Climate Change Denialism

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There are two very important posts out there that I’d like to make you aware of related to climate change denialism. Here’s the teasers, please click through and read them. If you like them, tweet them!

First, from The Scientist, an opinion piece by Michael Mann, author of The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines:

Life as a Target: Attacks on my work aimed at undermining climate change science have turned me into a public figure. I have come to embrace that role.

As a climate scientist, I have seen my integrity perniciously attacked. Politicians have demanded I be fired from my job because of my work demonstrating the reality and threat of human-caused climate change. I’ve been subjected to congressional investigations by congressman in the pay of the fossil fuel industry and was the target of what The Washington Post referred to as a “witch hunt” by Virginia’s reactionary Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli. I have even received a number of anonymous death threats. My plight is dramatic, but unfortunately, it is not unique; climate scientists are regularly the subject of such attacks. This cynicism is part of a destructive public-relations campaign being waged by fossil fuel companies, front groups, and individuals aligned with them in an effort to discredit the science linking the burning of fossil fuels with potentially dangerous climate change…..

CLICK HERE to read the entire post.

The next item is related to a recent screw up by a commenter at Christian Science Monitor who accidentally took science denier Anthony Watt’s interview at Oilprice.com seriously (we discussed this here). This is a new interview at Oilprice.com with my friend and colleague Professor John Abraham:

Real Pragmatism for Real Climate Change: Interview with Dr. John Abraham

At a time when extreme weather incidents are causing billions in damages, businesses, governments and the public need the right information to make the right decisions. The bad news is that nature of superstorms like Hurricane Sandy has a human fingerprint. The good news is that if man is harming the climate, man can also do something about it….

CLICK HERE to read the entire interview. Anthony Watts has responded on his blog but if I put a link to it he will discover that I’ve written about him and instruct his winged monkeys to fill my comment section with hate.

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In Search of Sungudogo by Greg Laden, now in Kindle or Paperback
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36 thoughts on “Climate Change Denialism

  1. What is the desired climate for the planet?
    How fortunate is it that the climate was perfect before the industrial revolution?
    What is it the global warming folks want?
    Do they believe it enough to take action even if they can’t make you?
    With the planet at stake, how can there be any other issue?

  2. Greg: Note that WUWT has these sites on its blog roll.

    ?AccuWeather GW Blog
    ?Collide-a-scape – Keith Kloor
    ?Real Climate
    ?scienceofdoom
    ?Stoat – Connolley
    ?Tamino’s Open Mind

    I don’t recognize a single skeptic site in yours. Of course, you are not alone. None of the major AGW sites link to skeptics. Most of the skeptics do link to AGW sites.

    The question unanswered, is why is this?

  3. Why don’t I list “skeptics” sites on my blog roll? Because I think that the climate science deniers are doing a bad thing, spreading misinformation and lies, and also, behaving (in many cases) badly in other ways, such as threatening law suits or attempting to get criminal charges against scientists, etc. etc. It would be grossly irresponsible and highly unethical for me to put those sites on my blog roll.

  4. @LesJohnson – skeptics put AGW sites on their blog rolls because they’re not afraid of debate or presenting both sides. AGW sites don’t put skeptic sites in their blog rolls for the opposite reason.

  5. But why do skeptic sites put AGW site son their blog rolls?

    So their minions know where to go to whine and lie?

  6. Is it hateful to call someone a flying monkey?

    Wait, flying is good else how could I get to the climate conference… and monkeys are good too… primates and all, like prime or near the top and maybe able to carry on after Thermageddon, so thanks!

    Tom Nelson has got you linked, babe. So expect some decent traffic. Looks lonely here so don’t snip the hate. Isn’t traffic the whole point of blogging?

  7. Minions? Really?

    Here I thought it was to promote free and open discussion. To see other ideas and opinions, and to compare those ideas.

    No, really? Minions? Are we in a graphic novel?

  8. Greg, What apathetic and self-serving justification for not linking to skeptic Blogs. The truth is that you are a Religious Zealot and propagandist, beneath contempt.

  9. Interesting comment about “threatening lawsuits” Greg. I thought the only idiot carrying through with that was Michael “I’m a celebrity Nobel prize winner (NOT)” Mann.

  10. Greg: your

    such as threatening law suits

    You mean like Mann’s lawsuits?

    or attempting to get criminal charges against scientists,

    You mean like Suzuki, Kennedy or Hansen calling for scientists and politicians to be tried for crimes against the planet?

  11. Less [#5] … I don’t know, you would have to ask them, but one guess would be do that you could ask that question. It’s a bully tactic; establishing rules that don’t really exist then whinging when your victim does not obey said rules. That’s just a guess, though.

    OK, that will be all for the winged monkeys for now, thanks for proving my point!

  12. Perhaps some Denial blogs have links to sites which actually have science and facts (i.e. those sites that acknowledge the reality of AGW) because they want to appear more rational and serious? In this respect, it can’t happen the other way around (i.e. a site like this one linking to ones always harking on about cold temperatures and anything-but-CO2; whilst ignoring all warm temperature records and anything that confirms model predictions, etc : for example, WUWT) because it would be like Richard Dawkins’s site having links to Creationist nonsense.

  13. The world should have stopped taking Mann seriously way back when he wouldn’t share his data/methodology because people “were just going to try to find something wrong with it.” That’s not science.

    Their obdurate behavior is so strange no fiction editor would ever allow it. “This is the most important scientific study ever done, the fate of the world hangs in the balance… what? No you can’t check my work!” Not plausible.

    As others have said, I’ll believe this is a real issue when the people claiming that start acting like it.

    Oh, almost forgot: Haaaate! Haaaaaaaate! And your little dog too!

  14. This comment thread is epic. The sheer number of self-contradictory arguments being pushed by the deniers is enough to put creationists to shame.

  15. @Les # 5

    They do it for the same reason that Answers in Genesis used to link to TalkOrigins. They know their readers have drunk the koolaid so deeply that a little exposure to information won’t hurt them.

  16. TallDave–you might want to do some googling before spouting easily debunked nonsense.

    I suspect denier sites link to real science sites because they think it gives them some credibility. Judging by the comments here, it seems this tactic has fooled a few folks.

    Dr. Abrahams’s responses were very good, and straight to the point. It is getting easy to refute Watts by using Watts himself. E.g. for his latest PR piece on temp station siting problems, just quote what he said about the BEST study….it was something along the lines of dismissing the results of BEST because it hadn’t been accepted for publication yet. Never mind that lots of stuff he cites or pushes hasn’t been published either, including his latest release.

  17. Minions? Really?
    Here I thought it was to promote free and open discussion. To see other ideas and opinions, and to compare those ideas.
    No, really? Minions? Are we in a graphic novel?

    Since the deniers really aren’t concerned about scientific discussion, only repeating distortions, misrepresentations, and outright falsehoods about established science, minion is as good a word as any to describe them.

  18. TallDave wrote : ‘The world should have stopped taking Mann seriously way back when he wouldn’t share his data/methodology because people “were just going to try to find something wrong with it.” That’s not science.’

    And what you have written there doesn’t seem right, as far as I can tell. Can you provide a link to that quote from Mann ?

    TallDave wrote : ‘Their obdurate behavior is so strange no fiction editor would ever allow it. “This is the most important scientific study ever done, the fate of the world hangs in the balance… what? No you can’t check my work!” Not plausible.’

    I agree – your statement and quote is not plausible. Can you provide any links ?

    TallDave wrote : ‘As others have said, I’ll believe this is a real issue when the people claiming that start acting like it.’

    Can you provide a wish-list of what you wish these people to act like ?

  19. JMurphy, I think you are exposing your own wilingness to massage data. When plotted with sensible start/endpoints for each epoch you get:

    http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1990/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/to:2013/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1993/to:2000/trend

    Bear in mind that 1998 was characterised by a very strong El Nino event followed by a rapid cooling, and so should perhaps not be included in trends. Not that this affects the overall pattern. Furthermore it is hard to find any range that doesn’t give a near-flat line post 2001.

    Those are the facts as reported by all of the major climate analyses. Make of them what you will but don’t try to massage them away.

  20. JMurphy, I think you are exposing your own wilingness to massage data. When plotted with sensible start/endpoints for each epoch you get:

    http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1990/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001/to:2013/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1993/to:2000/trend

    Bear in mind that 1998 was characterised by a very strong El Nino event followed by a rapid cooling, and so should perhaps not be included in trends. Not that this affects the overall pattern. Furthermore it is hard to find any range that doesn’t give a near-flat line post 2001.

    Those are the facts as reported by all of the major climate analyses. Make of them what you will but don’t try to -ahem- deny them. Or massage them away.

  21. Anteaus, please see the post above mine, from Mike M, to which I was replying – using the same time period, but showing the trend.
    What massaging are you suggesting ?

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  23. It’s amazing how far some people go massaging the data to fabricate the results they WANT to get. When plotted with SENSIBLE start/endpoints for each epoch you get:

    http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1965.0/to:2013.1/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1965.0/to:1977.1/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1977.1/to:1987.0/trend/plot/hadcrut4tr/from:1987.0/to:1996.8/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:1996.8/to:2001.0/trend/plot/hadcrut4gl/from:2001.0/to:2013.0/trend

    Anyone who bothers to look at the data in an unbiased way, with sensible start/endpoints, can see the data outright proves global warming doesn’t exist. 1965 to 2013, there’s nothing there but COOLING trends.

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