At WUWT, Anthony proposed a yellow badge for skeptics:
He follows with this request:
“Maybe somebody can come up with a theme variation specific to climate skeptics.”
I hunted around and found these three possible alternatives:
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Anthony also corrected me on my history: Stasi were the East German secret police, not Nazi secret police. Yep. I goofed on the Stasi– as I conceded in comments at Anthony’s blog and on my own post.
Update:June 24.
Josh suggested these
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He also made “warmista”, “Monckton” and “Pielke” badges. All are currently on display here.
I like the last one.
I like the main smiley face. After all aren’t skeptics really optimistic about future climate change?
If it was possible to have them reflect the likeness of the skeptic, I might wear one, but I suppose a long grey beard hanging off the bottom might be a problem for the manufacturer.
Bob Tisdale,
Well, at least they all look like they are going bald… so some skeptics could use them ‘as is’.
Now you have jumped the shark, Lucia. The paper didn’t have a ‘black list’, it demonstrated that in terms of scientific arguments, the ‘skeptics’ have come up with nothing, but instead get around that problem by being very vocal on the internet and waving their hands around a lot. The so called ‘debate’ is nothing of the sort.
If you would rather associate yourself with a paranoid conspiracy theorist, then that’s your choice.
Here’s one for bugs and sod.
http://www.myemoticons.com/avatars/images/moods/scream.jpg
bugs,
I think you are posting on the wrong thread.
Simply add sun rays to “smiley” – for sunny disposition which skeptics bring to the table (if not enough, mak’ em frosty sun rays).
this is a pathetic attempt from Anthony, to cover his Godwin gaffe.
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i doubt that a badge will show a different number of “sceptic” scientists…
Wait, so ill-considered and horrifically disproportionate Stasi analogies are appropriate, just because they aren’t Nazi? That’s a weird standard. I’d say the spirit of Godwin’s Law applies to certain other events and people as well.
Ha ha, Lucia is like Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin and Papa Doc all rolled into one, but since none of them were Nazis, it’s all good.
i would not extend Godwin too far.
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but the real problem is a different one:
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the StaSi part shows, that Anthony was serious, when he made the comment, that included the yellow badges.
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this post feels a little like an “i am sorry” present from lucia, for calling him out.
Yellow badges? Really?
Perhaps Watts should consider getting a number tattoo on his arm to make the joke (and the imagined persecution) a little more entertaining. His tattoo number will correspond to where he stands on the infamous Black List.
Hey Lucia, were you not able to find a smiley that’s chocking on the zyklon-B of the Climate Nazis who’ve put together the Black List?
I’m so sick of that man.
Lucia: There seems to be a number of somber comments on your smiley-face thread.
“Yellow badges? Really?
Perhaps Watts should consider getting a number tattoo on his arm to make the joke (and the imagined persecution) a little more entertaining. His tattoo number will correspond to where he stands on the infamous Black List.”
Exactly. If he didn’t meet strict Godwin’s Law criteria before, he certainly does after invoking “yellow badges.”
All part and parcel of the persecution complex one finds among all conspiracy theorists. Whether it’s UFOs or vaccines or psuedoskeptics, they all think “the establishment” is out to silence them.
Robert,
Everybody thinks they’re Galileo.
Speaking of Galileo. I wonder who crackpots compared themselves to before Galileo.
Re: carrot eater (Jun 23 16:39),
Don’t mistake “not Godwin” with “reasonable analogy”. To be Godwin, it has to be a Nazi analogy. It can’t be McCarthy, Stalin, PolPot, Caligula..&etc. That’s just the way it works.
“I wonder who crackpots compared themselves to before Galileo.”
I don’t know. Maybe you ought to ask this guy.
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/5/11/865403/-Who-Will-Be-Americas-Climate-Change-Galileo
Just to clarify, on the same day, one Watts post bemoaned the sad state of affairs in the climate blogosphere and called for a friendlier discourse. A second Watts post, hours later, invoked the Spanish Inquisition, Soviet-era secret police and the Nazi pogrom on Jews – pretty much the holy trinity of western persecution.
I’m not really getting the “skeptics are all sunny and warm” vibe, Lucia.
No one expects the Spanish Inquisition!

Lucia, I like #2, except that I’d replace the mouth line with Mann’s hockey stick, tilted downward to the right, with the start point and the end point being the same height.
Or something like that.
Yellow Badge up high
On the Blacklisted Free Ones.
Merciful Gaia.
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bugs and the other true believers who are too cowardly to even admit the obvious- that the purpose of the PNAS garbage article is to create a list of people to ignore, belittle and shove out of the public square only show their complete lack of integrity.
I don’t think the paper’s method is good or useful, but this is a garbage comment. Paranoia. Some people sign some petitions or co-author the NIPCC – they’re willingly and publicly putting themselves in some group, and hoping people will take notice. So when somebody takes notice and uses that list to do some analysis of their scholarly output, it’s suddenly a blacklist?
Take Poptech’s list of ‘sceptic’ publications (as bizarrely elastic as his criteria was). Is that a blacklist?
Give me a break.
Here are some images of denier coins. There are several dated around the Roman Warm Period. Maybe this would be too cerebral and go over most peoples heads though.
http://www.google.com/images?um=1&hl=en&safe=off&rls=com.microsoft%3Aen-us%3AIE-SearchBox&tbs=isch%3A1&sa=1&q=denier+coins&btnG=Search&aq=f&aqi=&aql=&oq=&gs_rfai=
Let’s see if this works (I’ve never posted an image before).
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I present to you the ultimate symbol of the PPP (poor persecuted pseudo-skeptics):
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In front you see how the pseudo-skeptics want us to think they feel, but behind it you see how they really feel. Poor, poor persecuted pseudo-skeptics…
I think I may have found an oddity about the citation counts! I’ve written Anderegg to verify I’m interpreting correctly. If I am, it’s very, very odd!
Carrot– The UC groups doesn’t consist only of people who wrote the NIPCC. It includes Pielke Sr.
hunter (Comment#46665) June 23rd, 2010 at 9:44 pm
The people on the list, both sides, are already well known, it reveals nothing new. It is just evidence of the claims of the authors, nothing more. The working scientists on that list are just as secure today as they were yesterday. They are just few in number, as the paper claims, and not actually publishing much, also as the paper claims. Lindzen keeps waving his arms around about an Iris, yet provides nothing that proves it.
Lucia
Did I say that was the only way onto the list? No. There are 12 ways onto the list, and they all involve people very much willingly and very publicly putting their names to sceptic documents, with the hope of getting some attention for their views.
And so somehow that’s a blacklist? I’m sorry, but this is just one of the dumbest things I’ve heard.
Oh, goodness gracious me, a Pielke has been classified as a sceptic. The world must now come to an end.
Chad (Comment#46631) June 23rd, 2010 at 5:38 pm
quote Speaking of Galileo. I wonder who crackpots compared themselves to before Galileo. unquote
Socrates. He thought for himself and was killed for it. He said ‘no’ to power. Of course only a crackpot would ever consider telling those in authority that they are wrong.
Our leaders are wise, all knowing, and we must be grateful that they are kind enough to share their wisdom. Let us never be like the crackpots who compare themselves with Socrates and Galileo.
JF
My captain on Vulcans once said to me ‘Jules, you are a ‘no’ man in a world which prefers ‘yes’ men.
Neven, its once more a prolonged exercise in begging the question. Your use of the term ‘pseudo-skeptics’.
You need to face up to the fact that there are many informed people of good faith who find the AGW hypothesis unconvincing, because the evidence for it is not persuasive, and there is plenty of evidence against it,
There is a genuine rationally based disagreement. When you call people pseudo-skeptics you make the assumption that there is not. It is a tactic of argument familiar to us from the hysterical cult movements of the 20C, but its discredited now by familiarity.
Compare: the reason you are sceptical about the truth of pyschoanalytic theories is that they threaten you because if you accepted their truth, you would have to admit the existence of the repressed contents of your unconscious. In fact, the very strength of your opposition is proof of their truth. Were they not true, you would not feel so strongly opposed to them.
Similarly, you oppose the truth of Marxist theory and the merits of the Soviet state because of your class origins. The stronger your opposition, the more clear your commitment to class based thinking is. You are in fact in such an awful state on this, that it is clearly a case of mental illness, and a free society will have to shut you up in hospital for your and their good.
In general, assuming the truth of what one wants to prove, then diagnosing mental disability of some sort or bad faith as the only explanation of dissent, that is not going anywhere nowadays. Time to drop it, and get focussed on feedback. That is where the intellectual problem with AGW will be found.
Julian Flood, oh paragon of wisdom, do you think not Jesus of Nazareth would make an even more apt example? Pseudo-skeptics like Anthony Watts are after all our Saviours.
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Thanks to them we can continue to buy big TVs, live in big houses, drive big cars, and generally do whatever we like (or what we think we like as it is taught to us by our culture of honesty and modesty) without having to think about consequences. They are perpetuating our material heaven on Earth, the ultimate goal. Mammon, I mean, the Lord praise them!
Sheesh, people get all worked up about Anthony doing a Godwin. He obviously always had the smiley button in mind, when he was talking about yellow badges. The link to the wikipedia article about the Nazi’s yellow badges in his first post on this, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/22/the-blacklist-of-climate-science/ , must have been a slip of hand. I am sure he just typed down that link utterly convinced it would point to an article about the smiley face. It obviously is an oversight, that the wikipedia link is still up. And I am pretty sure, we alarmists have already begun to bug Anthony’s house and workplace, are paying some of his friends as informers to betray his most private thoughts, are threatening the career of his children and are right now installing a mined fence around his home town.
Riiiiight, who am I kidding. I find it utterly disgusting that Anthony puts on the pretense to be a victim and invoces the imagry of both the Nazis and the Stasi. I find it despicable, how he trivializes the suffering of the Jews in the Third Reich and the people who died in the attempt to escape from Eastern Germany. I am German, born long after the Third Reich. I’ve learned, what my ancestors have done to the Jews, the Sinti and Roma, homosexuals, communinst, and I know what the supporters of the Communist regime have done to my country man on the other side of the iron curtain. If the Muslims of Srebrenica liken themselves to the Jews, that’s permissible. If the Tutsi liken themselves to it, you won’t hear much of a complaint. There are still large differences, but it comes close enough. If however self-proclaimed skeptics invoke this imagry for themselves, because someone dared to collate the lists they themselves proudly signed and advertised in the news and politics, I have nothing more to offer than utter and complete contempt.
The paper itself does not offer any new insights and I am not impressed with the metric nor the rigor of establishing expertise in climate science chosen in the paper.
So you would feel as bad if prominant climate scientists made similar Nazi comparisons………oh no it was all quiet then!
Re: lucia (Jun 23 23:03),
http://www.sepp.org/policy%20declarations/statment.html
(emphasis added) This statement signed by, amongst others, Roger Pielke, Ph.D., Professor of Atmospheric Science, Colorado State University. This is what got him into the UC category. 18 years is a long time, his views may have changed.
If Pielke Sr. does no longer think so, he might want to consider to ask SEPP to include an update to that list.
Anthony went a step further by likening (pseudo-)skeptics to Jews, or am I misinterpreting things? There’s been some Godwin on all sides, but did prominent climate scientists ever go: ‘Boohoohoo, we are being persecuted!’
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I don’t think so. You know why? Because they have scientific arguments that hold up, and Watts and his merry band of victim bullies don’t. Whining is all they have.
Dave, help me out and give examples; looks like I’m not looking in the right places.
It’s not my first time I’ve seen the Godwin being pulled and it won’t be my last. I don’t always respond, it’s just that the person in question will go down quite a few notches in my respect for him/her. What really riled me here, is Anthony taking on the mantle of victimhood, as if he and others were persecuted on a scale comparable to the Jews under the Nazis, and when being called upon it to play innocent and not even retract and apologize. He’s even now trying to introduce double-speak. He wants to keep the “yellow badges” rhetoric, so he invents the reinterpretation into a smiley. From now on, he can allways call on his opponents that they force them to wear yellow badges. Anyone with a shred of knowledge in history will make the connection to the Shoa, but Anthony has the plausible deniability that he just meant the innocent smiley face. And yes, I do find that kind of backhandedness despicable. Don’t you?
If you think that I’m overreacting, I predict, that Anthony will continue to use yellow badge references. I bet you 20 Euros/Dollars in a gentlemen’s bet – to be donated to a charity chosen by the loser of the bet – that Anthony will use the yellow badge symbolism again in another post on WUWT till the end of October. After the end of October, the loser will silently donate those 20 Dollars/Euros, the winner will not crow about winning. Deal?
The more rationalizations and abuse of claims of alleged violations of Godwin’s law true believers make the more cynical they appear.
As has been pointed out, the list in question is not even accurate, and is based more on the authors bigotry than on anything the victims of their work have done.
The fact is the CAGW community has sought to marginalize skeptics up to and including manipulating the peer review process, suppressing publications, using software tricks and applying demeaning labels to skeptics. There are credible and specific reports of CAGW academics doing this and more.
So I guess it is no surprise that true believers here would like to pretend that alleged violations of Godwin’s law is the only issue worth discussing. It fits well within the pattern of dissembling and distraction that CAGW as a whole depends.
http://w2.eff.org/Net_culture/Folklore/Humor/godwins.law
It’s not a law you can violate, it’s an observation.
As for those scientists, each and every scientist put into the UE category put his name on one of the following petitions / publications or is member of an organization, each of which has a message along one of the lines “the emission of CO2 will not harm us” or “we don’t know enough and urge not to act now”.
Each of these were aimed to influence public opinion.
Finally, I think I have made it clear on this blog, that I do not think highly of this paper in technical terms and that I find it unhelpful. On the other hand, it does not state anything that comes as a surprise.
Yeah Neven sure! And the head of the CRU didn’t claim to all the world that he contemplated suicide either.
Be off vacationing. Hunter @ (Comment#46692), you hit the nail on the head except I would also add: indoctrination of children.( Al “Don’t listen to your parents” Gore)
Josh suggested some smiley faces! http://www.cartoonsbyjosh.com/
Thanks to them we can continue to buy big TVs, live in big houses, drive big cars, and generally do whatever we like (or what we think we like as it is taught to us by our culture of honesty and modesty) without having to think about consequences. They are perpetuating our material heaven on Earth, the ultimate goal. Mammon, I mean, the Lord praise them!
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Either this is an excellent simulation of mental illness or the author is typing the quoted rant as an element of therapy that the kind big man in the white coats prescribed .
Thanks for the reminder why no sane person would want to be in the same place with Neven .
OK so you don’t like big TVs ? Big houses ? Small houses neither ?
Don’t like cars ? Some more mindboggling trivialities ? Beside slavering , do you bite too ? Mammon indeed … 🙂
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God when will people like you get it that YOU can live however you choose . You can stop washing and stand for 10 years on a column screaming about evil soap , cars and houses .
It is not even original .
But don’t expect that everybody is crazy like a rabbit .
So do your thing , leave people alone and be very sure that everybody thinks of consequences . Just not in the same way like perturbated people do .
Got it ?
Leave .¨
People .
Alone .
Skeptics are optimistic about continued fossil fuel use and pessimistic they can be replaced easily.
Non-skeptics are pessimistic about continued fossil fuel use and optimistic they can be replaced easily.
Put another way, conservatives and progressives :). Some of us (ok it might just be me) don’t believe any of them can predict the future.
Neven (Comment#46686) June 24th, 2010 at 3:01 am
“Thanks to them we can continue to buy big TVs, live in big houses, drive big cars, and generally do whatever we like (or what we think we like as it is taught to us by our culture of honesty and modesty) without having to think about consequences. ”
My grandfather lived in a cabin in the forest without electricity by personal choice. He cut down trees for heating, burnt them inefficiently in a fireplace and discharged his waste directly into a lake without treatment.
If we all lived as ‘environmentally aware’ as he did, we wouldn’t be able to breath for all the soot, we would have no forests, and the lakes and rivers would all be so polluted we would have no drinking water. Pretty much what we have in Africa today.
Now don’t be starting off the population controllers Harry. There’s enough on Revkins blog.
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Sure.
If.
They.
Leave.
Me.
Alone.
And.
They’re.
Not.
.
:-B
Neven helped me make up my mind. Instead of the Honda, I’m going with the Escalade… I’m gonna install a coal burning stove in my new cabin instead of propane or a fireplace… and I’m going with one of those great big flat screens… and an extra fridge on the porch, an old used recycled one… then I’m going to the store and buy Chinese manufactured goods so another billion folks will have a shot at heat, dishwashers, cars, bath tubs, swimming pools, hunting cabins etc
I agree that 1992 was an awfully long time ago, as was 1995. That’s maybe a questionable element of methodology in this paper that hasn’t been discussed yet. Somebody could have signed off on such a public statement in 1992, but by 2010 would not have signed such a statement.
<carrot eater (Comment#46737) June 24th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
It’s entirely possible, but it’s not a blacklist, it’s an analysis of who many support each side, and how much they publish that supports their case. A few cases like Pielke, (who imho is very much a d….. ) won’t affect that.
Remove Pielke Sr. from the UC group and the “competence” (as “measured”) of the UC as a whole goes waaaay down.
bugs
An analysis of publications of those who are UE and CE needs a methodology that can correctly identify who is UE and CE. Having the lists be all jumbled is pointless.
blue grue–
RC just wrote this.. “tries to assess the credibility of scientists who have made public declarations about policy directions.”
Remove the scientists who have not made public declarations of policy directions and the “competence” diagnonsis of the CE group is probably also going to go way down! Merely contributing to the IPCC is not making a public declaration of policy directions.
Two things. First, their definition of CE is not tied to policy directions. It’s simply a question of how much you agree with the ‘tenets’ of climate science.
Second, I also initially thought taking IPCC WG1 authors as CE was not the best idea. You can play a role in the IPCC reports, and still be what we might label as a ‘sceptic’ (Christy and Lindzen). That said, it wraps around – the authors are using the IPCC report as a way to define what the mainstream views are in the first place. So it makes some sense to default the lead authors as CE, and then remove them if they happened to have signed onto one of the sceptic petitions. I don’t think this would leave too many Lindzens or Christys behind in the CE group. Still, I would not have done it this way.
And before you jump at me, I realise it was the RC introduction that put policy into the mix. I’m just pointing out that the paper’s definition of CE looks to be independent of feelings on policy. Though if somebody signs a petition saying that there should be some sort of policy response, that rather strongly implies that you think that the consensus science (however you might define that) is good enough (however you might otherwise define that). I do like that the RC introduction touches on these ambiguities that come up when you try to measure opinion.
Carrot
Actually, this isn’t clear what their definition of “CE” is. They diagnose it with a mix of letters that advocate policy and participation in writing the WG1 of the AR4. They can claim CE means whatever they like, but the former method of measuring “CE”ness identifies policy advocates; The latter may mis-identify “UE”s with “CE”. ( I’d guess that happens in only a few instances, but there is nothing that says a contributing author to one of the many chapters in the AR4 must agree with the main tenets written up by the lead authors of the AR4-WG1 as a whole.)
It’s clear the majority of contributors to the AR4 do not sign any of these political documents. We know some sign the ‘skeptic’ policy documents; more sign the ‘CE’ type documents. Rather than assume all who sign nothing must be “CE”, why not assume that the non-signers contain mostly CE’s and some UEs, in roughly the proportion of signers of these various policy documents?
Re: lucia (Jun 24 15:57),
From the paper
As far as I can tell, all the lists counted for UE called the scienctific evidence for ACC into question. Stance on policy does not play a role in the paper (of course the stance on policy will be influenced on being convinced of ACC or not, but the paper doesn’t test that).
I laugh that they complain about the Inhoffe list attributing opinions to people but seem to have no problem with the PNAS paper lumping all the contributing authors to the IPCC into CE– and then RC escalates that into writing a post where they make it appear that the PNAS paper was just evaluating advocates.
Lucia,
That’s kind of going in a circle around what I said. Their definition of CE is somewhat ambiguous, yes. Though that would be difficult/impossible to mitigate against.
And yes, listing IPCC authors can get you a few stray UEs. I even listed two from previous years. But I rather doubt there are many Lindzen/Christy types among there, that we don’t know about. But again – I would not have defaulted the IPCC lead authors into being CE. I agree it’s not the best choice; I just don’t think it’s that bad. On the flip side, I would definitely default NIPCC authors into UE.
Re: lucia (Jun 24 16:36),
“I laugh that they complain about the Inhoffe list attributing opinions to people”
Nobody complains about Sen Inhofe attributing opinions to people. The complaint is that he is a potentially powerful politician who is saying that the scientists on the list are criminals who should be prosecuted.
“We are not saying that there are 17 scientists we should be calling criminals,” said Matt Dempsey, a spokesman for Inhofe. “I’m not putting a number on 17.”
Nick–
Inhoffe has done more than one thing in his life, and people have complained about many of them. The one you mention has nothing to do with the current conversation.
Carrot
I actually think it was a very, very bad choice to use the ambiguous group at all. They should have compared one group who signed political letters against another group who signed political letters. Why default and make the comparison apples to (apples + zucchini)?
What’s the point of including the IPCC authors, guessing they are somehow like the group who signed one type of political letter and then doing the analysis?
I think Steig does have concerns on this sort of thing:
this is just a nearly impossible thing. everybody knows that there are more actively publishing CE types than UE types, that the volume of literature from CE types is bigger than the volume of literature from UE types. I guess I didn’t really think about publications per person, so that’s sort of new here. But the stuff on citations is not really surprising, though using citations as a metric is somewhat problematic. [That said, there are periodic attempts by UEs to try to give an inflated sense of their numbers, and I see the PNAS work as being motivated to counteract those attempts – I think this is even explicit in the paper]
So you take these things that everybody knows, and try to actually quantify them, and everybody goes nuts. That’s the weird part – we can quibble about the methods all day long, but are the results really surprising?
Lucia,
If you define ‘CE’ as “roughly agreeing with the IPCC”, and their abstract more or less does this, then it makes some sense to default in the IPCC lead authors, and then exclude anybody like Lindzen, on the assumption that they are few in number and identifiable by the other criteria. I guess it really depends on how you want to define CE; see below.
But I would not have done it. I think it’s a bad choice because it puts an asymmetry into how the two lists are put together. It is not a positive declaration of anything specific, like signing a petition is. So I think it’s bad, but I can see their reasoning.
The bigger thing driving it is the ambiguity of what is a CE. RC put out some really basic criteria (is the earth warming? do greenhouse gases have something to do with it? is this expected to continue?). On that level, you’d probably have to incorporate all sorts of intermediate and lukewarmer types, as well as even some UEs. Then again, that itself has meaning.
Maybe an objective way to go about it would be to ask, what is the probability in your mind that the climate sensitivity is as low as Lindzen is sure it is? But that requires a fantasy world where you could do whatever polling you wanted.
As far as the yellow badges go, you could make one with an upward-facing “C” for a nose, connected to the two eyes that are “O” so that CO2 is definitely in there. And put sunshine rays around it.
lucia (Comment#46764) June 24th, 2010 at 3:53 pm
Go ahead and do the analysis your way. Do you really think there will be any difference. The ‘skeptics’ just don’t come up with the goods.
Those that ignore history are always condemned to repeat it.
The Nazi’s developed fairly sophisticated ways to categorise camp inmates, which included political opponents, intellectuals, non-conformists. Only real problem with this kind of connection is probably the colour. Red or Black would probably be more appropriate under the Nazi system. Not sure if Lysenko badged his scientific opponents, or just used his list, but the Russians practised similar ‘anti-science’ during and after WW2 with dissenters sent to the Gulags. If Google Scholar had existed in those days, no doubt their task would have been easier.
But it does highlight the danger of creating lists and divisions. Some climate scientists seem to understand this danger, some do not and the media has already seized the story as proof that appeals to authority can be quantified.
As for the badges, I think that just helps show in an unscientific way that sceptics have a better sense of humour. If the ‘CE’s don’t like this, then argue against the ‘denier’ lable given the inevitable parallels. I know sceptic is not as popular though because scientists are supposed to be sceptical.
Hairdryer,
So these authors analyse (however well or poorly) some existing lists that sceptics themselves signed up to, and you start making Nazi allusions.
Here’s another list made by sceptics.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/15/reference-450-skeptical-peer-reviewed-papers/
Time to crank up the Nazi allusions, about the danger of making such a list?
When Morano makes a list of sceptics, do you fire up the Nazi allusions?
http://epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Minority.SenateReport
How about this one? Did you start talking about gulags because this list of names is on the web?
http://www.oism.org/pproject/
Carrot,
What exactly is wrong with being a sceptic in science? What I think is wrong is when lists are drawn up for specific purposes, such as in this PNAS paper to assume authority or credibility. Especially if the methodology for doing so is not very good. The Collide-a-scape thread gives examples of how the media is interpreting the paper which is generally as an appeal to authority. IMHO, the best way to deal with scepticism is argue your case coherently and convincingly and not attempt to supress debate. That’s damaging to science.
Atomic Hairdryer
Wow, look at you shifting those goalposts light years away from where they were only 25 minutes ago.
Now you’re complaining about the methodology or interpretation. That’s fine. I also think the paper has problems in that regard. But I didn’t see any of that in your first comment, where you were happily fulfilling Godwin.
Just 25 minutes ago you were ominously talking about how the Nazis and Soviets used lists. Huh. I guess you should have told Morano that before he undertook to make a list of hundreds of (allegedly) dissenting scientists.
Carrot
They didn’t merely default in the lead authors. They included all contributors to all chapters. So maybe you are a scientists contributing because you work on solar stuff or glaciology or something. Ok… so maybe if you see things a bit more like Lindsen, Spencer or Christy, you might have written the summary statement that is a bit weaker than what was written. Maybe you disagree on some policy issue (that’s and not science makes Pielke a “UE”.)
So, do you jump up and make a statement of protest? Refuse to be a contributor? (That is, refuse to do something very beneficial to your career?) Why would you do these things?
There is no particular reason to assume that every contributor who happens to have not signed a petition cannot have views similar to Lindzen, Spencer, Christy or Pielke Sr. Why shouldn’t the default be that we expect the silent contributors to display the same range of agreement with the “tenets” and do the subfration of scientists who have actually signed statements?
To have clear groups, they should have just compared people who sign letters to people who sign letters. They’d have two groups of compariable sizes (~400 to 500) instead of one really big group and one group bout 1/2 it’s size. If the results are robust, it wouldn’t make any difference.
Lucia,
I agree it’d be better to compare like to like.
I’m just saying what the logic appeared to be. I wouldn’t have done it that way.
But the bigger issue remains ambiguity over what any of these things mean. What is CE, UE? Clearly, somebody who thinks the greenhouse effect is already saturated, or violates the Second Law, should be UE. There will be some clearcut cases. But among real publishing scientists, you won’t get so much of that sort of thing. IN fact, it can even just come down to attitude or temperament. Two people can think that the climate sensitivity is probably on the low end of the estimated range; one can take a UE attitude, the other can have a CE attitude, yet examine and assess the science the same way.
Carrot
Sure. But what does this have to do with the PNAS paper?
The PNAS paper didn’t identify a group of people who believe anything remotely like the greenhouse effect violates the 2nd law of thermo. It tells us nothing we didn’t already know about their credentials. We know they don’t understand the 2nd law, but the PNAS paper doesn’t begin to touch on that score.
There are lots of hypothetical divisions you might make to distinguish groups one might label UE or CE. But those aren’t teh divisions the PNAS paper made. There are also many method you could use to try to gauge credential: PNAS picked a particular method.
I think the choices in the PNAS paper result in people learning absolutely nothing at all about the credentials of people who really are convinced or unconvinced. It applies labels in a weird way. In the end, it doesn’t tell us the relative credentials of the sorts of people who are vocally “UE” or “CE”.
All of us had our own guesses and theories about the relative credentials of whoever we consider “UE” and “CE” before that paper was published. The paper will change no ones mind because it shouldn’t. The reason it shouldn’t is the paper is really horribly flawed.
I was discussing the difficulty inherent in shoehorning people into labels. As the PNAS paper does this sort of shoehorning, I was trying to move beyond the PNAS paper, to try to think of better criteria, and perhaps finer divisions.
In the end, each person is unique, so on some level, lumping will always fail to capture the range of that person’s assessments of different hypotheses and theories.
I think it’s safe to say that the Second Law/Saturation/TraceGasesCan’tDoAnything/BeckToldUsAboutCO2Levels/theCO2IsNotComingFromCombustionandCement/TheGraphsOnlyShowWarmingBecauseItsAConspiracy types generally aren’t practicing and publishing scientists, but are lay commenters and bloggers (just depressingly common or at least Internet-prolific). But those are the only types you could unequivocally and unambiguously call ‘sceptics’.. eh, let me use ‘dissenters’. These are the guys I’m quite comfortable to call septics. (Though I think Spencer dabbled with one of the above).
But moving to another part of the idea-space.. I mean, how do you label somebody who did some analysis (model-based, paleo-inferred, whatever) and came up with a climate sensitivity of 1.5 C per doubled CO2? That person could be mainstream, he could be sceptic – who knows?
That said, that person should not be encouraging the septics from the previous grouping in their ignorance, because he knows better.
Carrot–
Ok. If you just want to discuss the difficulty of binning people, that’s fair enough. I agree with you that it’s very difficult to do it in any meaningful way.
I’m not quite sure what “encouraging the septics” means. If it means leading someone to believe that the greenhouse effect violates the 2nd law of thermo, than I agree no one should do that. But, if someone did find good evidence that the climate sensitivity is 1.5 per doubled CO2, the would presumably be explaining their theory and evidence repeatedly. I assume this is ok, right?
When I say encouraging, I mean associating with the lay-sceptics (either online or offline) without trying to educate them on the sillier stuff (like the Second Law stuff). Remaining silent on those matters, while associating with them, seems like poor form to me.
To be fair, and to their credit, some sceptic bloggers undertake this sort of thing from time to time – trying to educate their more rabid readers about some aspect of ‘mainstream’ science that they have accepted.
Atomic Hairdryer (Comment#46934) June 25th, 2010 at 10:55 am
Being a skeptic means you want to see the evidence for something. The IPCC provides mountains of evidence, and outside the IPCC, there is even more evidence that supports AGW. The ‘skeptics’, however, don’t seem to come up with much at all in the way of evidence. That is what this paper is saying. Quibbling about the methodology may have some points that are correct, but the figures are so overwhelming, redoing it won’t change anything.
bugs. Indeed. Being a sceptic means I want to see evidence. Being a sceptic means I become more sceptical when I see attempts to uncover evidence obstructed, or when I see attempts like the PNAS paper to quantify appeals to authority. It isn’t really the sceptics job to help sell AGW, or policies linked to AGW. It’s the ‘CE’s job to sell it to us, and where they are failing with people like me.
To me, the figures are not overwhelming and there is still plenty of uncertainty. Yet we get the AGW advocates telling us the science is supposedly settled, and it’s now time to help their business plans.
An extremely sceptical view may be that if the evidence in AR4 is so compelling, why are we wasting money on AR5, and why aren’t we cutting funding for work on detection and attribution?
So I think if we don’t understand something, it’s right to ask questions. On blogs like this, we’re (or at least I’m) lucky to have Lucia and others who will explain things. If a story or paper hits the blogosphere, various bloggers will analyse and interpret it. People may comment on it, challenge and question it. I might ask questions. I learn. Science is about spreading knowledge as well as advancing it, isn’t it? If something is explained, I may shift from being sceptical towards the ‘CE’ position. If debate is closed down, I’ll likely remain sceptical.
Initially when I started following the AGW story, I didn’t understand the statistical ninjutsu involved with unravelling the Hockey Stick story because I’m not a statistician. Lucia explained aspects of it in a way I understood, along with other stats elements. That, plus doing some of my own homework means I think I understood most of the great ‘Unit Root’ debate. In understanding the nuances of climate science, isn’t the open approach better to quell scepticism?
“Being a skeptic means you want to see the evidence for something. The IPCC provides mountains of evidence, and outside the IPCC, there is even more evidence that supports AGW. The ‘skeptics’, however, don’t seem to come up with much at all in the way of evidence. That is what this paper is saying. Quibbling about the methodology may have some points that are correct, but the figures are so overwhelming, redoing it won’t change anything.”
BUGS: YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG HUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUEHUE.
1) “IPCC provides … evidence” It isn’t a “skeptics'” intent or purpose to stop at “evidence” and rightly so. The 286 scientific articles of Blondlot and Co. could be seen as evidence of N-rays, right? Oh, sorry, that sad tale is just a case of experimenter bias, not pertinent here at all. The Bible is used as evidence for many things also, isn’t it? Oh, sorry, that’s just faith in a collection of unquestion(able) evidence, not pertinent here at all.
Questioning the (IPCC, AGW crowd, warmists, greenies, progressives, insert your venom here) is proper behaviour for all mankind, just like questioning (oil company shills, conservatives, guntoting rednecks, dirty racist white men, skeptics, insert your venom here.) Don’t ever pretend it isn’t and shouldn’t be, or you’re just a salesman.
2) “Skeptics don’t come up with much in the way of evidence…” Sorry, I am skeptical of this claim. Any chance you could demonstrate this point using evidence? That you are not convinced of something does not mean there is no or little evidence to support it, it only means your opinions are filtered.
I hope everyone saw the response to this latest climate scientist advocate alarmist nonsense at Roger Pielke Jr’s blog:
http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2010/06/peter-webster-on-pnas-paper-very-likely.html
I’m a lay person, and from “hide the decline” to this “skeptics blacklist”… I just have to wonder how it is that I’m the little layperson here and the people doing this sort of thing are supposed to be intelligent.
Best
Alex
(A long time lurker here.)
Cringeworthy backpeddeling from Watts.
And that following from the childish victimhood hyperbole compairing the status of climate “sceptics” with the status of the Jews in Nazi Germany.
lucia: “I’m not quite sure what “encouraging the septics†means.”
I’m not sure either. Failing to pull an infected central line? Poor handwashing compliance? Lack of a good sterile field in surgery?
“It’s the ‘CE’s job to sell it to us, and where they are failing with people like me.”
No, it’s not. Scientists’ job is to do good science, not sell it to the ignorant. Overcoming your capacity to ignore the data is not the test of scientific truth. There are always going to be people who ignore science for a variety of reasons, especially in America. You have your creationists, your lunar landing conspiracy theorists, your vaccine refusers, and of course your climate pseudoskeptics. It’s not lack of evidence that makes people attach themselves to irrational beliefs. It’s their own emotional and psychosocial makeup.