
David Brin: Distinguishing Climate "Deniers" From "Skeptics" - MaysonL
http://davidbrin.blogspot.com/2010/02/distinguishing-climate-deniers-from.html
======
cletus
As someone who deeply respects David Brin (the author), I am deeply
disappointed in this post.

The tipping point was the tired dogma of the Fox-Limbaugh conspiracy. If they
say something that's wrong, it's wrong because it's wrong, not because of who
said it. The so-called "conspiracy" of "Saudi princes", "Russian oil
interests" and other "petro-moguls" is just populist claptrap basically.

It's far easier to kill the messenger. As Homer Simpson said "let's go burn
down the observatory so this never happens again" (after the meteor strike).

Not that I'm saying Fox isn't or can't be biased but to dismiss everything
they ever broadcast just because it's Fox is a far more untenable and
ludicrous position.

The bias here is even more obvious when a comparison is made between those
skeptical of HGCC to the tobacco proponents of years gone past.

Apart from the obvious emotional connotations this attempts to conjure let me
put it this way: the Roman Catholic Church was wrong and Galileo was right.
But that doesn't _automatically_ make Catholics wrong in any subsequent
dispute.

The biggest fallout from the CRU email hack was how it shone a light on what
is basically a subversion of the scientific process: prestigious journals
failing to enforce their standards (Nature requires publication of raw data
but published AGW articles without it and ignored requests by third parties
for Nature to procure it from the authors), blacklisting of journals that
publish climate-skeptic works (mcCarthyism basically), failure of the peer
review process, selective sampling, obstructionism and deliberate efforts to
defeat FOI requests.

This alone should be serious cause for concern from anbody regardless of their
position as global policy and billions of dollars are being committed to what
is at best a questionable scientific process.

The onus isn't on skeptics to prove AGWists wrong. AGWists have postulated an
hypothesis and the burden on them is to prove it. Creationists fall victim to
similar fallacies.

~~~
lionhearted
> The so-called "conspiracy" of "Saudi princes", "Russian oil interests" and
> other "petro-moguls" is just populist claptrap basically.

It's amazing that a person can make the claim that it's ridiculous that there
could be any widespread foul play amongst mainstream climate scientists - what
are you, some kind of conspiracy nut? Then in the same piece, the person will
turn around and point out that it's incredibly obvious that there must be
widespread foul play and collusion between oil producers, Saudi Princes, the
Republican Party, and Fox News.

How do they do that with a straight face? Climate science is a much smaller,
much more unified community with only a few major journals and a generally
accepted and favorable political position. Industry, politics, media, and
foreign governments have widely different and diverging goals. So they claim
it's impossible that the small, similarly backgrounded group with similar
goals colludes and you'd be a conspiracy nut for even suggesting that it might
be possible. And at the same time, they claim it's incredibly obvious that the
large, not unified, competing goals groups are colluding. How the heck do they
do that with a straight face?

~~~
cletus
> It's amazing that a person can make the claim that it's ridiculous that
> there could be any widespread foul play amongst mainstream climate
> scientists

Actually I referred to the CRU in particular. You know, the source of the
emails.

Pointing to share ownership (7%?) by Saudi princes as proof of anything is the
scientific equivalent of the boogeyman.

> Climate science is a much smaller, much more unified community

Some might argue that it's easier to collude the smaller the group gets.

My main point is that the so-called Climategate emails demonstrate a failure
of the scientific process. Lack of transparency is a huge problem that
everyone should be concerned about regardless of their position.

~~~
vannevar
You guys get that you're both on the same side, right? Climatologists are
conspiring to take over the world and all that? Just thought I'd save you some
time.

------
patio11
Is there a reciprocal duty on the part of responsible climate change
supporters to admit that data has been destroyed to prevent it from being
analyzed by skeptical researchers, and that there has been a explicit,
documented campaign to destroy the professional reputations of journals which
publish papers critical of what is often called the consensus?

If there is no such reciprocal obligation, I'd be interested in knowing why
not, because both of those are documented in the "Climategate" emails and
subsequent follow-on investigation. (e.g. The data that Jones threatened to
destroy rather than allow to get hit with a Freedom of Information request was
indeed requested and is, indeed, beyond recovery.)

~~~
necubi
Yes, there have been mistakes and imperfect scientists working on climate
change. But you can find such foibles in nearly every scientific field—and
very rarely do they shake the foundations.

For example: evolution. I hope we can all agree that evolution and natural
selection form a stunningly successful model of the diversity found in the
natural world. This is the position of virtually every biologist and is really
only opposed by fundamentalist crazies. Despite this, there have been many
mistakes in the history of evolution (for example, the Piltdown Man) that have
served to weaken its public credible. However, despite these errors there was
never anything fundamentally wrong with the underlying theory.

Scientists make mistakes, for both good reasons and bad. But to use a few
isolated incidents to cast aspersions on an entire field suggests that you
have already come to a conclusion and are looking for evidence, however
tenuous, to support it. Your criticisms are at their heart intellectually
vacuous and are not sufficient to cast down decades of research by thousands
of very smart, dedicated people.

~~~
cletus
"Making mistakes" as you call it is a white wash.

Refusing to publish data, actively obstructing efforts to get that data,
selective sampling and black-box "massaging" of raw data essentially
invalidate any conclusion drawn from that data.

The essence of the scientific process is reproducability. Anything that isn't
reproducible or at least testable is worthless. Anything built on it is
worthless.

It's like some physicist somewhere announcing to the world "I've proven the
existence of the Higgs Boson" and then refusing to tell you how he did it.

~~~
cromulent
In relation to the physicist analogy, isn't there in this case a lot of other
physicists saying that they saw similar things?

~~~
fleitz
Science is not a democracy. It's a method for deriving knowledge from
observation. We need the observations to evaluate the conclusions, not a bunch
of hearsay. If other scientists are seeing the same things they should provide
the data and methodology so that it can be evaluated independently.

~~~
cromulent
That's true - science is a method for deriving knowledge from observation. So,
if many scientists are observing, one scientists' secrecy and falsification
does not make the other findings "worthless".

------
TomOfTTB
To me it's those who feel the need to label that are the problem. If someone
is making an easily refutable argument than refute it. That's how an
intelligent, civilized person makes their case.

Name calling is the tool of children and the irrational

------
ErrantX
Well I am not sure it is 100% consensus (there are dissenters); so this seems
to fall for some of it's own fallacies. :-p

~~~
Adam503
There's not 100% consensus the sun will rise in the morning or that Earth is
round.

Not to mention the embarrassing fact of how many Americans truly believe
dinosaurs and cavemen were on the Earth at the same time about 6,500 years
ago.

~~~
ErrantX
Agreed. But I was more concerned with his continued use of "100% consensus" -
it felt like a "shouty argument" and out of place in a piece which was
discussing the rationality of the skeptics argument :)

------
CulturalNgineer
If we look at the arguments for or against vigorous action on climate change,
there really is an overwhelming weight on the side of taking action.

And that's the case even if the climate change argument were a weak one (and
it isn't) since the remedies have so many ancillary benefits. In truth, most
(though not all) offered solutions should appeal to both deniers and skeptics
for reasons having nothing to do with climate.

Yet meaningful action seems impossible.

So we come to this:

If the weight on one side of the teeter-totter is overwhelming,

And yet the teeter-totter won't budge leaving good solutions in the air and
stagnation firmly rooted...

Then we must consider that the teeter-totter is broken and/or a new fulcrum is
needed.

I'm not trying to be mysterious here. It just seems a good analogy.

In which case, the solution isn't piling on more good arguments...

It's to find out what's wrong with the teeter-totter and get to fixing it.

~~~
azgolfer
And if the teeter totter shows he is as light as a duck, burn the denialist !

------
nkurz
I'm tired of all the labeling, and I don't care much for the article with it's
circular argument about 100% consensus among all experts. But I'm all for his
proposal of common ground:

"we need more efficiency and sustainability, desperately, in order to regain
energy independence, improve productivity, erase the huge leverage of hostile
foreign petro-powers, reduce pollution, secure our defense, prevent ocean
acidification, and ease a vampiric drain on our economy."

I could quibble with some of his colorful language (eg, how desperately?), but
the principle seems sound: we would benefit from greater energy efficiency and
improvements in alternative energy sources regardless of their effect on
global warming. Is there anyone here (either side) who disagrees with this? If
so, why?

~~~
wedesoft
Hoping that the politicians will do the right decisions for the wrong reason
won't do. The AGW scare has compelled governments to direct resources towards
reducing CO2 while neglecting other environmental issues. The lower bound of
food prices has doubled because more bio fuel means less food and this is
causing death and starvation in third world countries. A lot of windfarms have
been built which is probably the most expensive and most unreliable source of
energy on the planet. Furthermore projects about geological carbon storage
(pumping CO2 underground) are currently being planned. And then there is Cap
And Trade and the Carbon Swaps. The tax payers will not be able to get rid of
this schemes as long as CO2 is used as a benchmark for measuring environmental
impact.

------
akamaka
This particular argument is stupid and pointless.

To an intelligent person who understands the basic principles of the
greenhouse effect, the real questions are "How much?" and "How fast?"

My understanding of climate science is that we don't yet have accurate enough
models to make anything more than wild estimates of the economic costs of
climate change.

Once we do have such data, nobody will care about what David Brin said.

~~~
Tichy
"My understanding of climate science is"

Care to elaborate what your understanding of climate science is?

~~~
akamaka
"My understanding" means what I understand of it, which obviously not very
much, because I'm not a researcher myself.

