The Top Ten BPSDB
Ben of Wott’s Up With That? commented on “Guide for dealing with the “Denier” label” that “the “skeptic” fig-leaf is what annoys me most about climate change deniers” which led me to respond that “And there is so much to choose from too. I wonder if I could pick which are the “Ten most infuriating climate change Denier scams.”
Which comes with the following caveats of course.
1) Is identifying the scams that most infuriate simply an invitation to even more of the same?
2) Is acknowledging (again) the obvious reality that:
-
-
- There are Deniers;
- They use scams & deceit etc rather than rational debate;
- It is infuriating.
-
simply polarizing?
3) Is this just an invitation to simply list (again) the:
Regardless, both feet into the fire … simply post your nomination as a comment. Should clear winners not emerge we will use the Poll function to hold a runoff to determine the top ten.
Nominations should include a tinyurl link to an example of scam in question (or a hand drawn facsimile thereof) [Offer void where prohibited by law].
Bonus Question(s):
Bonus Question #1: Who are the legitimate skeptics? of the names known to the climate blogosphere, who can be documented as consistently making rational, evidence based challenges to the core science as opposed to wallowing in denial?
Nominations should reflect the reality that:
- no one is perfect, having made some mistakes should not disqualify anyone;
- broken clocks are right twice a day; we do not want to include anyone who accidentally got it right a couple of times even though the bulk of their efforts are more properly described as denial.
Bonus Question #2: Do those actual skeptics own the Deniers (eg Monckton, Plimer, Lomborg etc) as being their intellectual brethren? (explicit embracing only, failure to distance oneself does not count as acknowledgment)
Contest void with respect to those engaged normal scientific enquirey since skepticism is the scientific norm & hence just about every scientist whose work is remotely related to climate change would be on the list – we are looking for efforts above and beyond the professional norms.
NB: Joke nominations (eg Monckton, Carter, Plimer, Lomborg, Dyson, Coleman etc) will simply be deleted.
We give our consent every moment that we do not resist.
Comment Policy
- The “Mostly” Open Thread” is for general climate discussion that is not relevant to a particular post. Spam and abuse rules still apply;
- The “Challenging the Core Science” Comment Thread is for comments that purport to challenge the core science of anthropogenic climate change.
Not quite on topic (that would require some thought). But I’d be interested in knowing – has anyone on the denial/legitimate skeptic side ever acknowledged that oil or coal industry funding would be a problematic conflict of interest?
I think that that has got to be a necessary (though not sufficient) precondition for being regarded an actual skeptic.
—-
Potential is certainly fair enough, I should have put that in. I was thinking primarily of the think tank activities – blogs like WUWT frequently repost and promote their stuff.
The existence of a conflict of interest (potential or real) is not a counterargument, but it is relevant and ought to be acknowledged, imo.
—-
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by greenfyre. greenfyre said: The ten most infuriating climate change Denier scams: http://t.co/hfT6R8o #climatechange #climate #globalwarming […]
“mememine” is a serial climate zombie who I have encountered posting on numerous comment threads. The guy is wacky and nasty. Here’s one of his recent posts.
“THE DENIERS HAVE WON
1. While our emissions drop, CO2 levels still continue to rise and obviously no unstoppable warming after 25 years of predictions.
2. historic cold in Europe
3. ocean surface temperatures are dropping
4. 2010 was a record year for voters rejecting the CO2 mistake.
5. 2010 was a big year for volcanic activity
6. floods in Australia caused by La Niña — ocean cooling
7. low jet stream in Europe.
The Deniers Have Won.
I suggest that you all calm down and stop throwing your purses in a huff. Take a deep breath. Promised run away unstoppable warming isn’t real after all. Be happy.
So the climate deniers have won, so what? Climate change is dead, so what? You bet on the wrong horse, it happens. You must accept the truth that you were deceived by your Environmental Studies Prof and your Starbucks drinking Fine-Arts friends. You can simply stay in a small shrinking clutch of head in the sand climate alarmists and continue to drink the watery Kool-Aid or move on like the rest us living in the real world. Grow some. Get over it. We are stereotyping ourselves as whiney and petty liberals. Let’s redefine ourselves and stand on our principles, not on our butts pointing fingers like children. Let’s be real liberals again who doubt, question and challenge authority, not legitimize it and issue CO2 death threats to our very own children with sickening glee! Pollution is real. We get it. The world is not ending and we as progressives can now face the challenges of the future with courage and optimism.”
http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0111/47106.html#ixzz1APRIahOG
—-
That wouldn’t be argumentum ad nauseam, but closer to a Gish gallop (which is very common amongst denialists of all stripes).
Mememine: “…issue CO2 death threats to our very own children with sickening glee”
Is this guy for real?
—-
Unfortunately, “memmine” is for real and posts on numerous mass media websites.
He/she also uses a variation of the name — I suspect because he/she has been banned from some sites under the name, “mememine.”
He/she is a pro and many times is the first post on an article.
One of his/her gaols is to rile up pro-AGW posters like us in hopes that we loose our temper. If we do, then he/she and his/her cohorts swoop in and get us banned from posting on the website.
I speak from personal experience.
re what tactics?
Four main.
1) Argues that there is no need for anyone to look at the science (dismisses), so has popular appeal.
2) Argues that any self-respecting Liberal with an appreciation of how science largely got us into this mess and is concerned about their children and is against the war in Iraq will reject climate change. A twist on the more common simple-minded libertarianism of so much of the non-professional climate change denialist beliefs on the net.
3) Argues a vague conspiracy theory with confused logic that can go unnoticed due to high language skills, but amounts to: scientists are pretending there is a mess, and want to address this mess even though it doesn’t exist.
4) Last but certainly not least, attempts to manipulate public emotion about horrible things. He frequently compares climate scientists to priests who abuse children (‘alter boys’).
And for anyone who wonders about this individuals’ gender – this is a male who believes he is really smart and loves to argue his personal opinions (shadowbox).
If I weren’t so concerned about the overriding issue of communication on climate change, I might be concerned about the features of climate change denial on the internet that seem to be related to some features of boys’ socialization (gone wrong).
cheers
—-
One of the more infuriating denier claims, usually a fall-back position after prior idiotic comments were shown for what they were, is that humans can’t cause climate change because climate change is natural.
The implication is that humans are somehow not natural (without specifying what humans are, if not natural), and that the ‘not natural’ cannot have any influence on the ‘natural’ (ignoring the myriad evidence to the contrary, eg artificial insemination, in vitro fertilisation, disease control, flood mitigation, smog, fire etc etc).
It also implies that CO2 that humans toss into the air is not ‘natural’ and that only only that portion of the air that is ‘natural’ CO2 will elicit the greenhouse effect. The portion emitted by humans will be inert.
Variations of the theme are ‘it’s a natural cycle’, ‘we can’t change nature’, ‘to think that ‘man’ (never woman, I note) can control nature is absurd’, ‘nature will do her own thing’ etc etc.
I’m wondering if this has some sort of religious basis where they interpret (or more probably misinterpret) their faith’s teachings to mean that humans are not natural. This could fit with fundamental creationists who, as I understand it, believe that humans were created simultaneously with everything else in all universes and are somehow separate from other ‘natural’ entities. It also fits with the abnormal view that the human species is not part of the animal kingdom.
—-
1) I accuse you of doing what I am about to do. This gets my vote.
Others that are annoying.
2) Never permanently retire an argument. Just how many times are we going to see those discredited memes
3) Ignore your teams inconsistencies. Or better still, just switch as necessary. Its the sun its the sun, its cosmic rays its cosmic rays, its the sun.
4) Ignore what was said yesterday. 1998 is an extreme outlier, it has been cooling since 1998. No mention of how an extreme outlier has become normal.
10 most annoying denier crocks
1. It’s within natural variation
2. Hal Lewis admitted it
3. Climategate proves there is no warming
4. Al Gore is a hypocrite & profiteer
5. Cooling was predicted in the 70s
6. Even if AGW is true, it still doesn’t justify regulation
7. IPCC is full of non-scientists
8. Besides, scientists don’t know everything, but it’s OK when WE cite non-scientists.
9. There’s snow fall, drop in temperature, cooling trend, _______ (insert a small area or short amount of years as an anecdotal example)
10. Models are hypothesis and not observed! Anybody can make ANY model they like (but we as deniers don’t even bother making our own realist projections)
As to point 5, expect in a few years that some will point out that “cooling was predicted in 2010!”, with references to such scientific greats as Abdussamatov, (Don) Easterbrook (not to be confused with Steve), and the distortion of Keenlyside/Latif’s work.
So we need to push alarmism more to prevent such rumors from surfacing?
—-
I was sarcastic , sorry 🙂
—-
re bonus question #1. Apart from climate scientists themselves who are the most legitimate skeptics of all when it comes to climate science, it’s virtually impossible to name a legitimate climate ‘skeptic’. At least not one who consistently challenges climate science legitimately (in the sense that they find fault with it).
This is because legitimate skeptics are transient and fit that description for a very short time. Very soon after they start to explore the climate issue they accept the core scientific findings of the last couple of hundred years and would no longer accept the label of climate ‘skeptic’.
Thereafter they maintain a skeptical attitude (as opposed to being climate ‘skeptics’) as they always have, questioning what they read and doing the necessary research in matters in which they have an interest.
If pressed, I’d say almost all climate scientists are legitimate climate skeptics, with the expertise and means to examine what they question.
(I use the word ‘skeptic’ in quote marks to distinguish climate ‘skeptics’ (aka deniers) from people who don’t take all they read as true and question a lot then explore further what they question.)
Follow up to bonus question #1
Okay, I just realised that climate scientists are excluded from the bonus questions. So perhaps Nick Barnes and his collaborators at Clear Climate Code would fit the bill. They are arguably outside the mainstream climate science. And re bonus question #2 – I can’t see anywhere that those on the CCC team have allied themselves with deniers.
—-
“Nominations should be reflect the reality that:
no one is perfect, having made some mistakes should not disqualify anyone;”
How nice of you to use clause one to adduce clause two! Was the appalling grammar in clause three really necessary though?
—-
“1934 was as warm as 1998”, or silently switching to the US record of temperatures, while everybody else is talking about the global situation.
—-
I nominate Jastrow, Nierenberg and Seitz 1991, which was also presented at the White house and likely had significant political impact. The three gentleman from the George C Marshall-insititute took a graph by Hansen et al that compared temperature to the forcing from CO2, then CO2+volcanoes, and then CO2+volcanoes+sun. The first one shows a so-so correlation, but the last one shows quite a good correlation. They then only kept the temp vs CO2 part of the graph and cut away the rest, and argued that this showed that CO2 wasn’t causing the warming. This was quite contradictory to the rest of the graph, which they had cut away.
—-
I nominate them (or rather their argument) to the scam, not to the legitimate skeptics.
—-
I don’t think this one has been mentioned yet as an annoying “skeptic” scam: The insinuation that climate scientists have a financial incentive to bias their results towards confirmation of global warming — i.e. they’re just chasing funding.
I find it particularly vile — but effective! — because it cuts to what I think is a fundamental goal of the skeptic movement: the notion that scientists can’t be trusted. Right now, trust in scientists is still high, but rhetorical moves like this erode that trust slowly but surely.
—-
why talk about climate scientists’ financial incentive when you can talk about Al Gore (a non-scientist) and David Mayer de Rothschild’s financial incentives?
But yes, as if deniers don’t have financial incentives.
Some even are stupid enough to claim that Shell & Exxon respectively support a carbon regulation (as if they chose it over non-regulation)
Or the idea that ideology is itself a conflict of interest. Or the idea that believing we should do something about global warming is inherently political and clear evidence of ideology.
Or that believing in global warming is necessary to support some ideology. There is no ideology in the world that would be contradicted by non-existence of global warming, any more than it is a major problem for any ideology that there is no good reason for government to require that all toothpaste be colored pink.
But there is an ideology contradicted by the existence of global warming — Rand’s Objectivism is premised on the idea that there are two ways someone else can affect you — through mutual agreements, and through coercion via violence or threat of violence (and this includes convincing the government to pass and enforce a law). Of course that ideology is contradicted by the existence of any environmental problem.
Rand’s view is nothing special, it’s basically saying, people get you to do something , either by persuasion or by force.
“Might makes right” unless somebody convinces you that violence isn’t necessary and you just obey.
Environmental problem is not an example of “another person” affecting you.
You took the words right out of my mouth.
Also keep in mind that conservatives have a long-standing dilslike of college professors because the majority have a liberal bent. Rush Limbaugh has been ranting about this for years.
Most of the die-hard anti-AGW bloggers have been thoroughly indoctrinated by Limbaugh and his ilk and by FOX News. They have indeed become “zombies” and hate anyone they perceive to be an “elite.”
but of course, its ok when THEY are indoctrinated, brainwashed, programmed for automated soundbytes.
Alex Jones is wrong on every issue to them, except global warming.
“Phil Jones says there has been no warming since 1995” has to be right up there. His remarks have not just been misrepresented but the question was framed specifically to produce an answer which made such misrepresentation possible.
Oh man, I just had an infuriating argument about this one with a commenter at The Hill, though the infuriation had more to do with his dogged refusal to either acknowledge my points or attempt to rebut them than the point itself.
Generally, though, statistically illiterate arguments (Arctic ice recovery since 2007! Cooling since 1998!) are infuriating because there is only so much you can teach someone about statistics in a blog comment thread. I do wish schools made sure everyone learned statistics, even if it came at the expense of calculus, useful as I’ve found that subject. We live in the age of too much information, and a solid understanding of statistics can be useful to anyone regardless of profession just in understanding what to do with all the information we receive in everyday life.
—-
For what it’s worth, here’s what my standard post on this topic would be.
“When you read Phil Jones’ actual words, you see he’s saying there is a warming trend but it’s not statistically significant. He’s not talking about whether warming is actually happening. He’s discussing our ability to detect that warming trend in a noisy signal over a short period.”
Source:”Phil Jones says no global warming since 1995”, John Cook, Skeptical Science, June 26, 2010
http://www.skepticalscience.com/Phil-Jones-says-no-global-warming-since-1995.htm
Phil Jones replies: “The key statement here is ‘not statistically significant’. It wasn’t for these years at the 95% level, but it would have been at the 90% level. If you add the value of 0.52 in for 2010 and look at 1995 to 2010 then the warming is statistically significant at the 95% level.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/dec/08/david-rose-climate-science
I guess Roy Spencer and John Christie are the nearest we have to climate scientists who believe that AGW is widely exaggerated (although must have some effect). The former has a blog. I would have included Linzden amongst them, but his latest exploits have discredited him totally.
I’m sure someone can find a case for demoting Christie and Spencer to Denier status. This would be a shame though as I think having a few genuine contrarians can be useful even if AGW is >95% certain.
The risk is if the genuine climate community become entirely polarised a contrarian might be the first to spot any genuine evidence to oppose the consensus.
Click to access The_failures_part_1.pdf
here’s a good summary of the top 10 failures
—-
The IPCC modeling clearly predicts a climate scenario that resembles reality about as closely as eugenics did in the early twentieth century. The hypothesis of AGW is based on a modeling assumption of climate ultra-sensitivity, which it is becoming clear climate is not. The rise in CO2 has continued even as the global ‘mean’ temperature has declined slightly, something not modeled or explained by the IPCC politicians, let alone the continued absence of a predicted ‘hot spot’.
The widespread corruption of temperature data, the email climategate scandal, the labeling of those that would have the temerity to present a counter argument and to show that the science is by no means settled – let alone established – and to describe them as ‘deniers’ speaks only to a politics of a dogmatic, politically correct eco-theocracy.
This phenomena is a new age totalitarianism doomed to failure as it believes, in spite of the evidence to the contrary, that it is in a position to ‘do’ anything about natural climate cycles. Clutching at rhetoric, doomsaying, and hockey sticks will become the last gasping breath of the flat earthers, when people finally realise the cost of believing in politics rather than the evidence of science and not, incidentally, the scientific consensus, an oxymoronic statement if ever there were one.
—-
If Manfred is interested in getting all his claims refuted, he should ask. I’d gladly do so. However, I’m afraid this is yet another “hit-and-run” bot. A sane human being can’t be this wrong on all accounts…
—–
Predictable.
As denialists of usual climate oscillations, who assert that it is not ‘business as usual’ – provide me with five key references that ‘prove’ AGW (to your satisfaction that the science is ‘settled’) and that we can actually do anything meaningful and cost effective to avert the alleged ‘catastrophe’.
—-
“Usual climate oscillations”?
Fact is, science knows what causes those ‘oscillations’. One of the factors is CO2. At present, none of the other known factors can explain the increase in temperature (they’re pointing downwards, in fact, since about the middle of the last century). Enter CO2…
And if you really want something catastrophic: equilibrium ice melt with *current* temperatures will result in a sea level rise of many meters (5-10). We’re damn lucky that equilibrium will take many hundreds of years to be achieved.
—-