At this point in the debate over climate change, I doubt that any standard process of argument (reference to scientific research, analysis of data, refutation on Internet-derived talking points and so on) is likely to shift the views of those who accept some version of the anti-science position on this topic. Certainly, I don’t intend to try any further.
But, it seems useful for a number of reasons to try to understand why people take and hold such positions. In some cases, it may be that, where rational debate on the scientific merits has failed, some other mode of argument or persuasion might work. More generally, in any political process, it’s useful to understand the opposition.
Here’s a first attempt at a taxonomy, which I started in this Tim Lambert thread
. Looking at those who have either propounded or accepted anti-science views on this topic, nearly all appear to fit into one or more of the following categories
* Tribalists
* Ideologists
* Hacks
* Irresponsible contrarian
* Emeritus disease
Update John Mashey has a related taxonomy here
Further update The discussion has convinced me that I need to add a further category, that of irresponsible contrarian. I’d previously applied this to Richard Lindzen, see below, so it was a mistake not to have this category.
Tribalists are probably the biggest group, with two main subcategories.
First, there’s a group of people who really dislike environmentalists and can’t bear the thought that they could be right about something as important as climate change. This group is strongly represented among (though still a minority of) engineers and mining geologists, groups that appear to make up most of the rank-and-file membership of the Lavoisier Group, for example.
Second, there are rightwingers in the US and other countries (including Australia) where the political right derives most of its thinking from the US. The basic motivation is the same, except the animus is directed towards liberals (in the US sense) and leftists in general, rather than environmentalists specifically. Members of this group are notable for an obsessive focus on Al Gore: some seem to think that an An Inconvenient Truth and not, say, the thousands of pages of IPCC reports, is the primary document in the case for action on climate change.
There’s nothing much that can be done about the political right, which is wrapped in impenetrable layers of delusion, but there’s a lot that can be done (and is being done, to some extent) to bridge cultural gaps between environmentalism and professions like engineering and geology. Younger members of these professions tend to be lot more concerned about sustainability, while the spread of suits, haircuts and a generally pragmatic approach among environmentalists has done its bit also.
Ideologists overlap significantly with tribal rightwingers, but are potentially more amenable to argument. These are people with a libertarian, or more generally pro-market outlook, who have convince themselves that doing something serious about climate change involves a major step towards socialism (a view shared by a few hopeful socialists). Given this conviction, wishful thinking inclines members of this group towards scientific delusionism. For most of these people, the fears they have are groundless. The standard measures proposed to deal with climate change, emissions trading and carbon taxes, are minimally interventionist, both in scale (maybe $10 billion a year for Australia to start with, and not much more even in the long run) and form (these are market-based methods of correcting externalities).
There are, I guess, a handful of extreme libertarians whose ideological position depends on the non-existence of global public goods requiring global policy solutions. To this group, I can only say that if your political views are inconsistent with the existence of the atmosphere, perhaps you should revise those views rather than trying to adjust reality to fit them.
The third group, not large in number, but important as opinion leaders, are hacks, who argue against science for a living. This group can easily be recognised by their past track record. Since there aren’t many people prepared to do this kind of thing, the same individuals and institutions have pushed the corporate line on tobacco and passive smoking, the ozone layer, DDT and climate change, among many others. In Australia, the IPA has played the leading role in this respect, running hard on passive smoking before shifting to climate delusionism.
The individual who most exemplifies this group globally is Steve Milloy, an all-purpose compendium of hackery, who spent years presenting himself as a scourge of “junk science” while secretly on the payroll of tobacco and oil companies. He’s now the official Science expert for Fox News, which says it all I guess. People who have paid little attention to th issue and have accepted Internet factoids as trustworthy can often by persuaded by pointing out their origin with people like Milloy. But at this point the majority of delusionists have well-established mental defences for their own delusions; many have convinced themselves that it’s the real scientists who are spouting lies for money and that corporate funding for the likes of Milloy is just self-defence.
The best hope of dealing with this group has been making life hard for their paymasters. After being outed as the money pump for a string of front groups, Exxon has largely given up paying. For anyone old enough to have been in the game before the mid-1990s, it’s always useful to check the Tobacco Archives, which document every corrupt payment made by the tobacco industry to its legion of hired guns.
Fourth, there are irresponsible contrarians, exemplified by Richard Lindzen. The typical contrarian is skilled enough in argument to maintain a weak position, and successful enough in their own field (often tangentially relevant to the issue at hand) to have an inflated view of their own intelligence. And they prefer confuting the conventional wisdom (to their own satisfaction) to giving serious consideration to the views of experts on subjects where there own knowledge is limited. The type is most clearly illustrated by a 2001 Newsweek interview of Lindzen that I’ve quoted before
Lindzen clearly relishes the role of naysayer. He’ll even expound on how weakly lung cancer is linked to cigarette smoking. He speaks in full, impeccably logical paragraphs, and he punctuates his measured cadences with thoughtful drags on a cigarette.
Anyone who could draw this conclusion in the light of the evidence, and act on it as Lindzen has done, is clearly useless as a source of advice on any issue involving the analysis of statistical evidence. But, I imagine, he could hold up his side of this argument just as well as he does on climate change.
Finally, and most unfortunately, there is Emeritus disease, a problem that is found in every area of academic controversy. The typical sufferer is an older male, with the archetypal case being the holder of an emeritus position. Unfortunately, aging tends to go along with both a hardening of intellectual arteries and an unwillingness or inability to keep abreast of recent developments in the field in question, with the effect of dogmatic attachment to views formed long ago. Having taken a view of an issue on the basis of very limited consideration, they remain dogmatically attached to it until the end of their days.
(Looking at the description, I’m obviously a high-risk candidate for going emeritus myself. That’s one reason I try to engage in discussion with people holding a range of views from which I might learn something, most recently economists of the Austrian school).
Unfortunately, Emeritus disease has a bad prognosis. As Max Planck observed long ago
a new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
I’ll lay down a few rules for discussion on this post. I’m not interest in rehashing delusionist talking points (GW stopped in 1998, Al Gore is fat and so on) and comments containing such points will in general be deleted. On the other hand, I’d be interested in anyone claiming to have reached a sceptical position who doesn’t fit into one or other of the categories I’ve mentioned (to be credible, you may have to forgo anonymity). And, obviously, I’m interested in refinements of the classification, better targeted counterarguments and so on.
John Quiggin 
An earthquake off Honduras, and at this time a Tsunami warning,although some reserve of opinion that it will be full gloater.Being not perfect,and, not going back over things I have seen on the Net. the summary above of temperature is following Carbon dioxide counts really depends how you see the graphical presentation that Al Gore was applauded for.From above his lines at his height cross-eyed and squinting, or standing on your head, wearing bi-focals doing a high five and losing your balance,right at the moment there is a peak in one of the lines.So what is the prospect that these earthquake scenarios raise or lower Whole of Earth temperatures or a greenhouse gas of unnamed type.After all someone above was going on about physics and what it really means…So can the same person be totally predictive or source a weather modeller to outline the whatevers..as a process of testing and showing some skills that can determine them,as well as basic decency in the form of elaborating for the sake of honesty!?
I realise you’re mostly dealing with the high profile people, but the folk I generally speak to are what I call “gleeful minions”. Basically, they’ve swallowed some of the talking points, and are delighted to know something that “the scientists” apparently don’t. They’re the type who think scientists are elites in ivory towers who can’t see the wood for the trees.
They feel powerless, as important events are beyond their comprehension. It is comforting to them to think that science is arrogantly making claims that it can’t back up, that science is just an overcomplicated game with rules that aren’t based in reality.
…like postmodernism…
Anyway, it’s this sort of thing that, I think, sells newspaper headlines about scientists flip-flopping on a range of issues. Science is vast and scary, and they like to think it’s all ultimately just fire and noise.
The blog host asked for examples of sceptics that don’t fit his categories. I believe I am one of those, primarily because I find the statistics underlying a lot of the science that forms the basis for the alarmist position on global warming to be, shall we say, less than robust?
No, I am the other one: former researcher in Machine Learning at the Australian National University. If you click on the google scholar link in #25, my papers are the ones like this.
I spent a lot of time looking into questions of statistical significance, albeit more from a computer-science perspective (“what are good ways to reliably teach computers”) than from a classical statistics perspective, but the math is the same. Eg, I am quite familiar with algorithms like RegEm that are used in climate science.
jquiggin #44:
No, because that’s not an argument about the science.
I’ve read the hockeystick papers (and many others). I’ve read Steve McIntyre and others objections, the Wegman report, etc. The problems are real, regardless of how you categorize the various participants in the debate.
I think that there’s at least one other category, which I’ll call the Incompetents. These are the people who have decided that the workers in the field they are criticizing are all (or almost all) incompetent, and that the science that they are expounding is junk. Both J. Baxter and AnonTwo would fall in this category, I think, as would Freeman Dyson and Michael Crichton. These people usually have a good deal of technical knowledge themselves, though it is almost always outside the field under discussion. They often point to elementary errors that they think researchers are making, or that the researchers don’t really understand what they are doing.
If you poke around the anti-relativity literature, you’ll find many Incompetents there. I also think that a lot of anti-evolutionists who fall under the Salem Hypothesis fall into this category as well.
There are problems, which JQ’s taxonomy doesn’t get:
1. ‘Climate science’ is not a legitimate science like physics or biochemistry. It is a hodgepodge of dozens of bits and pieces of other actual sciences.
2. The orthodoxy treats astronomical cycles and the medieval warming period like an embarrassimng relative; in fact, silences both.
3. As has been noted above, being able to wax lyrical about the carbon cycle, does not a credible advocate of AGW make.
4. Given that nearly all the action is surrounding “what to do about if it is true” and that this is not ‘science’ in any conventional sense. In fact, it has been overwhelmingly turned over to economists, whose forecasting and simulation abilities leave a lot to be desired.
5. The tragic reality that far too many ordinary folks see the most rabid spruikers for AGW as being the same guys were most passionately spruiking for Marxist Leninism/Trotskyism less a generation ago. Their presence in this crisis saps its credibility immeasurably.
regardless of your expertise in CS I struggle to see why you’d claim the following is pertinent “More recently there’s the oft-repeated claims of diminishing sea-ice (fact check: global ice is growing or static, and even Arctic ice coverage is more-or-less back to normal)”
Why do you not agree with NSDIC(The National Snow and Ice Data Center)who say with reference to recent ice extent
“However this summer unfolds, scientists expect to see high year-to-year variability in ice extent embedded within the long-term decline.”
and much more.
Which of their algorithms – or class of algorithms – do you think misleads them with respect to trends? Is this a dislike for the methods in general or just in their application at NSDIC.
apologies, my post at #57 is directed to Jonathan Baxter
RE nanks #57:
Global sea ice extent is fairly static (graph at link).
I believe the NSDIC quote is referring to Northern Hemisphere extent. Yes, there is a trend. But nothing like the catastrophe we have been led to believe, with many alarmists claiming there would be an ice-free arctic last summer due to global warming (in fact, much of the big decline in 2007 was due to changes in wind patterns, not temperature).
There is no doubt the Earth has warmed over the last century. I have little doubt some of the warming is caused by increased CO2 emissions. But beyond that, the case for alarm seems quite weak to me.
Anyway, we don’t really need to continue debating this here. My point of commenting was to establish that there are some sceptics who don’t fit into the categories listed, although I know I won’t convince some people of that. I believe my scepticism is simply of the common-or-garden scientific variety, but you can judge for yourself.
Dan @48,
You should thank philip travers @49 for illustrating your point.
Philip, I don’t suppose you would be able to quote The words you say Al Gore spoke that you say were so wrong in relation to CO2 leading vs lagging?
“with many alarmists claiming there would be an ice-free arctic last summer due to global warming”
Name one.
How about this:
So sometime before 2013. Maybe not 2008, but 2011? 2010? This guy – a Professor – was quoted by Al Gore.
This kind of blatant propaganda doesn’t have much to do with science.
Hi J Baxter. You present yourself as a scientist who brings scientific rigour to your analysis of this issue.
When asked about your opinion on the algorithms at the NSIDC, you digressed sharply.
You’ve mixed up a bet amongst Arctic ice scientists that the North Pole would melt out in summer 2008 (not the whole Arctic), with a quote in a news article about the possibility of an ice-free Arctic in summer 2013 (rather than examining the science behind it).
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7139797.stm
Further, you’ve singled out the shortest interval rather than the range in the news article: 2013 – 2030. Here’s another quote from that article.
Perhaps you did not read the original article, instead finding the quote isolated in a blog. In either event, where is your rigour, even with something a basic as a one-page news item? Never mind that you did not answer the query on the maths
You’ve now used the words ‘alarmists’ and ‘propaganda’, propogating more by omission (witlessly or otherwise).
This is not the best way to demonstrate your academic credentials, and suggests you may yet fit into the first category. Your rhetoric is the big give-away.
If that wasn’t enough, you introduce Gore into the discussion, fulfilling another category one requirement. So far that’s is a pretty good validation of Quiggin’s taxonomy.
RE barry #63:
I did not intend to. I understood the question of the algorithms to be based on a false assumption: that global sea ice is diminishing, which it is not (at least not particularly significantly). I do not have any reason to doubt the algorithms they use at NSDIC.
Either way the alarmist claims are way off.
My area of expertise is statistical modeling. Several of the more significant papers in the climate science literature rely on very complex statistical modeling techniques that are easy to overfit if you are not very careful. Often, when people have managed to reproduce those studies (eg hockeystick and the recent Antarctic warming nature paper), they are found not to be robust to fairly trivial changes in model parameters.
An oft-used argument against people like me opining on climate science is that we are unqualified. Well, that argument can be applied back to climate science itself: are ecologists, environmentalists, biologists, dendrochronologists, etc qualified to wield the complex statistical tools they use? With the more advanced algorithms behind a lot of temperature reconstruction work, I would have to say the answer is generally “no”.
I don’t pretend to have a deep understanding of the thermodynamics of the atmosphere and ocean, but I do understand when statistical algorithms are bing misused.
Gore quoted Wieslaw’s research in his Nobel acceptance speech, showing that Wieslaw’s claims received significant attention. That’s all.
Anyway, as I said above, you’re free to draw your own conclusions about me.
Moving the goalposts is classic denialism, whether or not you like the label.
Blind acceptance of the tripe at CA coupled with a belief that climate scientists are incompetent is classic denialism, whether or not you like the label. True skepticism would include being skeptical of claims made at CA.
Where have I indicated blind acceptance of anything? And where have I said climate scientists are incompetent? I am sure most climate science is solid. Just not a lot of the more prominent papers that rely on complex statistical modeling to perform temperature reconstructions or projections.
I have the background to read this stuff for myself and draw my own conclusions. I tried to show that with the google scholar link- there’s really no other way for me to convince you.
Indeed. But very few claims made at CA turn out to be wrong. Take that from a natural skeptic. But I agree that many “denialist” claims are complete baloney.
From looking at the evolutionist/creationist debate (from a safe distance), I would suggest that one group is non-scientists. Those of us who have been to university and worked our way through some evidence-based discipline (which includes history as well as the sciences) may forget that the majority have not been inculcated into this way of thinking. That is, most people form their opinions on the basis of what they think the majority of their peers are saying, or what supposed opinion leaders think, or whatever but not by excluding everything except the actual evidence. so rather than wondering why most people do not accept the scientific consensus, we might be asking how people do form their opinions (and how to influence this).
climate scientists are incompetent is classic denialism
What an argument. It really is sad.
From back at #10:
True, and a brilliant short post on just this phenomenon may be found over at Julian Sanchez’.
JB, I’m not holding out much hope, but you might want to read these observations on the Wegman report on the hockey stick debate which supposedly counters the NAS report that endorsed MBH
https://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2006/07/15/adventures-in-social-network-analysis/
Wegman, the lead author, presented himself as an objective and independent statistical analyst, but later outed himself as a delusionist.
jquiggin, I agree that the social network analysis in Wegman’s report is fairly light. So academics form cliques – what’s new? However, I don’t see how that makes him a “delusionist”.
As I thought, you can’t name a single scientist who predicted an ice-free arctic last summer, because there likely wasn’t a single one who did so. However, many denialists made the claim that scientists were predicting an ice-free arctic and more likely than you having “mixed up” bets on an ice-free pole, is you having credulously adopted this claim from another denialist.
Hardly, the stuff of “skepticism”.
Come on lenny, the media was ablaze with prophecies of doom from receding ice. You don’t need to be a denialist to know it was overblown.
How about Mark Serreze, the new director of the NSIDC saying the Arctic could be ice-free in 2008.
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/Story?id=4728737&page=1
#76 JJ Read the last fifteen comments on the thread, and you’ll see where you got this wrong.
#73 JB, I meant that he later signed a public statement rejecting AGW, having failed to mention his views on the topic when holding holding himself out as an independent expert focusing on the statistical issues in a single paper.
#78 jquiggin: Maybe he formed his views on AGW as a result of the work he did for the Wegman report? Besides, even if he was skeptical before working on the report, that does not imply his analysis was false.
On a general note, isn’t all this debate about motives or character rather beside the point? You could produce incontrovertible evidence that Wegman strangles puppies for fun, but it wouldn’t make any difference to the veracity of his analysis.
Another goalpost move.
Denialist. Not skeptic.
The “hockey stick” is actually irrelevant to AGW theory. It is only relevant to discussions about the possible impact of an unprecedented rate of change due to AGW. Denialists like yourself are eager to “disprove” the “hockey stick” because if recent, and future, warming due to AGW is not unprecedented over human history then one can more plausibly argue that there’s nothing to worry about.
So if his work on the “hockey stick” convinced him that AGW theory is wrong, he’s a fool. The basic physics aren’t refuted.
Besides which, the supposedly debunked “hockey stick” has not been debunked, and denialists like yourself are forced to misrepresent the NAS report, the (in)significance of Wegman’s analysis, etc etc.
You’re no skeptic. You’re a denialist.
How about the NORTH POLE is not THE ARCTIC.
You can look that up on a map if you don’t believe me.
Okay, all you non-delusionists.
Fill in this equation which is the most important equation in global warming theory and the basis of the climate models.
The Temperature C impact from rising CO2.
TempC Increase = [ X Watt/metre^2 * Ln (CO2-Future / CO2-280)] * [ Y Celcius / Watt/metre^2]
Please fill-in
… X
… Y
… CO2-future at 387 ppm and then 700 ppm (a good estimate for CO2 in the year 2100).
(Note this is only for CO2 and there are different formulae for the other GHGs. You can bump up the numbers by 25% or so if you want to simulate all the GHGs.)
I think you’ll find the math doesn’t work.
Wow, the basic physics of climate science disproved in a blog post, and, I can’t forbear from observing, by someone who can’t even spell “Celsius”, and doesn’t know the difference between the North Pole and the entire Arctic.
JB, you must be aware that the vast majority of the delusionist case is like this, even when it’s done by people who ought to know better, like Wegman. The argument being trotted out here is a standard one from the CA crew, IIRC, which says a lot.
@Jeff – that’s right, all those scientists can’t do simple maths. lol. Which part of ‘hasn’t got the maths smarts’ does Barry Brook suffer from?
http://bravenewclimate.com/about/
The reductionist qualities of the proposed Taxonomy of climate delusionist, carries an undercurrent of sarcasm and ridicule for those “contrarian” thinkers. OTOH if you are serious about this Taxonomic classification of climate delusionist I assume it is just a hypothesis in which case other than the “physics savy’ John Masheys attempt to further breakdown the classifications, has no further supporting evidence amongst the wide spread scientific community. In which case I would like to invoke the “precautionary principle”. The taxonomic hypothesis proposed may cause tremendous hardship for those delusionist who have taken a position contrary to the one expressed by most on this blog. The Taxonomy must be abandoned.
This brings me to JQ question
“I’d be interested in anyone claiming to have reached a sceptical position who doesn’t fit into one or other of the categories I’ve mentioned”
It is the underlying fundamental assumptions of the “precautionary principle” and how it is invoked by the pro-climate lobby that has resulted in my sceptical position. The precautionary principle is not in my opinion, science, as some claim:
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/sapp.php
The major problem is this principle is open to misuse and abuse.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/englund/englund37.html
Eric Englund is a bit “doomsdayish” but I will invoke the precautionary principle again.
And Ronald Bailey asks some worthwhile questions as well:
http://www.reason.com/news/printer/30977.html
and Andrew Michael Baker @ the QU of technology provides an interesting opinion on this matter as well:
Click to access APrecautionaryTale.pdf
It is hard to ignore stuff like this and dismiss it as irrelevant and delusional but I suppose there is not much the pro-climate guys can do other than maintain the rage after Mr Plimer controversial stunt threatens to derail the political motives of the pro-climate lobby.
In regard to who I am for the purpose of this hypothesis. We’ll I am in my fourth decade, have a family, I work in health care and finance, I have a couple of university degrees, my name is of no importance or significance to anyone in politics or climate science. I have no influential academic peers. The question is can you save me from my delusional plight and if so how would you approach this mammoth task of rewiring my delusional brain. PS. Perhaps a genecentric approach is best. Wait for guys like me to die and selectively breed pre-programmed proclimate persons.
It is the most important equation in the field and it has never been explained to you.
Where does X come from?
What is the value of Y? Does it vary over time?
(Sorry for misspelling Celsius. I’m used to just writing C but it might have been confusing in an equation. Arguing the North Pole is not the Arctic in terms of sea ice is frankly ridiculous.)
Not sure if this fits in with the other classes.
(Sorry for vagueness about details but I want to try doing this again).
An unspecified time ago (but during Bush Jr) I spoofed a high profile US denialist whom I was almost certain was an emeritus hack. But when I asked about motivations…
Turns out he was unpopular in college and was “ha! they laughed at me but I’ll show them! I’ll kick over their sandcastle and make them sorry”.
I just left quietly then. Wasn’t a lot I could say. Maybe he was messing with me. But I don’t think so as it would have required more intelligence than his public writings would have suggested. (a la Bush Jr mayhap?).
Is this a new class?
What a wide ranging debate that seemed to have digressed a bit from the original intent. However #1 and quite a few others seem to support the following statement:
“These are people who are mostly over 40, have seen material standards of living improve throughout their lives and who make or build things. They have have always believed that their whole working life has helped contribute to a better world. Whether that was their purpose is irrelevant”
Well I almost fit into that category. I do accept AGW and have done so for about four/five years. As an atheist who is currently living in Tokyo, grew up in Melbourne after my parent’s fled Pinochet’s regime in Chile in the early 70s, I hold the view that progres is taming the environment to fit people’s lives – no advance in technology, no advance in humanity. I care not one whit about saving the planet, or biodiversity or so many of the things that environmentalist hold dear. Instead I care about saving people and I shall remain eternally grateful to Australia for providing refuge to a young boy.
Did I mention that I build things? Well I have built four houses in Melbourne, I have worked in the mines in WA and I now live and work in Tokyo. That means that there are three families that have a roof over their head – protects them from cold weather which reduces lifespan. My income over the years has meant that I have been able to provide employment to bricklayers, electricians, sales staff, etc. You get the picture. However I think that my most important hire was a domestic maid in Chile – thin and emaciated (her children ate first)she did not want charity, she wanted a job and I obliged. I still get moved when she politely asked me whether I could give her half a days pay in advance because she hadn’t eaten for at least 24 hours. That was easy because I build things for a living and I am handsomely rewarded for it.
I have met many tradies who are indeed concerned over the drought and the environment but their vote, like mine, also takes into account the consequences of action. BTW I do support increasing carbon taxes or ETS which will inevitably lead to an increase in the cost of living. but I can afford that. Others? some may not.
And there is one other thing – in the isolation of the ballot booth votes are cast on jobs and taxes. Robert Maclellan, Victoria’s best planning minister ever, approved many a construction site which lead to the creation of Save Our Suburbs (SOS) and other community groups which eventually lead to the ejection of Jeff Kennet’s government. The Bracks government created the policy of 2030 which now more or less lies in tatters because of the strong community opposition (the fact that it needed more work also contributed). Yet here in Tokyo the policy works – train stations with entire shopping complexes (at ikkebukuro the subterranean complex means that there is no need to come up to the surface for anything!) then surrounded by office blocks and then residential. 10 to 12 storey buildings are common and most people live very close to a train station and a park. And because most people work near a train station there is no need to drive. Yet the Australian electorate continually rejects this option. Instead they have polls where they continually tell each other how worried they are about saving the planet, go to the beach and hold hands, and participate in Earth hour. they complain about the number of people who live in Melbourne (I wonder if the little boy of yester year would be welcomed today) and the planet.
Aside from the ETS/carbon tax (policy issue discussed elsewhere on this blog) the real issue for the environmental cause is to convince the electorate that an enhanced 2030 plan would indeed be best. Alternatively, economic theory would need to be developed so as to explain how the standard of living can be improved (or at least maintained) with an ageing population and decreasing numbers. But both these issues are hard yakka, aren’t they? Much better to sneer at those who feed others.
I forgot to mention that, for a handy directory of responses to most of the talking points discussed, you should go to
http://www.grist.org/article/series/skeptics/
The stuff about chaos and forecasting is well covered, as is Arctic ice.
For the details on forcings, feedbacks and so on, go to Barry Brooks here
http://bravenewclimate.com/2008/10/06/how-much-warming-in-the-pipeline-part-1-co2-e/
83
TempC Increase = [ X Watt/metre^2 * Ln (CO2-Future / CO2-280)] * [ Y Celcius / Watt/metre^2]
It’s a loverly formula, why it’s even got a natural log in it. Before one discusses what it means one does sort of need to know where it comes from, what the magic number (280) represents and what assumptions where made. Oh and it would help if you told me what X and Y are and how you measure or calculate them. Then we could look at the * / and ln arrangement and decide if they make sense.
As the weather is a complex dynamic system I doubt it represents anything very much, but I know I am ignorant and am happy to be educated.
I am also interested to know why people in denial debate hockey sticks and simulations when we know how the heat is trapped. I would have though proving that CO2 didn’t stop heat radiating back out to space would be the focus. But hay what do I know about proving all those dumb scientists wrong I’m only an engineer.
If your in Australia how about hopping on a plane and having a look at a New Zealand Glacier or two, (nice place) and report back on why they are receding? I took the easy path and blamed Global warming, but obviously you as a hot shot scientist who is so much smarter than the dumb scientists who think it’s getting warmer and this mediocre engineer will be able to enlighten me.
Regards
Napoleon
Oh and PS, normally you use ln not Ln to represent natural logs. I know your a hot shot scientist and convention doesn’t matter that much, it does however make information transfer difficult if you don’t stick to them.
Regards
Bonaparte
Mark Milankovitch #56 wrote:
“The tragic reality that far too many ordinary folks see the most rabid spruikers for AGW as being the same guys were most passionately spruiking for Marxist Leninism/Trotskyism less a generation ago.”
As Menzies said of H. V. Evatt during the Petrov Affair, the Lord hath delivered him into my hands.
As I explained in 2002 at http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=1110
“One of the curious features of public intellectual life in the English-speaking world is that many leading voices of the Right began their political and intellectual engagement on the Left. David Horowitz in the US and Paul Johnson in the UK are perhaps the two best known, but Australia seems particularly generously endowed with this type. Names like Padraic P. McGuinness, Keith Windschuttle, Piers Akerman, Ross Terrill, Bob Catley, Bettina Arndt, Michael Thompson, Christopher Pearson, Michael Duffy and Max Teichmann come readily to mind.”
Of those named, Windschuttle, Akerman, Pearson and Duffy are all obsessive greenhouse denialists, as are Michael Thompson’s co-ideologues at The New City blog.
Even more ruinously for Mark, some of the most vociferous denialists in the blogosphere are the people at Strange Times (a.k.a. The Last Superpower) who are STILL “passionately spruiking for Marxist Leninism” in its most odious form, namely Maoism.
A question for JQ: where would you place the Maoist denialists in your taxonomy?
I should have added that Windschuttle was once a spruiker for Trotskyism along with Hall Greenland and Bob Gould, Akerman was once a signatory to a communist newpaper advertisement, Pearson was once a Maoist, Duffy was once an anarchist and Thompson was an activist in a Maoist union.
I suspect Jonathan Baxter (and others) fit John Mashey’s psych-2 category better than any of JQ’s categories. His motivation seems to be the intellectual enjoyment of adopting a contrary position but he has little confidence in this position.
Jonathan Baxter told us Arctic sea ice was more-or-less back to normal – a vastly contrary position to the bevy of scientists telling us Arctic sea ice has been declining for decades and will change from perennial to seasonal.
Jonathon then abandoned this remarkable position with no explanation, moving to claiming a particular scientist, Maslowski, is predicting this change to seasonal ice too soon. This huge change in position is delineated not by nominating the large body of scientific work Jonathon now apparently agrees with, but by finding a scientist he still disagrees with. Its contrariness just for the sake of it
I agree that we need a category of irresponsible contrarians, which is commonly a precursor of emeritus disease. Lindzen is the exemplar of this group.
I see the Trots turned Culture Warriors as essentially Tribalist in their motivation, though this is expressed in the adoption of a series of sectarian ideological positions.
BTW, Paul, I hadn’t even noticed that Ross Terrill had changed sides, though in his case, and that of Bob Catley, I’d say the Hack category is closer to the mark. Whoever appears to hold the Mandate of Heaven, these two can be found on their side.
It will be interesting to see whether Terrill can scramble back to the left now that Rudd is in (or maybe he has already done so).
93# Paul says
“I should have added that Windschuttle was once a spruiker for Trotskyism along with Hall Greenland and Bob Gould, Akerman was once a signatory to a communist newpaper advertisement, Pearson was once a Maoist, Duffy was once an anarchist and Thompson was an activist in a Maoist union.”
This would be hugely funny if these people didnt get published in the mainstream media so often… its a tragi-comedy of epically garrulous dimensions!!
Adolfo @89:
This highlights what concerns me most about the whole GW focus. We could put in vast efforts, yet while this kind of attitude prevails (and any other is still marginal), they’ll be wasted because further and worse results of permanently soiling our nest will just come back to bite us, again and again.
As long as we insist on a permanent War On Nonhumans, crises will redouble every few decades.
John, I wrote this comment(but did not submit) some time ago after reading through one of your AGW blogs. After reading some of the current blog, I was finally compelled to have my say:
Dear JQ,
Whether or not AGW will ultimately lead to catastrophic effects on the natural environment and our lives and lifestyles, it seems to me that there is a fundamental unwillingness on the part of the ‘believers’ to do anything substantial about it. When petrol prices soared to around $2 per litre in 2008, I expected a deluge of articles in favour of this turn of events, as the rise in oil prices was a good simulation of the precise type of policy response required to reduce emissions – that is, a large (and almost overnight) tax on fossil fuel use. Instead, we were inundated with calls to reduce existing taxes on fuel because the high prices at the bowser were ‘hurting’ people, particularly the poor. The case can be made that, while the majority of people want to save the planet, a majority of the majority either don’t understand what is needed to do this, or they simply want somebody else to pay for it.
Personally, I’m agnostic about the extent of any harmful effects from increasing global CO2 emissions, but I’m more than happy to accept a no-regrets emissions-reduction strategy based on carbon taxes or an emissions-trading model. The costs of reducing emissions are likely to be grossly overstated (vested interests always overstate the costs of adjustment in response to either the removal of subsidies, or the implementation of taxes or regulations to internalise externalities), and would have minimal adverse impact on our standard of living, particularly over the longer term. But let’s not kid anyone – the price of fossil fuel based energy has to rise dramatically in order to encourage people to use less of it. Education, regulation and suasion have only a bit-part role to play in reducing emissions – the price of energy derived from coal, oil and gas must rise first, and probably substantially. Use tax revenue to deal with equity issues by all means, but let price signals be the main mechanism to direct the behaviour and responses of both consumers and producers of energy (including producers of alternative energy). If we try to (socially) engineer a solution to the problem of greenhouse gas emissions we are doomed to the sort of non-ending and pointless philosophical and ideological debates that your blogs on this subject generally degrade into.
To sum up, I think you should stop wasting energy trying to convince everyone that catastrophic AGW is indisputable, and start trying to convince everyone (including your own team-mates) about what is actually needed in order to fundamentally change people’s behaviour, and reduce aggregate greenhouse gas emissions.
Yours respectfully,
Agnostic but willing to help out.