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More than 100 comments found. Only the most recent 100 have been displayed.

At a glance - Is the CO2 effect saturated?

Theo Simon at 15:46 PM on 23 April, 2024

I am not science trained but trying to understand. This rebuttal doesn't mention the alleged evidence presented in the paper "Climatic consequences of the process of saturation of radiation absorption in gases" by Kubicki and others - or does it? The current denialism talking point is that additional CO2 has now been shown to have no additional warming effect, and claims new proofs of this:

https://notrickszone.com/2024/04/23/3-physicists-use-experimental-evidence-to-show-co2s-capacity-to-absorb-radiation-has-saturated/

Climate - the Movie: a hot mess of (c)old myths!

nigelj at 04:55 AM on 25 March, 2024

Nick Palmer says "It's becoming increasingly clear that virtually all of the 'engine' behind 'denialim is the Machiavellian manoeuvring of highly motivated political ideologues who believe their cause is so overwhelmingly important that it justifies the use of mass deception and the naked propaganda that is in this film."

Love this statement. So accurate. It concisely sums up the whole thing.

At the level of the general public denialism is probably a bit more broadly based, including people with vested interests in the fossil fules industry, or just worried about costs, and others with a more ideological or political agenda. Or a combination. Just based on my anecdotal impression and reading studies by various people but the pattern is very clear.

As to Margaret Thatcher, not my favourite politician, but not totally bad either. She had a chemistry degree. She undestands science and accepted anthropogenic global warming. Probably also a bit opportunistic promoting nuclear power but at least she accepted the science. The idea it was all to impoverish poor people is in the realms of tin foil hat conspiracy theory.

Certainly I have read many comments by deniers where they cant help reveal their political ideologies, and its frequently small government, libertarian freedom loving (taken to an extreme), or very conservative, or sometimes hard left concern trolling (mitigation will hurt poor people). Sometimes the right use the same argument that mitigation will hurt poor people, but I would suggest they couldnt care less and just use any ammunition they can get.

According to psychological studies people who value security as a priority tend to vote left, those who value freedom (of action) as the main priority tend to vote right. However these tendencies exist on a spectrum and most people value both. The freedom loving libertarian ideologues are way out at the extreeme to the point its a bit pathological and where they resent all laws except very minimal and basic criminal and property law. You cannot run a society like that. It doesnt work. An example:

www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/21534416/free-state-project-new-hampshire-libertarians-matthew-hongoltz-hetling

It's cosmic rays

MA Rodger at 21:33 PM on 22 September, 2023

sailingfree @120/121,
The H. Svensmark input into AGW science has been in general seen as entirely overblown unless you are in denial about AGW when the idea that the sun plays a much bigger role than the climatology shows is usually seen as supportive of their denialism.

Svensmark first published a cosmic ray climate effect back in 1997 demonstrating a remarkable fit between cosmic rays and global cloud cover. The fit proved to be spurious while experiment has demonstrated the causal link between cosmic rays and cloud formation to be very very weak. Undeterred by these setbacks, Svensmark has since been examining the detail of the cosmic ray/cloudiness relationship in an attempt to show there was a climatic effect after all.

Part of this analysis by Svensmark homed-in on Forbush Decreases, a phenomenon identified back in the mid-1900s and today catalogued at an average rate of over 100 events per year. A relationship bewteen these Forbush Decreases and changes in cloud had been observed back in the 1990s.

Svenmark first published on this phenomenon back in 2009. They used the most energetic Forbush Decreases (just 26 over 21 years) to produce a correlation between peak cloudiness and the Forbush Decrease strength (Fig 2- not entirely convincingly) and plotting the averages of cosmic ray evolution and average cloudiness evolution for the five most energetic Forbush Decrease events (Fig 1) although the reason for showing the averaging of these five alone is not evident to me in this paper.

Svensmark et al (2021) which you ask about is simply Svensmark et al (2009) but using a correlation with the CERES radiation data. The CERES data restricts analysis to post-2000 events and now only the 13 most energetic events are analysed for the correlation (fig 2) with event evolutions averaged from (again) the five strongest events (fig 1), this apparently because there is too much "dominant meteorological noise" if more events are included, although I'm not sure that squares up with the effect being climactically significant.

Of course, with the sun less active since SunSpotCycle 23, and thus presumably the cosmic rays increasing cloudiness which cools the climate, this would suggest that Svensmark's work would be implying amplification of the role of AGW rather than a diminution which denialists hope for. But such understanding may be a bit too involved for denialists to grasp.

There is no consensus

Eclectic at 09:37 AM on 11 September, 2023

RicardoB @952 :

In return, thanks for your thoughts on Dr Jordan Peterson. My question about Peterson's "choosing" of Dr Curry . . . was a 25% rhetorical question.

I have only seen a small amount of Peterson : too small to make a confident diagnosis of his psyche.

Initial impressions of him : intellectual, sententious, and addicted to the limelight (so much so, that he might well be prepared to sacrifice his probity in order to achieve more limelight & notoriety . . . and thus more clicks & money ).

So I wasn't sure whether his climate science denialism was genuine or merely commercial. There's a ripe field for moneymaking if you pander to the deniosphere ~ whether in climate or far-right-wingism or vaccines or evolution etcetera.

Peterson seems to have quite a cult following in some quarters. Just imagine the good he could do, if on the Side of the Angels !

If you strongly feel I would benefit from seeing more of Peterson, then please direct me (and us generally) to a couple of his essays or videos. Fear not ~ I have a good supply of anti-nausea tablets.

A Frank Discussion About the Propagation of Measurement Uncertainty

nigelj at 06:21 AM on 13 August, 2023

Eclectic @11.

I agree the cranks are a small subset of denilaists and that many of the denialists are fundamentally driven by selfish and economic motives. However you should add political motives to the list, being an ideologically motivated dislike of government rules and regulations. Of course these things are interrelated.

I have a bit of trouble identifying one single underlying cause of the climate denialism issue. It seems to be different denialists have different motives to an extent, randging from vested interests, to political and ideological axes to grind, to selfishness, to just a dislike of change to plain old contrariness. Or some combination. But if anyone thinks there is one key underling motive for the denialim I would be interested in your reasoning.

The cranks are not all deniers as such. Some believe burning fossil fuels is causing warming but some of them think other factors play a very large part like the water cycle or deforestation. A larger part than the IPCC have documented. They unwittingly serve the hard core denialists cause. They are like Lenin and Stalins "useful idiots."

I do visit WUWT sometimes, and I know what you are saying.

"To very broadly paraphrase Voltaire : It is horrifying to see how even intelligent minds can believe absurdities."

Voltaire is right. Its presumably a lot to do with cognitive dissonance. Intelligent minds are not immunue from strong emotively or ideologically driven beliefs and resolving conflicts between those and reality might lead to deliberate ignorance. Reference on cognitive dissonance:

www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/326738#signs

This does suggests cranks might be driven by underlying belief systems not just craziness.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #25 2023

nigelj at 08:37 AM on 24 June, 2023

OPOF, thanks for the very useful copy and paste quote.

The misinformation is very troubling. The climate denialists are still very active although its swiched to some extent from denialism about the science, to denialism about the impacts of climate change and the solutions.

However I'm not too keen on governments or the news media or other organisations becoming censors of information. I read George Orwells book 1984 recently and it certainly does a good job of raising awareness of the dire consequences of governmnet and media censorship even if it's well meant.

Of course we do have some established and reasonable limits on free speech, like laws against inciting violence but they are minimal and related to law breaking. I'm talking about going beyond this.

But at he same time the way Musk has allowed twitter to revert to an open slather for hate and misinformation is equally as troubling. It all leaves me unsure what the best solution is.

However there is no justification for algorithms that send people a deluge of climate denial. This is just manipulation to increase profits.

I recommend this book to people: 21 lessons for the 21st century by Yuval Harari. Very good chapter on climate change and other environmental issues. IMO this man has a great grasp of reality.

It's not urgent

MA Rodger at 08:24 AM on 26 March, 2023

PolutionMonster @28,

The "green wash" aspect to CCS comes from the oil industry seeing the injection of CO2 down oil wells as a useful 'voidage replacement' method for extracting more oil while the storage of CO2 keeps some of the criticism of fossil fuel extraction at arm's length. I'm not sure of the capacity in old FF wells. The carbon density of a well full of CO2 is going to be far far lower than one full of oil. Strangely, pumping CO2 down gas wells (where prsumably carbon-density for CO2 would be on a par with CH4) is mostly discussed in terms of preventing atmospheric CO2 release during gas extraction (which can contain a lot of CO2).
Yet CCS does obviously run beyond the "green wash" when the storage isn't an aging oil well and/or is used to draw down atmospheric CO2 rather than to stop CO2 emissions. Thus Bioenergy CCS or Direct Air CCS.

And denialism in politics - the right-wing of UK politics has become far more mainstream due to Brexit. And I have found those who campaign for Brexit were almost to a man also strong climate change deniers. This was very noticable here abouts as we had a big battle over an off-shore wind farm opposed by the denialists and eventually stopped by the Tory government newly free of coalition partners. This was followed closely by the Brexit referendum and us 'remainers' were locally facing exactly the same opposition line-up as with the wind farm.

Global warming: a battle for evangelical Christian hearts and minds

EddieEvans at 21:46 PM on 13 February, 2023

I received an email from an old acquaintance mired in conspiracy theories. An article, Climate Science’s Myth-Busterboosting, by Judith Curry.

Would anyone share a remark about “findings”? I see that SKS has much about her past denialism.

Wikipedia has a nice description of Curry, I know. I'm just curious if there's something recent, more revealing, if that's possible.

There's no tropospheric hot spot

MA Rodger at 19:23 PM on 23 August, 2022

Cedders @33,

And having had a read of that PDF...

Cedders @33,
Having examined the PDF (16 pages not 24), it is quite evident that it is a pile of utter nonsense, a "welcome to the lunatic asylum" message and not anything in any way scientifically-based.

The author is Piers Corbyn, a well-kown denialist and an elder brother of Jeremy Corbyn (a long-serving left-wing Labour MP who bizarrely gained the heady position of Leader of the Labour Party for 4½ years).

Piers Corbyn is described in Wikithing as "an English weather forecaster, businessman, anti-vaxxer and conspiracy theorist" and does feature here at SkS being (1) Cited within a spot of denialism of 2015 in the Daily Express tabloid/comic, (2) The main source of a pile of climate nonsense of 2013 from the then Mayor of London Alexander Boris von Pfiffle Johnson, a man now renowned throughout the known world for not being particularly truthful, (3) Listed here at SkS as a denialsit with zero peer-reviewed writings.

The 16 page thesis linked up-thread @33 is a 2019 thesis presented to the Reading University Debating Journal and sitting at the top of a list of 24 such theses posted 2018-19, top of the list because it is the most recent (the journal lasted less than a year), a list which addresses such important topics as 'Why Self-Service Checkouts are the Invention of the Devil' and 'The Great University of Reading Catering Con: Man Shall Not Live off Sandwiches Alone' and an anonymous piece 'Why I Support the Conservatives: The Most Successful Party in British History'.

The Piers Corbyn thesis begins by citing David Legates' dismissal of the 97% AGW consensus before dismissing that because "it is about facts; and no Global-Warming Inquisition is going to prevent me exposing their nonsensical theories."

Corbyn then kicks off by asserting anthropogenic CO2 comprises 4% of atmospheric CO2 (thus confusing FF carbon with naturally-cycled carbon) and that CO2 is not the main controller of global temperature (here presenting a graphic which confuses the US temperature with global temperature - shown below in this comment).
A further assertion is then presented, that CO2 is the result of warming oceans with six references/notes provided in support which seem to all point back to crazy denialist Murry Salby.

So, a la Salby, the present rise in CO2 is claimed to result from the good old Medieval Warm Period. A graphic is presented comparing a denialist 1,000y temperature record (based on the schematic FAR Fig 7c) with the much-confirmed scientifically-based Hockey Stick graph.
This brings us to the halfway page of Corbyn's denialist rant.

The thesis continues with pageful of misunderstanding of how the GH-effect works, ending with accusations that this misunderstood 'theory' breaks the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics (or it does if you misinterpret the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics).
Happily, this misunderstanding is considered to be not supported by "better scientists" who consider the lapse rate. And this indeed is a 'better' consideration. But here Corbyn perhaps confuses the tropical 'hot spot' (which is caused by increased tropical rainfall transporting more latent up into the troposphere) with some CO2 effect. (The 'hot spot' results from a warmer tropics and not per se any enhanced GH-effect.) And he fails to address the reasons why there is difficulty detecting this tropical 'hot spot'. Indeed he brands it as a 'coldspot' that he seems to say is caused by "more CO2 & other GHGs" which cause a diurnal fluctuation in the IR "heat-exit height" to become greater and, due to the 4th-power in the SB equation, this causes cooling. Whether such a phenomenon extends beyond the tropics (thus globally more-than negating the 'hot spot') is not properly explained but, due to the lapse rate this phenomenon can apparently also negate "the original expected surface warming."

A first graphic box is presented with three unsubstantiated bullet points explaining "Why CO2 theory does not work" alongside two similar "apart from"s.
A second graphic box also titled "Why CO2 theory does not work" states:-

In the real atmosphere there are day/night temperature fluctuations (eg in upper atmosphere). They are larger with more CO₂ because CO₂ (infra red absorber / emitter) gains & loses heat easier than N₂ & O₂ and so enables all the air to adjust quicker.

This is a fundamentally different explanation from the previous fluctuation in IR "heat-exit height" explanation described earlier, and it is still wrong.
(A packet of air with X concentrations of CO2 will both emit and absorb an IR photons of quantity P. With absorb=emit, it is thus in equilibrium. Add CO2 so the concentration is doubled to 2X, and the emitting photons will double to 2P and the absorbed photons will also double to 2P so absorb=emit and the same equilibrium is maintained. The main result is that twice the level if IR emission has half the pathlength before absorption so at any point the IR flux remains unchanged. And CO2 does not "gain & lose heat easier than N₂ & O₂" when it remains thermally coupled to the N₂ & O₂. )
The remainder of this second graphic box on PDF page 9 is a little too confused to rebut with any confidence. A diurnal range of "about 5 or 6 deg" is given which is apparently a temperature range yet whatever “deg” means (presumably Kelvin), the bulk of the troposphere has a far smaller diurnal range than even 5ºF. The mechanism for the enhanced cooling from the "heat-exit height" is presented as due to a fluctuating temperature losing more heat (by radiating IR) than a constant temperature (which is true). A rather dodgy-looking equation is followed by the note "Detail subject under research" but no reference is given and three-years-on there is no sign of such "research."
And a third graphic box is shown on the next page also titled "Why CO2 theory does not work," this third such graphic mainly presenting a pair of images from Australian denialist David M. W. Evans who has his own SkS page of climate misinformation.

The thesis then turns to the proposition that it is not CO2 but solar forces that "rules climate temperature" with the dotted line on the graphic below described as such a ruling influence. It apparently shows how the "9.3yr lunar-nodal crossing & the full 22yr solar magnetic cycle" allegedly shift the jet stream and "many circulation patterns." The graphic's 60-yr periodicity is less than convincing,being fitted to US rather than global temperature which, when extended beyond the 1895-2008 period shows itself to be simple curve-fitting (eg the Berkeley Earth US temperature record 1820-2020 does not show it, even to a blind man). The graphic was presented by Corbyn at the Heartland Institute's 2009 conflab in NY in which Corbyn [audio] insists other findings demonstrate “something is going on” but why it is this graphic being reused in this 2019 thesis is not clear – perhaps the forecast of world temperature dropping to 1970s levels by 2030 is too evident on other slides he used in that Heartland presentation.
To support his thesis Corbyn mentions an alleged cover-up by the likes of the BBC in reporting only global warming when the 'true' data shows cooling, the reported support for all this Piers Corbyn craziness from oil companies who shy away only because they want to use AGW to "make higher profits" and how these AGW-inspired mitigation agendas are already directly responsible for needlessly killing "millions" annually.
The thesis ends with a challenge:-

It is for this reason that I, Piers Corbyn, challenge whoever is willing in Reading University or other appropriate institutions to a debate on the failed Global warming scam vs evidence-based science.

So I interpret the thesis as a "welcome to the lunatic asylum" message from Piers Corbyn.
Piers Corbyn graphic

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #32 2022

nigelj at 11:30 AM on 19 August, 2022

Jason Chen @12

"What's not that list is physics goals of fixing the climate or even predicting it well. 30 years later, the climate is neither fixed nor on a path to be fixed. Fixed hasn't even been defined. The IPCC hasn't identified anything close to a seat belt. The response strategies it has formulated have a conspicuous overlap with Klaus Schwab's agenda for maximal disruption. Large chunks of the world are rejecting them as economically and politically unpalatable. These are just facts."

Your stream of mostly nonsensical, wrong, evidence free, citation free assertions is getting tiresome. I wish you would take your trolling somewhere else. You also have a habit of confusing various things.

For the benefit of sane people:

"What's not that list is physics goals of fixing the climate"

Fixing the climate is not a physics goal. Physics is about understanding the climate. Mitigation is about fixing the climate.

And The IPCCs stated goals of assessing the relevant scientific information obvious directly imply the requirement to understand the physics.And their stated goal of formulating response strategies is clearly about "fixing the climate".

"or even predicting it well"

IPPC does not predict the climate. It reviews predictions made in various modelling exercises and the predictions have been quite good:

climate.nasa.gov/news/2943/study-confirms-climate-models-are-getting-future-warming-projections-right/

"the climate is neither fixed nor on a path to be fixed."

The fact that the climate problem has not been fixed is nothing to do with the IPCC or some undefined nebulous global elite. Neither are tasked with fixing the climate problem. Its because governments have weak policies, corporates have been slow to respond, and individuals have been complacent.

"Fixed hasn't even been defined. "

Fixed has been defined: Net zero by 2050 under the Paris Accord Agreements. You may disagree with the definition, but stop telling people there is no definition.

"The IPCC hasn't identified anything close to a seat belt."

The IPCC have defined the science very well. Their latest report runs to about 10,000 pages and references many thousands of peer reviewed studies. The science goes back over 100 years. This website discusses this issue if you go through their menu system to find relevant information.

"Klaus Swabs agenda".

Jason you better put on your tin foil hat.

"Large chunks of the world are rejecting them as economically and politically unpalatable. These are just facts."

Large chunks of the world are rejecting climate mitigation strategies for a range of reasons. For some its because they don't want to pay any costs, but there are many other reasons including vested interests, holding on to establiashed patterns of a materialistic displays of status, campaigns of climate science denialism and for various psychological reasons. But equally large chunks of people want mitigation strategies implimented, if you read polling studies by Pew Research.

Those are the real facts, with some relevant sources noted..

Taking the Temperature: a dispatch from the UK

John Mason at 20:43 PM on 29 July, 2022

Disturbing but unsurprising, Jim. There can be few things harder to cope with than buying wholeheartedly into a myth (climate change denialism, brexit, trump etc) then witnessing its disintegration.

New IPCC report: Only political will stands in way of meeting the Paris targets

Eclectic at 00:23 AM on 13 April, 2022

Quite right , Rayates55 . Although SkepticalScience is a website primarily and almost exclusively oriented to the scientific aspects of climate change, nevertheless you will find occasional articles on the psychological aspects of science denialism. Politics, in the sense of partisan politics is hardly touched upon. And if you hail from the USA, you know how toxic & insane the partisan politics can be ~ about science, epidemics, vaccines, and you-name-it-whatever . . . including public toilets !

So in the practical area of influencing the various legislatures, SkepticalScience is not a participant.

Rayates55 , your scope at this website is therefore very minimal for discussing the political science aspects. But this very thread may be your opportunity to make a brief contribution to such a topic.

Please start the ball rolling, with your own summary of the important points which you feel would be of practical use !

( My own thoughts are that the political world will gradually ramp up its corrective actions, as the technological capabilities slowly improve ~ and as, decade by decade, the worsening situation stimulates voters to demand more action. So, not very fast. And if anything good is to come from the recent/current coronavirus pandemic - plus the atrocities of the Ukraine War [happening in Europe, not Africa] - then it may be that national governments will pay more attention to "resiliency" of local energy supplies & food production & manufacturing. )

Rayates55 , the floor is yours. I am all ears, for your insightful ideas.

The Climate Shell Game

John Mason at 19:14 PM on 23 March, 2022

@Jan #16:

Not so sure about that. The measures taken here in the UK against COVID were dramatic and severe, yet given clear information regarding the nature of the threat, the majority of people accepted them to "do their bit". Countries where a degree of denialism prevailed saw, by contrast, massive losses. I know these are two very different issues but to me it shows what's possible if people are well-informed.

SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?

nigelj at 07:48 AM on 20 February, 2022

For information. "Review of Seim and Olsen paper: “The influence of IR Absorption and Backscatter Radiation from CO2…”

wattsupwiththat.com/2021/04/18/review-of-seim-and-olsen-paper/

Comprehensively debunked on WUWT. If those guys are debunking the paper it must be incredibly bad! Not sure why Santilves couldn't find this review because it only took me a few seconds. I wonder if he will argue with the review, or move on and just go onto dumping more junk science onto this website?

I think hes a hard core denialist like I originally stated. He mostly doesnt address specific points people raise. He uses all the usual denialist arguments one after the other. Perhaps he could tell us in unequivocal language what aspects of the AGW issue he accepts? What would change his mind? But no, we will probably just get another flood of denialism.

Time to disengage with him. He has all the factual information he needs. People here have done their bit. If he wont accept it that is his problem.

SkS Analogy 1 - Speed Kills: How fast can we slow down?

Santalives at 17:35 PM on 18 February, 2022

@Baerbellw. It is not the site, whether this one wuwt Or ntz its the content of peer reviewed science that is published. So far all I have seen denialism that there is any science that challenges the orthodoxy. If this site was really about skeptical science it would have every climate science paper, but it really just appears to be a echo chamber of alarmists views that refuse to even read other papers.

It's albedo

MA Rodger at 00:17 AM on 9 February, 2022

blaisct @113,

Surely 0.45ºC x 0.5Wm^-2/ºC = 0.225Wm^-2. The Dübal & Vahrenholt (2021) numbers put the 2001-20 19-year increase in Absorbed Solar at +1.27Wm^-2 (+/- 0.26, so 1.53 to 1.01). With the 0.5 convertion factor you state you used, that would be 1.27 / 0.5 = 2.54ºC (or 3.06ºC to 2.02ºC). The alternative 0.7 convertion factor you mention would yield 2.19ºC to 1.44ºC.
As for these 0.5 and 0.7 convertion factors, simple physics tells us a planet with 240Wm^-2 solar warming would require a factor of 3.7Wm^-2/ºC. But with the oceans to be warmed, that is a process that would take centuries not 19 years of slowly increased warming, a process which is also complicated by feedback mechanisms.

I would attempt to assist in putting your analysis back on the rails but I'm not entirely sure what it is you are about and also a little conscious that you are referencing Dübal & Vahrenholt (2021) which drinks rather deeply at the well of denialism.

That said, you appear not to be accounting for AGW prior to 2001 and attempting to analyse climate numbers 2001-20 in isolation. But AGW has been running at a pretty constant rate since the 1970s with only recently the first signs of a bit of acceleration. Simply attempting to isolate the period 2001-20 from the on-going AGW is always going to end in tears.

Fighting back against climate misinformation and the damage being done

Mal Adapted at 07:14 AM on 10 October, 2021

I've been commenting on climate-related articles on NYTimes.com for a few years now. I've noticed a change in the science-denying participants, as public opinion has tilted in favor of the scientific consensus, perhaps shocked by widely-reported new weather extremes. Denialism is ever more automatic and reactive. Some regular pseudonyms appear to be software agents, deployed to spout denialism on triggering. OTOH, the overwhelming consensus of commenters in these articles is science-respecting. Every once in a while, a comment of mine will get enough 'recommends' to make me think I'm not just talking to myself. I'll probably keep commenting for awhile, at least.

Skeptical Science New Research for Week #35, 2021

Eclectic at 20:32 PM on 5 September, 2021

MA Rodger @3 :

Thank you for that info. I had seen comments years ago on SkS by Dan Pangburn, and comments by him in more recent years on several blogs. His scientific ideas show an overlap of crackpot & delusional aspects. An interesting psychopathology ~ but far from rare in the sphere of climate denialism.

Citizenschallenge ~ some googling quickly showed you having a minor clash with Pangburn nearly a decade ago. With your inquiry at #1 , was it based on the discovery of something valid in "Pangburn 2021" ?? Had you any reason to suppose that a Stuffed Leopard would change its spots . . . or lose its stuffing?

Models are unreliable

MA Rodger at 13:03 PM on 8 August, 2021

sailingfree @1292,

The GCM models cover the entire climate system so it is up to the analyst creating a graph what part of the modelled climate system he takes data from for his comparison.

The problem with Christy is that he is rather too enthusiastic about demonstrating his denialism and so makes a very poor job of his comparisons.

RealClimate provide comparisons of model output with temperature data including global & tropical TMT data and have also provided a critique of Christy's efforts.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

MA Rodger at 21:26 PM on 23 June, 2021

Nick Palmer @88,
Delingpole? I don't see Delingpole as somebody who has any grip on anything that is worth my consideration. He is an absurd right-wing commentator, a wind-up merchant.

You are wrong to say the 2019 Katharine Hayhoe coverage"touches on the 'watermelon' aspect." It does not. It is saying some explain their denilaism by saying they see reds-under-the-AGW-bed, not that there are any there. All Hayhoe is saying is that the solutions to AGW have not been made as toxic as the science within the minds of those captured by denialism. That perhaps brings us back on-topic as the Mann book is saying that denialists are now laying claim to solutions such as CCS & nuclear to undermine the development of renewables. (I noted just yesterday on the BBC's Politics Live programme Steve Baker MP, one of the Gentlemen Who Prefer Fantasy, happily arguing for CCS & nuclear and bad-mouthing solar.)
Your other two links both discuss the same paper - Campbell & Kay (2014) 'Solution aversion: On the relation between ideology and motivated disbelief'.
I would suggest these citations simply makes the case against your assertion that Mann is pushing some deep-green agenda insinuated into the world by the evil GreenPeace. Rather, it suggests Mann has spotted this denialist shift in tactic.

...

You then turn to addressing us pidgeons which doesn't last long before we get another dead cat lobbed at us. "I haven't finished trying to clarify things for you all but...."
You expend 1,700 words trying to convince us that Exxon are being unfairly stitched up by Greenpeace/Oreskes. (I would suggest this is now appearing as something you care rather too much about for you not to have a dog in the race.)

You insist GreenPeace cherrypick from ancient Exxon documents to create their case against Exxon. I would suggest that an accusation of fundamental cherrypicking by GreenPeace could be (indeed should be) backed up by some evidence (maybe show us some false allegstions of Rochefeller funding work to undermine Arrhenius). You tell us these cherrypicks are "relatively few in number" but it seem presenting them is too complicated for you even though you later tell us it "is actually very quick and easy to do"!!.

What we do see is within you ability is to present some of the cherrypicks from Climategate (something that tick Delingpole tries to lay claim to exposing). Perhaps you feel this has more need of exposure than the case you are trying to make against GreenPeace.

...

All in all, Nick Palmer, you do not present your argument or yourself well here. Rather than the cocktail of argument you attempt to present, we pidgeons get a pile of dead cats. Perhaps your arguments need presenting for you.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

Nick Palmer at 09:33 AM on 23 June, 2021

Just in case you lot are still resisting the idea that the politics relating to climate science have become extremely polarised - in my view to the point where ideologues of both the left and right think it justified to exaggerate/minimise the scientific truths/uncertainties to sway the democratically voting public one way or the other - here's a video blog by alt-right hero and part of the original Climategate team who publicised the emails, James Delingpole basically saying that 'the left' have infiltrated and corrupted the science for the purpose of using political deception to seize power for themselves.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=866yHuh1RYM

Deconstruct or follow up Delingpoles' rhetoric elsewhere and you will find a helluva lot of intelligent articulate people who believe that the public's environmental consciences are being exploited by closet socialist forces to deceive them, using 'fear porn', into voting for policies which they otherwise wouldn't consider voting for, in a dark strategy to bring in some form of latter day Marxism. They insinuate this has got its tentacles into climate science which they assert has led to the reality of the science, as presented to the public, being twisted by them for political ends. It's absolutely not just Greenpeace, as I already said, who've 'gone red' to the point where it has 'noble cause' corrupted their presentations of environmental matters and, crucially, the narrow choice of solutions they favour - those which would enable and bring on that 'great reset' of civilisation that they want to see. It's much, much bigger than that.

I think we are seeing a resurgence and a recrystallisation of those who got convinced by Utopianist politics of the left and free market thinkers of the right taught at University - Marxist-Leninism, Ayn Rand, Adam Smith etc. Most of those students eventually 'grew up' and mellowed in time, leaving only a small cadre of incorrigible extremists but who are now, as the situation is becoming increasingly polarised politically, revisiting their former ideologies. In essence 'woking' up. I submit that the real battle we are seeing played out in the arena of climate matters is not between science and denialism of science - those are only the proxies used to manipulate the public. The true battle is between the increasingly polarised and increasingly extreme and deceitful proponents of the various far left and right ideologies and their re-energised followers.

It is now almost an article of faith, so accepted has it become, amongst many top climate scientists and commentators, that 'denialism' is really NOT motivated by stupidity or a greedy desire to keep on making as much money as possible but is rather a strong resistance to the solutions that they fear are just 'chess moves' to bring about the great Red 'reset' they think the 'opposition' are secretly motivated by.

Here's an excellent article by famous climate scientist Katharine Hayhoe identifying those who are 'solutions averse' as being a major factor in denialism. It touches on the 'watermelon' aspect. You can turn a blind eye to what I am saying if you want, but in that case you should also attack Hayhoe too - but don't expect many to applaud you...

https://theecologist.org/2019/may/20/moving-past-climate-denial

Also try this: https://www.thecut.com/2014/11/solution-aversion-can-explain-climate-skeptics.html

https://today.duke.edu/2014/11/solutionaversion

I think some people who fight climate science denialism still have the naive idea that just enlessly quoting the science to them, and Skepticalscience's F.L.I.C.C logical fallacies, will make denialists fall apart. I too used to think that if one would just keep hammering away, eventually they would give up. Anyone who tries this will find that it actually does not work well at all. Take on some of the smarter ones and you will rapidly find that you are, at least in the eyes of the watching/reading/listening public, who are the only audience it's worthwhile spending any time trying to correct, outgunned scientifically and rhetorically. That's why I don't these days much use the actual nitty-gritty science as a club with which to demolish them because the smarter ones will always have a superficially plausible, to the audience at least, comeback which looks convincing TO THE AUDIENCE. Arguing the science accurately can often lose the argument, as many scientists found when they attempted to debate such notorious, yet rhetorically brilliant sceptic/deniers such as Lord Monckton.

I haven't finished trying to clarify things for you all but right back at the beginning, in post#18, I fairly covered what I was trying to suggest is a more realistic interpretation of the truth than the activist's simplistic 'Evil Exxon Knew' propaganda one. In short, most of you seem to believe, and are arguing as if, the science was rock solid back then and that it said any global warming would certainly lead to bad things. This is utterly wrong, and to argue as if it was true is just deceitful. As I have said, and many significant figures in the field will confirm, I've been fighting denialism for a very long time so when denialists present some paper or piece of text extracted from a longer document as 'proof' of something, I always try and read the original, usually finding out that they have twisted the meaning, cherry picked inappropriate sentences or failed to understand it and thereby jumped to fallacious conclusions - similarly I read the letters and extracts that Greenpeace used and, frankly, either they were trying deliberately to mislead or they didn't understand the language properly and jumped to their prejudiced conclusions and then made all the insinuations that we are familiar with and that nobody else seems be questioning much, if at all. The idea that Exxon always knew that anthropogenic climate change was real (which they, of course, did) AND that they always knew that the results of that would be really bad and so they conspired to cover that bad future up is false and is the basis of the wilful misreading and deceitful interpretation of the cherry picked phrases, excerpts and documents that has created a vastly worse than deserved public perception of how the fossil fuel corporations acted. Always remember that, at least ideally, people (and corporations) should be presumed innocent until proven beyond reasonable doubt to be guilty. Greenpeace/Oreskes polemics are not such proof. Their insinuations of the guilt of Big Oil is just a mirror image of how the Climategate hackers insinuated guilt into the words of the top climate scientists.

Here's a clip from my post#18

NAP: "When activists try to bad mouth Exxon et al they speak from a 'post facto' appreciation of the science, as if today's relatively strong climate science existed back when the documents highlighted in 'Exxon knew' were created. Let me explain what I think is another interpretation other than Greenpeace/Oreskes'/Supran's narratives suggesting 'Exxon knew' that climate change was going to be bad because their scientists told them so as far back as the 70s and 80s. Let me first present Stephen Schneider's famous quote from 1988 (the whole quote, not the edited one used by denialists).

S.S. "On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but – which means that we must include all doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climate change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, means getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This “double ethical bind” we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.""

Stephen Schneider, as a climate scientist, was about 'as good as it gets' and he said that in 1988. Bear in mind that a lot of the initial framing to prejudice readers that 'Exxon knew' used was based on documents from considerably longer ago, so what are the activists who eagerly allowed themselves to be swept up in it until no-one questioned it turning a blind eye to? It's that the computer models of the time were extremely crude because computer technology back then was just not powerful enough to divide Earth up into enough finite element 'blocks' of small enough size to make model projections of much validity, in particular projections of how much, how fast and how bad or how good... Our ideas of the feedback effects of clouds and aerosols back then was extremely rudimentary and there were widely differing scientific opinions as to the magnitude or even the direction of the feedback. The scientific voices we see in Exxon Knew tend to be those who were suggesting there was lot more certainty of outcome than there actually was. That their version has been eventually shown to be mostly correct by a further 40 years of science in no way means they were right to espouse such certainty back then - just lucky. As I pointed out before, even as late as the very recent CMIP6 models, we are still refining this aspect - and still finding surprises. To insinuate that the science has always been as fairly rock solid as it today is just a wilful rewriting of history. Try reading Spencer Weart's comprehensive history of the development of climate science for a more objective view of the way things developed...

ExxonMobil spokesperson Allan Jeffers told Scientific American in 2015. “The thing that shocks me the most is that we’ve been saying this for years, that we have been involved in climate research. These guys (Inside Climate News) go down and pull some documents that we made available publicly in the archives and portray them as some kind of bombshell whistle-blower exposé because of the loaded language and the selective use of materials.”

Look at the phrases and excerpts that were used in both Greenpeace's 'Exxon Knew' and 'Inside Climate News's' exposés. You will find they actually are very cherry picked and relatively few in number considering the huge volumes of company documents that were analysed. Does that remind you of anything else? Because it should. The Climategate hackers trawled through mountains of emails - over ten years worth - to cherry pick apparently juicy phrases and ended up with just a few headline phrases, a sample of which follow. Now, like most of us now know, there are almost certainly innocent and valid explanations of each of these phrases, and independent investigations in due course vindicated the scientists. Reading them, and some of the other somewhat less apparently salacious extracts that got less publicity, and comparing them with the 'presented as a smoking gun' extracts from Greenpeace/Oreskes/Supran etc I have to say, on the face of it, the Climategate cherry picks look more evidential of serious misdeeds than the 'Exxon Knew' excerpts. Except we are confident that the Climategate hackers badly misrepresented the emails by insinuating shady motives where none were. Why should we not consider that those nominally on the side of the science did not do the same? Surely readers here are not so naive aas to believe that everyone on 'our side' is pure as the driven snow and all those on the 'other side' are evil black hats?

Here's a 'top eight'

1) Phil Jones "“I’ve just completed Mike’s [Mann] Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) and from 1961 for Keith’s [Briffa] to hide the decline.”

2) “Well, I have my own article on where the heck is global warming…. The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t.” [Kevin Trenberth, 2009]

3) “I know there is pressure to present a nice tidy story as regards ‘apparent unprecedented warming in a thousand years or more in the proxy data’ but in reality the situation is not quite so simple." Keth Briffa

4) Mike [Mann], can you delete any e-mails you may have had with Keith [Trenberth] re AR4? Keith will do likewise…. Can you also e-mail Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his e-mail address…. We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.” [Phil Jones, May 29, 2008]

5) “Also we have applied a completely artificial adjustment to the data after 1960, so they look closer to observed temperatures than the tree-ring data actually were….” [Tim Osborn, Climatic Research Unit, December 20, 2006]

6) “I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report. Kevin [Trenberth] and I will keep them out somehow, even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!” [Phil Jones, July 8, 2004]

7) “You might want to check with the IPCC Bureau. I’ve been told that IPCC is above national FOI Acts. One way to cover yourself and all those working in AR5 [the upcoming IPCC Fifth Assessment Report] would be to delete all e-mails at the end of the process. Hard to do, as not everybody will remember it.” [Phil Jones, May 12, 2009]

8) “If you look at the attached plot you will see that the land also shows the 1940s warming blip (as I’m sure you know). So, if we could reduce the ocean blip by, say 0.15 deg C, then this would be significant for the global mean—but we’d still have to explain the land blip….” [Tom Wigley, University Corporation for Atmospheric Research, to Phil Jones, September 28, 2008]

Please at least consider the possibility that Greenpeace, who have been deceiving the public about the toxicity and carcinogenicity of this, that and the other for decades (ask me how if you want to see how blatant their deceit or delusion is... showing this is actually very quick and easy to do) were, in a very similar way, and motivated by their underlying ideology, deliberately (or delusionally) misrepresenting innocent phrases to blacken names excessively too.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

Bob Loblaw at 11:47 AM on 22 June, 2021

"...getting it, whatever it is" does not seem like a particularly ringing endorsement of whatever Nick is promoting.

I'm more in agreement with MAR: NIck's writing "does not make for pretty reading".

Nick has again started off with a diatribe about how "none of us are fully getting what I am saying", but he's not going to tell us why our responses are "flawed" and accuses MAR of writing something that "is a mirror inage [sic]of the sort of toxic denialist misrepresentation of someone's position".

Maybe your arguments are not well expressed, and not that convincing, Nick?

I get that you dislike Greenpeace. I get that you don't like Oreske's work. I get that you have personal anecdotes that convince you that the oil industry really hasn't been behaving all that badly.

I have personal anecdotes, too. I studied the physics of freezing soils and construction of arctic pipelines from some of the expert witnesses involved in the Berger Inquiry, and then worked in the oil patch and research comunity for three years before going back to grad school. I saw personally how the industry struggled to figure out how to deal with thaw settlement of warm pipelines in permafrost, and frost heave of refrigerated pipelines in unfrozen soils. Building pipelines in the arctic was not like building them in Texas.

...and I saw the public position the companies took, blaming delays on "environmentalists", all while working internally to understand engineering problems they had no solutions to. I saw this 40 years ago.

So, Nick, your argument that you are presenting some new idea that goes against common viewpoints seems odd to me - I've seen the "the environmentalists made us do it" charade a long time ago, and it is a dog that will not hunt - unless you can come up with something more than personal anecdotes. So, when you say "...I realise I've got an uphill struggle with you lot because you are unlikely to have heard anyone arguing this position before...", you are definitely wrong.

As for your arguments presented here, and your accusations of "denialist misrepresentation", etc., have you really looked at how you have characterized the people you are arguing with here, and the positions (either comments here, or from the larger debate) you are arguing against?

"..the appearance of some of the more extreme campaigning activists by, in my view, misattributing dark motivations to and unfairly demonising the actions..."

"Greenpeace's highly misleading report"

"This is a seriously warped thing to assert."

"When activists try to bad mouth Exxon et al they speak from a 'post facto' appreciation of the science,"

"it was the far left who more or less started denialism off "

"I believe it was the environmental organisations excessive and unwarranted views..."

"... Big Oil continued to support the "B.S. factories" because they were effective at trying to protect those corporations against unwarranted attack. "

"...chock full of cherry picking and insinuation ..."

"...most seem to have been happy to accept Greenpeace et al's interpretation of events as gospel ..."

"...an alternative explanation to the insinuative narrative that just about everyone seems to have accepted. I think that narrative is fundamentally flawed and was constructed by people with a strong ideological bias as a way to socially engineer the public ..."

"Perhaps it might help if you and the other two knew three things which might help you..."

"Just watch the 'usual suspects' jump on the word 'unabated' ..."

"You sound like a denialist! "

"You lot are STILL not understanding my main point and are jumping to fundamentally fallacious conclusions about my position."

"I think you lot are trying to hard to prop up a very long standing meme, originated by Greenpeace and subsequently promoted by, IMHO, political forces not related to pure climate science"

"it's been interesting to see the, in my view somewhat biased, kick-back from long term Skepsci followers. I think what I might do in due course is approach John Cook to see if we can arrange a Zoom meeting. He and Stephan Lewandowsky are right at the forefront of the 'psychological' approach to deconstructing denialist attitudes and methods. Maybe they'll be more welcoming of a new hypothesis than others..."

"However, I assure you that..."

BTW, as some of you are using exactly the same insinuative style as hardline denialists do,

Do you realize how your choice of words makes you appear?

I know nothing about you other than what you post here (and possibly a bit more posted elsewhere - I don't recognize the name)). I also know for sure that you don't know anything about me, other than what I post here or on other climate-related blogs you might have seen me comment on. (You can read about me on the SkS Team page to know how I know this.)

What's the point? Your self-agrandizement is pretty tiresome, and you really are not doing yourself any favours with your claims of knowing everything better than everyone else. You are not adderssing other people's criticisms - you are just dismissing them based on your fixed ideas about their motivation and (usually incorrect) assumptions about their sources of information.

By the way, in this thread my count says you've mentioned Greenpeace about 25 times. Did I mention that we already know you don't like Greenpeace?

You have said "I'll try and restate things later, if I get time,"

Please don't unless you actually have something new to say.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

Nick Palmer at 02:55 AM on 19 June, 2021

I don't wish to add more fuel to the fire I started with my alternative hypothesis explaining Big Oil's actions and motivations, in particular because some really useful comments have been made above just recently, but I want to clarify a coupel of points.

I never meant to suggest that Big Oil were that scared of Greenpeace's 'reds' and the anti-industry policies they favoured. Big as Greenpeace is, it is still not a huge influence on governments and their policies. However, I assure you that giant industries of all types are concerned about draconian restrictions being placed on their activities by closet globalists/socialists/communists etc and that is why they employ these Institutes and lobbyists - as a counter-force to protect their interests. The industries do not necessarily 'believe' the propaganda that the Institutes push out but choose to use them to enable more industry friendly policies to be planned for that achieve the same ends (reduced pollution, greenhouse gases etc) without gutting their financial bottom lines.

Here's a number of links showing pretty clearly that the major focus of the Heartland's, C.E.I's etc is on countering the 'Marxist threat' and they absolutely do believe that environmentalism was 'infiltrated' by globalists using the threats that environmentalism identified as an Eysencks' 'hobgoblin' as a proxy way to undermine capitalism and get the public, who would otherwise reject the ideology, to vote for so doing.

In the links given, Jay Lehr, Senior Policy Advisor with the International Climate Science Coalition and Senior Science Analyst at CFACT was science director at Heartland for more than two decades. Tom Harris is executive director of the International Climate Science Coalition and is a policy adviser to Heartland and closely associated with Jay Lehr.

https://americaoutloud.com/how-environmentalism-has-kept-communism-alive-part-one/

https://www.heartland.org/news-opinion/news/cold-outbreaks-are-not-caused-by-global-warming?source=policybot

In climate circles, when such as Heartland and Competive Enterprise Institute are being discussed, they are referred to as denialist organisations. Exposés of their funding usually let the reader assume that any funds from Big Oil etc were for the specific purpose of speading climate science denialism. These organisations only spread climate science denialism as a pragmatic technique that works to influence public perceptions. As Marc Morano (Climate Depot) suggested in the video I linked to, they don't even care much whether what they say is true as long as it achieves their end which is to fight what they see as an insidious assault on US Capitalism in the name of environmentalism and global warming etc.

I'm saying is that it should be acknowledged that the 'Heartland ideology' is, as least partially, based on truth. Many prominent environmental voices do indeed have significant left leaning politics and there are plenty of those who believe openly or secretly that the gobal warming 'mega threat' can be used to engineer the 'great reset' that they want for human civilisation.

Obviously, this does not exclude that the environmental threats can be real, which, of course, they are but it does explain why some activists so incorrigibly and grossly exagerrate both the risks and the time scales that the actual science delineates.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

nigelj at 08:10 AM on 16 June, 2021

Nick Palmer @54 says "I think you lot are trying to hard to prop up a very long standing meme,....I think the true culpability of Big Fossil Fuel is not for resembling the activist meme of them being shadowy psychopaths intent on destroying the world for profit but rather for being like the punk in Dirty Harry who, when neither of them knew for certain whether there were any bullets left in the Magnum, recklessly took a chance and paid the price."

I don't see where I've supported that activist meme that "corporations are shadowy psychopaths intent on destroying the world for profit". Their motives are more complex than that. They seek profit because thats how the system works and the law requires they build shareholder value and I don't see that as evil, although it would be useful to see if the law could expand corporate goals to also include environmental objectives.

Corporations pollute because of the tragedy of the commons problem. There is not mush point blaming them for that too much, rather that the answer is government environmental laws or we change the entire economic system.

However corporations do misbehave and break laws at times and Exonn Mobils behaviour was underhanded. And I dont buy into this crazy notion that the oil companies behaviour was because of Greenpeace. The oil companies could see the writing on the wall that governments would put pressure on them one way or the other, and perhaps the general public will so they got worried about impacts on their incomes and job security etc,etc, and defensive and it lead to a campaign to spread doubt. I've seen polling studies of oil companies where almost their entire staff are climate change sceptics, liberals and conservatives alike.

But I agree with your Dirty Harry analogy.

"I came to my ideas from a lot of experience over several decades debunking 'ordinary' denialism, but I also found it quite often necessary to debunk alarmists too, who went much further than the peer reviewed science actually said."

Same with me. It's tough going because you get labelled a luke warmer and traitor. There's exaggeration, group think , bias and tribalism on both sides of the debate, but I think our side is far more objective overall and correct environmentally and thats the bottom line.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

Nick Palmer at 06:31 AM on 16 June, 2021

I think you lot are trying to hard to prop up a very long standing meme, originated by Greenpeace and subsequently promoted by, IMHO, political forces not related to pure climate science. I've never said that Big Oil should have done what they did, just that their motivation to do it may not have been that which was attributed to them by that meme. FWIW, I think the true culpability of Big Fossil Fuel is not for resembling the activist meme of them being shadowy psychopaths intent on destroying the world for profit but rather for being like the punk in Dirty Harry who, when neither of them knew for certain whether there were any bullets left in the Magnum, recklessly took a chance and paid the price.

If you've ever seen that analogy used in the climate wars, I originated it. My argument to denialists back then was that, by analogy, 'denier punks' had a right to risk their own lives by believing that there were no climate change bullets left, or that possible low climate sensitivity meant that any bullet would be nearly a blank, but that they had a much greater responsibility to not take any view which would put everyobdy else in the world at risk if they were wrong. I had long discussions about this general concept with Greg 'What's the worst that could happen' Craven whose approach of risk analysis I still think is far superior at getting through to the majority of the public rather than the 'This is what the science says', 'Oh no it isn't', 'Yes it is', shouting match that the public arena is.

I came to my ideas from a lot of experience over several decades debunking 'ordinary' denialism, but I also found it quite often necessary to debunk alarmists too, who went much further than the peer reviewed science actually said. Alarmism gives deniers a lot of amunition to smear the actual science, in the minds of the public, by proxy. A lot of current denialism consists of holding up the silliest statements of extremists to ridicule, rather than attacking the science directly, but unfortunately that rebounds badly on the actual science in the public's view who have little way of knowing which of the very confident sounding sides are accurate or legit.

Long before John Cook started off the whole Denial 101 F.L.I.C.C initiative, I had been made well aware of the multiple deceptive rhetorical 'tricks' used by ordinary denialists to deny the peer reviewed science. I also became aware that the vast majority actually completely believed their position, whether it was the 'almost mainstream' luke-warmer position or the weirder 'against the second law of thermodynamics' pseudoscience types. What I did notice was that, say, in the comments of WUWT, virtually none of the former ever criticised the latter. It was only a very, very few, such as Mosher, who took on the real loonies. I also came to see that the reverse was also the case in environmentalist literature. Apart from a few such as myself, who has always tried to root out any mistakes, delusion or deceptions wherever they may be found, activist alarmism in publicly available media seemed to get a 'free pass' from those who normally argued the science, such as skepsci types. For what it's worth, I find it much harder to deal with activists, rather than with the more moderate 'denialists' as activist ideology isn't really based on a rational bullet-proof knowledge of the science, but rather on persuasive memes and Hans Eysenck's 'hobgoblins' to scare the public. I couldn't help noticing that BOTH sides used the same techniques of misdirection, cherry picking etc although, back then, it tended to be the more extreme - the incorrigibles of the denialist side - who did the lion's share of it. In the last few years, as the political aspects of the climate arena have suddenly popped out of the closet far more than ever before, and the sides have become ever more partisan, I'd say 'what lies beneath' the surface of people on all sides debating climate policy is surfacing.

I used to sit on my former Government's Energy panel, which was set up to deal with energy policy relating to climate science and the energy transitions required and I became pretty well connected with some significant movers and shakers in the climate science arena, both scientists, civil servants and media folk. For what it's worth, the panel also had representatives on it from gas and oil 'fossil fuel' corporations, plus the area electricity supplier. That's another reason why I'm virtually certain that the Greenpeace/Oreskes meme, that even some smart people seem to have swallowed hook, line and sinker, is a fair distance from the truth. The meme has a lot of the smell of simplified 'hobgoblins to sway the public' about it, rather than it being a completely accurate piece of historical reportage...

Anyway, it's been interesting to see the, in my view somewhat biased, kick-back from long term Skepsci followers. I think what I might do in due course is approach John Cook to see if we can arrange a Zoom meeting. He and Stephan Lewandowsky are right at the forefront of the 'psychological' approach to deconstructing denialist attitudes and methods. Maybe they'll be more welcoming of a new hypothesis than others...

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

nigelj at 16:55 PM on 15 June, 2021

Nick Palmers theory appears to be the fossil fuel companies were defensive and spread denialism because they were under attack by extremist environmentalists and never offered the option of carbon capture because environmentalists allegedly hate it. The real reason for the fossil fuel companies defensive response and spreading denialism and doubt is far more likely to be vested interests, fear of job losses, dislike of government regulation / taxes, all the usual things. Just apply Occams Razor. This is far more likely than the complicated, fantastical movie like drama that is rather lacking in hard evidence, painted by Nick Palmer. This Greenpeace stuff would be a bit player in the whole affair.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

nigelj at 09:55 AM on 15 June, 2021

Bob Loblow @45

"I did not get the impression that NIck denies this (my note: oil companies knowingly engaged in climate denialism from the early days onwards) - I was more under the impression that he thought it was a reasonable reaction to what he considers an "unwarranted attack"."

I got the impression Nick thought the oil companies didn't knowingly and deliberately spread denialism because he was so critical of Orekses book (at comment 3) which apparently linked oil companies to denialism. Maybe I interpreted it all wrong. Apologies to Nick if I did. Its really easy for Nick to clarify the issue.

And if he was just saying the oil companies were reacting to unfair attacks on them at that time, the science has firmed up in recent years yet at least some of the fossil fuel companies still seem to be linked to denialism. So whats their excuse now?

I tend to actually agree with quite a few of Nicks views which I hope I've made clear. So this is a tricky thing for me to comment on. There seems to be an element of truth that some peolpe scapegoat oil companies to shift responsibility away from their own lifestyles, just as oil companies blame individuals to shift responsibility away from themselves. But the idea that denialists are denialists because Greenpeace's occasional bouts of craziness seems untenable. It might be a factor hardening some peoples attitudes but the denialism has other more fundamental roots.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

nigelj at 13:50 PM on 13 June, 2021

Nick Palmer @31, I do understand where you are coming from but I have a couple of disagreements.

"I thought I'd already addressed that. The short answer is that Big Oil continued to support the "B.S. factories" because they were effective at trying to protect those corporations against unwarranted attack."

That doesn't mean the corporations don't also use lobby groups to help spread denial. You seem a little bit stuck in an either / or mindset.

"Anyone who regularly takes on the really incorrigible denialists, as I do - I don't mean the brainwashed rank and file Hicksville idiots, but the much smarter ones - soon discovers that beneath all the high sounding 'alternative science' of the 1000frollyphds, the B.S. factories, Heartland's James Taylor, Quora's James Matkin etc are people who are almost always actually motivated by just a couple of things, of which by far the most common is extreme ideological antipathy to the 'big government' solutions promoted by extremist activists - the deep green environmentalists, the 'Smash Capitalism' closet reds and the 'System Change, not Climate Change' demonstrators."

This extreme ideological antipathy to big government is indeed common thing with the denialists, a libertarian and conservative leaning thing, but you need to understand many of these people define big government as anything beyond military and policing! They are opposed to anything that isn't very small government. So to say climate denlialism is the fault of a few extreme political activists proposing very big government is flawed logic.

"The 'Greenpeace knew' report and the recent Oreskes/Supran paper really are not evidence showing which way the truth lies being, as I've suggested before, chock full of cherry picking and insinuation and, in my view, the leading-the-reader attribution of malignant motives to innocent(ish) behaviour because of the underlying ideology of the authors. Oreskes is known to be significantly left wing and long ago Greenpeace's leaders adopted similar, or stronger, politics and I find their campaigning and assertions have got increasingly slanted and deceptive too."

I thought Orekses book was actually quite good if a bit too general, but there is plenty of hard evidence tying oil companies to spreading denialism of you look around. Read the book Dark Money for a start.

"What is noticeable is that no matter how convincingly one may have demolished their case, give them several weeks, or a couple of months, and one will often find them using exactly the same flawed logic, cherry picked facts and deceptive framing as before. This could mean either they have some sort of mental condition where their mind edits out their defeat so, like psychics who forget all their wrong predictions and only remember any correct ones, they maintain a spurious sense of their own abilities or they don't care much if you demolish their case in public because their only goal is to sway the public mind to their desired end and they know that the public has a very short memory and that the short denialist memes 'it's the Sun, it's cooling, it's cold now in Hicksville, it's cosmic rays etc have a very powerful ability to fool, or at least induce doubt and uncertainty in, the public's minds."

Yes its some sort of mental condition of a sort. Some people have difficulty admitting to themselves they are wrong or have been sucked in, so they hang onto beliefs. They become stubborn and entrenched. We probably all do a bit at times. With others the stubborness and arrogance is more extreme. Google narcissistic personality disorder. Combine this with small government leanings and a smart mind and a reasonable knowledge of science and you have a nuclear powered denialist, and the internet gives them the whole world to preach to. It's really frustrating to say the least.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

Nick Palmer at 02:48 AM on 13 June, 2021

I realise I've got an uphill struggle with you lot because you are unlikely to have heard anyone arguing this position before - most seem to have been happy to accept Greenpeace et al's interpretation of events as gospel without deconstructing it enough. When one has been deconstructing the deceit, delusion and/or dumbness from the various denialist factions for decades, as I have, one can't help it if one sometimes notices the very same methods being used by our 'side'. I personally think that demonising Big Oil's past activities and misrepresenting them as if they were real denialism is very counter-productive. Apart from anything else, one of the most powerful arguments I use against tricksy denialist rhetoric is that these days even Big Fossil Fuel fully accepts mainstream climate science and they acknowledge that something serious needs to be done to avoid the very unacceptable risks. I point that if there was a trace of reality in the arguments that have sucked them in, Big Oil's scientists would have noticed and their corporate execs would have then beaten a wide path to the doors of the sceptic/contrarian/denialists with wheelbarrows full of cash to learn about their magic get-out-of-jail-free cards. When I challenge denialists to explain, if they are so sure of their beliefs, why this is not happening, and never did happen, they either shut up or go off into the lala land of conspiracies I list later on. In either case, the wider audience sees they have nothing real...

Bob Loblaw@25 wrote:

"Give me a break. I was studying climatology for 10 years before Hansen's speech, and a dozen years before the 1990 IPCC report"

I refer you again (3rd time) to my quote of Carbonbrief's article and the words of top climate scientist Andrew Dessler of Texas A&M Uni.

C.B.: "In 1979, the Charney Report from the US National Academy of Sciences suggested that ECS was likely somewhere between 1.5C and 4.5C per doubling of CO2. Nearly 40 years later, the best estimate of sensitivity is largely the same.
However, Prof Andrew Dessler at Texas A&M University pushes back on this suggestion. He tells Carbon Brief:

I think that the idea that ‘uncertainty has remained the same since the late 1970s’ is wrong. If you look at the Charney report, it’s clear that there were a lot of things they didn’t know about the climate. So their estimate of uncertainty was, in my opinion, way, way too small"

"Back in 1979, climate science was much less well understood than today. There were far fewer lines of evidence to use in assessing climate sensitivity. The Charney report range was based on physical intuition and results from only two early climate models.

In contrast, modern sensitivity estimates are based on evidence from many different sources, including models, observations and palaeoclimate estimates. As Dessler suggests, one of the main advances in understanding of climate sensitivity over the past few decades is scientists’ ability to more confidently rule out very high or very low climate sensitivities."

I'm not disputing that the basic science of radiative physics and the simple climate modelling of ECS of 'how many degrees per doubling' has been around a long time. As a matter of fact, as a science geek, I knew about some of the scientific views in my later teens (early 70s) - about the time I stopped buying aerosols (apart from WD40...) to protect the ozone layer. The uncertainty of outcome referred to by Dessler is to the 'known unknowns' and 'unknown unknowns' at the time and these were very significant. The (some of) CMIP6 model problems were mentioned just to show that even today some crucial feedback mechanisms affecting ECS are still being nailed down 40 years later.

It is the solidarity or otherwise of the climate sensitivity figures AT THE TIME of the memos and documents cherry picked in 'Exxon Knew' which is at the very nub of whether, as the populist environmentalist narrative goes, Exxon were evil or, as I am convinced, just cautious because the views of sensitivity at the time were just not solid enough to mandate massive corporation change without a lot more scientific work to more reliably figure out what ECS was (not to mention the Transient and Earth system sensitivities too). If Exxon's scientists told their bosses that, as Dessler wrote, Charney's figures were waay more uncertain than Charney thought they were, that is not evidence of psychopathic evil, it's just evidence of good scientists offering a very valid criticism of another scientist's work.

Sure, at the time, Exxon's own scientists acknowledged the basic 'settled' science but of course they would also acknowledge the great uncertainties which the 'anti's turned a blind eye to. There was nothing sinister about that and it is the attribution of malignant motives to Big Oil by Greenpeace et al that I have a serious issue with. There is so much deceit, deception, propaganda, selective and misleading information from all sides out there that I think our 'side' should clean up its act and disavow all that stuff and just stick to the best peer reviewed science, the best risk analysis and not indulge in dubiously demonising (probably) innocent'ish corporate behaviour that has been, in my view, massively misrepresented or rule out many solutions, as Mann has done, which have great potential thus making 'the answers' much harder to achieve.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

nigelj at 12:35 PM on 11 June, 2021

Clarification to my comment at 26: However its not tenable to claim these far left environmentalist somehow triggered any of the climate denialism.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

nigelj at 08:31 AM on 11 June, 2021

Nick Palmer @23

I didn't say Exon had clear and certain knowledge of the dangers of climate change way back then. I think the oil companies knew there was a problem, but not the full extent, like anyone else at the time. Remember I said this "Exon knew there was a climate problem but told the public a different story. Theres no way of excusing this. Even if Exonn didnt really understand the true extent of the problem it doesn't change the utterly mixed messaging."

While you're right that companies use lobbying organisations to fend off government regulation, its very hard to believe that big oil funded these lobby groups but didnt realise they were promoting denialism, or didn't fund them to assist in promoting denialism . The most I would concede is that not all fossil fuel companies would be the same.

Yes many of the very active environmentalists lean very left politically and want to smash capitalism. Michael Moore's film Planet of the Humans perhaps falls into that category. It was a very frustrating film full of inaccurate information and anti renewables rhetroic. I fall into the camp that thinks capitalism needs some reforms, but I don't think anyone has come up with a completely new alternative thats workable or ever will. I find the far left almost as annoying as the far right. But environmental activists will do what they do and believe what they beleive just as libertarians do the same.

However its not tenable to claim these far left environmentalist somehow triggered right wing climate denialism. If you look at the history of denialism of science in general its driven by a variety of things from vested interests, political views, religion, human psychology and some of these are politically neutral things. The far left environmentalists might have added a bit to the polarisation of the climate issue. But so have the far right denialists! Hugely so.

Of course big oil won't have its own internal documents talking about denialist myths like solar forcing and cosmic rays. They are not stupid. They outsource this to the lobby groups. But like I said in my previous comment, demonising the oil industry on and on seems ultimately a bit pointless.

Ok maybe I was too dismissive of Stephen Schneider. However the point I'm trying to make is the number of climate scientists that come across as serious, over the top alarmists is in a minority. In my admittedly anecdotal experience most seem pretty measured in their comments. The IPCC reports are very measured. So its unfair to accuse the scientific community of over stating the nature of this climate problem. One or two scientists go crazy, claiming climate change will kill billions of people in a decade, etc,etc. I find this rather frustrating because it feeds the denialists, but they are in a small minority.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

Bob Loblaw at 07:36 AM on 11 June, 2021

Nick Palmer:

I agree with what Phillip and NigelJ have said to a much larger extent than I agree with what you have said. I will focus on a few points in your latest comment.

"I was referring to the definite and real uncertainty in the science BEFORE Hansen's 1988 speech"

Give me a break. I was studying climatology for 10 years before Hansen's speech, and a dozen years before the 1990 IPCC report. I did not need Greenpeace or any other media reports to know what was going on - I was reading the primary literature. I found about papers like Manabe and Wetherald (1967) by reading them when they were still <20 years old.

"It is less than honest of people to assert that our modern established science in any way is comparable to the nascent science back then,"

It is less than honest for people to assert that there was not a lot that we knew back then, either. We knew in the mid 1980s that Sherwood Idso's arguments for negligible warming were wrong. That did not stop special interests from funding him for decades afterwards. That funding was not intended to pursue a legitimate sicentific goal - it was to sow doubt.

Climatology was not "nascent" in the 1980s. It was "nascent" in the 1880s.

"I submit that these tactics of Big Oil were just ordinary political manoeuvring to resist irrationally draconian 'green/red' calls until the science got strong enough. "

I submit that if this were the case, then Big Oil would have tried to argue the real science and legitimate uncertainty, instead of funding positions that were already known to be bunk.

"...government pandering to the views of misinformed activists ..."

You mean like the denial industry that was created specifically to maximize the extent to which politicians and the public were provided with misinformation? As you point out, right-wing politicians like Margaret Thatcher had a reasonably realistic view of the science several decades ago. Something - someone - managed to convince them otherwise.

"It is a matter of record that the fossil fuel industry increasingly deserted the early 'denialist' fossil fuel organisation - which was formed in 1989 - the 'Global Climate Coalition' - until by the early 2000s it was disbanded, and this was because the science had got strong enough."

Alternate explanation: as early denial organizations lost credibility, it was easier to let them die and fund new organizations that could spout the same misinformation under a new name. Until that organization loses it credibility. Or don't even wait - just create a whole bunch of them and make it look as if there is widespread doubt.

Much of the rest of your comment dives into "the mean lefties made them do it". I heard the same kind of arguments being made about general environmental issues when I worked in the oil patch in the early 1980s. It was not a reaction to climate isuses - it was a standard rhetorical tactic long before then.

"BTW, are there are any links to Big Oil documents which actually deny the science in the way that deniers do - it's the Sun - it's cooling - it's cosmic rays - the temperature record was tampered with - it's all fraud etc? I've never seen any actual full-on denialism in them. "

Because they learned from the problems the tobacco industry ran into over their internal documents? And funneled the money through shell corporations or institutes to hide the source, letting the denial groups do this for them? People that don't want to get cuaght doing what they are doing usually figure out eventually to not keep records.

It doesn't matter if Big Oil believed the denialism or not - they sure funded it. Out of the goodness of their hearts, or because they thought it made good business sense?

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

Nick Palmer at 02:05 AM on 11 June, 2021

Phillipe and NigelJ. I think you two have somewhat missed that I was referring to the definite and real uncertainty in the science BEFORE Hansen's 1988 speech and the formation of the IPCC. That is when the documents in 'Exxon Knew', which are now held up as evidnec of 'certain' knowledge and associated deceit, were created. It is less than honest of people to assert that our modern established science in any way is comparable to the nascent science back then, upon which it would have been simply wrong to base far-reaching, global economy affecting/dismantling policies. It is verging on deceit to cast aspersions at targets who are not guilty or, at least, very much less guilty than they are being accused of being, using sophisticated rhetoric, cherry picking, misattribution of motivation etc and all the liguistic techniques that such as John Cook has clarified the denialist 'side' as using.

The uncertainty I was referring to (ordinary man-in-the-street definition, not the scientific one), at the relevant time, and what was not well understood then, was of such a magnitude (look again at the Dessler quote I gave) that it was entirely justified that Big Oil did not turn on a sixpence and shut down when the environmental organisations seized on this new way to attack Big Industry by using activist's frequent tendency to make unwarranted speculations on fragmentary evidence, then deciding that whatever unlikely speculative doomy result they came up with is almost certain to happen and then using that to justify calling for bans and authoritarian restrictions to avoid that end.

There can be no doubt that Big Oil sponsored think tanks, Institutes and lobbying organisations that used actual denialist rhetoric as part of their portfolio of techniques to try to influence politicians and policy formulations but, and I think this is where a lot of people go wrong, this should not have caused people to jump to the conclusion that Big Oil was deliberately spreading denialism because they were actually in denial of climate science - pause for a lot of screaming and gnashing of teeth by the extremists! I submit that these tactics of Big Oil were just ordinary political manoeuvring to resist irrationally draconian 'green/red' calls until the science got strong enough. The primary function of such lobbying organisations is to help their clients fight back against what they see as heavy handed legislation or inappropriate policy making by government pandering to the views of misinformed activists and those members of the voting public whose views have been changed by them to the point where they would vote in such draconian and misconceived action.

It is a matter of record that the fossil fuel industry increasingly deserted the early 'denialist' fossil fuel organisation - which was formed in 1989 - the 'Global Climate Coalition' - until by the early 2000s it was disbanded, and this was because the science had got strong enough.

"The GCC dissolved in 2001 after membership declined in the face of improved understanding of the role of greenhouse gases in climate change and of public criticism" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Climate_Coalition

Anyone who engages with denialists, the right wing or who defends the basic priciples behind environmentalism (which are, of course, still very valid) will pretty soon be accused of being a 'watermelon' - green on the outside, red on the inside, by which they mean that environmentalists have a superficial layer of concern for the environment masking a far left 'smash capitalism' ideology underneath. This is not a conspiracy theory! It is clear that many recent significant spokespersons indeed do have a very deep seated antipathy towards the capitalism system, upon which they lay the blame for all sorts of mankind's woes and they have an ideological zeal that only their pet version of international socialism will save us all - which goal, to them, justifies the deceit and propaganda they use as they try to 'socially engineer' the masses.

It is these 'fifth columnists' who created the Patrick Moore's, the Patrick Michael's, the Bjorn Lomborg's and who gave such as the Heartland Institute such large amounts of ammunition to doubt the integrity of the genuine, reasonable scientifically based policies. Bear in mind that one of the very earliest politicians to warn about the dangers of potential climate change in public and political circles was the rather far right Margaret Thatcher

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnAzoDtwCBg&t=30s

and it was the far left who more or less started denialism off by insinuating that it was all fake science to justify shutting coal mines down, to handicap the development of the Third World and to accelerate the expansion of nuclear power. It was only afterwards that the left realised that if they became anti-global warming they could have a powerful stick to hit Big Industry, the international monetary system etc and slip their desired political outcomes in by the back door. That change in outlook in turn created the right wing/libertarian opposition - first to the 'solutions' the left claimed were mandatory and then their political 'chess moves' generated out and out deceitful-but-plausible-sounding denialism to undermine the legitimate science by appealing to the U.S.'s conservative blue collar population that it was actually a reds-under-the-bed attempt to undermine their freedoms.

Here is the very rational Zion Lights explaining why she disavowed her earlier extreme, ideology based, environmental beliefs and how she sees those beliefs as counter-productive these days.

https://quillette.com/2021/05/31/the-sad-truth-about-traditional-environmentalism/

Whether activists like it or not, I believe it was the environmental organisations excessive and unwarranted views, and the political engineering of (some) of their leaders, which led them to make simplistic and ill thought out (or craftily planned) demands for policy changes which would have been disastrous. A far more likely explanation of Big Fossil Fuel's stance and acts is not that their execs were real denialists possessed of a psychopathic disregard for humanity but that their adverts and public facing statements were their attempt to resist politicians moving against them and implementing the type of draconian policies called for by those with fallacious, or at least well over-the-top, views in some cases motivated by an underlying 'closet' political ideology - Smash Capitalism! - that the public would never actually vote for if it was expressed out loud.

BTW, are there are any links to Big Oil documents which actually deny the science in the way that deniers do - it's the Sun - it's cooling - it's cosmic rays - the temperature record was tampered with - it's all fraud etc? I've never seen any actual full-on denialism in them. That's why I made my point that the words in the documents have likely been mischaracterised by Oreskes and Supran et al to insinuate and attribute motives which really weren't there.

I think you really shouldn't characterise Stephen Schneider's views as "the opinion of one person". He was a very well regarded early climate scientist, who was also acknowledged as a brilliant communicator of that science to the public. His (unedited by denialists) quote which I gave is still a very accurate statement on the science and its communication and comprehension by the public. Unfortunately, in this area, he is almost peerless these days. Richard Alley, Katharine Hayhoe, Gavin Schmidt and Michael Mann are really good but, in my opinion, they are not quite at the same level. Schneider could take on a hostile audience of denialists and either defeat them or make their apparently plausible views look as irrational as they really are.

BTW, Phillipe, I actually referred to the CMIP6 models (not the CMP5 ones, as you incorrectly stated I did) running (considerably) too hot. This is not contentious. Ask Gavin Schmidt or any other similarly credentialled scientist...

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

nigelj at 08:16 AM on 10 June, 2021

Nick Palmer @18, I think you are largely wrong about the fossil fuel companies, especially the view that their own internal scientists were outspoken alarmists who exaggerated things. Stephen Schneider's views that climate scientists exaggerate and use scare stories are the opinion of one person. All the material I've seen from the IPCC is conservatively worded and full of caveats, ifs and buts. Theres no reason to believe Exons own internal scientists were much different. At worse they may have said theres potentially a big problem here, and there would be nothing wrong with saying that. Yes climate activists do sometimes get carried away, but they are not the scientists.

Exon knew there was a climate problem but told the public a different story. Theres no way of excusing this. Even if Exonn didnt really understand the true extent of the problem it doesn't change the utterly mixed messaging.

Lets look at oil companies more generally. At least some oil companies have clearly been involved in spreading campaigns to create doubt, amply proven in books like Dark Money. I've seen polling studies showing most employees of oil companies are climate sceptics. This is probably not surprising because they are obviously worried about losing their jobs. But the fact remains oil companies have helped spread denialism and doubt. They may be worried about their kids and the climate problem but that doesnt mean they arent sceptics of one sort or another or oppose mitigation.

However theres obviously another side to it. Its fair to say that expecting oil companies to just shut down their operations in a voluntary way is unrealistic. They aren't breaking any laws, and there is no society wide consensus that they should just shut down. Companies exist to make profits and ignore environmental issues the "tragedy of the commons problem". People are rightly worried about their job security. Climate change is a complex costly sort of problem but doesn't fall into the same category as an immediate threat to people lives like an industrial toxin. If companies cover up issues like that they would be potentially legally liable. But I can still understand the anger of the climate activists.

The issue is entirely about what society and its governments does about oil companies. This is about what laws, regulations and taxes it applies. Without that nothing much will change. I notice that the Netherlands have recently imposed a law requiring Shell oil to cut emissions 40%. Other countries are imposing carbon taxes.

Of course its also about individual carbon footprints. Another issue.

Yes you are right theres hypocrisy and finger pointing etc on both sides of the debate, but theres a huge volume of people that are less vocal and strident in their views.

The New Climate War by Michael E. Mann - our reviews

Nick Palmer at 09:05 AM on 8 June, 2021

libertador @5

I'm not sure I have a political ideology any more. I've settled on a rag bag of right and left wing concepts ending up somewhere 'in the middle'. I think it's singleminded one-dimensional dogmatic political ideologies, and the activists that they spawn, which are now the major obstacle to humanity getting things moving. I've found that the proponents of all ideologies use misleading language and rhetoric etc to try to make the case that their way is 'the way' because, unfortunately, that is how politicians get elected and retain their support. Just you try getting elected by telling the people the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth - I did and all I can say is 'good luck with that'!

As I said, I've been active in engaging climate science denialism for over 30 years (and other forms of pseudoscience long before that). After a while, one gets to recognise when someone arguing a point is using certain rhetorical techniques to sway their audience to form certain conclusions. This applies whether whether the case they are arguing is true or fallacious and whether they are trying to deceive or genuinely believe what they are saying.

It would be less than objective to not notice when the proponents of the 'side' that one's heart favours use the very same methods to sway their audience as those who try to, consciously or unconsciously, mislead their audience. Integrity is not best served by demonising one's opponents for deception whilst giving those supporting whatever 'cause' floats your boat a free pass for using exactly the same methods - it's a bad strategy to believe that 'the ends justify the means' - apart from anything else, using misleading facts and statements, because one believes it justified if it sways sufficient numbers of the general public to vote your way, is counter-productive because the opposition immediately seize on and amplify any 'divine deception' one might have used to smear the whole scientific case by proxy as can clearly be seen in how the denialosphere reacts to the ever more soldifying scientific postion on climate change by endlessly recycling unwise statements and 'forecasts' from yesteryear of top scientists and activists.

Dr. Ben Santer: Climate Denialism Has No Place at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

nigelj at 07:27 AM on 26 May, 2021

"I don't think there is any reason to think that Koonin wasn't always an oilman at heart and never properly signed up to AGW mitigation."

Theres probably something in that. But there are probably other factors as well. Some people are also very stubborn by nature. They will never admit they are wrong so they just continue on with the same views and take them to their grave. This can be caused by personality disorders like Narcissm (NPD), and even just getting older leads to less flexibility of thinking. I'm not saying Koonin fits this category because I have no idea, but it does happen. Climate denialism has a lot to do with allegiances to the oil industry and libertarian ideology, but this gets overlaid with a lot of psychological issues.

Greens: Divided on ‘clean’ energy? Or closer than they appear?

Nick Palmer at 23:23 PM on 21 May, 2021

I think the '600' Greens have shot themselves in the foot on this one but, more seriously, I think they will alienate the deeper thinking, more knowledgable amongst their large numbers of supporters as the more 'watermelons' of their leaders continue to try to railroad the public towards their politically biased choices for 'solutions'. The last thing the world needs now is politic biases handicapping our options to solve this huge and deep seated climate change problem.

I find the seemingly growing poltical polarisation of the 'sides' worrying to see. The left seem to be becoming more extreme in their prescriptions for policy - 100% renewables, no nuclear, no CCS whilst simultaneously solving inequality, racial justice, white supremacy etc, etc! That seems to me to be making an already very hard problem much harder to address, possibly impossible.

The right, while they seem to have retreated from full-on rabid denialism, look to be dragging their feet in the hope that the 'lukewarmers' are right and that technical innovation and carbon capture will save the situation without too much disruption to the status quo.

I think neither 'side' has all the answers, but their increasingly entrenched positions are starting to build up massive political tensions which cannot be a good thing for generating publicy acceptable policies for the fundamental changes over the long term that will be needed.

To head off some commenters, my position is that of a centrist - free'ish but lightly as possible regulated markets with social and enviromental safety nets - somewhat like the Scandinavian countries.

Why scientists shouldn't heed calls to 'stay in our lane'

Eclectic at 20:45 PM on 20 April, 2021

Sad for Ben Santer to lose a friend to "trumpism".

I have lost a cousin who has cut himself off from his siblings & extended family ~ in part because Global Warming is a Hoax. Add some conspiracy ideation and a "suspicious mind" about the (presumed) nefarious intent of his siblings/cousins. His adult children try to keep their heads down and wait for it all to pass (but they don't seem hopeful).

He is not insane in the strict medico-legal sense, but IMO he is intellectually insane. Nor do I think he has an organic brain dysfunction and/or early dementia, as far as I can tell. But judging by the shenanigans on the internet (especially the echochamber of GreenHouse denialism at WattsUpWithThat ) his is not a wildly uncommon case. Additionally, there must be millions who go along for the ride, as a matter of identity politics.

Fortunately, I rarely encounter flagrant denialists in everyday real life. But obviously they exist, even in the higher echelons of government.

The real question is :- Which way is the tide running? And are politicians starting to see the light . . . or are they merely responding to increased public & media pressure, and are simply dissembling while hoping they're dealing with a transient wave of publicity.

From what I've seen during the past 5 months [ i.e. since mid-November 2020] , the denizens of WUWT are a bit glum, but consider themselves to be bravely holding out against all this unscientific AGW nonsense (and its underlying Marxist World Revolutionary push). Bravely holding out until the public is brought to its senses by sky-rocketing electricity prices and the inevitable arrival of decades of drastic Global Cooling. Due soon.

Critical Thinking about Climate - a video series by John Cook

Eclectic at 10:08 AM on 8 October, 2020

Nigelj, in general you are correct about "sceptics" revising their previous position ~ when finally all the world and his wife are pointing the finger of scorn & reproach.

That would be so for the milder cases of climate denialism, over the next 20 years, I expect. But not so much for the hard-core denialists (you know the type) . . . they use a seemingly-infinite amount of motivated reasoning to resist the reality which is staring them in the face.

For the hard-core cases, the "noisiness" of data over the coming decades ~ will be a hook for their every hope. Every pause/hiatus in surface temperature, every brief uptick in arctic sea-ice extent, every season which happens to be rather quieter in hurricanes / wildfires / sea-level-rise . . . every example will be pointed to as a fore-runner of the coming Cooling Century which will confound the mainstream scientists.

These cases are the hard-core denialists who will maintain their position . . . right up until they themselves fall to the final sweep of the Reaper's Scythe.

Participating in Al Gore's Climate Reality Leadership Corps Training

nigelj at 07:52 AM on 18 September, 2020

Keithy @16

"No, nigelj, the problem does not speak for itself.....Most people don't care unless they are made to... Al Gore made sweeping statements that big business knew had to be refuted because investment certainty is a must in big business."

I dont entirely agree. Most people globally are aware of the climate problem, you see this in polling studies, and clearly most people havent even read Al gores book or seen his movie, just look at the number of sales globally. I think this could be true even in America. Many people live in countries who probably haven't even heard of Al Gore. Likewise all those countries also have plenty of climate denialism.

Most people including business interests probably get their climate information mainly from general media commentary on the issue and from media commentary on the IPCC reports. The denialists and business are also reacting to media commentary.

The most we could say is Al Gore has probably polarised things a bit in the USA because of his political leanings, and yes I would agree to the extent that his book probably helped motivate the denialists. But they would have been pretty motivated anyway just by things like the IPCC reports. Do you really believe denialists would have just ignored those?

Participating in Al Gore's Climate Reality Leadership Corps Training

Philippe Chantreau at 05:15 AM on 18 September, 2020

It seems indeed that the only point to be extracted from Keithy's contribution is that Al Gore caused the denialism we have been witnessing and the pseudo-debate that is now raging. As Baerbel showed us, the timeline does not support that argument.

It's possible that an in depth analysis could in fact reveal that Al Gore managed to attract on the subject more public attention, an attention that some of the work of deniers ironically had aimed at keeping off the problem. So, if anything can be gathered from Keithy's contribution so far, it's that Al Gore forced the denial supporing industries to ramp up their effort. Wow! How unexpected, how surprising. We are so fortunate that someone came up to bring that powerful insight.

If there is anything left for Keithy to argue, that would be that the overall balance of Al Gore's climate campaign has been negative, but he has come nowhere near supporting that with facts and analysis; it would be a very difficult case to make in my opinion. Surveys of the general public, even in the ill-informed US, where denial is the best organized, most vocal and best connected, shows that the majority of the population is well aware of the problem and realizes its importance.

Participating in Al Gore's Climate Reality Leadership Corps Training

MA Rodger at 20:23 PM on 17 September, 2020

Keithy @various,

You seem to have been vacillating between two arguments which is not helpful to setting out yor arguement.

Your initial point @9 concerned Al Gore's 2007 message which had been described @5 as not being denier-proof. You counter saying Al Gore's message had to resonate with a public audience meaning 'facts' are less important than 'drama' and (perhaps less well explained by yourself) that such a message would kick off a public debate which would include denialists.

@14-16 you imply that industry/business is synonymous with 'denier' and set out a second argument that unless AGW mitigation is made worthwhile for industry, they would not assist in it. (@19 you rather confusingly seperate 'blue chip company' and 'the garden variety denier', presumably this latter being the denialist public with presumably the former requiring 'facts' and the latter 'drama'.) In terms of which of the two is more important, industry or public, you assert @23 that it is primarily industry/business which needs to be convinced of the requirement to act on AGW.

And in similar vein you state @25:-

"Entrepreneurs don't get out of bed to make peanuts. If there is no pathway for future profiteering then the ideas of capitalism, with its associated captains of industry, itself go to sleep."

In trying to make sense of this "waffling" (as Eclectic terms it), I would suggest that there are certain industries which have been attempting to push back against AGW mitigation. A giant oil company, for instance, has assets on its books in the shape of oil reserves worth billions and it would be employing divisions of workers to find more, such operations also being book assets worth billions. AGW science is saying these assets should not be exploited and the search for more oil reserves should stop immediately. That presents such companies with the prospect of massive loss of assets. So to delay such AGW mitigation, even by a decade or two, is a very profitable enterprise for such companies.

But the vast majority of industry would not react so aggressively against AGW mitigation. And industry does not "go to sleep" when faced by the need to mitigate AGW. Certainly some industries will have a harder time than others in the carbon-free energy-scarce world which will closely follow successful AGW mitigation. Many will see once-profitable business likely disappear (eg steel cans & glass jars replaced by bio-plastic-&-cardboard containers) but when the economic writing is on the wall such industries will evolve into new businesses, either scaled down or providing the modern replacement product.

Of itself, industry is not a barrier to AGW mitigation. What is a barrier is a denialist public whose existence prevents an honest political AGW debate (which is required to mitigate for AGW). Certain industries have actively promoted public & political denialism and they are likely greatly surprised how successful they have been at it so far.

Participating in Al Gore's Climate Reality Leadership Corps Training

nigelj at 07:30 AM on 16 September, 2020

Keithy @9, I am struggling a bit to understand your point of view. I do not think Al Gore chose drama over facts. His book and movie sounded very facts based to me. Did you mean he emphasised drama over just a dry delivery of the facts?

I think Al gores book was good, but over simplified a few things. It could have better explained why CO2 lags temperature in the ice age cycles and generally how the thing worked.

But either way, I do concede there was a big element of drama and theatre in Gores book and movie, and that this would attract the denialists. But I'm not sure we really needed the denialists involved to advertise the climate problem. The problem speaks for itself.

Like PC says the climate change denialism is just misleading rhetoric and assorted nonsense. I think we can live without this frustrating public debate that seems to never end.

However Gores book and movie would probaly grab public attention. I read Al gores book and it did focus my attention on the climate issue because it was well presented. However it probably didnt go down well with the right wing in America, given Gore is a rich democrat. But whats done is done.

A conundrum: our continued presence on Facebook

nigelj at 07:01 AM on 27 July, 2020

sailrick @30, thanks for that useful information. It is tough to know where to go, because it looks to me like Facebooks advertising algorithms essentially targets people with certain types of articles that fits their past history, so amplifies climate denialism, while Me We dont do that. But Facebook do come down quite hard on far right groups and other assorted totally crazy people, while Me We allow anyone on their website.

Perhaps MeWe are better overall than facebook, because at least it doesnt manipulate what information people recieve, but given they only have a couple of million users, thats going to mean skepticalscience.com would not be reaching many people. Tough choice.

A conundrum: our continued presence on Facebook

sauerj at 13:11 PM on 22 July, 2020

A recent "Living on Earth" radio show talked about some climate action groups dropping their advertising on FB. I can only wonder if there are many, many other groups, scientist leaders and businesses that SkS could team up with, who are disgusted with FB abetting climate denialism and conspiracies, and targeting users via fear and outrage manipulation (boggeyman politics), resulting in unhealthy polarization of society, all for the sake of a buck.
http://www.loe.org/shows/segments.html?programID=20-P13-00029&segmentID=1

A conundrum: our continued presence on Facebook

nigelj at 07:04 AM on 20 July, 2020

My take in a bit more detail and having read the comments: There appear to be a couple of main issues with facebook. 1)Micro targetting of ads and information that can reinforce climate denialism, and 2) facebooks poor fact checking, because facebook claim climate denialism articles are not news articles, they are opinion so they dont need fact checking.

Facebook show no signs of changing this behaviour, despite these issues being raised on various websites. Im assuming people have also lobbied facebook directly. The government hasn't intervened very much, presumably because its afraid of being seen to censor free speech and excessively interfering in how facebook do business in relation to micro targetting.

Fact checking opinion articles or dealing with complaints about them would be very time consuming for governments. Even if the public lobbied governments, it looks to me like they might be reluctant to act. Governmnets usually only get tough if its a question of safety, blatantly inaccurate news articles, and so on. I guess we could argue lies about climate change threaten the safety of humanity. Would that have potential, or is it too tenuous?

So things might only change if users leave facebook and thus start hurting their bottom line. However the problem is if only a few users leave it wont make a difference. You would need quite a big exodus. People like facebook, and the issues we see as a problem might not bother enough people, or they might not be smart enough to understand them. So the risk is a few leave, but 99% stay and so what would we have achieved?

I did leave facebook some time ago for a combination of reasons.

A conundrum: our continued presence on Facebook

sauerj at 12:07 PM on 19 July, 2020

Reasons to Stay or Leave: 4 Reasons for each group. Rating each 1 to 5 (1 = stay, 5= leave)

Reasons for staying on FB:

1) No One Polices False Information: FB does not self-control (police) false information. Neither does most other media organizations (Fox News), and neither does MeWe. There will still be climate denier groups and individuals all over MeWe, peddling false information within their echo groups, once it gets a full spectrum of users. So, this is a neutral point: Rating = 3.

2) Flow of False Information Likely Only Slightly Less on MeWe: Many climate deniers are not FB users. They get the misinformation from many other sources. Even if everyone moved to MeWe, the flow of climate denial into MeWe will be the same (coming from other media sources). (Certainly the self-amplification of this misinformation within FB will be stunted - see first two points in next section - but I believe this internal amplification is a smaller accelerant of the flow of misinformation on FB compared to the incoming flow of misinformation from other media sources.) So, this is a neutral point: Rating = 3. ... (Although, since the flow of misinformation may be less (if even slightly less), then one could argue this should be a 4 favoring leaving.)

3) Loss of Readership & Loss of Penetrating the Internet w/ Good, Truthful Material: FB users like the "one stop shopping" aspect of FB's news feed. Not having to click around on different sites, just scroll down to see media material from groups & individuals of interest is very fast and convenient. But, there are many other social media (SM) platforms that users do click on, so adding MeWe to the list is only a partial inconvenience. But, until MeWe use builds, the readership of SkS on SM would plummet in the meantime if fully moving to FB. So, this is not a show stopper for leaving, but it is a major reason to stay (for now): Rating = 1.

4) Buy out of MeWe or future change of MeWe: There is no guarantee that MeWe won't succumb to future money interest. So, loss of readership and other headaches could be all for naught in a few years from now. But, this is only speculation: Rating = 3.

Reasons for leaving FB

1) No Profile Specific Ordering of News Feed: FB users can order their newsfeed based on time too (just like MeWe); but they have to click on this feature with every refresh; while, with MeWe, this is built-in. Odds are that only <5% of FB users methodically do this. Therefore, this reduces the "outrage trigger potential" of MeWe compared to FB. This is one reason why the internal self-amplification of false information would be less on MeWe vs FB. Rating = 5.

2) No Profile Specific Ads: FB users can block ads using adblockers (very effective) and hiding the rest (a minor inconvenience). But, only 30% of internet users use adblockers. So, 70% of FB users are getting profile specific ads which potentially feed their "outrage & false information addiction". So, this is another reason why the internal self-amplification of outrage and false information would be less on MeWe vs FB. Rating = 4. (or maybe a 5)

3) Make a Moral Point about the Social Health Fallout caused by FB: Most media publishers get their paycheck off of peddling "outrage" in order to draw readership so to sell ads. Some publishers rely on this to the extreme (Info Wars, Fox News, CNN, FB); others much less so or not at all (AP News, MeWe). Social media (vs older media forms) speeds up the flow of this "outrage quotient" by 1) being constant in time and 2) enabling the viewers themselves to contribute to the circulation of outrage, like a virus. This can take this flow & buildup of "outrage" to socially unhealthy levels of polarization and radicalization which can even overpower the old social stabilizing institutions that, in the past, would keep up with dampening past lower levels of outrage (keeping it in check). So, today's intense flow of "outrage" caused by social media groups, like FB which feeds off of it for its paycheck and purposely is designed to amplify it, is a serious social health issue. However, MeWe doesn't block incoming "outrage" content; but it does thwart the internal self-amplification of this outrage, via #1 and #2 in the above 'Leaving' reasons. By leaving, this is taking a stand against this kind of socially unhealthy pathology against FB's purposeful amplification of outrage for the sake of making a buck. Rating = 5.

4) Make a Moral Point about FB not controlling Climate Denialism: As a climate pro-science site, it would only seem fitting & in keeping with its mission that SkS should make a moral stand against FB's nefarious climate denial inaction. Rating = 5.

Average Rating = between 3.625 to 3.875

Conclusions & Recommendations: Based on this, I would work to leave FB but do so with as much noise as you can. I would try to team up with as many climate action advocate groups as you can (scientists, climate groups, institutions, schools, companies, churches, etc). Then, I would write a mass article, signed by all, to be published in a couple major papers (Guardian, Forbes) so to announce your plans to leave FB on Date = XYZ, unless FB meets specified demands in writing by that date (and spell out your demands in detail). The points above in #4 and #5 in the 'Leaving' section should be made clear (like a social condemnation against FB and how they are nefariously polarizing the world for the sake of a buck). Then, follow thru (in mass) and leave FB if they refuse to meet the demands in full by that date. Give instructions to your readership on how to set up MeWe accounts with plenty of "overlapping" time to ease the transition.

I have accounts w/ both FB and MeWe; although I am not a frequent MeWe user yet.

2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #27

nigelj at 08:16 AM on 6 July, 2020

The Guardian article says "I’m not saying facts don’t matter or the scientific method should be watered down or we should communicate without facts. What I am saying is that now the climate science has been proven to be true to the highest degree possible, we have to stop being reasonable and start being emotional."

Yes, but it may depend on the emotions. I get angry with lack of mitigation and denialist rhetoric, but getting angry with denialists and shouting at them or becoming personal can lead to them getting more entrenched in their views. Its a fine balance where the anger needs expression but needs control.

Crying tears about the end of the world gets a predictably negative reaction from the political right. Getting really angry with our leaders is sometimes very justified, but it can quickly escalate out of control to shouting matches and their views becoming more entrenched. Put it this may the anger needs to be very facts based and focused.

Climate scientists could write more accounts including their more personal fears. I think everyone would connect with that.

Yes world views are important. Much of the denialism comes from the political right and its driven by ideological fear of things like taxes etc. You can try to empathise with the political right, and find solutions that minimise the perceived problems of "big government" and couch the problem in terms the political right understand, such of concern for other people as our neighbours rather than using the word inequality. But attempts to do this have not yeilded great results.

Yes its clear climate denialism and weak climate mitigation policies are driven by political tribalism but mitigation is weak even in countries without much political tribalism. Even one party states like China are still building a lot of coal fired power. So other things are at work. Perhaps everyone is complacent and wants to preserve the status quo, especially the leaders in society. But I think much of it comes back to my previous comment:

Humans are hard wired to respond most strongly to very present threats (like covid 19) rather than long term and future orientated threats like climate change.This doesn't mean fear is not a motivator for climate action, but it clearly signals it may not be sufficient, so we need a focus on the benefits of solutions as well. (this creates positive emotions)

www.bbc.com/future/article/20190304-human-evolution-means-we-can-tackle-climate-change

And yes I can see facts are not enough to convince people. But facts are part of it. More needs to be made of the devastatingly high risk lower probability events like hothouse earth and multi metre sea level rise. This is lacking in the IPCC reports and its this politicians look at.

Models are unreliable

Eclectic at 13:32 PM on 4 July, 2020

Bob Loblaw @1204 ,

The "search" for a course on DIY GCM's is not just certainly odd ~ it is positively hilarious.

But maybe technology is moving faster than I thought. And I had better check Amazon for stocks of those long-promised pocket-size quantum supercomputers (powered by cold fusion, I hope). Doubtless these miniaturized marvels would be quite expensive at first ~ but perhaps early adopters will be issued with a bonus App for a GCM or two.

Our moderator seemed to think that the good Deplore_This was doing some "baiting" ( aka "trolling" ? ). Never in a million years would I have thought such a thing . . . but it might explain the underlying motivation of this recent "encounter" at SkS, and it would explain the confused rambling denialism that he/she is throwing up. And explain the DK-like complacency.

Phillipe C @ 1203 ,

your suggestion that the Lady in Question might be the good Dr Curry, is, surely, a tad ungentlemanly? After all, the literary style is somewhat different ~ though I suppose I could be wrong on that (or the style might have had an extensive makeover per Grammarly or similar App).

Still, it will be interesting if there are more developments. I always hope there will be something new to learn, from every "challenge" to mainstream climate science. Admittedly, my hopes have always been dashed ~ but some day there may be a grain of wisdom to be found among the bucketloads of BS.

Planet of the humans: A reheated mess of lazy, old myths

nigelj at 17:59 PM on 28 April, 2020

The following is another fact check on the so called documentary. Fact check: New Michael Moore-backed documentary full of errors, fundamentally misunderstands electric system.

The criticisms of renewables are clearly dated and wrong and an awful lot of cherrypicking is going on, one of the logical fallacies usually used by climate denialists. For example picking the worst and oldest wind farm they could find.

That said, renewables do need plenty of storage and it would be foolish to claim they are perfect. But nothing is perfect. Don't make the perfect the enemy of the good (a quote from Voltaire)

But the article doesn't drill down adequately into the origins of this absurd attack on renewables. There are apparently some comments in the movie and by M Moore that strongly associate renewables with billionarie capitalists who are seen as a problem, so the attack on renewables looks politically motivated. Nothing wrong with scepticism about billionaire capitalists, but this is an example of scepticism going off the rails into the twilight zone because its not clear why some product or service is inherently bad or should be rejected, just because its a product of capitalism.

The alternative suggested is to keep burning fossil fuels and instead aim to reduce population growth and use hugely less energy. Now there is no doubt getting population growth down should be a part of climate mitigation because it reduces energy demand, and environmental pressure, but even if the fertility rate dropped to zero tomorrow (it won't) it would take decades for population size to fall in absolute terms so population reduction can only be a part answer to the climate problem. And expecting people to make massive 50% plus reductions in energy use doesn't look terribly realistic. So we need a new energy grid even if it is constructed by billionaire capitalists, (at least until someone comes up with a better way of financing such grids that actually works).

This is not an argument against sensible reforms to the capitalist system, or an excuse for billionaires who back climate denialism, or who rip off the system and set a bad example generally. There is a strong argument that capitalism needs to evolve, but conflating this with the value of renewables doesn't make a lot of sense.

This is related: I Am a Mad Scientist

With climate and coronavirus, 'the broad shape of the story is the same'

nigelj at 18:12 PM on 14 April, 2020

There is possibly another parallel between climate change and covid 19, and it's related to scepticism verging on denialism. Firstly we know there are several consensus studies showing most climate scientists agree we are changing the climate, and a very small number of scientists disagree. It appears covid 19 might be similar in New Zealand with most health experts agreeing covid 19 is a big problem, and small goup of strongly dissenting voices in NZ trying to essentially minimise the covid 19 problem, and attack the lockdown response. While I havent seen a poll or anything, this picture is emerging strongly in our media.

The media article about the denialist group has mysteriously disappeared, but the following article refers directly to this dissenting group and is critical of it.

www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/120984583/coronavirus-lockdown-rules-should-be-relaxed-health-experts-say

One sees some interesting features with this covid 19 scepticism that parallels the climate issue. First the covid sceptics take quite an extreme position, much like the climate denialists, so no middle ground with these guys. Secondly their group includes a motley mixture of health experts, economists, legal people and statisticians, so while not exactly fake experts the group is light on actuall health expertise. Thirdly Thornley claimed that only 10% of fatalities were caused by covid 19 while, the rest were caused by underlying conditions. This is moronic and misleading and a sort of red herring argument.

Thornley implies covid 19 is no more lethal than influenza, which is not what the weight of evidence says (granted nobody is 100 % certain). The group say that the data show covid is not a huge problem seemingly oblivious that the reason our numbers of infections have fallen is because of the lockdown that they generally criticise. This is so stupid it beggars belief.

The group as a whole claim covid 19 is no worse than influenza for most people, while neglecting to mention it is a great deal worse for about 20% of people and causes more severe complications than seasonal influenza (this appears beyond debate now). The group also promote the Swedish model, without mentioning that they have quite a high mortality rate. The group cherrypick various other examples.

These assorted tactics are all remarkably similar to climate denialism.

(That said, while I think lockdowns make sense, we have to also consider the very significant economic and social distress this causes and tread carefully and minimise their length.)

YouTube's Climate Denial Problem

MA Rodger at 18:23 PM on 12 April, 2020

prove we are smart @37,

Your contention @32 was that "Google and Amazon are now in the oil business," (this being the title of a webpage @vox.com) and that would bring into question Google's stance on climate denialism with Google being the owners of YouTube. That webpage you link-to actually says very little but more informative are some of its links (eg here) which describe Google, Amazon and others providing services for the oil industry. That isn't quite the same as being 'in' the oil industry.

Having the oil industry as a client is a relationship many many companies have. The novel point to the the services being offered by Google etc is that it is about using high tech (eg AI) to improve the efficiency of oil extraction, indeed of oil exploration. You may argue the ethics of providing such services, as Michael Mann does in the webpage I linked above which also describes the creation of Google's Oil, Gas & Energy Division. To suggest such moves by Google would cause it to support climate denialism (or cause it not not shut down denialist YouTube content) is surely a bit of a leap.

YouTube's Climate Denial Problem

Eclectic at 14:17 PM on 10 April, 2020

Nigelj , thanks for the link (climatescience.org.nz ~ a marvellous example of unintended irony in title, as is often the case for science-denier websites).

Although we don't live in Venice, this 2020 is a sort of Year of the Cholera . . . so I shall certainly take time to look through some of that website, for entertainment.

A quick glance at its First Page listed articles does appear depressingly banal for denialism. I see that the very-emeritus Professor Happer gets a mention. And kind of disappointing there's no prominent mention of Feynman or Galileo (those names are usually a nice marker for the presence of scientific-pretentiousness in denialism sites).

Here's hoping there are some unusual gems of madness to be found there. Sadly, all too many such science-denier sites are filled with nothing but ordinary "cut glass" madness . . . so, rather boring for the gem fossicker.

YouTube's Climate Denial Problem

nigelj at 17:26 PM on 8 April, 2020

Eclectic @13, you are definitely not wrong. I see the same parade of denialist charcters in our media and comments pages and on our own climate denial website here, although I rarely visit it these days. Same old same old.

And talking about conspiracy theories and thick as two short planks this article on covid 19 is a perfect example. But I still maintain much of the climate denialism is in the deliberate stupidity department and lack of wisdom and objectivity, rather than a low IQ or bad education as such.

YouTube's Climate Denial Problem

Eclectic at 13:55 PM on 8 April, 2020

Nigelj ,

a large part of that "short-term" thinking is just plain selfishness.

In my travels in the land of WattsUpWithThat website, I see many commenters who are thick as two short planks ~ and who are still today in full denial of any planetary warming, and are in full denial of the GreenHouse Effect and especially the role of CO2. But also a smaller number of reasonably intelligent commenters too (of whom only some are in denial about CO2).

But once you get past the "total denial of AGW" crowd, you also find the partial deniers : the lukewarmers who assert the minimal & severely-restricted amount of current Global Warming. Or others who flip over entirely and assert that the present & future warming can only be a blessing for humanity (as in the allegedly halcyon days of the Roman Warm Period and the MWP). #More CO2 and CO2 plant food please!

Now, what is behind these unsupported, unscientific views? Some of it is sheer "tribal thinking" ~ people who are angry with our changing social world, and who wish to revert to an earlier golden age (in their eyes) of perhaps half a century ago. And the more intelligent, do indulge in all sorts of convoluted Motivated Reasoning to negate the scientific evidence & scientific assessments.

And then there are the paranoid ~ the Conspiracy Theorists holding various insane views about all the scientists worldwide being in a century long plot to overthrow Sacred Free-Market Capitalism and install World Communism & an oppressive freedom-destroying undemocratic oligarchy. The scientists all being "useful idiots" or willing tools of Mr Soros et alia.

Scratch deeper ~ and you find Money & Selfishness. Bigger government must surely mean bigger taxing of my money . . . and a World (Socialist) Government will surely mean redistribution of my money to the undeserving poor of (my) America, and even worse, the redistribution of my money to Third World countries (or any country which isn't the USA).

So in that way, it comes back to : money & selfishness. Which are just two sides of the one coin.

Nature or Nurture as the cause of selfishness? The larger proportion of such selfishness (expressed as climate denialism) in Americans, is unlikely to be simply genetic traits of personality. Surely culture & upbringing must be a component : possibly aided (at the local national level) by much much more Oil Industry propaganda along with the ever-present modern enhanced Tribalism.

From what I can see in the WUWT comments sections, with all their anger & resentments about climate science [presumably just the visible tip of some larger unknowable iceberg] . . . it is especially the redistribution threat which is getting up the nose of the middle class right-wing in the USA. A selfish group, comprising (at an educated guess) about 15% of the population ~ plus some hangers-on who are just going along with the Tribal slogans.

And yet, against that [and as we see in today's Coronavirus emergency] there are many others who are acting nobly & charitably & unselfishly to help their fellow citizens & the community generally. Three cheers for them!

YouTube's Climate Denial Problem

MA Rodger at 23:50 PM on 7 April, 2020

factotum @10,

I had a read of your "AGW Deniers are Dumber than Plants" article and can't say I agree with it. Okay, I won't begin by asserting that the first three sentences are flat wrong, but beyond the pedantry of say, subjectivist epistemology, the overall thesis that "deniers are dumb" is simply incorrect. Similarly, the OP's YouTube video isn't correct in describing denialism as simply presenting a never-ending pack of lies. It is more complex than that.

I did have in mind linking to a particular OP I read some time ago but in trying to track it down I found this one instead which I'll share here as I rather liked the way it begins by saying that a google search on "Why are climate change deniers..." found the 'number one hit' was "Why are climate change deniers so stupid?" I ran the same search myself and found the following ten top of the search results:-

♣ Why are climate change deniers using the same twisted strategies as Big Tobacco to instill doubt?
♣ Why are Climate Change Deniers Bullying a 16-Year-Old Girl?
♣ Why are climate change deniers more likely to be racist?
♣ Why are climate change deniers still so prevalent?
♣ why are climate change deniers almost always awful people?
♣ why are climate change deniers so stupid?
♣ Why are climate change deniers like Stephens [Bret Stephens, a columnist for the New York Times] more interested in possible but unlikely scenarios like nuclear attacks by rogue states rather than the real and ongoing threat to national security and global stability posed by climate change?
♣ why are climate change deniers so dismissive of science and so ready to embrace continued subsidization, aka corporate welfare, for big oil billionaires?
♣ Why are climate change deniers like the Roman emperor Nero?
♣ Why are climate change deniers unjustified in their high standards of "skepticism"?

This OP I link-to sets out the question "Are they just a bunch of idiots who are ignorant of science and incapable of understanding it?" and answers it saying For the most part “No.” Its a usefully brief account although I feel it fudges one point when it says:-

"Research has proven that humans are distinctly uncomfortable with events or phenomena without clear causes, and when we don’t know something, we tend to fill in the gaps ourselves."

Myself, I would take out the bit about "without clear causes". I see denialism as being powerful enough so as not to be restricted to issues "without clear causes," especially in this age of the interweb.

Of course the interweb isn't that powerful a tool as I failed to locate that article I had in mind about denialism.

How deniers maintain the consensus gap

nigelj at 17:13 PM on 24 February, 2020

Regarding Philippe Chantreaus comments. The relevant book is Dark Money. The same people who said the global financial crash couldn' t happen, and when it did they made excuses for the culprits are the same people involved in climate denialism, eg The Koch Brothers, The Bradly Brothers etc.

They are business leaders at the libertarian ideological fringe, and perhaps many of them have sociopathic tendencies. Their two biggest hates are 1) taxes and 2) government regulations (apart from when it helps their business interests. These people are utter hypocrites. )

The Kochs and their supporters started a libertarian political party to push their cause a couple of decades ago, but it tanked in the polls, getting less than 1% support, so they adopted a different strategy, to fund a huge network of think tanks, and lobby groups and they have huge influence on the GOP through this and political donations, and some influence on the Democrats.

So if you want to know why federal level climate policy is mostly a failure in the USA, this would be the main reason. This sounds a but conspiratorial, but in this instance the evidence is overwhelming.

These people will stop at nothing to undermine things like a climate change consensus.

How deniers maintain the consensus gap

Philippe Chantreau at 12:22 PM on 24 February, 2020

scaddenp,

OK, that'd be the more general version. It is not human nature, however to think in crappy ways. Just today I met a young nursing student who gave a kidney, without being asked, just to make some other person's life possible; the recipient happened to be even younger than her.

Competition for high power positions and for material wealh tends to select favorably those with sociopathic tendencies, so it is possible that they are found in higher concentrations in these circles than in the general population.

If the general population was to acquire a understanding of the situation unpolluted by falsehoods and propaganda, they would decide to do the right thing. The desperate storm of denialism that we are witnessing is owed to the fact that the small groups who profit from the current situation are well aware that, would the full reality of AGW be accepted by the majority, they will have no moral case whatsoever, so they'll loose. What is hard to understand is the ferocity of continued pursuit of wealth coming from those who are already richer than most of us can imagine and enjoying a level of privilege unprecedented in humanity's history.

How deniers maintain the consensus gap

Eclectic at 12:05 PM on 24 February, 2020

JoeZ , I am pleased to see you have returned to multiple-thread posting at SkS after a brief "hiatus". Perhaps you were confused when you said that SkepticalScience had given you "a warning that ... [you would] be locked out!" . I haven't seen any evidence of such a warning ~ so presumably it came on some other website where you currently post.

Readers at SkS like to see science and fact-based opinions, rather than mere truculent denialism. So I am hoping you can provide some reasonable comment on the scientific consensus, even when you are struggling to come to terms with the future spending of "trillions" of dollars in dealing with the global warming problem. ( I would be interested to see - on another thread, please - a more precise budgeting of your projected "trillions". Trillions [over 30 years] are sometimes a figure thrown about, but AFAIK they are not offset by the trillions that would otherwise ordinarily be spent on upgrading & routine replacement of coal-fired power stations, and the routine replacement of ICE cars & so on, and on medical health costs & loss of productivity from air-pollution/particulates, nor the high [dollar] costs associated with big numbers of climate refugees . . . going to Boston etcetera. Nor the many other costs arising from a warming world. Human compassion aside, for those who are purely concerned with the dollar bottom-line, it seems a bargain to spend up-front money in tackling climate change.

.... and a minor comparison, the APPA expenditure figures project a total spend [over 30 years] of one trillion dollars on pet food. And that's just for the USA, alone. )

Welcome to Skeptical Science

Eclectic at 23:50 PM on 16 February, 2020

You're welcome, JoeZ @84. I am frequently lurking and/or posting on SkS and WUWT . . . so really it was only a minor co-incidence (and not Divine retribution) that you were exposed.

Your second sentence was rather ambiguous ~ it is almost as though you're saying you are presenting mutually-opposed opinions in two different forums [or "fora", if you live in Boston ;-) ]. But (pending any denial from you) I will take it that wasn't what you meant . . . in which case :- why would you object anyone reading the available totality of your opinions?

But - cutting to the Chase - I myself (and almost all readers at SkS ) greatly welcome any climate skepticism that you can present.

So far, however, you have not expressed any valid points of climate skepticism. And before you reply, please consult your English dictionary for the precise meaning of skepticism ~ for skepticism does not mean the contrarianism and/or science-denialism which you find everywhere at WUWT ! . . . with the honorable exception of WUWT comments by the very few there who are intellectually sane e.g. by Stokes, Mosher, and a couple of others not yet banned. [WUWT is a marvellous study in Motivated Reasoning ~ where otherwise-intelligent people repeatedly maintain the craziest concepts . . . and revel in the little echo-chamber where they can angrily vent their outrage & denial of reality.]

So, JoeZ , please present your skepticism about the evidence found in mainstream climate science. But I must warn you that Professors Lindzen, Svensmark & other denialists . . . have thus far entirely failed to find any evidence to invalidate the modern science.

Good luck, JoeZ ~ I sincerely hope you can uncover the "killer" evidence which will send all the world's scientists rushing back to the collective drawing-board. It will be a great relief to everyone, to learn that "AGW" is grossly wrong and there's no "climate emergency" whatsoever.

But until I see your genuine evidence, I shall have to remain . . . skeptical.

On climate misinformation and accountability

NoctambulantJoycean at 16:38 PM on 11 February, 2020

FYI, Roger Pielke Jr. misrepresents your post below:
https://twitter.com/RogerPielkeJr/status/1226987527468240896

This reminds me of the debates on "free speech" vs. "freeze peach", where various conservatives would act as if free speech / academic freedom entailed:

- freedom from criticism (including harsh criticism),
- no consequences for what one says,
- the ability to say whatever nonsense they wanted in any forum and under the employment of any institution,
etc.

Of course, freedom of speech entails none of that.

And by the flawed logic Judith Curry and Roger Pielke Jr. have been recently using, it's bullying when:

- virologists make websites correcting Peter Duesberg's distortions,
- doctors make websites correcting Andrew Wakefield's distortions,
- biologists + astronomers make websites correcting Duane Gish's distortions

These aren't just hypotheticals; they actually happened, and I've pointed them out to Pielke Jr. He, unsurprisingly, has no cogent response. For instance, the great website TalkOrigins has a list of creationists, and numerous pages debunking creationists' claims, including creationists with science degrees:

http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/credentials.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/

By Pielke Jr.'s implausible logic, that makes TalkOrigins a malicious attempt to blacklist scientists, make them unhirable, chill academic freedom, and make TalkOrigins "arbiters of all science". That makes no sense; that's not the point of TalkOrigins. TalkOrigins is meant to correct creationist distortions for the purpose of educating the public.

It might turn out that a young Earth creationist is unable to get hired to teach biology or astronomy, because prospective employers see the creationist's publicly-stated position being debunked on TalkOrigins. But that's fine, since one should be held accountable for what one says, when what one says is relevant to the position one is applying for. That's compatible with freedom of speech. Parallel point for people being unhirable based on their position being debunked on SkepticalScience, and their being listed on SkepticalScience misinformer's pages.

And in case folks want another example: AIDSTruth + others have lists of AIDS denialists, and numerous pages debunking AIDS denialists' claims, including AIDS denialists with science/medical degrees. Is Pielke Jr. going to object to that to? Does he really not understand the important role websites like AIDSTruth, TalkOrigins, and SkepticalScience play in correcting denialist misinformation/disinformation?:

https://www.aidstruth.org/new/denialism/denialists/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1949841/
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpubh.2015.00193/full

How did climate change get so controversial?

JohnMashey at 09:19 AM on 24 January, 2020

Over decades, Big Tobacco did denialism directly, via entities like Tobacco Industry Research Council, but over time moved to use more and more "independent" entities like front groups, think tanks and most of all, the Tea Party, a joint creation of Philip Morris & Kochs, via Citizens for a Sound Economy. In the 1980s, they also created a network run by GMU's Robert Tollison of academic economists across the USA to writeopeds and testify to local legislatures. That progression is detailed in the peer-reviewed paper I summarized & linked (open access) at Desmog.

Big Fossil has followed the same path. The Kochs seed-funded a large network of thinktanks, have spent much money on academics. Most fossil funding is usually invisible, except for accidents and ExxonMobil Foundation, whose use was silly, because it was publicly visible in IRS Form990 reports and the numbers were rounding error in daily profits. They took flak, which must have amused the Kochs, as they were spending more, so they mostly quit using EMF in the mid-2000s ... but in fact, kept funding some, like ACSH (Desmog, Sourcewatch). Latest numbers I have are $75K each year 2011-2016, for example.

How did climate change get so controversial?

Nick Palmer at 23:55 PM on 22 January, 2020

My view nowadays is that increasingly since 2007, Big Fossil Fuel no longer directly sponsors denialism. It's not in their corporate material, in their reports or websites. They do, however, contribute to organsations which use denialist memes and rhetoric when lobbying politicians etc but I think this is a separate thing.

My opinion is that the giant energy companies do accept the mainstream science these days but are, justifiably, worried about some of the solutions put forward by extreme environmental activists and some progressive/left leaning politicians which, to 'big business', look like 'communism by the back door'. Professor Katharine Hayhoe is recently actively using the term 'solutions averse' to describe such behaviour. She is now using an approach of researched and justifiable optimism that, without crushing capitalism or using heavy handed Big Government that we can do this - we can solve it.

Nowadays, when tackling a denialist who has proved to be 'solutions averse' I have taken to saying something like:

'If you so scared of the Big Government solutions, carbon taxes etc, why don't you get busy coming up with efficient, economical freemarket solutions to the problme instead of spreading denialst memes and propaganda just because they have been shown to sway the minds of the the voting masses?'

How did climate change get so controversial?

Nick Palmer at 23:33 PM on 22 January, 2020

"This ideology holds that capitalism and personal freedom are inextricably linked. Even a small action like a tax on tobacco could be the start of a slippery slope of ever-increasing regulation, leading to government controlling every part of our lives."

It's good to see this in the book. It does tend to be US types who most have that particularly extreme notion of 'freedom' though. Not all freemarket or libertarian types do, for example the wonderful Potholer54 (Peter Hadfield) who has done a couple of videos on freemarket solutions to climate change.

I have to say that I think the 'fossil fuel lobbyists are behind denialism' argument is getting outdated. The truth I think is more nuanced despite what the Oreskes' of this world insinuate.

nigelj #2 I think you might mean 'the tragedy of the commons'

I had an intense conversation at work today.

Eclectic at 12:55 PM on 15 January, 2020

Doug_C @17 , the comment by TomJanson (as he rightly points out) was not simply referring to an isolated "bad year" of Australian wildfires in the end-1974 summer. There were many & extensive fires in other years of the 20th Century ~ yet they don't support the denialist case he is desperate to make.

But hilariously, TomJanson seems to have failed to take a careful look at a map of Australia. Perhaps he is too busy himself "fighting fires" on multiple SkS threads at once? ;-)

TomJanson @ 16 /18 , you seem to be basing your opinion on just reading a few headines (WUWT? Murdoch Press with its "183 arsonists" and suchlike flagrant disinformation?)

Yes, the state of NSW is one of the "eastern states" of Australia, and the 1974 summer wildfires did include a section of the well-settled Hunter Valley near the coast. But there were vast areas burnt to the west in NSW ~ which is typical inland terrain, being grasslands / arid lands / unpopulated regions (the "Outback").

The frequency of burning of large areas of "Outback" . . . provides an apples & oranges comparison with the currently famous fires in the populous south-east of Australia. And provides a "statistical camouflage" for desperadoes like Dr Spencer, who really don't wish to properly examine the issues. His is a fine exampe of Motivated Reasoning . . . as is all climate-science denialism.

And I did not say "these fires are completely different". But they are different enough, for it to be wise to learn a lesson from them. For irregular/"noisy" events like major wildfires (in Australia), we have to look at exacerbating factors & underlying causations (of which there are many).

Over the long term, one prominent new factor is Global Warming.

How much can we blame AGW for the extent & ferocity of the fires? At an educated guess, perhaps one-third of it can be blamed on climate change.

# The point is, with the ongoing warming over the next 30 years , it could well be that the AGW factor will grow to become two-thirds contributor to the extent & ferocity of wildfires in the "settled south-east of Australia". (Other regions of the world will have their own problems.)

But the modern wildfires of 2019 are becoming a wake-up call to the local population (and a warning to the rest of the world) . . . and as a consequence to that, the science-denialists are very desperate to propagandize against the obvious AGW connection.

I had an intense conversation at work today.

nigelj at 09:33 AM on 14 January, 2020

"i've had these encounters and most people just reset after they walk away;"

Yes I have seen the same.

The way I see the whole denialist issue is we all have some natural healthy scepticism of new ideas, but get round to accepting them after hearing explanations etc. History shows this. Scepticism looks to me like it exists in many shades of grey from healthy scepticim to denialism, and its hard to know what category people are in, so we have to hope they are open to persuasion. Some will be some wont.

They may say they agree and walk away and reset into denialism, but it could operate the other way where they vehemently disagree, but go away and vote for the Green party or whatever. I've seen one or two characters do similar things.

The never-ending RCP8.5 debate

Nick Palmer at 01:31 AM on 14 January, 2020

nigelj@54 wrote: "However in these posts I always mention that I think climate change is deadly serious and why, to try and get across that I'm not minimising the problem, but that we just need accuracy"

100% yes!! It's the lack of accuracy in the rhetoric that motivates me to take on 'difficult' people, both denialst or doomist or left or right and all of the various combinations. I try to explain to the hyper-alarmists that their overblown rhetoric is actually a significant problem to getting the public on board and get labelled by themn as denialsist or a 'concern roll'. It's frustrating because I know that any undecided more reasonable readers who may be following can be turned away from the sensible middle path by the prejudice and misinformation on display

Thank you for taking the time to 'judge' the Barlow/Palmer contretemps. I must say I have never been so insulted by someone who is nominally on 'our side' before and that is why I needed a little confirmation that it wasn't me who had gone too far down a path...

I accept what you say. It's interesting that you sense that Barlow is/was an ecologist type. In my own 'environmentalist career' I started out completely believing the imminent tales of ecological doom spread by such as Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth - indeed I was a local groups FoE 'coordinator' throughout the 90s. I very much thought that modern society had us on a one way irrecoverable trip to ecocidal hell with the job of our organisations being to slow down the damage as much as possible while fearing the worst would happen. In one sense I go a little easy on Steven Barlow and others like him because I (kind of) was like him several decades ago - I know his arguments well because they were also close to mine before I wised up (I think) a little...

I came to see that there were sufficient people who cared to make a difference and I've seen many initiatives succeed in increasing recycling, protecting areas of wildlife, specific threatened species, certain types of air and water pollution etc and all without 'crushing capitalism' - which is unfortunately, an ideology that some 'extreme ecologists' get driven towards.

Are there still large ecological problems? Sure, and climate change will have many large impacts if we don't get on top of it, but the years have made me more optimistic about how the human race can handle big problems, once it is aware they are genuine and not over-hyped, as many things have been in the past.

The extreme ecologist Barlow's of this world, who use 'fear porn' in their rhetoric in a bid to scare the public towards their favoured solutions - in Barlow's case I suspect he is deep down a Back to Eden type - are no doubt sincere in what they believe, but they then go on to believe that their back to nature/abandon industry methodology is the only solution. I mentioned earlier on that there were 'sufficient' people who cared enough to forego the trappings of civilisation to 'save the world' but I have come to believe, at least in the West, that that figure is only about 20-25% of the general population. Try and impose policies that threaten the lifestyles, ambitions and aspirations of the large amjority too much and one will probably come up against what the President of the Finance and Economics Committee of my then government explained would be (metaphorically) a lot of angry people with swords fighting back!

That is why I reject the increasingly extreme rhetoric that Greta Thunberg, and her back seat driver advisers, are drip feeding out to the public that we have to drop fossil fuel use almost overnight - see the link...
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2020/01/10/greta-thunberg-and-20-youth-climate-activists-call-davos-attendees-abandon-fossil

I accept the view of many economists that such draconian action would immediately precipitate the world into a colossal mother of all global economic crashes. I think that's why IPCC targets allow for continued (but steeply reducing) use of fossil fuels as late as 2050. I think that is sensible. It's hard not to see, because of this relatively new development, that behind the Thunberg speeches that there is more than a hint of some politically minded influencers trying to engineer the destruction or hobbling of capitalism.

I worry that if such extreme action gets validated and taken on board by her many followers that the great mass of the population will be repulsed by it in short order.

In my view over-hyping dangers, calling for extreme and immediate one dimensional 'solutions' runs a grave risk of immunising the public against more measured action, and in this respect I think it a comparable to (or possibly greater, these days) problem than out and out denialism, which I think has recently moved into a new phase. In public fora and media they less and less actually deny the science directly any more but instead focus on cherry picking extreme media statements by alarmists and polticians, and innacurate 'shock horror' journalism, which they then knock down to smear the actual science in the minds of the public by proxy.

2020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #1

nigelj at 08:50 AM on 5 January, 2020

"Safety is something we all crave. It’s human nature."

Nope. Quite a few people crave danger. This is probably a factor in all the crazy climate denialism. They are happy to take a risk with the whole planet. Some of the science underpinning risk taking:

www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/science-choice/201508/can-you-be-addicted-adrenaline

www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-main-ingredient/201207/seeking-danger-find-sense-life

The economist William Nordhaus claimed 4 degrees is the safe limit above which human casualties become serious. The trouble is we don't know this with any certainty, and his views are contested, and even a 1.5 degree world could lock in 4 degrees, it cant be ruled out given the understanding of tipping points, so I can't see any safe limit. By the time one is mathematically defined with precision it will probably be too late.

Jonathen Franzen says "We haven’t fixed climate change for 30 years, so we may as well give in to the fact that everything is screwed." This just seems intellectually lazy and defeatist.

Here Are 3 Climategate Myths That Have Not Aged Well

nigelj at 06:18 AM on 22 November, 2019

Climategate has been investigated to death and the people concerned have been cleared of any form of scientific fraud. I must admit after first reading about climate gate I was immediately suspicious of the claims of wrong doing, because the idea of some climate conspiracy to fake data etc seems too far fetched to be plausible, so I had a closer look at a few articles and it was obvious the denialists took things out of context , and were being misleading. However I already knew about the hide the decline terminology, and anyone not already knowing this term would be justified in being a bit suspicious, and possibly saw the explanations as an ad hoc attempt to make excuses, even although they are robust explanations. The whole leak was damn rotten luck for the mainstream science community, but climate change has marched on and helped vindicate the scientists involved.

The thing is why would denialists be less than honest? It seems to me people are sometimes less than honest when they feel threatened in some way. For example whether it be they are afraid of having to change their lifestyle, give up things they like, pay money, or if their politics and world view feels threatened, or they feel caught out in some way, or are forced to admit to themselves they were sucked in by something ( a lot of denialists probably feel this way). Lots of reasons = lots of denialism.

Climate Scientist reacts to Donald Trump's climate comments

nigelj at 04:49 AM on 14 November, 2019

Well said. It's sad that time has to be wasted shooting this nonsense down, but its important to do so. Some people like to claim facts don't change people minds, which is absurd when you think about it. Facts change at least some people minds even a few denialists eg Richard Mueller.

Donald Trumps climate denialism is probably largely or at least partly fake. Hes not a complete moron. By analogy its like a drug addict or criminal knowing they have done wrong and making up any old nonsense in their defence. Trump is used to making money out of business as usual won't like anything changing his world, but any mass infrastructure programme will create jobs, increase wealth, and stimulate the economy. Look at history, you have the industrial revolution that changed how we did things, the new deal of the 1930's, WW2, the post war years where the highway network was built, mass air travel, the list is endless.

CSLDF: Here’s How Science Has Suffered During the First 1,000 Days of Trump

nigelj at 05:31 AM on 6 November, 2019

William @4, yes many in America are science deniers, but those that want to do science will still do science, so it probably doesn't matter, and everyone benefits even in their science denialism. This is of course a huge double standard.

The problem is when the government itself turns into a science denier and stops funding science or vilifies science so much nobody wants it as a career, and this is where the Trump Administration is heading in all its profound idiocy.

How the Greenland ice sheet fared in 2019

nigelj at 10:24 AM on 8 October, 2019

OPOF @4, yes its always worth a try rebutting climate denialism and explaining the bigger picture. Of course denialists will never or rarely change their minds in public in an internet discussion, because nobody likes to loose face, and this creates an impression denialists never change their minds, but some of them probably do change their minds. Here is an example of some who have:

www.theinertia.com/environment/heres-how-the-evidence-changed-a-climate-change-skeptics-mind/

www.theguardian.com/science/2012/jul/29/climate-change-sceptics-change-mind

Of course PC is also quite right. You get a lot of that.

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #40

nigelj at 06:11 AM on 6 October, 2019

The internet is full of climate denialism that creates the impression of an equally divided opinion on the climate issue, but polling shows most people do accept humans are altering the climate. Therefore its very likely a small number of paid lobbyists dominate the internet, and can have a disproportionate impact on perceptions. I hope politicians and other decision makers appreciate this.

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #36

nigelj at 06:51 AM on 15 September, 2019

The following text is from a climate change article at stuff.co.nz which is a large online newspaper in New Zealand. It has a startling admission in a revealing paragraph I have highlighted in bold type:

"We've witnessed that in the reader reaction to Stuff's Quick! Save the Planet project, which aims to make the realities of climate change feel urgent, tangible and unignorable. Today, we've joined Covering Climate Now – an ambitious, week-long global initiative emphasising the paramount importance of the climate story. "

"Covering Climate Now's roster features more than 240 news outlets, including the Guardian, CBS, the Times of India, and Asahi Shimbun. You'll see some of their stories on Stuff this week, alongside our original reporting. A broad selection of New Zealand's mainstream media is on board: 1 News, RNZ, Newshub, the NZ Herald, Newsroom and the Spinoff, as well as Stuff."

"Call it atonement. Collectively – and internationally – we as the media have for years allowed our taste for conflict to create the false impression that climate science was uncertain and a fit topic for debate. But as respectable media outlets increasingly dispense with any last remnants of climate science denialism, we're getting better at reporting this epoch-defining story accurately and constructively."

" During this Covering Climate Now week, Stuff will investigate the impact of trees, introduce New Zealand's climate change power-brokers, talk to trailblazing farmers learning to adapt, forecast what daily life could look like in 2050, and provide crucial information to help you vote in next month's council elections. In a new feature, Climate Lessons, scientists will share the knowledge gained from their research careers, and our ongoing Climate: Explained column will provide answers to common questions."

Millions of times later, 97 percent climate consensus still faces denial

BillyJoe at 11:10 AM on 22 August, 2019

Eclectic@29

Putting aside, for a moment, the fact that climate deniers will definitely use it as a "gotcha" to fuel climate denialism...

I do not understand why you prefer to make multiple excuses rather than simply agree that it is a good idea to state facts accurately.

It's a win-win situation to get it right: providing accurate information and avoiding giving climate deniers another talking point.

Millions of times later, 97 percent climate consensus still faces denial

MA Rodger at 20:37 PM on 20 August, 2019

Doug_C @21/22 & @25.
I think we are mainly talking past each other here. Perhaps to complete the trade of AGW 'credentials', I have been bashing on about the need to reduce our GHG emissions for only 38% of my life-to-date. I very quickly learnt that such a message is not something that easily yields meaningful results.

We agree that the scientific uncertainty within the subject is not the uncertainty wielded by denialists, although they will happily add it to their own accumulated pile of uncertainties. We agree there is no doubt that the scientific consensus dictates the need to quickly reduce GHG emissions to zero. And we seem to agree that the 3% non-consensus is today entirely non-scientific.

You do react to my assertion that there is scientifically a "looney fringe" that happily exaggerates AGW and which matches that denialist 3%. It is not as prominent as the 3% and it isn't so detatched from the science as the 3%. (And there are those non-scientific voices that exaggerate AGW even further.) Such exaggeration is often wielded by denialists as reason to ignore the science.
[Strangely there has been warning from denier Richard Lindzen that the most basic non-scientific denialist argument is damaging to his denialism (He says you couldn't hire folk to do a better job - see from 12:00 in this 2012 talk in the Palace of Westminster.) but such mud doesn't seem to stick to denialists as it does to AGW.]

One point I would take serious issue with.
You consider "even a 5% chance we are facing a global crisis of this magnitude it should result in immediate action.[my bold]" Yet I fully understand why, within the political sphere, that would not happen. The big problem is not the '5%' (which of course is actually a lot higher, not significantly different to 100%). The big problems are threefold - (1) the timing of the "global crisis" in the future way beyond any political planning horizons (with the exception of SLR on building requirements). (2) the far-reaching actions required by that "immediate action." (3) and what can be called 'institutional denialism' - your Trans Mountain pipeline provides a good example of the lunacy that can ensue. Unless the message sweeps the institution, the counter message of 'continue-on-as-before' will have great strength and will tend to regain its prior position. So bye-bye message.

I will continue to object to use of the word "existential" without qualification. And the extinction of species and habitats is surely not such a qualification. (Note that denialists will counter by saying that the present sixth great extinction event isn't all down to AGW. And there are more powerful arguments that they fail to harness.)

Finally, I'm reluctant to drag Quantum Mechanics into this interchange as it is certainly not of primary consideration. Yes QM does provide the "understanding" of the physics but the impact of the physics is measureable without it, perhaps this epitomised by black body radiation being the evidence that led to identifying QM and its probabalistic physics.

@25 - "How do you reason with people who have strayed so far from rational thought?" Reason may have flown out of their window but do we give them a free pass to spread their nonsense? If you can make their arguments look ridiculous it will perhaps chip away at their denialism and it will surely dissuade onlookers from believing it.

Millions of times later, 97 percent climate consensus still faces denial

nigelj at 16:55 PM on 20 August, 2019

Eclectic @24, sorry to be a bit doomy and gloomy, but I doubt there is a brilliant chess move to neutralise climate denialists of the Christopher Moncton variety. Believe me I've tried to think of one many times, and I have scrutinised your and others comments looking for one!

Obviously facts do convince some people, or we would all still think the world is flat, but the Moncton's of the world are not interested in facts. They are Doubting Thomases who are strongly driven by politics, or religion, or economics as Doug C points out, and I think you could add plain crankiness in some cases, and I think they are sometimes immensely proud people who are unable to admit they are wrong, ever.

The only thing that might convince the hard core denialists is a rapid escalation in sea level rise or something like that, and even then maybe not in some cases. It's sobering to remember there's still a flat earth society, people think the moon landings were faked, and about 50% of people don't believe in Evolution in some countries.

Theres an old saying "you cannot argue with an idiot" and some intelligent people are determined to act like idiots. If fact they can be the most stubborn.

I've seen climate scientists debate with denialists to no avail.

This is not to say we shouldnt try, but mostly when I respond to hardened denialists, or if I crticise some sceptical research paper, I word things mainly to connect with open minded people who might be reading, and who are just a little sceptical of climate change, and I choose my tone, tactics and explanations accordingly.

Of course some denialism is just cherrypicking and other deliberate logical fallacies in a vertitable climate blizzard, and sometimes it's best to point these out and not get bogged down in the science too much.

I sincerely believe its a battle to convince the many people in the middle of the bell curve, who think at least vaguely rationally, and there is some real hope there. Acceptance of AGW theory has increased a bit in America over the last decade, but Moncton will probably be last in line to change his views.

Millions of times later, 97 percent climate consensus still faces denial

MA Rodger at 00:40 AM on 20 August, 2019

Doug_C @19,

I rather disagree with your comment or at least feel it sould be better explained.

There are certainly differing qualities of work that comprise denialism. There is a large protion of that denialist work that is incompatable with very basic science. (I'm not sure that your mention of Quantum Mechanics is entirely correct or helpful to your assessment.) There is also a large protion of that denialist work that is incompatable with scientific data and thus contrdicts the resulting inferences that can be established by that data. None of this is a great distance from your comment.

What I don't see is any remaining denialist work that is properly supported by evidence. The entirety of the 3% sitting beyond the 'consensus' is surely incompatable with the scientific data and it is actually not a proper constituent part of the science.

What I particularly feel is a step too far is suggesting that:-

"The few percents of research that show doubt are simply there as part of the uncertainty that is inherent in science, it may as well be stated in terms of a 100% consensus when it comes to evidence driving policy on global warming."

This statement is saying that there exists "uncertainty ... inherent in (the) science" which is exactly the denialist message. The likes of, say, Richard Lindzen or Judith Curry who constitute the 3% outside the 'consensus' will argue that there is enough uncertainty to infer that Climate Sensitivity is low and thus AGW will not be a problem.

Now, we can see that Lindzen with his cloud iris theorising or Curry with her large natural climate wobbles are part of the scientific process. But the doubt they may have sown scientifically is long dispelled. What we are left with is the likes of Lindzen & Curry continuing to spread their now-unscientific message to policymakers as though it was legitimate science. It is unscientific to represent these messages as scientific and their messages ar become part of the "finely tuned stream of disinformation" (although the "tuning" may not be a conscious process on their part).

And masquerading as legitimate science, their message can then be presented as though it had the same scientific standing as the IPCC Assessment Reports rather than a loony fringe opinion, indeed one balanced by those who grossly exaggerate AGW.

I note you use the word "existential" without making plain to what it applies - ie what it is that has its existence threatened by AGW. I would suggest that it is but that loony fringe (that is balanced by the denialist looney fringe) that describes AGW as an existential threat to the human race when AGW is surely only an existential threat to the world economy whose collapse would not be a pretty sight and likely reduce human populations to a fraction of today's total.

Millions of times later, 97 percent climate consensus still faces denial

Nick Palmer at 21:14 PM on 17 August, 2019

nigelj@5

I thought I'd explained my suspicions as to why oil company execs use organisations who use denialist rhetoric to sway public opinions! I am more and more convinced that Big Fossil Fuel, as an entity, no longer believes denialist misinformation, this can be infererred because nowhere on their corporate websites these days will one find a trace of denialism - I think that is history...

I think they use lobbying organisations, who do still use the 200+ arguments that this website combats so well, not because they believe in them but because they have a proven ability to muddy the waters and push the buttons of the political forces they want to influence. It is clear that some of the command and control 'solutions' put forward by the more extreme campaigners and environmental organisations are based largely on an anti-capitalist hard left viewpoint which seems to want to completely dismantle our industrial society.

Whether Big Fossil Fuel is wrongly or rightly taking a Macarthyist 'Reds under the Bed' approach is unclear but, as I hinted above, there are solutions that businesses feel would work better for them and society which would sidestep draconian socialistic government type interventionist methods. It is notable that some oil majors have introduced a notional carbon tax into their accounting procedures in recent years, preparing for when the world may decide to go for a 'carbon tax and dividend' modified freemarket approach, like the similar method (Cap and Trade) which worked well to reduce acid gas and smoke stack particulate pollution in the early 90s

Millions of times later, 97 percent climate consensus still faces denial

nigelj at 07:22 AM on 17 August, 2019

Nick Palmer

" In order of numbers I would say most are A) right wing/libertarian deniers B) left wing deniers C) fundamentalist Christian deniers and, finally D) Galileo wannabes."

Good list and explanations, but I think you also have to add people with strongly vested interests in fossil fuels, such as oil company executives, transport sector executives, people who own cherished ICE cars etc, some of whom appear to be in denial of the science and / or mitigation in my experience, and it stands outside of right wing political convictions or a galileo complex. Not everyone who votes left wing supports either the science or mitigation, because polling tells us that suggesting they are just attached to fossil fuels at a deep level.

I agree I do get a sense denialism is shrinking.

Millions of times later, 97 percent climate consensus still faces denial

Nick Palmer at 01:41 AM on 17 August, 2019

Dana, I'm not sure continuing to demonise the fossil fuel industry by implying they are still sponsoring 'denialism' is useful anymore. No doubt they continue to use lobbying think tanks etc that use denialist propganda techniques to influence policy makers, and the general public, but a more sophisticated appreciation of matters than 'Big Oil bad' seems more appropriate these days. I think it far more likely that Big Fossil Fuel uses these lobbyists, not because they want to deny the science but rather that they want any proposed solutions to mitigate global warming to be as business friendly as possible. In short, BFF fears imposed heavy handed bureaucratic or left wing type solutions so uses lobbyists to campaign against this. As the well known denialist fighter Potholer54 (Peter Hadfield) has written, there are right wing low government solutions too.

Anyone who routinely takes on denialists, as I've been doing for decades now, should rapidly realise that there are four basic types of motivation. In order of numbers I would say most are A) right wing/libertarian deniers B) left wing deniers C) fundamentalist Christian deniers and, finally D) Galileo wannabes.

A's deny because they are led to fear that climate science is faked up by the left wing, the 'New World Order/Agenda 21' and politicos who, they assert, only fund scientists who toe the line. They are led to fear that climate science is all a plot to increase taxes and government control, to take away their 'freedoms' (and, sometimes, guns..). Some will even, adopting a faux humanitarian stance, assert that climate change policies are a bad idea because they will hurt the 'poor peoples' of the world by denying them cheap energy... This attitude is not helped by those of the more fanatical climate campaignes who assert that the capitalist system is the real problem and only by doing away with it completely, will we succeed - it's no wonder right wingers strongly resist this 'watermelon' (green on the outside, red on the inside) motivation!

Bs deny, or at least did historically, although there still exists some far fascist left denialism such in 'Spiked', because they see climate change policies as denying the third world the cheap energy they need to develop out of poverty and thereby threatening the richer nations.

Cs deny the science because they think God the designer is in charge, and so loves us that he wouldn't allow us to significantly destabilise the climate to our detriment, so he must have designed in feedbacks to prevent this which means they think that IPCC projections are a crock of s***.

Ds are probably the most irritating because they believe their hypotheses are superior to all others. Tend to believe that climate science is invalidated by the laws of thermodynamics, cosmic rays, variations in the magnetosphere.

I think there is evidence that support for the denialoshere is imploding and what will remain will be political rhetoricists using old denialist zombie memes to sway the minds of the public so they vote against the implementation of solutions that the 'other side' likes...

Climate's changed before

TVC15 at 10:16 AM on 9 August, 2019

@ 772 Daniel Bailey

For my small contributions, you are most welcome.

Daniel, your contributions have been an enormous help to me...nothing small about them! I am grateful to each person here who responds to the things I post as I've learned so much from all of you!

@ 771 MA Rodgers

Well, let that be a lesson for you!!
Denialism isn't logical. It turns folk into swivel-eyed loons.

I agree! I've come to realize that there is no point in discussing science with people who are anti-science or not literate in science. It's a huge waste of my time! If they are literate in science but want to learn then that's a different scenario and I feel happy helping them understand scientific concepts.

However when scientifically liberate people make false statements about science such as the climate deniers do I feel it's a duty to a certain point to expose their misinterpretations or myth spreading lies.

You guys have helped me to better do that!

Thank you!

Climate's changed before

MA Rodger at 22:56 PM on 30 July, 2019

TVC15 @770,
Well, let that be a lesson for you!!
Denialism isn't logical. It turns folk into swivel-eyed loons.

To correct his nonsense-
♣ It was 3 million years ago (not 2) that North & South America collided and joined up, a process that did kick off the Arctic glaciation which then resulted in c3 million years of ice ages. And over tha last 1 million years the ice ages were significantly bigger. Presumably the present warming that is bringing this 3-million-year-period to an end can be blamed on the collision of the USSR and the Republic of China with the United States of America, these all constituting significantly large land masses.
♣ You probaly could argue the Arctic was ice-free 100,000 years ago but only through the peak of the summer melt season (as in the Arctic Ocean having the levels of summer ice we would declare today to be ice-free).
♣ 15,000 years ago we were still coming out of the last ice age. We were out nearer 10,000 years ago (as the graphed ice core data clearly shows).
Ice Core Temperatures
♣ The extreme global temperature changes since the Last Glacial Maximum were nothing like "10-15 degrees C" except at a regional level (ie Greenland). And the period over which these increases occurred (the data graphed shows two large sudden Greenland increases in the last 20,000 years - +12ºC at 14.5kybp & +9ºC at 11.5kypb - which were not 10-year periods of increase but 200-year periods. I don't think the ice cap volumes exist in the northern hemisphere to achieve a repeat performance today.
♣ The relative temperature of different interglacials has been discussed in this thread before and so we know the swivel-eyed loon is having difficulty hearing this particular message. So, yes, we do think he is "just being crazy" and that craziness is why he has such difficulty accepting the science and its implications.
♣ With regard to emisions controls, we can, of course, treat all people on Earth equally as the denialist wishes. The science says that anthropogenic CO2 emissions of more than 700Gt(C) will be bad and with 7.7 billion folk living on the planet, that would be an allowance of 91t(C) per head(historical) ('historical' as your allowance-use is handed down from previous generations).
So let's calculate that allowance using Global Carbon Project figures and present-day population. Note these GCP territorial emission data only go back to 1959. Getting full historical figures would be possible (& correcting for increasing population could be factored in) but the general result will not change. That would mean that China still had an outstanding carbon allowance of 54t(C) per head, India 82t(C)/head while the good old USA has exceded its allowance and so has to pay back 238t(C)/head into the collective kitty. If full historical emissions were included, the US pay-back would be greater still, not qute as great as the UK pay-back if taken to the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. (From 1959 the UK pay-back is a trifling 47t(C)/head). Luxembourg from 1959 has a pay-bacl 0f 199t(C)/head but would be the country facing the biggest carbon-emissions pay-back with full historic figures.

Denial is a sad thing to behold. Denialist folk become happy to dismiss the evidence witout any assessment of what they are ignoring. It is simply done. "The IPCC assessment reports? A complete pack of lies!!"
More telling is the misuse of the remiaining information that you do accept. As you are ignoring whole swathes of actual data, your sources tend to be limited and adjusting the findings beyond that limited evidence becomes a necessity. So some, no all previous ice ages were warmer, golly, 10 degrees warmer, 20, 100 degrees warmer. We should be grateful we live now and not then!!!!
And how does the following rate on the scale of untruthfulness given it comes from a real climatologist, abet a retired one. It's from Lindzen's seminar at the UK House of Commons in 2012. (@ 32.20mins in the first videoed part of his talk linked here. (You-tube link here)

"Does it [20th century temperature increase] matter?"
"Okay so some points to take away from the global mean temperature anomaly record. Changes are small. They are in the order of several tenths of a degree. Changes are not causal but rather the residue of regional changes. Changes in the order of several tenths of a degree are always present at virtually all time-scales. And obsessing on the details of this record is more akin to a spectator sport or tea-leaf reading than a serious contributor to scientific efforts."
"Say, at least so far. I mean if some day I shoud see the changes are twenty times what I've seen so far, that would be certainly remarkable but nothing so far looks that way."

The implication is that we have here a retired climatologist who considers a gobal average temperature increase of less than (0.7 x 20=) 14ºC to be unremarkable. Are we then supposed to take such a retired climatologist as a serious authority on climate?

What perhaps we cannot judge is how much a denier knows he is misrepresenting the data he presents, that he is effectively lying. I suppose gross exageration can be justified because the denialist message is to them the correct message and, and denialists don't have the resources to counter all the lies that you climate alarmists generate with all your fake IPCC science.

Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?

MSMITH at 23:49 PM on 13 July, 2019

Eclectic:

I understand your frustration. I experience the same, because, as can be seen above, I could take your post, replace "coal/oil" with "renewable", replace "conservative" with "liberal" and replace "renewable" with "nuclear" and be describing my interaction with Michael Sweet.

Science denialism is alive and well, but it's not a conservative-only malady. It exists on both sides of the argument, but just manifests in slightly different ways.

Welcome to Skeptical Science

JasonChen at 03:01 AM on 17 June, 2019

climate denialism is closed minded. It thinks it knows the truth and wants to interpret the evidence to suit that. It has a preferred answer and wants to look at everything in that light.

John, you might want to reconsider this language on the newby page. This is a mind reading claim, something one expects from a zealot rather than a scientist.

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #21

nigelj at 07:03 AM on 26 May, 2019

Regarding the excellent article "The UN calls for enlightened self interest...."

Seems to be in very short supply.

"the UN chief stressed that “climate change cannot be stopped by the small island countries alone, it has to be stopped by the rest of the world” and that this requires the political will for “transformational policies in energy, mobility, industry and agriculture”.

So much has to be done in parallel. Who is supposed to lead the way?An uprising of school children seems to be the only thing happening. They are seeing the problem clearly, probably due to being taught the science and not brainwashed with the denialism like their parents. But its going to take more than kids protesting.

"Mr. Guterres echoed the “three urgent messages” to world leaders that he had “consistently conveyed” throughout his visit to the Pacific, beginning with shifting taxes from salaries to carbon. “We need to tax pollution, not people,” he reiterated. "

Yes taxing pollution is the economically sensible option, and may be viable in Europe, but carbon taxes are not proving popular in America even with a dividend scheme. All talk, no consensus, no action. It's due to taxes being regarded as a dirty word and the associated political tribalism that has developed. And emissions trading schemes seem to be just as hard to get through congress.

In America it might have to come back to something closer to the Green New Deal, where the government finances or subsidises climate related mitigation projects like the electricity generation and industry with deficit financing or money creation (Modern Monetary Theory is becoming a talking point lately). These things might be perceived to be less ideologically divisive and impactful on the public.

We have seeen money creation with quantitative easing and it hasn't lead to problems. Given the GOP is happy to run high deficits, it's going to be hard for them to take the idea off the table. Some evidence is emerging that deficits and government debt are not as problematic as once thought (refer to the economist.com). Not saying I personally love this thinking, but its what this respected website is saying.

"Second, he flagged that countries must stop subsidizing fossil fuels."
Yes to that. Pure commonsense. But people like Donald Trump have done a great job of convincing (brainwashing) his core voters that such subsidies are good for them.

Rebellious Times

Nick Palmer at 01:57 AM on 1 May, 2019

I'm uneasy about Extinction Rebellion's 'tell the truth' demand. The 'truth' they are telling their supporters to get them motivated to me looks quite a lot like 'reverse denialism' inasmuch as they cherry pick the very worst projections/predictions, the words of the most 'edgy' scientists and scientifc pundits such as Beckwith, MacPherson, Anderson and use cherry picked realities, such as the faster than expected polar ice loss rates, and that German nature reserve study on flying insects, to create a narrative that we are imminently doomed unless we adopt a 'war' mentality. Their headline net carbon neutrality by 2025 target has been criticised by Dr Adam Levy (ClimateAdam on Youtube) as not only just politically very unlikely but also physically impossible too...

I've ploughed through 3hrs+ of the organisers' videos and they make a big deal of that 'resilience centre' study that basically multiplied all the low-probability-high-impact scenarios together which basically asked what would happen if all the worst things that could happen actually happened - rather like someone who places a ten horse accumulator bet on rank outsiders and expects to get rich quick!

Whilst I believe that for risk assessment purpose such low probability aspects absolutely should not be dismissed I am preety sure, based on what I have seen that ER are promoting the 'ten horse accumulator' as the actual mainstream science which isn't being told to the public to get that public on to the streets protesting.

Anyone who has been fighting denialism for years will know that the denialosphere keep lists of silly or unwise things scientists, pro-climate campaigners such as Al Gore, etc etc have said (such as Viner's 'kids won't know what snow is anymore' remarks) and they wheel them out endlessly for many years afterwards. I think the rhetoric from the organisers of ER looks like a new source for the denailists to use to smear more moderate scientsists and the science itself.

Climate's changed before

Eclectic at 21:24 PM on 24 March, 2019

TVC15 , if you have past experience in debunking creationists, then you may well have come across the [science journalist] you-tuber Potholer54 who has done many videos on the same subject area.

Maybe you are not aware that Potholer54 has done 40+ videos on climate science denialism. Most of them are around 10 minutes long; some more like 15 minutes. But I heartily recommend them. He is meticulous in shooting down the denialists' claims & in demonstrating their falsehoods. He gives his references ~ and he is careful to base his comments on the evidence as determined by peer-reviewed papers in reputable scientific journals (in other words, he does does not act as a talking head spouting his own opinions . . . unlike most you-tubers).

You will find Potholer54 very useful, because he is skilfully attacking many of the prominent "public denialists", and his videos will cover many of the points that you will wish to use in debating denialists. He doesn't cover everything ~ but you will find him a very easygoing method of gaining climate scientific knowledge, both directly and indirectly.

Yet there's more ~ his videos are done in a humorous style (which I find very entertaining).

Climate's changed before

Eclectic at 11:34 AM on 24 March, 2019

TVC15 @652 ,

I am sure you are not really stunned by his* intellectual incompetence ~ but he has enough intelligence to display (via Motivated Reasoning) a barrage of Gish Gallop and rhetorical waffle.

*almost certainly he is a male ~ since women usually have more sense than to lose themselves in the quagmire of climate denialism. Prof. Curry excepted: she does a fine job of vagueness and "could-possibly-be" and unjustified sophistry and "confusionism" smoke&mirrors. In person, I have only ever met one woman who was an extreme denialist ~ she was an elderly geologist (retired). A few other women seemed to be of the "Yes Dear" type, just going along with their husband's delusions. ;-)

TVC15 , in replying to the "intelligent idiot" you mentioned, you have two reasons for engaging with him. One is to present commonsense factual science to the observers/readers [of course he himself is impervious to reason] . . . and the second reason is that you find it intellectually stimulating and fun.

Plck out and attack one or two of his weaknesses. Exposing him there, will by association throw doubt on his other points. Readers will be thinking: a falsehood in one area means he could be a liar in most areas. But always it should be fun for you (though sometimes partly a chore also).

Hopes for our climate future

Nick Palmer at 23:00 PM on 14 March, 2019

I've just posted this on the video comments on YouTube.

"This is a lovely vision of a version of utopia but just 'fixing' climate change on its own is a gigantic task on its own, let alone all the other things on this wish list. It's true that some of what is planned to mitigate and reduce future emissions could help some of the desired effects to come about, but I do see a problem. I'm a seasoned climate science denialism fighter and I can tell you that the most sophisticated and effective propaganda these days comes not from fossil fuel interests, as many environmentalists still believe, but from those who are wedded to far right-wing laissez-faire freemarket ideologies, and those who espouse simplistic neo-liberal economics. Much of the motivation behind a lot of high profile denialism comes from those who believe so strongly in their political view of the world that they regard it as justified to spread miseading and deceptive denialist propaganda, that they secretly know (I have come to this conclusion after many years of engaging with these types) has been debunked a thousand times. They do this because it has a proven ability to sway the minds of the voting layman public. The propagandists have a deep seated antipathy to, and wish to sabotage, what they see as far left wing ideology being 'slipped in' by the back door under the impetus to change things that climate science gives us. In short, they believe that many of those with environmental climate related concerns are 'watermelons' - green on the outside, red on the inside... Couple this with the 3% minority of climate scientists whose work suggests either that the climate change we see is not really down to us or that climate sensitivity is much lower than the IPCC figure so that means the eventual warming won't be that bad and the benefits may outweigh the problems, and they have at least some scientific justification, even though it is limited in size and overwhelmed by the mainstream view, for 'taking a gamble' to preserve the status quo."

Next self-paced run of Denial101x starts on March 5

Eclectic at 13:25 PM on 13 March, 2019

OPOF @52 ,

thank you for your suggestion of "Darwin" as an addition to the denialists' favorite allusions [addition to my list: Galileo / Einstein / Feynman / Popper].

But in a Cavalier manner, I will reject "Darwin". Yes, he was seen as a contrarian during his early years, as were the scientists Galileo and Einstein. Yet, anecdotally, I haven't ever noticed Darwin's case being used by denialists ~ usually they wish to "wrap themselves in the flag" of famous scientists who were initially ridiculed but were later glorified as being very right. (And probably there's a goodly percentage of climate-denialists who are also evolution-denialists . . . as well as being religious fundamentalists who cling to the biblical belief that God will surely intervene to protect the Earth from major degradation. So Darwin is persona non grata for them.) Galileo and Einstein fit their bill, and the mention of those names "proves" that History will eventually vindicate the "contrarian" climate-denialists.

The case of Feynman is somewhat different, he seems to be alluded to as a brilliant scientist and prominent espouser of skepticism. The denialists fail to appreciate that he was a true skeptic . . . while they themselves are faux-skeptics. But they like to imply they are modern-day Feynmans.

Popper, though not really classified as a scientist, gets some mentions from denialists, because they like his suggestion of the necessity of "falsifiability" (as the absolute criterion for genuine "science"). They wish to wrap themselves in his flag, too. Popper was partly wrong about "falsifiability" [IMO ~ but I don't wish to spend time arguing the point, here] but denialists wish to selectively use falsifiability as a stumbling-block for climate science.

Apologies for my lengthy post, and it is wandering off-topic. But denialism itself is the topic here ~ and I have always found the introduction of some of the above four names, to be a useful raiser of the Red Flag of Suspicion that a poster is engaged in intellectually-dishonest arguments and/or rhetoric. A handy short-cut for the reader.

Next self-paced run of Denial101x starts on March 5

Eclectic at 09:45 AM on 10 March, 2019

Fair enough, PhilippeC .

As far as pattern recognition :- one of my favorite signs of denialism is the rhetorical mention of Galileo or Einstein or Feynman or Popper [Popper, in reference to "falsifiability"]. That's almost an infallible sign of failure of logic (either as Dunning-Krugerism, and/or insincerity).

I'd be grateful if you Philippe, Nigelj, or anyone else, could suggest some other prominent names to add to the list.

Over the years, despite hundreds of cases of faux-skeptics claiming that they have valid evidence or valid references supporting their "position", I have never encountered even a single one who could bring forward any valid evidence. Typically all they have is deluded, pseudo-scientific ideas and/or tinfoil-hat conspiracy ideation. Crackpot , Shill , or Conspiracist . . . or a combination thereof.

So I am not holding my breath in waiting for Prometheus's revelations (if they come at all).

New research, February 4-10, 2019

Eclectic at 16:03 PM on 3 March, 2019

Philippe Chantreau @37 [and prior]

you are of course correct, when you say that our mutual friend (Nowhearthis) cannot be taken seriously.

He is atypical, in that he combines concern-trolling and the usual extremist venting (that political ideological extreme where callous selfishness views itself as virtuous). As usual, there is a large dollop of wilful blindness to scientific fact & logic, and a large dollop of smoke-and-mirrors sophistry (or rhetorical posturing . . . call it what you will) which is the product of Motivated Reasoning.

Probably at a deeper level, there is an intellect silently pleading to be freed from the emotional binds of denialism . . . and hoping that "Prince Philippe" or "Baron Red" (or anyone at SkS) can find the magic phrases which will convince the "other" part of the brain of its wrongheadedness? Well, that might (or might not) explain the continual repetition of mangled & absurd arguments from our friend.

There is some amusement value in engaging with the repetitious posts . . . counterbalanced by the tiresomeness of it all. Yet hope springs eternal....

New research, February 4-10, 2019

RedBaron at 16:14 PM on 24 February, 2019

@6 MA Rodger,

It's been measured. I have been trying to push the point again and again because precisely this is what is being missed.

In soil science we knew for over 100 years there was this mysterious rapid accumulation of stable carbon, in large amounts, over long periods of time, deep in certain soils under certain conditions. But besides that it was associated with grasslands, no one knew precisely what was going on. It was counter-intuitive.

Dr Sarah Wright, a soil scientist for the USDA discovered the missing link in 1996, Glomalin. It is such a fundamental breakthrough, literally there has been no Nobel Prize winner in Chemistry that has ever made a more important discovery, in my opinion. But because this is a rather obscure field that very few understand, she isn't recognized as much for it as she should be.

Glomalin is the missing link, but the whole chain is what matters. It has been called the liquid carbon pathway and it is a completely natural carbon pump into the soil and is a primary forcing along with Milankovitch cycles explaining rapid decreases in excess CO2 between each and every glaciation period since this ecosystem function became mature.

Remember, this is a self regulating complex system. The biosphere is a major, if not the major, feedback in that system.

More CO2 means more LCP which sequesters deep in the soil profile. Thus the CO2 spikes are evened out quickly by this feedback.

Mankind has not created this feedback, we simply unknowingly destroyed it with our plows and pesticides mostly and somewhat also the mass extirpation of the megafauna. It does not need man's assistance except in restoring a healthy soil food web and the rest is done naturally.

We never knew about this biological function because it was largely destroyed before we even started looking! However, we do know about it now. We know what it is, how it works, and most importantly, how to mimick this natural biome function with agriculture.

When we use biomimicry to design an agricultural system to mimic the function of the grasslands biomes, including their many biodiverse species and even large grazers as the primarary ecosystem engineers, vast tonnes of soil carbon builds up deep in the A and B soil horizons.

Until 1996, it was thought the primary source of A and B horizon carbon was degrading organic matter in the O-horizon. And sure enough, in forests this is true. But in Grasslands the primary source for A and B horizon carbon is the LCP by at least 2 orders of magnitude or more. It is that big a deal. I can't emphasize this enough. It is and will continue to be a huge impact on agriculture for many years to come, even if climate scientists never catch up to the soil science.

Remember, my main purpose for taking climate science course was to communicate this knowledge to climate scientists who might have a different silo of knowledge. Please don't be fooled by the same merchants of doubt that are plagueing the energy side of climate science. We have our fully funded merchants of doubt too.

Now here is some info as to why many times you may see a study that even today misses the LCP. See we use chemical fertilizers to supply NPK. Unknowingly this bypasses the function of the soil food web in general and glomalin producing AMF in particular.

Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Fungus Rhizophagus irregularis Increased Potassium Content and Expression of Genes Encoding Potassium Channels in Lycium barbarum

and

Substantial nitrogen acquisition by arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi from organic material has implications for N cycling

but more importantly, when we fertilize the soil with large quantities of NPK fertilizers, it shuts down this function.

Phosphorus and Nitrogen Regulate Arbuscular Mycorrhizal Symbiosis in Petunia hybrida

Something else too. Unlike saprophytic fungi which cause decay of organic matter in the O horizon releasing CO2 back into the atmosphere, AMF need a living root at all times to survive. So not only does using NPK fertilizers shut down the LCP, so does herbicides and plowing and even some fungicides.

In fact pretty much everything industrialized ag does now as common GAP unknowingly shuts down the LCP. It's no wonder it took so long to discover. Any time you see a study making claims of the potential rate of soil carbon sequestration, you need to look deeper and see if either standard green revolution methods are being used, or improved no till green revolution methods defined by the USDA as GAP (Good Agricultural Practises)

Turns out GAP was defined PRIOR to the discovery of glomalin and the LCP. So right now all those are being reviewed as we speak by the USDA-NRCS and the USDA-SARE. But already they are beginning to teach it to farmers voluntarily. Seminar on it in two days here in OKC. Was one last year too.

But it is a hugely political issue too with equally big players who are interfering with the denialism side of mitigation potential. All I ask is learn how to spot these so called "reviews" and see for yourself if the methods studied shut down the LCP or not. If they shut down the LCP, then the optimum sequestration rate is much lower and well modeled by the Roth C model.

However, the Roth C model is useless at modeling the LCP.

A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate

One Planet Only Forever at 05:01 AM on 20 February, 2019

Nick Palmer,

"...the engine behind denialism isn't really the fossil fuel corporations anymore but is more the right wing's horror of the solutions put forth as 'essential' by the left wing."

The right-wing you refer to has been taken over by the newly developed United Right I refer to. That new leadership of the Right is the problem needing to be corrected. And that United Right leadership like to try to claim that the understood corrections required to develop sustainable improvements for the future of humanity are "The Left", and are ideas of Others to be Feared.

I support the Responsible helpful members of the Right regaining control of their side of the spectrum. I do not see them succeeding without help from the "Left" which can only be obtained by those on the Right acting to helpfully achieve and improve on all, not some, of the Sustainable Development Goals.

The Sustainable Development Goals are blind to political sides. They are the best understanding and are open to improvement by any reasoned case presented by any side. And all siodes should accept the constantly improved understanding (very science like).

Right now the Right substantially incorrectly fights to oppose the achievment of the Sustainable Development Goals (because of loss of undeserved perceptions of status relative to others if the corrections are achieved). That needs to change, preferably by people on the Right regaining control over the dialogue and discourse from their side to be helpful participants in the development of sustainable improvements for the future of humanity.

A Swedish Teenager's Compelling Plea on Climate

Nick Palmer at 03:36 AM on 20 February, 2019

I have to agree with scaddenp. It's not actually absolutely necessary to cure world hunger, inequality etc etc to fix mamade climate change - it would be nice, but it really isn't essential. Unfortunately, anyone who spends any time fighting denialism, particularly the more sopisticated type, soon realises that the engine behind denialism isn't really the fossil fuel corporations anymore but is more the right wing's horror of the solutions put forth as 'essential' by the left wing. I think it fair to say that a significant part of the leadership of some of the large environmental organisations and campignig bodies tends to be very left wing and its arguable that many actually are the 'watermelons' that they are characterised as - green on the outside, red on the inside. Far left individuals masqueranding as environmentalists. There are significant 'climate change personalities' such as Dr Richard Alley, Potholer 54 and Katherine Hayhoe who are right wing, even Republicans but I have sensed a curious reluctance from some climate campaigners, and some in Greenpeace, to even consider their words and 'right wing' solutions as acceptable. It doesn't seem to these 'watermelon' types that solutions which very well might work should be allowed, because they counter far left wing ambitions.

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #5

nigelj at 12:02 PM on 4 February, 2019

The article paints a grim picture of the future if we do nothing, and I find it compelling and reasonably stated. Others have suggested Wells is scaremongering too much, and this could cause people to be overwhelmed and mentally switch off. I did a google search on the effectiveness of using fear to motivate people to change behaviour.

This meta study looked at impacts of using fear based health campaigns and found they do have some modest effect on changing behaviour, provided the fear component is balanced with good efficacy. In other words it has to be based on good evidence, so perhaps articles like Wells are valuable provided the science is right, and not exaggerated, and probabilities are discussed openly. A couple of his claims have been criticised by no less than M Mann. Other scientists have supported Wells and stated the criticisms are quibbles.

This is another interesting excerpt from Wells article:

"But no matter how well-informed you are, you are surely not alarmed enough. Over the past decades, our culture has gone apocalyptic with zombie movies and Mad Max dystopias, perhaps the collective result of displaced climate anxiety, and yet when it comes to contemplating real-world warming dangers, we suffer from an incredible failure of imagination. The reasons for that are many: the timid language of scientific probabilities, which the climatologist James Hansen once called “scientific reticence” in a paper chastising scientists for editing their own observations so conscientiously that they failed to communicate how dire the threat really was; the fact that the country is dominated by a group of technocrats who believe any problem can be solved and an opposing culture that doesn’t even see warming as a problem worth addressing; the way that climate denialism has made scientists even more cautious in offering speculative warnings; the simple speed of change and, also, its slowness, such that we are only seeing effects now of warming from decades past; our uncertainty about uncertainty, which the climate writer Naomi Oreskes in particular has suggested stops us from preparing as though anything worse than a median outcome were even possible; the way we assume climate change will hit hardest elsewhere, not everywhere;..."

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #3

nigelj at 08:28 AM on 22 January, 2019

PC @14, there is so much denialism about, that its easy to jump to conclusions, and I do it as well. We get on edge.

You are right, the event is not unusual, however it does look like inversions will become more frequent as in the links I posted.

2019 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #1

Lachlan at 12:35 PM on 10 January, 2019

Evan @11,

I agree that it would be nice to be able to "get it over with" and rebuild, but I think that having slow increase is far, far better. If 90% of a city is intact, then it can relocate the other 10% to higher ground. If 10% of a city is intact, it is really hard to rebuild the other 90%.

If a change happens over a millenium, think how many cities have the same borders a they did 1000 years ago.

The only drawback I see in gradual seal level rise is the "boiling frog" problem, where people don't accept the rise and keep rebuilding on the same sites after damage.

As nigelj says, the worst case is to have rapid bursts on a long-lived underlying trend, and that the greatest technical problem is unpredictability. (The greatest actual problem is denialism.)

Global warming ‘hiatus’ is the climate change myth that refuses to die

nigelj at 05:54 AM on 29 December, 2018

Michael Sweet @14, I wouldn't be surprised if the children talking about so called faked data were simply told that by their parents. But it's good to hear some improvement in attitudes and understanding of young people towards climate change.

I am very philosophical about the whole issue of denialism. Here are some random thoughts not specifically responding to points you made, but just my perspective. Firstly I broadly agree with Evans point of view @15.

Secondly look at other issues like evolution, dangers of tobacco, and the vaccines debates and even after decades there are still a few deniers out there who will probably die being deniers, for a variety of reasons. I'm not sure why climate science would be different, especially as it has so many real world implications that affect peoples lives.

However the number of people who deny the dangers of tobacco and theory of evolution has fallen over time from some poll I saw somewhere. Again I think climate change would follow a similar track. There has got to be a big group of people towards the middle of the bell curve open to persuasion, and I would suggest a group of ideologues, and cranks etc at the outer extreme who will never be convinced. But get the vast majority convinced and you are on track.

The trouble we have is to identify who we are talking to and not to waste energy. One on one debates with scientific cranks are useless. I would not be wasting time with them over the barbecue, and I tend to avoid them on websites unless their mistakes are so simple they can be pointed out irrefutably and briefly. Plus I don't have enough physics knowledge to take on some slippery cranky physicist, although I will get to the bottom of almost any issue if I have the time.

I think deniers that post lists of denialist myths are a bit different. It's important to refute these for the benefit of "other people listening" and for general education. If lies or missinformation go unrefuted they will obviously gain traction. But it requires judgement, because one doesn't want to give these people too much of a platform by engaging in pages of back and forth debate.

Young people must obviously be told the facts about climate science just as with any science. I have huge respect for teachers, but I have zero tolerance for teachers who teach climate denialism and they should be fired.

Of course we have to avoid the label of brainwashing but that is easily done by some factual messaging that the IPCC are 95% sure etc and a small number of cranks do dispute the findings. This all seems commonsense to me. Tell me if I'm wrong.

I don't know why humanity makes it all so difficult. Ray Ladbury says humanity is just not smart enough.

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