Have a look at the link.
Let’s play “Spot the Denial” in a mindbogglingly wrong piece by Joe Bastardi. There’s plenty to choose from this time.
For Those Who Deny Denial
Michael Tobis
Michael Tobis, editor-in-chief of Planet3.0 and site cofounder, has always been interested in the interface between science and public policy. He holds a doctorate from the University of Wisconsin - Madison in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences where he developed a 3-D ocean model on a custom computing platform. He has been involved in sustainability conversations on the internet since 1992, has been a web software developer since 2000, and has been posting sustainability articles on the web since 2007.
For a more important and revealing case, see John Mashey here
Bastardi is wrong on all the conclusions he draws from the material he exhibits. Very wrong. Stupidly wrong, as there is a (weak) case he could have made with the same data he showed.
Calling him a denier is more wrong than Bastardi was. By the way, 'wop' is not a racial insult. It is a nationalistic insult, on the order of 'Canuck'. 'Denier', on the other hand, stolen away from its original and legitimate usage, is a political insult, purposely equating Bastardi with skinhead deniers of the Holocaust. Racist would include... well, no. I won't do it.
Lest you think I'm exaggerating (and I know this post will disappear, but Tobis, just to show you you're full of it...)
The concept of denial has been distorted and expropriated for malign political purposes. Because you idiots couldn't win a debate with a door even though you are (broadly speaking) correct on the science, you have stooped to Comintern tactics for deligitimizing those who kick your ass every time you converse, even though they are (broadly speaking) wrong.
For the avoidance of doubt, the job of limiting emissions and preparing for very real climate change would be much further along the necessary road we must travel if the Fool's Parade of Gleick, Lewandowsky, Prall, Mann, Tobis, Cook, Nuccitelli (Hey! another wop!), ad nauseum had never uttered a word.
And just in case you're wondering about my sentiments, I lived in Italy for seven years among the most wonderful, best educated and gentle people it has ever been my good fortune to meet. See? I can distort nationalistic insults for my purposes, too!
Andrew Glikson
“I wonder whether such a show, if concerned with denial of the holocaust of world war II, would have been conceived?” - Andrew Glikson, Australian National University (2012)
Bernie Sanders
“It reminds me in some ways of the debate taking place in this country and around the world in the late 1930s – there were people – who said ‘don’t worry! Hitler’s not real! It’ll disappear!” - Bernie Sanders, U.S. Senator from Vermont (2010)
Charles Larson
“The deniers of climate change are cut from the same cloth as Holocaust deniers. They’ve never been to the death camps, Auschwitz and Birkenau, so what they haven’t seen does not exist.” - Charles Larson, American University (2013)
Craig Rosebraugh
“Fox [News] is far and away the extreme example. They’ll have a known holocaust denier debating a holocaust survivor.” - Craig Rosebraugh, Environmental Activist (2013)
David Fiderer
“At its core, global warming denial is like Holocaust denial, an assault on common decency.” - David Fiderer, The Huffington Post (2009)
David Roberts
“It’s about the climate-change “denial industry”, …we should have war crimes trials for these bastards – some sort of climate Nuremberg.“- David Roberts, Grist Magazine (2006)
Donald Prothero
“There are many more traits that the climate deniers share with the creationists and Holocaust deniers and others who distort the truth.” - Donald Prothero, Occidental College (2012)
Ellen Goodman
“Let’s just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.” - Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe (2007)
Greg Craven
“When the press does a story on the Holocaust, do they give equal time to the revisionists?” - Greg Craven, Central High School, Independence, Oregon (2010)
Guy Keleny
“I think these people are anti-science flat-earthers. …They are every bit as dangerous as Holocaust deniers.” - Guy Keleny, The Independent (2013)
Jim Hoggan
“These are not debunkers, testing outrageous claims with scientific rigor. They are deniers – like Holocaust deniers.” - Jim Hoggan, DeSmogBlog (2005)
Joel Connelly
“Bluntly put, climate change deniers pose a greater danger than the lingering industry that denies the Holocaust.” - Joel Connelly, Seattle Post-Intelligencer (2007)
Jon Niccum
“An Inconvenient Truth is so convincing that it makes opposers of the argument as credible as Holocaust deniers.” - Jon Niccum, Lawrence Journal-World (2006)
Nathan Rees
“The threat of climate change is catastrophic. In fact, the current wave of climate change scepticism smacks of 1930s-style appeasement.” - Nathan Rees, Australian Politician (2009)
Paul McCartney
“Some people don’t believe in climate warning – like those who don’t believe there was a Holocaust.” - Paul McCartney, Musician (2010)
Paul Payack
“There are now proposals that ‘global warming deniers’ be treated the same as ‘Holocaust deniers: professional ostracism, belittlement, ridicule and, even, jail.” - Paul Payack, Global Language Monitor (2006)
Pete Postlethwaite
“There are bound to be deniers. Whenever you set up a thesis there’s bound to be somebody who comes the opposite way …like Holocaust deniers.” - Pete Postlethwaite, Actor (2009)
Peter Jacques
“This article begins by first naming this counter-movement “climate denial” and working through the various apparent options by specifically looking at the scholarship on Holocaust denial for insight.” - Peter Jacques, University of Central Florida (2012)
Richard Glover
“Surely it’s time for climate-change deniers to have their opinions forcibly tattooed on their bodies.” - Richard Glover, The Sydney Morning Herald (2011)
Richard Kyte
“Does the Media Research Center think equal air time should be given to Holocaust deniers and flat-earthers as well?” - Richard Kyte, Viterbo University (2013)
Richard Schiffman
“We don’t give Holocaust deniers equal time to vent their noxious views, so why offer it to the climate change deniers?” - Richard Schiffman, The Huffington Post (2012)
Robert Manne
“Denialism, a concept that was first widely used, as far as I know, for those who claimed that the Holocaust was a fraud, is the concept I believe we should use.” - Robert Manne, La Trobe University (2009)
Scott Pelley
“If I do an interview with Elie Wiesel, am I required as a journalist to find a Holocaust denier?” - Scott Pelley, CBS (2006)
An interesting collection. Some of those are disturbing. Some aren't.
Denial is part of the human condition. Denying that is another form of, well, denial.
Bastardi's article is hard to construe as anything but deliberately misleading. At best it is delusional. How are we to have a conversation when people keep putting stuff like that on the table? And how are we to characterize this sort of malice or dysfunction? It needs a name, and not a complimentary one.
If you refuse to draw the line anywhere, you are refusing to have a conversation.
But you're not trying to have a conversation with Bastardi, are you? Hell, you're not even trying to have a conversation with me. (Conversations don't usually happen with the implied threat of 'moderation', or whatever label you're using for censorship.)
Bastardi is making a speech. It will resonate with those who already agree with him. Just like most of your speeches resonate with those who already agree with you. If Bastardi wanted to have a conversation he would come here, or Yale Climate, or Keith Kloor. If you wanted to have a conversation you would do the same. In fact you sometimes do.
When you do, you do not fare well, as I think you've acknowledged. You would do well to investigate why. I would suggest that labeling your opponents with an epithet they hate is not the way to start a conversation. At various times in your blogging career you have agreed and said you would not use the denier epithet any more. But your memory of what you have said is short. A short memory is good for a propagandist. Not so much for someone who wants to communicate.
"For the avoidance of doubt, the job of limiting emissions and preparing for very real climate change would be much further along the necessary road we must travel if the Fool's Parade of Gleick, Lewandowsky, Prall, Mann, Tobis, Cook, Nuccitelli (Hey! another wop!), ad nauseum had never uttered a word."
Oh my actual Christ on a bike. That right there's the point where I stopped being able to take Fuller seriously. So deeply, obviously wrong, it can't possibly be worth the effort to counter. Really - after that sentence, why give him any air at all? There isn't anything to discuss - certainly not anything related to P3's mission.
Well, it's tricky. I am opposed to moderating ad hominem; the question is whether his individual postings do or don't help us get to productive conversations.
It's certainly true that Fuller tends to hijack threads to his own obsessions. Which is why there is an open thread and why there is this thread - if Fuller or someone with similar inclinations wants to participate let him do so there. The condition is that the editors (in practice, nowadays, me) find his contribution interesting and/or constructive. He can take that or leave it.
In the present case, it is conceivable to me that "Gleick, Lewandowsky, Prall, Mann, Tobis, Cook, Nuccitelli" et al could indeed be doing more harm than good. As a self-skeptic, I try to bend-over backwards to entertain arguments to the effect that I am wrong. The problem is that Tom makes tantalizing gestures in the direction of having some belief structure about this "climate communicators are wrong" business, but can't control his temper long enough to tell us what it means.
I am doubtful, of course. Kahan, for instance makes a far more explicit case for a similar conclusion, and it is clearly wrong in my own estimation. (ymmv) But at least Kahan gives us something to discuss.
If Fuller ever got around to producing an argument for his position other than childish hissing, I really would try to listen to it and give it fair consideration.
But the stolen CRU emails (and similarly stolen SkS files) are off limits for this site by policy, so that may somewhat limit his ability to advance the conversation. I will not expand on why - that would violate that constraint. If Fuller's arguments are based on stolen correspondence then I guess he'll have to take them elsewhere.
(Fuller also regularly provides us the service of reminding us that quantity of conversation is not as important as quality.)
I promise to keep conversations on topic. Fuller did not discuss my nomenclature point at all, but raised a different one. I should have purged it.
I don't produce arguments here because you censor. It takes work and time to produce good arguments and I won't do it when you can 'lose' them or simply refuse to post.
[ Ho hum. We deleted a single comment from you the first week we were up and one from Nullius. You raised such a stink about "censorship" that we have posted every single non-spam comment since; occasionally not in the main thread, though. This is specifically as a response to you, Tom, and has been some work, though in retrospect it is a good approach. If something of yours did not show up in the old borehole or the new shadow threads, it was presumably a false positive on the spam filter or some glitch on the way out of China. We get so much spam trapped by Akismet that it is impractical to look at it, sorry. -mt ]
Since the first week, we do not delete anything that makes it through the spam filter except obvious commercial spam. We have gone to some lengths to enable this without breaking the flow of conversation, pretty much in response to your own personal squawking.
However, if you don't want to run the risk of your posting being demoted to the shadow thread, either 1) don't say things for no other apparent purpose than irritating people and repeating yourself or 2) go away entirely. If you don't intend to defend your position then you are not contributing to the discussion as we construe it, and so you really ought to find something else to do with your time or at least someplace else to expound your unsupported opinions.
Squawking, eh? You have obviously never had a comment deleted. You have deleted mine on numerous occasions. Why should I trust you?
[ We deleted a single comment from you the first week we were up and one from Nullius. You raised such a stink about "censorship" that we have posted every single non-spam comment since; occasionally not in the main thread, though. This is specifically as a response to you, Tom, and has been some work, though in retrospect it is a good approach. If something of yours did not show up in the old borehole or the new shadow threads, it was presumably a false positive on the spam filter or some glitch on the way out of China. We get so much spam trapped by Akismet that it is impractical to look at it, sorry. -mt ]
1. Argument from lack of effectiveness. Pew's survey ranking priorities for Americans show climate change declining from 31% in 2009 to 29% in January 2014. http://www.pewresearch.org/key-data-points/climate-change-key-data-points-from-pew-research/
2. Argument from reputational risk: Lewandowsky's paper was withdrawn and his explanation for the reason was rebutted by the editor of Frontiers: http://www.frontiersin.org/blog/Rights_of_Human_Subjects_in_Scientific_Papers/830. Anderegg Prall et al was criticized by Spencer Weart the day it was published. Weart remarked that a casual glance the paper should not have been published in its (then) present form. Other defects were noted on this website: http://init.planet3.org/2010/06/fullers-complaints-w-anderegg-prall-et-al.html. Michael Mann's work has been extremely polarizing, criticized by his peers in no uncertain terms and generating Congressional hearings that focused on what was wrong with his work and neglecting what little was right. His later activities on Twitter and in the courts can only be characterized as bizarre and is just fueling the skeptic cause. If you look at who has joined Steyn's side in the legal dispute between Steyn and Mann, you see that the lawsuit is there only to serve Mann (and thank you Rod Serling for that).
3. Argument from threat to science as a Western institution. Elements of the science used in policy discussions about climate change have been challenged on a variety of grounds and have contributed to what the Guardian calls the decline of science, accompanied by a book called 'Is American Science in Decline?'. Articles about lack of replicability, outright fraud and sloppy use of statistics are cited--and as these are the accusations leveled at the people I named above, a positive feedback loop is created whereby discussions of climate change feed the impressions of lower quality production in scientific fields. http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/talking-back/2012/08/22/is-american-science-in-decline/. http://www.theguardian.com/science/the-h-word/2012/sep/13/history-science.
4. Argument from stasis: For close to a decade members of the consensus have agonized quite publicly about the lack of movement in public opinion and public policy. Those making the argument most vociferously include those I mentioned above. As it has had no perceptible effect, it creates the impression of what I characterized five years ago as World War 1 style trench warfare. The public has by and large moved on. Governments from Canada to Australia have managed to walk away from previous commitments to lower emissions. Policy makers are now basically fighting regulators, not something that normally produces an edifying result. Nothing new is being said. And the worst of the self-appointed spokesperson for the consensus is busy just saying the same stuff louder. Nothing could be less productive.
And as I've told you on numerous occasions, any time you want me to leave Planet 3, just say so.
I agree with MT that some of the quotes in Tom's list are disturbing. But I'm not the author of them, and I won't accept responsibility for them. The word 'denier' is in the public domain, and anyone is free to use it for any purpose that suits them. I use the word with a range of pejorative connotations, but I proactively repudiate any call for legal sanctions against AGW-deniers unless they commit actionable libel, and forcible tattooing would definitely be going too far.
Nor will I hold anyone else responsible for my use of the word. I'm not a member of any 'team'. I'm an individual who judges assertions about reality according to my personal epistemic standards. My standards are supported, if not by my direct knowledge of the facts at issue, then by my confidence in my scientific meta-literacy, developed by my upbringing as a son of a scientist in a community of scientists and my formal training to the doctoral level.
I'll continue to use the word with different connotations in different contexts, because it's the most succinct way to express my opinion in each those contexts. If an AGW-denier objects to being called that, I'll clarify what I mean in that context; my meaning may or may not be the one he or she imputes. And I'll always tell them that if they don't want to be called 'denier', they should either: 1) present an argument that, in the judgement of more than 3% of the qualified experts, overturns the consensus; 2) examine their motivations and acknowledge their errors; or 3) STFU.
How do I justify my position? By my firm belief that everyone is entitled to my opinion. Regardless, reality doesn't care about my or anyone else's feelings. If the worst warming scenario comes to pass, it will be the fault of the deniers who obstructed corrective action, not me.
Mal Adapted, your justification of your position is weak to the point of moral bankruptcy.
If the worst comes to pass, the skeptics will certainly deserve a lot of blame--which they're getting in spades in advance of any consequences at all.
But the contributions from your side of the fence--whether or not you're a part of 'The Team'--have contributed, and not in a small way.
As I said on the previous thread, you are where you are because you have done what you have done. If you like where you are, continue what you are doing.
Mal Adapted, are you happy with where we stand with regard to climate policy? If you are, keep calling people deniers and postulating that Republican billionaires are nefariously conspiring to frustrate your every move. That absolves you of any responsibility to act responsibly.
[ If you were having an argument over dinner with a cousin at your great aunt's you would not say "to the point of moral bankruptcy". Comparable understatement in such matters would be greatly appreciated here and will improve your chances not only of passing moderation but actually of advancing such of your own opinions as have merit. We are trying to make progress here, not enemies. -mt ]
Oh--Mal Adapted, wrt to your point number 1: Freeman Dyson. Quality rather than quantity, right?
Are you suggesting that there are no Republican billionaires funding stubborn pseudo-rational opposition? Or that they are essentially ineffective?
Dyson -
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2007/08/dyson-exegesis.html
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2010/01/guest-posting-expanded-dyson-exegesis.html
http://init.planet3.org/2009/03/slicin-dicin-dyson-bryson.html
A particularly salient example:
Tom Fuller,
I'm new here so these points may already have been made:
1) "your are where you are because you have done what you have done"
That's Post Hoc Ergo Propter Hoc fallacy as clear as it gets. Do you have any data-supported narrative to show a causal link?
2) Freeman Dyson? Argument From Authority; if that's the game then you lose to quantity, unless you have some evidence that he is better qualified than the actual experts.
But I have a real question about this labeling business. I use the term Denialist because I think the proper analogy is with Creationist-- someone who rejects a generally accepted Scientific Theory, with a clear connection to religious or ideological predisposition.
Do you think that Creationists would listen to reason if we called them Evolution Skeptics?
I don't; the whole Intelligent Design fiasco is pretty clear evidence to the contrary.
Dyson would be an excellent case for a psychological study of denial. He is not stupid nor demented. What motivates his ridicu-lousy reasoning? Perhaps Stockholm syndrome, like many a journalist or politician? But he seems not a hostage of the Fossil Fools. Looks more like Dyson is held hostage by his own sci-fi dreams. So perhaps it's Palmström syndrome (after Christian Morgenstern's poem The impossible fact).
Dyson is a liberal fellow, so the market-obsessed ideology is no explanation.
What does explain him, I think, is that he is miffed. Nobody is citing his 1977 "Can we control the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere?" (his answer was in the affirmative). He concluded in 1977 the the problem, though potentially real, was entirely solvable, though he was very light on the details. Since nobody is citing him, he considers them arguing from ignorance.
I would actually like to see more work on the question he raised, in fact. There's very little solid research at a level that would satisfy a whole-systems thinker, and the path to a decent future may well involve some ambient carbon capture scheme.
But in my estimate, it appears to be Dyson's own ego that has driven him to trust Wattsian nonsense in lieu of actual science on this matter; I think no deeper ideological or sociological motives pertain.
Michael, "An insult is like a drink; it affects one only if accepted." (RA Heinlein). Tom and I hold each other in symmetric regard, so please don't moderate him on my account.
I'm most certainly not happy with where we stand with regard to climate policy. It's easy to dismiss Tom's position that calling people deniers, poopy-heads or what have you, has the same weight in that regard as the vast sums of mone wielded by fossil-fuel billionaires, so I won't lose any sleep over my moral responsibility for the policy void.
Tom, are you saying that Dyson's past mastery of theoretical physics qualifies him to overturn the consensus of working climate scientists all by himself?
Dyson is the paradigmatic techno-optimist. He seems to think that because he can imagine a way to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, the AGW problem is solved. I refute it thus:
http://bluemoon.ucsd.edu/co2_400/co2_800k_zoom.png
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarming/images/giss_temperature.png
This is what immediately comes to mind:
http://zvon.org/comp/r/ref-Jargon_file.html#Terms~gedanken
mt/admin said:
(Google Scholar says 139, and I have found at least one gem amoung them. Will pursue these later, when I write down my sinister plan to save the world. This article of Dyson's will certainly be quoted. Thanks for reminding me.)
Worthwhile to re-read/examine this piece. It seems the first serious examination of the one and only "geoengineering" option we have. If only Dyson hadn't later written down his biotech phantasies, later. E.g.: http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2007/jul/19/our-biotech-future
My dream, too, actually! Incl. Internet to the village! But forget silicon plants or diamond-bearing trees. What about terra preta (char-amended soil) instead?
-------------------------------------------------------------
Realclimate review of a later nybooks.com article:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/freeman-dysons-selective-vision/langswitch_lang/in
-------------------------------------------------------------
So, actually Dyson has a solution. This should make it easier for him to accept the problem. Methinks a major force of denial is feeling helpless, seeing no solution. This force seems not apply to Dyson.
"Windignation"
-- by Horatio Algeranon
If Holocaust deniers
Had never really been
Climate change deniers
Would have to sketch them in