Apr14
Lukewarmer: New word?
Anthony Watts David Smith cracked me up with new word:
Also, I am a “lukewarmer” who thinks that the world is warmer than it would otherwise be due to anthropogenic gases (but doubts that the impact will be extreme).
Though I dislike argument-by-name calling, I tend to like new words. It does seem to me we could use a thermometer scale for believe in global warming. How about these:
- “Hell fire and brimstone warmer:” Reading blogs like Joe Romm’s, you sometimes wonder why you can’t see the flames dancing around you. Print out his blog posts, and the paper will likely spontaneously combust. It’s a wonder people dare to draw electricity to light their modem screens and read that blog!
- “Blow hot-and-cold warmer:” Believes in global warming but, like Kerry Emmanuel, can’t make up their mind about hurricanes. (I approve of people who change their minds, by the way. )
- “It’s Colder that a Witches Elbow Denialist”: If you complain about the heat on a 100F in August in their presence, they will remind you that people complained about the heat in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof”, sweating is probably good for the soul, and we should probably get on our knees and pray it hits 102F tomorrow. Yes you’ve met them; I’m not sure any of them blog.
Suggestions welcome!
Hat Tip:Watts Up With That?
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73 Responses to “Lukewarmer: New word?”
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Mike Walsh April 14th, 2008 at 2:48 pm
Lucia, just a correction note that it wasn’t Anthony that used “lukewarmer”, but David Smith in a guest post on Watts up with that.
lucia April 14th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Thanks, fixed.
Al Fin (3 comments.) April 14th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
Lukewarmer is a good one for moderates. My favourite for extreme alarmists is “holy warmer!” Those are the genuine hard core fundamentalist fire and brimstone pentecostal warmers.
Bishop Hill (2 comments.) April 14th, 2008 at 10:33 pm
People who reckon we’ve entered a cooling phase could be the Brass Monkeys.
(Not sure this expression is understood outside the UK - explanation here, if not.)
Rex April 14th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Just checked this
http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/map/im......anim.html and cryosphere (ARCTIC AND ANTARCTIC ice UP UP UP) will arctic go above anomaly?)
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/
and COLA (which has not changed much in the last 6 months except March asia (which was warmer).
http://wxmaps.org/pix/analyses.html (climate outlooks).
So It looks like GISS and HADCRUT may have one H– of a problem in “forcing temps up” for April 2008. Also check the 4.4 -7.5 km height UHA/RSS data here (seems to be diving)
http://discover.itsc.uah.edu/amsutemps/
One consolation prize for the AGW’ers… NH Snow cover is slightly below normal LOL
from a lukewarmer LOL
Chris H April 14th, 2008 at 11:29 pm
The first time I saw the term “lukewarmer” used was in a post by Bender on Climate Audit. I just did a quick search on CA and the oldest comment I could find containing “luke-warmer” was by Bender on October 3rd, 2006 and is indeed by Bender. There could of course be plenty of earlier uses!
It’s a great term that nicely sums up my own point of view on AGW, which attributes about 1/4 of the measured warming since the mid 70s to anthropogenic emissions of CO2, 1/4 to measurement bias, 1/4 to other forcings and 1/4 to internal variation/oscillation/long term persistence.
terry (26 comments.) April 15th, 2008 at 4:45 am
Lukewarmer—I like it!
Since I do get called all sorts of names for my stances and pointing out that “the science isn’t settled” as you and Steve McIntyre and others keep pointing out.
And besides, where’s the fun of the science being settled? I personally enjoy the discovery!
This calls for a haiku, titled “Lukewarmer”
Lukewarmer science
not too hot also not cold
happy medium
joel mcdade April 15th, 2008 at 7:01 am
Actually, “lukewarmer” was originally coined by bender over at CA. As it sums up my position, I have shamelessly appropriated the term and used it elsewhere. Sorry, bender. Please take it as a compliment.
lucia April 15th, 2008 at 7:52 am
I suspect bender would be happy to see us adopt his term and credit him. If not, he may object. If so, I will suggest we all substitute the apostle Luke’s name with “Thomas Warmer”.
For non-Christians: The Apostle Thomas is known as “Doubting Thomas” because he on inspecting the holes in Jesus’s hand before believing the guy came back to life. (Thomas is sometimes described as Jesus’s twin; so he may have had reasons to know that appearances can be deceiving.)
Of course, Thomas-warmer won’t be a perfect substitution. Once he sees evidence he is pretty convinced. So, his other nickname is “Thomas the Believer”.
Andrew April 15th, 2008 at 11:57 am
Given my experience with seeing very respectable and intelligent people, including some who agree that the last thirty years of Global Warming is all man made, being called “deniers” by everyone from the gatekeepers at RC to the people in the “middle” like some of Roger Pielke Jr’s friends at the Breakthrough Institute and others (Ted Nordhaus used the word quite candidly, but seems to think we went extinct circa 2000) (heck, Judith Curry practically whined that by insinuating that it had Holocaust conotations-which it ~did~ and was always intended to, make no mistake-we took away a perfectly good epithet), I would hate for any skeptics to go around tossing labels at very polite people like Lucia. It might not seem that bad, but it can hurt peoples feelings. Of course, some certainly deserve the label “alarmist” despite certain whiny posters at other blogs objections, it is quite frequently accurate. But in this case, this is one of the most civil blogs in the climate blog world.
That was my rant on name calling. Thank you.
lucia April 15th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Andrew– You’re right in general and specifics.
There a problem with ‘denier’, particularly since people brought up the silly Holocaust links. That is a sign of just how bad (and silly) the rhetoric gets. After all, is belief about the science going to affect lives? Or policies we implement?
If someone is willing to promote nuclear energy for reasons other than reducing CO2, and we have the side effect of reducing CO2, fine with me!
That said, names can be both good and bad. Having lived on this earth a while, I’ve learned that people also do have names for groups of like minded people. Sometimes they are good names; sometimes bad. Usually, the good ones are the ones people select for themselves and like minded people. Coming up with friendly-ish is useful— so I do like “lukewarmer”.
I can’t actually imagine “Hell fire and brimstone warmer” catching on though — unless someone decides they want to call themselves that!
Zeke (10 comments.) April 15th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
Lucia,
I agree that there is a pretty broad spectrum between “the world is not warming” to “we are all going to die”, with most of us somewhere in the middle. With the politicization of the issue, however, comes an unfortunate tendency to avoid acknowledging uncertainty in public statements as to not give ammunition to those who use any uncertainty to advocate a position on one extreme. You see this all the time over at, say, climate audit, where McIntyre will critique some aspect of a study and the comment threads will be full of people extrapolating the flaws in a particular study to the death knell of all climate science.
We need to figure out how to acknowledge the uncertainties inherent in climate prediction without losing the interest of the general public, who is used to seeing issues in absolute terms.
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