- Climate Wars
- Icing Asher
- Never Debate
Climate Wars
The CBC ‘Ideas’ series is presenting Gwynne Dyer’s “Climate Wars.” Fortunately a friend alerted me to it at the last moment and I managed to catch Part 1, and based on that I am recommending it to all.
“Global warming is moving much more quickly than scientists thought it would. Even if the biggest current and prospective emitters – the United States, China and India – were to slam on the brakes today, the earth would continue to heat up for decades.
cbc.ca — At best, we may be able to slow things down and deal with the consequences, without social and political breakdown. Gwynne Dyer examines several radical short- and medium-term measures now being considered – all of them controversial. Climate Wars – January 14, 21, 28, 2009”
Unfortunately Part 1 has already aired, but it becomes available as podcast Monday Jan 19th so you can still hear it (for a month anyway). The rest of the series is as scheduled on the page linked, or by podcast.
More Icing on debunking Asher
I have added a couple of updates to the debunking of Michael Asher’s bogus claim that “Sea Ice Ends Year at Same Level as 1979“, viz
Tamino has done a lovely job exposing Asher’s con job with his Cold Hard Facts piece:
and Peter Sinclair has also debunked it in video format:
Explain, apologise, but never debate
Intelligence Squared US hosted a debate on the question “Major reductions in carbon emissions are not worth the money”
Major reductions in carbon emissions are not worth the money
Date 1/13/2009 VotesOnline
Poll
Before
Debate
After
Debate
For 67.19 % 15.66 % 41.90 % Against 29.65 % 49.40 % 47.71 % Undecided 3.15 % 34.94 % 10.40 %
What do you notice? A few things stand out for me.
i) The original audience was almost 50% favour taking action, followed 35% Undecided, and only 15% favouring no action.
ii) After the debate the original audience was almost evenly split between for and against.
iii) The web voters overwhelming favour taking no action by 2:1.
The initial audience composition of the audience is interesting in that it doesn’t reflect the population demographics with respect to the issue. I suspect that the fact of the matter is that anyone who is going to spend an evening watching a debate, never mind drop $40 to do it, believes the issue is an important one.
The web poll is somewhat skewed the other way, but I suspect that this reflects in part the fact that word went out to the Denialosphere to go and vote. I detected no such effort on behalf of the climate realists.
Given that, I am not really sure what the initial Against/Undecided/For division means in practice, nor what conclusions we should draw from it beyond what I have to say below.
Needless to say the Denier crowd is making much of points ii) and iii), specifically that a) the “skeptics” won the debate, and b) that all of the undecideds and almost none of those favouring action on climate change were influenced by the debate, ie we are such brainless zealots that facts have no influence on us (eg here).
I blogged earlier that climate realists should never debate.
While “debating” may be a wonderful part of civic discourse, public “Debates” are another matter entirely. They are not about determining what is correct or true, instead they are a type of theatre and the best performer will “win”.
Debates are only a level playing field if both sides have the same regard (or disregard) for the truth. Ten minutes spent in the Denialosphere is all you need to see how little regard they have for facts or truth.
A standard tactic they use is the “the Gish Gallop”, ie pump out as much drivel as quickly as possible with a sense of absolute certainty to simply overwhelm the opposition.
Picking the most prominent of the “For” team, let’s have a quick look at Bjorn Lomborg. John Mashey has a new post “BJORN LOMBORG, Wizard of misdirection & Reincarnation of Julian Simon” over at The Way Things Break that looks at Lomborg’s principle tactics.
I would also recommend Kåre Fog’s website devoted to the errors of Lomborg, not to mention Real Climate’s collection of posts debunking Lomborg, and here are some more I have found.
There is another simple explanation as to why the climate propoenents were not influenced by the debate. I would like to suggest that they were probably more educated about this issue, and hence not disposed to believe the blizzard of bullshit that got thrown at them.
On the other hand those in the Undecided group would be very susceptible to what appears to be a mountain of evidence, but is in fact merely a large heap of something.
As mentioned, I may get around to dissecting the actual transcript and demonstrating the truth of what I suggest here, or not.
Regardless, never debate! It is a popularity contest between those expressing the complexity and uncertainty of reality versus the charisma of absolute certainty in an ideology, and we know who wins those.
That is why Deniers always want public debates rather than simply referring to the facts and evidence. They cannot win the latter, and they almost always win the former, so it’s not much of a choice for them, nor for us.
We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.
Denier “Challenge” aka Deathwatch Update: Day 88 … still no evidence.
IMAGE CREDITS
[…] Read the rest of this superb post right here […]
Problem: when all the good debaters for the affirmative decline to debate, then what happens? [1]
I wonder what the impact would be if the debating statement was reversed? “Not reducing carbon emissions will damage the economy” or something… The whole idea of making a dichotomy out of any multi-faceted issue is fairly repugnant in the first place though…[2]
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Debating denialists is always a mistake. Debates are not about determining truth, but about winning. The denialists who engaged in these “debates” are expert debaters who do not care about the truth even when they are genuine scientists. The average person cannot become informed about climate science through such events.
The best thing to do with dentialists is to treat them the same as flat-earthers, evolution deniers, and moon-landing conspiracists. Those of us who honestly care about the science, the honest scientists, journalists and bloggers, should write and speak about the science whether it be in technical or popular terms. If we do that enough, eventually enough people will understand the fundamentals to see through the denialists lies and disinformation.
It is important to remember what the quote on Jules’ Klimaatblog says:
http://jules-klimaat.blogspot.com/
“The target audience of denialism is the lay audience, not scientists. It’s made up to look like science, but it’s PR.” (David Archer)
The lay audience should be our target too, although, because of the nature of what we wish to achieve with them, (help them to understand the science) we will need to do it honestly and with integrity.
For the denialists, this is an ideological battle and defeat of the Evil that is the Enemy (Big Government, atheistic Liberals, Communists, supporters of One-World-Government) justifies any corruption of integrity and truth. We, who are committed to integrity and truth, should not help them by putting ourselves in situations where dishonesty and glibness are likely to have the advantage.
Blogging for the future at Climaticide Chronicles
htttp://climaticidechronicles.org/
Actually it’s not true that the inactivists always win debates.
It’s just that when they lose, they keep quiet about it.
Frank: “adjust for liberal bias“.
In the same vein that the psychology of denialism seems to have been approached from multiple angles of denialism, it’d be interesting to see if anyone has written anything on the psychology of apologists. It’s fairly clear that the usual rebuttal (“reality has a liberal bias”) isn’t working, while the converse (“[ideology of inactivist] does not agree with reality”) is essentially the general-case blanket argument against apologists.
(It’s also rather interesting that both theological apologists and climate inactivists seem to be driven by a unified psychological condition: Fundamentalism. The former is a theological fundamentalist, the latter is (usually) a free-market fundamentalist. There are some interesting observations on the *individual* psychology and behaviour of fundamentalists, but to my knowledge very little in the field of sociology on fundamentalism’s impact on culture or social issues. Then again, I could be wrong. Time to hit the social sciences journals again.)
I listen to the I Squared debates on podcasts for a variety of issues, and in every one that I recall, the side that started out with fewer votes picked up more votes than the side that started out with more. In other words, their success criteria is wrong, and instead should be measured against similar “before” results from other I Squared debates. [1]
I don’t necessarily agree that realists shouldn’t debate the other side, but if you debate someone deceptive like Lomborg, you need to be extra tough. Don’t go after skeptics in general as being deceptive [2], go after him specifically for the things he’s said and wrote in the past. Briefly explain and then ignore the Gish Gallop, but don’t let Lomborg escape his past, which is a stationary target.
I think creating an accurate public assessment of Lomborg’s credibility would be a useful outcome regardless of the vote outcome, and the unpleasant experience might rein him in a little for the future. [3] The downside is it won’t be pleasant for the realist, either.
My blathering on this subject:
http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2008/05/debating-against-climate-dishonesty.html [4]
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I should add that I’m not 100% convinced that my suggestion – specifically target the credibility of the specific debater on the other side who’s known to deceptive – will work. I’d just like to see it tried.
I’ve purchased the book Climate Wars and I managed to get to page 3…to Chapter 1. It’s already frightning.
A quote from the Introduction:
“We are not going to get through this without taking a lot of casualties, if we get through it at all.”
Tom: Climate Wars is a spectacular wake-up call. (For me, the oddest part was when I guessed which sources he was using for his opening chapter. He cited all of the reports I found on my own when looking for security/climate links.)
The perfect follow-up to it, though, is probably Bill McKibben’s Deep Economy. The methods mentioned there aim at changing philosophy before a collision with a runaway climate while at the same time bracing for any inevitable impact.
[…] It would be a chance to sell your snake oil sham direct to the public without fear of intelligent, informed comment. I have discussed why liars and frauds prefer the public debate format here and here. […]
Well, I quantified it: 16 of 25 Intelligence Squared debates had the initial loser gain more votes, in 6 the reverse occurred, three were ties:
http://backseatdriving.blogspot.com/2009/02/intelligence-squared-debates-favor.html
I don’t think the results of the two climate debates tell us much about whether to debate.