The Science of PR and non-Science of Climate Change Denial

This guy is "a public relations professional."

What do you think he knows about simulation of nonlinear, chaotic physical systems?

"While those who stand in denial of climate change have failed in the last 15 years to produce a single, peer-reviewed scientific journal article that challenges the theory and evidence of human-induced climate change..."

shows how much homework this guy has done.

It says a lot more about your inability to cope with any scientific evidence that conflicts with your dogmatic blinkered denier politics.

The deniers for hire are using exactly the same techniques as were pioneered by big tobacco to keep the suckers smoking and it works :( Some of the players have even worked as tobacco, CFC and AGW deniers.

It is actually a very good heuristic for spotting professional deniers for hire to look back and see what they had to say about any of:

seatbelts in cars save lives smoking tobacco causes cancer (and other lung damage) CFCs deplete the ozone layer

National Geographic has an article at the moment on the rise of antiscience in the USA and its pernicious hold on the general public.

The states cut a deal with the tobacco industry: give us a big chunk of the revenue, raise prices, and we'll both be happy.

So, past things like this make it impermissible to debate atmospheric physics?

"But few PR offences have been so obvious, so successful and so despicable as the attack on the scientific certainty of climate change."

Scientific certainty? Scientists can freely question quantum mechanics, relativity, the origin of the universe, the nature of superconductivity, the value of vitamins, the life of the proton, but they are not allowed to debate the behavior of a wildly nonlinear, chaotic system with poorly defined forcings? THE SCIENCE IS SETTLED!

Now THATs unscientific!

I never expected the average person to be scientific, but I'd prefer that scientists be scientific.

Chuckle. I somewhat question the value of the peer review process. When the church and the inquisition were peer reviewing science, there were many regretable incidents. I'm not sure that academia is much of an improvement as anything that questions mainstream science, tends to fail peer reviews. Still, the stuff that passes is are from perfect:

Retraction Watch:

'Crackpot' Theory of Everything Reveals Dark Side of Peer Review

Publishers withdraw more than 120 gibberish papers

and so on.

Really? And what do you know about it? It's not much of a venture to say absolutely nothing.

Maybe you missed the part about "that challenges the theory and evidence of human-induced climate change"? Do you understand the nuance there? I doubt it because he doesn't use a graph.

I expect that I've done a lot more nonlinear system simulation than that journalist guy. And a lot of temperature measurement. Chances are pretty good that the claimed "global warming" is instrumentation error.

Whenever anybody claims that the science is settled, you know that it isn't.

That guy is flogging his book, and simultaneously pans skeptics for their funding.

Actually, it shows how much homework you have done. There was at least one article that that claimed to be peer-reviewed, but the Climategate e-mails were all about how the editor who published the article had ignored four re ferees reports rejecting the rubbish. The editorial board of the journal re signed en masse when the case was exposed.

Fred Pearce who wrote "The Climate Files"

regarded the behaviour of the scientists involved in exposing the scam as a bit over the top, but Fred Pearce isn't a scientist, and doesn't appreciat e the general commitment of scientists to keeping the peer-reviewed literat ure clean.

The have been a few genuinely peer-reviewed papers - by Lindzen amongst oth ers - that attempted to challenge the orthodoxy, but they've all run into c onvincing counter-evidence.

As little as you do.

They alert the sophisticated reader that some of the stuff he reads about anthropogenic global warming may serve the interests of people making money of promoting anthropogenic global warming.

It isn't. That the earth is warming is a fact, and that the rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere are causing the rise is also a fact.

You can have all the silly ideas you like about the life-time of the proton, but global warming is something that we should be doing something about now. Denying that we need action now isn't defending scientific freedom - it's defending the right of the fossil carbon industry to make money now at the expense of everybody's future.

Global warming isn't chaotic - the short term fluctuation that make our weather are chaotic, but the business of shifting heat from the equator to the poles - which is what our weather is doing - is much more predictable.

You haven't got a clue about what's "scientific". You've been suckered by the denialist propaganda machine and lack the capacity for critical thinking required to see through it.

absolutely nothing.

You and Anthony Watts both believe. He didn't finish his university studies , and you didn't do any more than you had to. There's no chance that anthro pogenic global warming is an instrumentation error.

of human-induced climate change"? Do you understand the nuance there? I do ubt it because he doesn't use a graph.

"Settled" as in not subject to any change? Science depends on continuing sc epticism and keeps on finding better answers. Sadly for your point of view, the flexibility of science is more about the explanations than the facts b eing explained.

Anthropogenic global warming is real and significant. No new theory is goin g to make it go away, and putting more CO2 into the atmosphere is going to make it worse. There's some debate about exactly how much worse, but the ra nge is from disaster to catastrophe.

He not panning skeptics, but rather the denialist propaganda machine, which is deceitful rather than skeptical. If you'd paid more attention as a unde rgraduate you might now be able to work this out for yourself.

That's just a plain stupid statement. If nothing else, you can start paying attention to major shifts of habitat and populations of all the various lifeforms on the planet, any idiot can see that something major is happening.

For those that can spare 54 minutes, here's a audio file that claims Miami, FL is doomed within the century.

That statement is amazing. Major shifts? All life forms? Like the polar bears drowning? The sheep getting smaller? People migrating from Texas to the Northeast?

The "pause" in warming is correlated with satellite measurement, which, if not "corrected", should be pretty reliable. There are reasons that historical temperature measurements may not be accurate. Measuring outdoor air temperature accurately is very tricky.

Here's one indicator tracked by EPA:

Forget the crap temperature measurements, just watch the wildlife, they seem to outdo mankind predicting events like earthquakes and other natural disasters.

My cat refuses to go outside here in the northeast. With all the snow i fear we have crossed a tipping point And are headed for an ice age.

Rod Serling predicted all of this

Mark

There's plenty of evidence for "something major happening" in Los Angeles' La Brea Tar Pits.

Cheers, James Arthur

Wildlife populations were cited as classic chaotic processes, long before the current AGW craziness. You can find most any trend that you want to find.

The fact is that CO2 is good for plants, and plants are good for wildlife.

I had a chained-switcher charger on my bench last week. n~=90% for two cascaded stages. Pretty good, need better. With good DVMs, IR, thermocouples, and regulated supplies and loads, I still can't account for half the heat (5%). Goes in, doesn't come out.

Energy balance for a whole planet would be a lot harder, and less accurate.

We had these in LA:

Then, climate change struck. Prehistoric SUVs suspected. One million La Brea fossils agree: fossil fuels kill.

Cheers, James Arthur

Changing name from global warming to climate change is, in itself, scientific fraud. You dont get to change models 10 years after telling everyone they must believe your model. Fraud fraud fraud.

But "The models are so much better now."

You're behind the curve. It's now "climate disruption."

And CO2 is now a "pollutant."

And the whole thing is about #12 on the list of public concerns.