Friday Funny: Hayhoe talks to Marshall
A bit of light relief. This is hilarious. Katharine Hayhoe talks to George Marshall and other members of the Green Blob about how to talk climate change outside of the ‘green bubble’. She’s preaching in a church. #YouCouldntMakeItUp.
Climate Scepticism 
I certainly find the choice of “music” leading into this unusually inappropriate for a cathedral.
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Science and Conviction! Are they not mutually exclusive?
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CLIVE BEST
Only until those concerned have been tried and found guilty.
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‘I gave up hard science to become a climate justice warrior and here I am today preaching the Climate Gospel According to Hayhoe from the safe space of this church. Look at me! Am I not human? Am I not therefore blessed with the spark of the Divine? Am I not therefore a Blessed Keeper of the Facts that shall deliver us from the evil of the fossil fuel funded Deniers?’
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Here’s a transcript of the 5 minutes highlights video. I’ve highlighted certain words which come up on the screen during the talk. It’s quite obvious that this is a religious event, but I wouldn’t like our criticisms to be an attack on religion. (I have a Hindu friend with a physics PhD who believes fervently in CAGW. At least, I assume he does, since he won’t discuss it with me.) The question for me is: what does Hayhoe think she’s doing here? And what do Cliamte Outreach think they’re doing with taxpayers’ money?
Title: Katherine Hayhoe one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People one of Huffington Post’s 20 Climate Champions one of Christianity Today’s 50 Women to Watch
George Marshall: So what’s made Katherine a hero of me personally and for all of us at Climate Outreach has been her determination, as we’ll be hearing this evening, to spread her science and her conviction to new audiences which is very much close to our hearts as in Climate Outreach. These huge areas of people who are not actively engaged.
Katherine Hayhoe: When you ask people: Do you think this is going to effect you? Almost everybody says: “Mmm, probably not really”. But there’s one question that even more people say no to than that. You know what that question is? That question is: Do you talk about climate change? Or do you even hear somebody else that you know talking about climate change? More than once or twice a year? Incredibly intelligent smart rational people can think that climate change isn’t real, has nothing to do with the facts or the data and has nothing to do with the assessment reports that you can pile up to the ceiling. And has everything to do with culture, with whom you believe, who you agree with, who we think shares our values.
For me, the reason why I switched from astrophysics to climate science is for a very specific reason. It was because I felt that I could actually make a difference for people. Climate change is impacting people’s lives, and the more poor and the more vulnerable we are, the more disproportionately affected we are by change in climate and that is not fair. I have a profound love and care for people that is tied directly to my faith. We’re told in the Bible to love others as Christ loves us. I still remember the first time that I decided I should probably tell people – especially as most people in Texas would call themselves Christians – I should probably tell people that I was a Christian and explain to them why as a Christian I cared about it, so I did it – something amazing happened. People’s faces changed. You could see that their attitude changed. Because we had connected, we had bonded over something that mattered intimately to us. It’s not just about connecting with the values though, it’s also about giving hope.
How do you find hope? I can tell you you absolutely can find hope if you look for it. Where do we find hope? We don”t find hope in science, that’s not what it’s designed to give us. We can find hope two ways. One is, looking to other people. Do you know how much good there is going on in this world if you look for it? And the second thing, personally – and this is very personal, it gives me hope – is my faith. That is the purpose of my faith. The idea that there is more, there is the possibility for change.
If we care about almost anything that most of us do, that’s why you care about climate change. The only reason that we really should really care about climate change is because it effects everything else that we already care about. It’s a human issue, and so everyone who’s human has all the values they already need to care about it. And if they aren’t human, could have not cared about it, the only reason is because they haven’t been able to connect the dots. Science can tell us what the impact look like on their one and a half degree or two or three degree targets, but science cannot tell us what’s the right thing to do. That’s where we need what’s in our hearts and for about 85% of us around the world, what is written in our hearts has much more to do with our faith, and for a hundred percent of us, what’s written in our hearts has everything to do with being human.
Jamie Clarke: For the next five minutes, I thought, have a look around you, find someone you don’t know, that you haven’t already talked to, and try and discuss what Katherine and George have been discussing now.
Revd Charlotte Bannister-Parker: I think, Katherine, if you said anything important, really important tonight, it’s that connection with our heart, our hope and our love for one another.
Jamie Clarke: We have a challenge for you. Climate Outreach wants the conversations not to finish when you leave the door, or when you have the drinks we’re supplying here, Where have you got circles of influence that you don’t like talking about the issue? Think about those communities. Think about how you can have a conversation along the lines of Katherine’s.
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Hey ho: “Science can tell us what the impact look like on their one and a half degree or two or three degree targets”
Actually not much. There is plenty of speculation and no science.
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The bible warns about those who preach a new gospel, and not in a good way.
Hayhoe, Pope Francis, and far too many others are doing just that.
It will not turn out well for them or their version of the good news.
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At the very real risk of causing offense to many here who I have come to respect, I absolutely abhor this whole discussion. An expression of a person’s innermost faith, the intersection of their innermost beliefs (scientific and spiritual) is mocked and labelled a “Friday Funny”. I do not subscribe to either of her beliefs but from an early age you learn to be tolerant of others’ beliefs, not least because their beliefs might turn out to be correct. Then we forge our own way, commonly becoming intolerant of the views of others. For some of us it is only when we become Shakespeare’s three-legged man and look back at our big mistakes that we can again view the foibles of others with more respect. For years I instilled future fears of the effects of Peak Oil upon my students because I believed in it hook line and sinker. I am still dazed by how wrong I was. I believe passionately that catastrophic climate change is wrong, but so could I be. I have friends and former colleagues who fervently believe in AGW and fear CAGW. We just avoid our differences. I respect their views and just hope they are wrong. I don’t mock them.
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Alan, I don’t think we are mocking Hayhoe because of her faith; I’m certainly not. Her religious beliefs are a matter of personal choice and should not be open to mockery or criticism as long as she is not imposing them upon others. What we ARE doing is casting an acerbic eye upon the spectacle of her, in effect, mocking her own faith by employing its tenets to frame a perceived ‘problem’ for humanity which should be rigidly defined via scientific enquiry, but isn’t. She fills the knowledge/certainty gap with her God and expects her followers to buy into it.
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ALAN KENDALL
I agree about not mocking innermost beliefs, which is why I asked people to keep off the subject of religion, or at least treat it with respect. But this video is most odd, and that needs pointing out. Peak Oil and dangerous global warming are not matters of faith but of geology and meteorology.
Some context here. George Marshall is a very weird person and I’ve said some cruel things about him, not because he’s weird, but because he’s weird on the taxpayer’s money, in a context where debate is not available. Climate Outreach’s budget can be justified (sort of) as reasearch into ways of persuading the voter that the government’s policy is good for them, like seat belts and fluoridisation. They’re about tailoring the message to different audiences, which is a tiny bit Orwellian but not really shocking. Here they seem to be tailoring a message to Christians by bringing a scientist across from Texas, and Lo, the scientist turns out to speak in the tones of the craziest green evangelist. In their five minute “best of” compilation there’s not a single word of science. As Ben has frequently pointed out, the enviironmentalist message is All About Me. And this is happening in Oxford, in front of an apparently well educated audience.
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Geoff. One talks to and for your audience. Clearly I and you are not her audience. Try to put yourself into her shoes. She believes that the science she knows and relies upon (a science followed by the majority) points towards significant negative future effects. Her faith propels her to use all her talents. For her there is probably no distinction between the various parts of her life. You should not try to carve off her scientifIc life from the rest. From bed brief talk it is clear that, for her all parts of her are indivisible. The title “Friday Funny” to me indicates you are mocking her – indivisible her.
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Alan,
This post seems entirely in keeping with the norm for this site.
FWIW, I went to go and see Katharine Hayhoe talk in Edinburgh. I thought it was a good talk. Katharine is clearly a very effective communicator. As far as the science that was mentioned, it was entirely consistent with our best understanding (which is true whether you agree with that best understanding, or not). All that Katharine Hayhoe is doing is trying to engage with a community, and appears to be doing so very effectively. It may be that many here would rather that she did not, but that’s certainly no reason not to do so.
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ALAN KENDALL, AND..PHYSICS
I am not carving off Hayhoe’s scientific life (if she has one) from the rest. It’s not there. If she said anything scientific in her talk, they left it out of the video. Why? I’ll look at the full talk some time and get back to you.
Paul says: “She’s preaching in a church, You couldn’t make it up.” I think that’s funny. Alan Bennett shocked some over fifty years ago with his spoof sermon. But this isn’t a sermon, and it isn’t on the BBC back in the nineteen sixties It’s a very well-known scientist supposedly explaining her faith in the science, but in fact explaining nothing at all. In another context I could be outrageously rude about this, and I could do it without offending anyone’s beliefs – not their religious beliefs, anyway.
Climate Outrich (or COINing It, as it’s known in green circles) is using the church setting, (and even a clip of the vicar) for a reason. And Dr Physics uses the occasion to make a sniffy comment about us, despite the fact that we’ve avoided being rude.
Hayhoe is thinking and talking about herself, and ends her talk by encouraging the audience to talk about themselves to people they don’t know. Meanwhile the planet is burning and millions of us are going to meet our Maker sooner than we should because of the fossil-fuelled doubting Thomases at Cliscep.
I’d better stop there.
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Paul,
Hayhoe is from Texas and I have watched her a bit more closely than I would otherwise have.
From the (of course) tax free entity she set up (of course) with her husband to profit from her selling this blend of religion and sciencey social talk I also find are worth ridicule.
ATTP,
No, she is touting extremist nonsense whose believers have used as an excuse to silence discussion and distort the development if science.
She most definitely has nothing to offer about insights into “best understanding”.
The abuse of so-called NGO and other tax dodges is a significant drain on the economy. The pattern exemplified by Hayhoe is yet another sign that climate science as it has evolved is not a productive or healthy contributor to the world.
Hayhoe’s choices in this are telling and worthy of spotlighting and resisting.
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This episode is being treated as if it were unusual, yet I read that she has written a book about climate change and religious belief and has given similar talks all over Texas. She has degrees in physics and astronomy, and in atmospheric science and has published more than a hundred peer-reviewed papers (so then Geoff your quip about whether she has a scientific life would appear to be unwarranted). I would imagine that, with her convictions, she would be a formidable debating opponent.
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If Harvey et al authors had listened to talks by Hayhoe, they would not have excommunicated themselves from science so effectively, and they might even have retained some legal credibility for Climate Science’s Peer Review processes
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Alan,
I don’t know about a formidable debating component, but something to bear in mind is that social science research indicates that facts aren’t enough; the deficit model has failed. There’s also indications (Kahan, for example) that culture plays a big role in whether or not people accept some scientific positions. Katharine Hayhoe (as you mention) clearly has strong academic credentials, but also has the ability to engage with audiences that may be predisposed to reject, for example, climate science. This is one reason, I think, Katharine is such an effective communicator.
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History lesson.. Marshall Founded – Rising Tide and COIN (now Climate Outreach ) at about the same time.
He’d come back from, working abroad with ‘Big Green’ NGOs – director of Greenpeace, senior in Rainforest Foundation, and wanted a role outside of big NGO’. So he sets up a nice little mini ngo, funded by usual left wing type grant donations orgs, and settles down in Oxford, and has his family, COIN keeps him ticking nicely along an approx a primary teachers wage, for the last 16 years. Leo Hockman once told me everyone knows how ‘Climate George’ is.
Whist Rising Tide was creating deniers Halls of Shame, and Marshall and Lynas were creating Who’s who lists of deniers.. smearing them as exxon funded evil people. Marshall was also whilst wearing his COIN hat, talking about climate communications,and making out COIN was not an activist organisation.
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https://www.amazon.co.uk/Carbon-Detox-step-step-getting-ebook/dp/B003XRDBI0/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1512826831&sr=8-1&keywords=carbon+detox If you want to understand Marsahll read his book..
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My beef with Hayhoe is not her religion or even the fact that she debases her faith to try and promote climate change action. My beef is that she is, as a supposed self-confessed science communicator, a fraud.
“Most people don’t reject science wholesale because they actually have a problem with the science. The same equations of radiative transfer and non-linear fluid dynamics that explain how our stoves work or how airplanes fly provide the basis of our climate models, too. Rather, people selectively reject a specific set of scientific findings: those they perceive to be a threat to their ideology or worldview, and hence to their identity.”
As we know, radiative transfer physics and non-linear fluid dynamics explain why we are going to hell in a handcart if we don’t cut CO2 emissions drastically. On the other hand, very predictably, aeroplanes do fly and stoves do cook our food, but climate models don’t predict the climate that well.
She drums the fake certainty home with the gravity analogy and the jumping off the cliff scenario (also beloved of Brexit ‘no deal’ alarmists):
“The true threat, however, is the delusion that our opinion of science somehow alters its reality. If we say we don’t believe in gravity and we step off the cliff, we’re still going down. Sea level will rise regardless of any legislation we may pass, and the climate is changing no matter how many politicians say it isn’t. The window of time to prevent widespread dangerous human interference with the climate system is closing fast. Rejecting this reality puts us all at risk.”
Then, for good measure, she throws in the ridiculous and wholly inappropriate physician metaphor to describe herself and fellow scientists warning of imminent catastrophe:
“Climate scientists are like the physicians of the planet. Our planet is running a fever and we’ve run the tests, analyzed the data, and drawn the conclusions. Humans are responsible; the impacts are serious and even dangerous; and the time to act is now. And just like physicians, I believe we have a moral responsibility to inform everyone affected by this – which includes all seven and a half billion of us on this planet – of the risks we face.”
Is it any wonder that sceptics are tempted to take the mick when she starts preaching ‘climate communication’ in English churches?
http://www.wired.co.uk/article/katherine-hayhoe-climate-change-clean-energy-interview
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Jaime,
Saying something that you disagree with doesn’t make someone a fraud.
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But saying what I quoted she said does.
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Jaime,
You keep believing that (and maybe also ponder why seem people insist on using the term “denier”).
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Of course, ATTP, we have been over this in immense detail. Hayhoe is just wrong in her analogy between OAGCM’s and aircraft CFD. It’s a misleading analogy and part of the old lie that it’s “just the laws of physics,” one of the worst because its a very widely believed lie amoung the users of CFD and AOGCM’s that leads them to make all sorts of compounding errors. You can weasel the words all you want, but the analogy is simply not helpful. The properties of the attractor is the issue and of course no one knows much.
Hayhoe says that “As we know, radiative transfer physics and non-linear fluid dynamics explain why we are going to hell in a handcart if we don’t cut CO2 emissions drastically. On the other hand, very predictably, aeroplanes do fly and stoves do cook our food, but climate models don’t predict the climate that well.” That’s a material misrepresentation and a very harmful one.
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Ken,
I have pondered why many climate alarmists use the word ‘denier’ and it’s for exactly the same reason why Hayhoe illegitimately compares solid, known science, which gives us tangible technological benefits, to global circulation models and the supposedly ‘solid, settled science’ of dangerous man-made climate change. These people who label sceptics ‘deniers’ need to invent something which we supposedly deny.
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Jaime,
What I’m suggesting is that some people use the term “denier” because they believe that it is an appropriate term to describe those they’re choosing to describe in that way. Similarly, you seem to think that your description of Katharine Hayhoe is also justified. Maybe you could consider this, just for a moment.
I happen to think that Katharine Hayhoe is an excellent science communicator.
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What ATTP is suggesting is what-about-ism. The point is Hayhoe misrepresents. That’s terrible communication and tells us that “science communication” is no science but as accurate as advertising you see on TV
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“denier” is simply the age old environmentalist frame the debate as an enemy narrative… and attack the enemy..
George Marshall has written, how unhelpful the enemy narrative is..
Yet also forgets to mention, that he was one of the people instrumental in creating, and framing the enemy ‘narrative’. K Hayhoe is acting in good faith I’m sure. I know Marshall is an exGreenpeace activist fond of the word ‘denier.. because ‘it works’ (his words).
I have commented at Climate Outreach, how more powerful his new narrative would be, and how to talk to conservatives, if he would just mention his role in actually creating that narrative. He being one of the first to put Lindzen and Lomborg in exxon funded climate deniers Halls of Shame.. his Climate Camp videos are something to behold….
but of course, my comment is deleted out of site at Climate Outreach.
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I happen to think that, for once, you need to listen to Ken. Katherine Hayhoe is a good science communicator and the sceptical side is losing hands down. Hayhoe knows her audience. This is not us, were the lost, the irredeemable. Her targets are those with a religious background and at most a high-school education. Texas would seem her natural hunting ground, and with missionary parents she is highly adapted for her chosen role. She uses analogies that you and I might question but which seem perfectly natural with her true audience. If we try to explain why the analogies are inappropriate we get bogged down with technical detail and those we need to convince are lost. Fire needs to be fought with fire. Take the medical analogy (the Earth has a fever and scientists take its temperature). This needs to be taken away and made unusable – perhaps by reference to snake-oil salesmen, to the use of leeches and the like. Fire and fire! Don’t criticise Hayhoe for using her talents. Develop our own.
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George Marshall Guardian.. (2013)
“Campaigners try their best to build an enemy narrative, bringing in oil companies, organised denial, the Koch brothers, governments, Jeremy Clarkson as their set-piece villains. Maybe, as Bill McKibben argues, you cannot have a movement without an enemy. But I would suggest that this is a dangerous game to play. Climate change will never win with enemy narratives. Once unleashed, they take on a life of their own and come back to bite us, and we will find ourselves written in to replace our chosen enemies.
George Marshall – Rising Tide – Hall of Shame (2002)
“Yet, as always, there is a small group of people happy to distort the truth to promote themselves and build their careers. Some are directly funded by the fossil fuel industries. Some are self promoting egotists seeking attention. Some just want to be controversial and fill a newspaper column.
Their arguments also differ. A declining number claim that there is no climate change at all. Some accept climate change but say that it will be beneficial. Most say that there may be some small change, but that it has been exagerated for political reasons. The claim that the causes are still unknown and that it is probably a natural cycle.
All of the deniers- we refuse to grace them with their chosen name, “skeptics”- are dangerous for they create a false debate around the existence of climate change and divert attention from the real debate: “What are we going to do about climate change?”. – Rising Tide 2002
the Climate Outreach communications org ( formerly called COIN) that George founded at the same time as Rising tide has always presented itself as a charity interested in climate change communications
Yet, Here was George’s other organization Political statement (not he is even against electric cars, wnted 90% CO2 reduction in 10 years, and an environmenatlist solution to climatechange.. (ie consume less)
http://www.risingtide.org.uk:80/pages/aboutus.html
http://www.risingtide.org.uk:80/pages/resources/f5sol.html
“Framing”
“In politics, there was “Holocaust denial,” “moon-landing denial” and “evolution denial” — all flowing from Freud, with its implications not only of untruth but of mental illness.
And now the word’s in the center ring of the global warming fight: “climate denial.”
“Climate change has always been a kind of a framing war,” said George Marshall, founder of the Climate Outreach Information Network in Great Britain and the author of the book “Don’t Even Think About It: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Ignore Climate Change.” “If you can get out there and you can get your language inserted into the discourse, it’s your ideas that dominate.”
Marshall and co-author Mark Lynas published the first reference to “climate denier” in the English-language press in a 2003 op-ed they wrote for the left-leaning magazine The New Statesman.
They wanted those words to sting.” – EEnews 2015
https://www.eenews.net/stories/1060018646/print
COIN nice climate comms face organisation in 2003 (Marshall, Lynas, Monbiot all involved)
https://web.archive.org/web/20040902094734/http://www.coinet.org.uk:80/index.html
Marshall/Lynas listing a who’s who exxon funded of ‘deniers (also 2003)
https://www.newstatesman.com/node/191306
Marshall – two faced, activist?
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Katharine Hayhoe’s narrative is not new – (maybe in the USA)
I sat through an almost exact same narrative – in a church – with Sir John Houghton (convinced Christian) delivering it… the audience were a bit sceptical! Afterwards Sir John personally warmed me against fossil fuel companies and denial, and I had an argument with a local greenpeace activist.. Years ago. nothing changes.
Slides – God, Science and Global Warming
Click to access get-doc.php
and the subject of one of my first blog posts.
https://unsettledclimate.org/2010/12/21/is-the-road-to-green-hell-paved-with-good-intentions/
Audio: (with me in the questions)
[audio src="http://www.wargravechurch.org.uk/churchbuilder/get-doc.php?docid=37&page=houghton-talk-sm.mp3" /]
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The snake oil analogy only works if you ID the snakeoil sales man.
Gore of course easily fills the over the top plaid jacket preacher/con pretty well.
Hayhoe is more subtle, but she is peddling snake oil all the same.
As to her CV, dorry but it doesn’t matter.
Curry, with a more impressive CV, was vilified in misogynistic ways, and Hayhoe did nothing.
From my perspective Hayhoe is just a slicker Gore.
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Convincing gullible scientifically non-literate bible-belters that climate change is real and dangerous using inappropriate and even dishonest analogies is not ‘good science communication’, it’s effective targeted propaganda. Hayhoe might be good at it, but it’s still dishonest and I’ll still criticise her for engaging her dubious talents to spread disinformation among the vulnerable.
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Alan, I think this may a matter of definition. I regard a good communicator as one who is quite faithful to facts and truth and conveys that easily to people who have less expertise. Success in convincing someone of something is something else. It’s effective advocacy or propaganda.
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“What I’m suggesting is that some people use the term “denier” because they believe that it is an appropriate term to describe those they’re choosing to describe in that way.”
Yes, Ricey, so you do.
I use the term “dickhead” in much the same way…
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I think facts are considered optional in Social Science, it is the message that counts.
As a Defence, Harvey et al may have sought Legal Opinion about this by now.
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long comment in moderation. (lots of links)
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At the beginning of the long video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPtE0Cqw2V8
Tany Alexander of Climate Outreach says:
Did you get that? COIN is paid hundreds of thousands of your money to talk to us, and they’d rather not, “if they were honest”. So they don’t. They talk to each other.
I was visitor number 85 to the Youtube clip. I’m guessing that’s about a tenth of the visitors this thread has had.
Is that Lew in the green pullover to the left of the screen in the opening clip?
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Mega sense of humour failure. Expected from Kenny, but surprised at Alan.
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If these are the highlights, I shudder to think what the lowlights must be like. I hope there isn’t a full video. And if there is, I hope nobody posts it here.
Oh no! Geoff! How could you?!
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I think Hayhoe gets away with rather more than she should do on account of her being so ‘nice’ in that evangelical home-made apple pie, Ms goody-two-shoes-out-to save-the-world kind of way. She has the charm which crusty old white male climate warriors like Mann obviously lack, and uses that charm to good effect.
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Paul. I know explaining humour is difficult, but perhaps you could attempt to explain what is so funny about a committed woman who feels compelled by her upbringing, her faith and her understanding of her science to spread the word about her concerns. She specifically targets the problem of getting others to proselytize. The end, where she urges her audience to turn and talk to each other (which seems to amuse some here) is a common bonding tactic of some churches like the Baptists.
I have made my position clear, and you will have noticed I have no intention of pushing it further. However I really don’t find it humorous and do wonder why others do. If anything, I have some admiration for Hayhoe, she seems very effective at what she does and is recognized for it. I certainly don’t laugh and mock my opponents except when they deliberately ask for it (hi Len).
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Sorry Alan, whether somebody has a nice mid-West upbringing and has faith or is an agnostic secularist dragged up in the gutter of the inner city, they are still fair game here as long as they are pushing the CAGW myth. Personally, I see no real evidence that Ms Hayhoe’s faith and upbringing is the primary impetus for her climate proselytizing. Why should she be any different to her non-religious colleagues?
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I refuse to be drawn into this debate (ho ho), except to say:
1. I well remember chatting to Barry about his encounter with John Houghton in 2010. Good man. I agree with Barry that Hayhoe is quite likely to be sincere. I also agree with those who question her reaction to the demonisation of ‘deniers’ by her fellow warmists. Has she stood with Christ, the despised one, on that? Interesting question.
2. The Bishop of Chester made what I thought was a really helpful contribution in the questions for Ian Plimer at the GWPF at the House of Lords the other night. I didn’t think Ian really grappled with the Bish’s point – though otherwise his answers were robust and to the point. I’ll probably come back to that in my Ignorance series.
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Long comment in moderation still… whilst Hayhoe is sincere, lots of evidence that Marshall is NOT. [RD: This one? Hopefully sorted now, Barry.]
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ALAN KENDALL (10 Dec 17 at 11:49 am)
I’ve experienced the bonding tactic in a Quaker meeting, and I wouldn’t dream of mocking it. Probably they held the meeting in a church because the vicar is a friend and a fellow activist and it’s cheaper than a public hall. It’s still funny though, in the same way that it’s funny that Matt Ridley has a coal mine on his premises. Matt has strong opinions on energy policy, but he doesn’t base them on faith in carbon.
The faithful gathered there are climate believers, not necessarily Christians. That’s what we’re mocking. Can you imagine Jesus saying: “We really need to be talking to people who we would rather not if we were honest, actually talk to”?
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You’ve all given reasons to argue with, oppose, despise even, Katherine Hayhoe, but nothing to explain why she is funny when earnestly proselytizing. I see a well qualified and highly effective opponent. What’s to laugh about?
If I gave a talk in a brewery on spreading the message that CAGW isn’t, would our opponents think it funny* or would they consider it an outrage and bitterly complain?
* (I would try to make it so).
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Here’s an answer Katherine give to a question around 1:07:45
Admit it Alan, Ken. That’s quite funny, isn’t it?
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Geoff. No it bloody well isn’t. She’s getting that message across. I don’t hear any laughter from her audience. If they weren’t convinced before the talk, they are now. And they were convinced or reassured by a pleasant lady of science.
I have met hundreds of earnest young and old people who would spout the same words. I don’t find it funny one little bit – scary perhaps.
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If you can’t see the joke in the first line of the post and in their own tweet then I can’t see how to explain it.
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If I can’t see what you find so funny, perhaps it’s also a question of what I find serious and you are seemingly are ignoring.
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C’mon Alan – being a very broad church we’re never going to agree on what is funny. But it’s hard to think Paul, Geoff, Jaime and others here don’t take climate alarmism and its apparent success seriously – I say apparent because I would never give too much credence to slick video of attempted propagandization from inside an Oxford church.
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Richard. I was writing specifically about this particular discussion thread. I do not doubt that, usually all who that you mention are not ignoring the threat of climate alarmism (except in this specific case where the focus seems to me to be firmly fixed on humour). Since this humour involves what can be conceived as her religious beliefs, I personally do not subscribe to it. As I wrote earlier, I’ve already made my point. I’m merely defending myself from comments that I have no sense of humour, which I think I have shown over the past year to be incorrect.
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This is not science communication, it is preaching, making the church environment rather appropriate. This doesn’t mean it’s ineffective, probably the reverse. But it does mean that everyone who signs on after receiving this sermon will be signing on for the wrong reasons, i.e. emotive engagement rather rather than objective engagement with science and reason. It also means more polarization; emotional and cultural framings typical garner recruits and skeptical opposition (e.g. from clashing frames) at the same time. Science communication sans emotional framing addresses all cultures equally; while that ideal can rarely be achieved for issues already in social conflict, reaching deeper for emotive and faith / hope / fear based or similar appeals, can only amplify polarization. She may be a great speaker, a great preacher, she projects well, but this is poor communication.
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Alan, I think Geoff was drawing attention to the incongruity of what Hayhoe is saying with what we could possibly imagine Jesus doing. I think that is very funny. It’s also pretty tragic, depending on one’s starting point.
On Baptists, demonisation, and what the King James version of the New Testament calls party spirit, I was thinking earlier of this little story. At a big US Baptist church the preacher thunders “Everyone who’s proud to be a Baptist, stand up!” He notices to his annoyance a little old lady in the front row who stays seated and decides to make an example of her.
“So what on earth are you?”
“I’m a Methodist,” she says calmly.
“And why are you a Methodist?” he says, showboating to his congregation.
“Because my father was a Methodist and my mother was a Methodist,” she explains.
“So if your father was a moron and your mother was a moron, what would you be?”
The old lady thinks for a moment. “I suppose that would make me a Baptist.”
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Effective climate change communication – preaching about love and hope and humanity and faith and caring (esp about poor brown people who are uniquely vulnerable to climate change) in a church, whilst telling your left-leaning 99% middle class white, home counties congregation that ‘the science’ offers very little hope, but tells us there are really bad things we know are going to happen in the future which we don’t even know about. An event organised by leaches sucking public funds to talk to people they don’t really want to talk to (hence the susceptible audience) about what a really, really big problem climate change is. Hayhoe gets accolades for this drivel and no doubt she gets paid. COIN gets paid – out of our money. I too could have a mega sense of humour failure at this point, but I can just about manage to see the funny side of it – funny as in Pythonesque funny. i think if this thread continues though, Paul’s ‘light relief’ post is going to turn into a sense of humour failure all round.
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And for that I would be sorry. But let’s face it, its given all of you humour-monkeys an opportunity to sound off against Katherine. Somewhat surprised Len didn’t join in with the frivolities.
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Hayhoe is an entertaining speaker but her message is a bit muddled. She says that the real problem is not the ‘tiny fraction’ of people who don’t believe in climate change but those who do believe but don’t do much about it. She then spends large parts of her speech telling the audience how to convert the tiny fraction.
But if believers’ inaction is the main problem, all she’s doing when she converts unbelieving old, white, male Rotarians etc is rendering their ‘denier’ inaction righteous, no? Is that a good thing?
Or, to put it another way, if the tiny fraction’s inaction on global calefaction is a distraction from the greater inaction infractions of those in the know, why bother talking to Rotarians? Self-satisfaction?
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Meh, religion is dumb and boring. I only skimmed some comments anyway. If there was humour I missed it. But it wouldn’t compare to some skeptic treats, such as watching Salby hypnotize a bunch of susceptible old codgers with his brand of nonsense. I bet some readers are fans though.
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Now look what you’ve done Alan. You tempted Len onto the thread to contribute massively by telling us he’s bored with religion and fixated by Salby!
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Jaime. That’s hilarious (and predictable)
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Vinny’s point about the self-defined futility of the targeting is a very good one. Meanwhile the poor that Hayhoe claims to care for, due to her faith, need cheap energy and the greater prosperity that it enables and they need a fossil-fuel-guzzling global bureaucracy to reduce CO2 emissions like a hole in the head. The measures resulting impoverish them while having a negligible effect, according to all the evidence so far, in reducing extreme climate events.
But then, as Jaime rightly points out, there is loads of money behind the false messages. Even the slickness of the video shows that. People are being paid much to make the already well-off feel good, to enable further unjust profits of energy crony capitalists and to damage the poor. It is not obvious that this is what Jesus would wish to put his name to. The motivation behind the muddle, as Vinny calls it, can still be good, one assumes, but the overall package still stinks.
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I think Jesus would have thrown them out of the church tbh.
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To come back to something Hayhoe actually said (though nobody else seemed to find it interesting)
She is not the first person to have stated that climate scientists know that it’s going to be worse than they think it is. Lewandowsky has two peer reviewed papers stating that the less you know about the future, the more likely it is that the future will be worse than you think. And he has a mathematical proof to that effect (as long as your curves are concave.)
This is not just daft, in the usual ha-ha-Lew-is-at-it-again sense. It is literally insane. Useful mathematical truths like Pythagoras’s theorem are rare things. Lew thinks that we are wrong, morally wrong, not to fear climate change because his curves are concave. Hayhoe thinks that it’s been demonstrated scientifically that we know that it will be worse than we think it will.
I don’t care if Hayhoe is a Texan Evangelist, a Myanmar pacifist Buddhist, or a militant Rohingya radical Islamist. They can meet in an Oxford Church or a Mongolian Yoghurt for all I care. She is bonkers. Nuts. Off the wall. Who are all those earnest Oxford citizens who can’t see that?
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Geoff. Katherine Hayhoe is a well educated woman who has produced acceptable science. Why do you think someone with such a background could come to believe such rot and broadcast it? The only acceptable view should be that this type of unknown is unpredictable – unless of course you are saying that we live in the best of times and that any change is unwanted.
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ALAN KENDALL (not a reply to your latestcomment)
Hayhoe is quite an engaging speaker,isn’t she? She has a lot of videos. I clicked on this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BjhrwA9f4G8 It’s part of a series on Climate denialism on an Australian Open University- type course that John Cook was pushing. For the first five minutes I felt some sympathy for her. Then she gets into the Doctor’s Diagnosis argument. Luckily I’ve studied psychology under the great Professor Lewandowsky and I realise that the subliminal gateway keystone domino message of this gambit is that Climate Denial is like cancer.
Hayhoe is a rare bird among climate scientists because she wants to engage with deniers. But the climate change deniers she wants to engage with are the Texan evangelicals she meets in the grocery store, which figures, because her husband is the local pastor and the pastor’s wife has a duty to the flock too. Surprisingly she admits that the grocery store customers have heard about the emails “stolen” from UEA and the Pause. Gosh. So these rednecks are not as ignorant as we thought. But unfortunately, they don’t have access to the New York Times or Guardian Environment, so Hayhoe has appointed herself missionary to the heathen Texas redneck, and COIN has invited her to give a talk, like some 19th century Oxford Missionary Society inviting someone from Darkest Africa to report from the front line.
Which is George Marshall’s way of telling us that we homegrown deniers don’t count. Barry Woods tries tirelessly to engage with these people. I had a couple of interesting conversations with COIN’s Adam Corner before he called a halt. We sometimes try and comment at their blog, but it’s like trying to hit on a corpse. And humiliating, to boot, when you get the brush off.
Should we challenge them to a debate? It’s a bit uneven, since they have a government and charity-funded budget of hundreds of thousands and a staff of ten, and we have an annual budget of 100 pounds generously paid by one of us to WordPress. They publish books and we don’t. They have articles at Guardian Environment, while some of us are banned from commenting there.
But we have comments, and they don’t. Including comments from people who don’t agree with us, like ANDTHENTHERESPHYSICS, for which much thanks. We have discussions, where we disagree among ourselves. Perhaps a debate would be a good idea. What does anyone think?
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For me Hayhoe’s preposterous explanation could be out of a Monty Python skit, but sadly she is merely pimping the mind numbing dogma if clinate obsession in a sciencey pseudo religious manner.
She does in fact remind me a bit of that perky family friendly character from Brazil:
https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Flh3.googleusercontent.com%2Fproxy%2FHdwhJtDbtuF-2amOemiumrSBn7Fpd8MGkqxyyPui_flaJZDlZAD68eCwGqCNFtSP-3QKe8pxiNY8k5201GPdwx8FjQvPcwkA_wTqMk0kDxuRStduz3fZe2RAezYfAgcsZ_CnkZIj6OmV6WM7Y-OvDfW5bg%3Ds0-d&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fscottsfilmwatch.blogspot.com%2F2012%2F05%2Ffilm-82-brazil-1985.html&docid=5hIfkCJK5kw8hM&tbnid=cVFM_eR9aZWxRM%3A&vet=1&w=160&h=225&client=ms-android-att-us&bih=560&biw=360&ved=0ahUKEwjIu9jWzIDYAhVEUt8KHY5LDnUQxiAIICgA&iact=c&ictx=1
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Yeah, apologies, Geoff (9:57 pm), that is bonkers.
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ALAN KENDALL (10 Dec 17 at 10:37 pm)
I don’t know why. I only insult and denigrate well-educated people, since the others are not worth bothering about. You say she has produced acceptable science, and I believe you. Her research “currently focusses on establishing a scientific basis for assessing the regional and local scale impacts of climate change on human systems and the natural environment” to quote George Marshall. That’s great, since that’s precisely the area where we’re most ignorant, according to the IPCC. We don’t know why California is unusually dry, and Florida is unusually cold, and a polar bear who is all over the internet is unusually thin. Facebook and Twitter claim to know, and publish a million pieces of evidence per day. We would like to know from Ms Hayhoe the Bigger Picture. What we get is homilies from the Texas grocery store.
You rephrase the quote I give as “this type of unknown is unpredictable.” But that’s not what she says. She says that: “We KNOW that there are things that are going to happen in the future that we don’t even KNOW about, but we do KNOW that there is a greater chance that they’ll be worse rather than better than we THINK.”
Forgive me, but count me out of that “we”. Maybe my mind has been formatted by a different IT specialist, but I do not KNOW things which I do not KNOW about, and I do not KNOW things which I do not THINK.
I blame English teachers. Mine were certainly conservative, but they recommended us to read Orwell and Joyce, to get another point of view. And we were the science class. Hayhoe sounds Canadian, but that’s no excuse.
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Hayhoe may well sound Canadian (whatever that’s supposed to mean!), but that’s probably because her roots are in my adopted home and not-so-native land. Certainly the CBC has been trumpeting her “cause” for the last few years. If you go to http://www.cbc.ca/search and enter Hayhoe, the first listing that pops up is http://www.cbc.ca/radio/tapestry/katharine-hayhoe-1.3446633.
You’ll be surprised to learn that this “scientist” is convinced that “polar bears are the canary in the coal mine”. And you’ll be equally surprised to learn from a May 2015 CBC write up that inter alia Hayhoe avers that:
Needless to say, she has the latest and greatest alarmist mantra down pat:
How can one who supposedly produces “acceptable science” be so dependent on such tired (and untrue) mantras?!
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When I wrote that Kayhoe produced “acceptable science” I meant that she has had accepted more than 100 peer-reviewed papers. I have no knowledge of their content or worth. I do know that she worked on global methane budgets at a time the “mantra” worried that methane was rising, whereas it was actually stable or falling slightly. Some of the decline may have been a consequence of the shutting down of leaking Soviet gas pipelines. Doubtless Hayhoe touts the view that rising temperatures in the Arctic will release masses of methane, a scenario that is pure bunkum (rising sea levels have drowned huge areas of permafrost beneath above-freezing point seawater and that ice is still there thousands of years later). Even the origin of marine methane is not fully understood https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/12/07/researchers-nail-down-the-long-sought-source-of-ocean-methane/
But I will predict she is considered a methane expert and spins the runaway methane mantra.
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Geoff, we could indeed challenge COIN to talk to ‘hard core deniers’ like us who purportedly they do not want to talk to – either here, or there, but I suspect that they would not wish to talk to us!
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“Climate Outreach was set up in 2004, with a mission to help people understand climate change in their own voice, and we’ve become Europe’s leading climate communication organisation.
We produce world-leading advice and practical tools for engagement by combining scientific research methods with years of hands-on experience. Our services support governments, businesses, NGOs and grassroots organisations. We specialise in how to engage hard-to-reach audiences – developing climate connection programmes with communities such as youth, the centre-right, faith and migrant groups.”
They are proud of working with “challenging audiences”. You can’t get more challenging than Cliscep! Bring it on I say. If they can crack one very small nut here, the world is their oyster.
.
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I read through these posts weighing the arguments about Hayoe’s sincerity and communication skills, and whether she was a good communicator to whom we should give credit, and all the time there was something missing, it was lurking in the back of my mind refusing to come out. I’ve known of Hayhoe for years and had formed an opinion but just couldn’t get to it in the fog of the various positions on the thread, then at 9.57 Geoff Chambers chipped in with a comment that encapsulates my view of Hayhoe;
“She is bonkers. Nuts.”
That’s it. It matters little that she has produced 100 scientific papers, or that she is an articulate and persuasive speaker and believes in what she says if she starts out by being “bonkers”.
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Jaime. A poor analogy? Climate Outreach is the oyster, and cliscep a bit of grit, to be covered over and smothered like a pearl. CO has everything to lose and very little to gain from engaging with cliscep, so we are likely to be ignored. On the other hand with their expertise in public engagement they just might take cliscep on if they were publically challenged.
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Alan – Monbiot and Marshall destroyed Dr David Bellamy – we would be easy
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Polar Bears seem to be immune from the good communication skills of Climate Outreach and are not committing suicide as decreed. Do they need to be force fed Climate Outreach on a one-to-one basis?
As Polar Bears can multiply, Climate Scientists will need lots of Climate Outreachers to help their sums add up properly to match the Polar Bear’s numbers.
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GolfCharlie. Polar bears can also divide as any proselytizing Climate Outreachers would soon discover. Blood on the ice would also constitute another feedback causing more ice melt and runaway global warming (which those outreachers should have done).
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Barry, Bellamy destroyed himself by exposing his own ignorance.
Alan of course you are funny. Who can forget your, (paraphrasing) “I don’t understand physics but I have my own theories how it works”. That was a corker.
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Ah yes, I remember now, Bellamy was suicided, as the Mafia say.
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Len. The usual convention when quoting someone, especially when using quotation marks, is not to paraphrase – but you knew that didn’t you? I must say, that reading some of your material has caused me often to lose my drink with paroxisms of mirth. But such ephemera are soon lost so I can offer no examples.
But it seems clear you have nothing to contribute to this discussion. So not much new there then.
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Len Martinez, can you explain how Mann’s Hockey Stick works, because the Earth’s Climate can’t make the same tricks work?
Alan Kendall, runway warming is what Climate Scientists keep recording at Heathrow Airport.
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Richard, a public figure like Bellamy relies on an aura of erudition. When he loses that, e.g. by displaying ignorance of something he should know, the spell is broken.
Alan, glad to keep you amused. And I don’t mean to pick on you, others are equally amusing, including Jaime’s cooling world, Richard’s preening and name dropping, Paul’s problems understanding language and context, Geoff’s philosophical diversions and general twattishness from Barrel, weasel, hunter and others. It’s a laugh.
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Mediocre, self-appointed experts, as I’ve been saying. It’s interesting how the climate elite delegates its dirty work to one just like them whose real identity – and thus track record in the real-world, with its inevitable flaws – remains forever opaque, assisting the cipher to deliver any smear, from any direction, rather than answer a single difficult question of substance (an example from the first month of the year that’s stayed in mind, left untouched by the troll, with or without a bargepole, ever since). Embarrassingly blank.
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Oh how brave you are Len. Accusations and insults that you know would get you banned from almost any other climate blog, spat out without provocation and left like excrement. Perhaps your intent is to divert (and you may succeed) but rightfully your rants should be ignored.
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Christmas is coming. I think we should stick the Len troll on top of Cliscep’s Christmas Tree and watch him rant from up there for the festive season. It will be a laugh. We’ll toss him a mince pie occasionally, but no alcohol – we want to keep his rants at least semi-lucid.
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“Acceptable science” today means “anything that doesn’t make Mann, Lewandowsky and gang unhappy”.
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Richard, reduced to editing old posts when no-one is looking to make yourself look better, eh? [It was done at the time, liar.] I have no idea what you snipped, but I guess it was something insightful that was awkward for you. [It was you going on about Trump’s budgets, which could not be known. I’d said in my previous comment that was off-topic. You ignored that and deliberately avoided my question about Nic Lewis. That’s my point. As you are doing again now. As you always do, with anything difficult. That makes the return on the investment of having you around such terribly thin gruel.]
Alan, the thread is about taking the piss out of Hayhoe – not so high minded that people shouldn’t expect a bit of teasing in return.
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First time I’ve seen that edit, Richard. As far as I’m concerned you wrote it today. [In saying that you’re calling me a liar. I’m not lying about having made the edits the same day. But you’ve now gone heavily into smear mode. By writing inline I’m indicating I strongly disapprove.] If you want an answer, don’t do stealth edits; write a comment so it is visible in the list of latest comments. [As you can see, your wish is my every command. I’m not deleting anything you write, but I am answering inline to reduce pollution of latest comments. And you still have the option to respond to the implicit question on 20th January about Nic Lewis. But, the question being difficult, I’m sure you’ll avoid it like the plague.]
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Len who?
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On the subject of discussion with Climate Outreach:
JAIME JESSOP (11 Dec 17 at 9:57 am) said: “we could indeed challenge COIN to talk to ‘hard core deniers’ like us who purportedly they do not want to talk to – either here, or there, but I suspect that they would not wish to talk to us.”
and BARRY WOODS: (11 Dec 17 at 10:37 am ) said: “Monbiot and Marshall destroyed Dr David Bellamy – we would be easy.”
Adam Corner of Climate Outreach did discuss with me three times at some length. The rules of engagement were that climate science was off-limits, so it couldn’t get very interesting, but Judith Curry and Bishop Hill took up the story. I was polite, because we had had an amical email exchange. As a result of that, I persuaded him to allow comments at their blog, with the direct result that we could destroy Lewandowsky’s Moon Hoax paper live, unbothered by the noise you get on bigger blogs. That was a small success.
Barry is right about Monbiot’s destructive skills, but I’m not sure about Marshall, who is basically nice (I mean, he hints at our similarity to Holocaust deniers in a nice way.)
A discussion would need a subject. I’d like to ask them why they don’t want to talk to us.
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Geoff: ” I’d like to ask them why they don’t want to talk to us.”
Because we would burst the bubble they inhabit rather quickly. Simple as that. That’s not arrogance. It’s just fact.
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Jaime
I”d like to be so confident. It’s a question of tactics. We are sniping from the sidelines. I googled the term. I don’t speak English much, so I felt I needed to check and I found this:
Yeah. That’s us. We are sidelined. Climate Outreach is peanuts in the world of climate politics. But their budget is a few thousand times ours.
In answer to Barry Woods: I’ve already beaten Monbiot in debate. I once pointed out at one of his articles that the catastrophic science he was quoting was financed by Exxon. He responded by asking for evidence that the science had been biassed by the source of finance, then suggested that another commenter was a sockpuppet. I was then banned from commenting, but the supposed sockpuppet, not.
Monbiot doesn’t do much on climate since he correctly pointed out post-ClimateGate that Professor Phil Jones should be sacked. Then he retracted, saying he was waiting for the results of the official enquiry. When an investigative journalist announces that he’s going to believe the results of an official enquiry, he’s announcing that he is no longer an investigative journalist.
I think we could debate Monbiot and Marshall. Or anyone. So yes, I agree with Jaime.
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Geoff:
There’s a connection between these two. If the sidelines is all we are allowed, it’s still right to snipe. Appreciate those who do.
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Why should there be any extra respect due, because in a ‘church’.
Houghton said this in my local church
Haven’t we first to tackle World
Poverty, then Climate Change?
NO,
because unless
we tackle Climate Change now,
the plight of many of the poorest
will be enormously worse”
My response to him, you could do both. And at total poverty of the imagination not to attempt to make the poor NOT poor… Rich westerners thinking poor is a state of grace.
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Geoff.. Marshall and monbiot have thirty years of experience each using every single debating activist dirty trick.. good luck
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I think the real answer is not so much that they don’t want to talk to you, it’s more that it seems that you don’t really want to talk to them. What it really seems is that you want to shout at, argue with, insult, accuse of various forms of nefarious behaviour, etc. If you reduced this, maybe you could actually have a conversation. On the other hand, maybe you don’t really want a conversation, so you behave in a manner that makes it very likely that others won’t want to talk with you and then, when they don’t, you get to say “see, told you so”.
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Marshall wants to get rid of us… hence his creation of deniers – Halls of Shame.. his who’s who list of deniers. and his behaviour at the Campaign against Climate Change, sceptic backlash meeting..
“Look at the word “sceptic”. It’s a very carefully chosen word.
I rather use “denier” – and I’m delighted to say it works.”
http://www.joabbess.com/2010/04/17/sceptic-backlash-questions-answered/
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same meeting – Ben Stewart (Greenpeace) Marshall is also ex-Greenpeace (International, director)
“We have to make “brand sceptic” toxic.
We need a new, compelling narrative, and pull together a community of activists determined to hold journalists to account.
We have to launch a campaign so these people are scared of us.” – Ben Stewart Greenpeace
http://www.joabbess.com/2010/04/15/ben-stewart-greenpeace-stalking/
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Marshall – after deleting my comment at his blog suggesting his linking to a Hall of Shame (of his own creation) is not helping..
extract:
“I have been deluged with comments from people who do not accept human generated global warming This is entirely their right, but it is also my right to keep my blog on the topic that I choose and also care passionately about, not as a sounding board for a debate that I do not accept- ” George Marshall
Marshall does not accept any debate, he has been trying to frame communications for decades as has largely succeeded..
Watch his climate camp video…. where it gets to cattle trucks taking people away and people screaming in the night..
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Marshall:
… they know what’s going on, they can hear their next door neighbours being dragged off in the middle of the night … they’re aware of the fact that there are cattle trucks going in one direction full of screaming people and coming back completely empty, and yet, wiithout even discussing it, they manage to reach a kind of a compact between themselves that this is something they’re not going to deal with. I think we’ve got something very similar happening with climate change.
Things which are very immediate, happening now, have direct implications, and above all where we can see that there is a recognisable threat, or a recognisable enemy, are things that we respond very fast to.
The challenge for us as campaigners is to find ways of making climate change a real risk in people’s minds, making it immediate, making it real, and above all, making it emotional, no longer depending on information as a main means of our communication and depending in fact on conveying our own emotional engagement, above all I think our own anger about it …
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Barry’s quotes from George Marshall are chilling and weird beyond belief. Perhaps we should start a Hall of Shame for climate weirdoes?
Andthenthere’sPhysics: “…it seems that you don’t really want to talk to them.”
But I did discuss with Adam Corner at great length. He only called it off because he was losing. It caused some comment on the sceptical side (Bishop Hill and Judith Curry’s) but none on theirs.
Would you be willing to debate?
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ATTP – If you recall. ages back. I said to you I thought commenting on your blog would be a bit pointless, as the locals would pile on.. And I actually invited you to a panel debate. to meet and have a chat. (distance a problem,)
this one: An Inconvenient Tweet
http://podcast.open.ac.uk/pod/Mediating-Change-workshop20140212#!889a5afe2b
http://stadium.open.ac.uk/stadia/preview.php?whichevent=2331&s=31
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Not really. I don’t really think this is something that we can resolve via debate. I’m normally happy to talk with people, as long as it remains a worthwhile/interesting discussion and remains moderately pleasant (although my expectations for the latter are somewhat less than they once were).
I would guess that he disagrees. From what I’ve seen, claims that the other party are losing are often based on a somewhat odd sense of what it means to win.
All I’m suggesting is that if you really wanted to talk with these other people, there are probably ways in which you could do so. It might require restraining some of your rhetoric and avoiding some topics that seem to commonly emerge. You may not be willing to do that, but it is – I think – still a possibility.
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Barry,
Possibly, but I don’t remember a panel debate. A couple of things to bear in mind, I try to moderate my blog so as to avoid too much piling on, and to keep it reasonably civil. The problem though, is that too much of that and people accuse me of censorship and too little and people complain that they can’t comment because others will pile on. The correct balance appears to depend on who is doing the complaining. As far as meeting and chatting, I don’t recall any such opportunity.
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ATTP – it was a long, long time ago. I suggested it on twitter.
Willard seems to kill things (as he/she does everywhere) (and Mosher) when neither of them are at your blog, the comments get interesting. the discussion with Clive Best for example.
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So why wouldn’t you be wiling to debate? The reason that you give – that you don’t really think this is something that we can resolve via debate – is extraordinarily vague. What is this “something”? Of course, some things are not worth debating, because they’re well-established, or impossible to resolve. But debate is happening all over, at all levels, political, scientific and psychological. Why not with us? I’m not expecting Lord Stern or Michael Mann to deign to speak to us, but what about other bloggers?
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Geoff,
All I’m really suggesting is that my preference is to discuss things, not debate things. This is partly because I don’t really have any problem with a discussion in which there is no final resolution, and partly because my interest is more in the scientific issues, than in the other issues, and I don’t think a debate is the way to address scientific issues. Someone could appear to win some kind of debate about science and that would have virtually no impact on our actual scientific understanding.
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Geoff, the answer to your question of why they don’t want to debate is (of course) given earlier in your 8.25pm comment: “we could destroy Lewandowsky’s Moon Hoax paper live”.
Barry and I were involved yesterday in such a destruction.
The author of the piece Michael Barnard said he wasn’t going to debate us, thereby admitting defeat.
In one hilarious comment he says he’s blocked me, for an allegedly ad hominem comment, and goes on to call me a ‘denier’.
It’s the same reason, getting back to the subject of the post, that people like Hayhoe have blocked us all on twitter. They know that in any debate they would get shredded. (And of course Geoff has been banned from the Conversation and the Guardian, at least).
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OK, call it a discussion then, not a debate. I certainly wasn’t suggesting a formal set up with a vote after it, so your objection to debating science is dealt with. I agree entirely that we’re not going to settle “the science” that way.
Here’s how it might work on a blog – perhaps on two blogs simultaneously:
A limited number of debaters (up to three?) exchange views above the line according to pre-established rules as to timing and length of post, alternating, picking up the points made by the opposing side, and everyone else can pile in under the line in the usual fashion. Here, the existence of the same evolving post on two different blogs would have the advantage of separating the fans, like at a football match. The subject would inevitably be along the lines of “What exactly do we disagree about?” which comes down to “what are we sceptical about?” for us and “what does the science say?” for you.
And I’d like to see some rule about precision. It’s so tiresome when a phrase like “since the industrial revolution” is used to mean anything between 1760 and 1950.
If you’re not willing, your colleagues on the Cook paper (Nuccitelli, Painter etc) would make ideal candidates, I’d have thought.
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Paul
I was exaggerating when I said we destroyed Lew. What happened was that Barry started exploring the question of what blogs posted a link to the survey, I followed it up, and the relatively small number of informed people had an enlightening discussion. The large number of comments at eg JoNova or WUWT means that lines of discussion get lost. I frankly think that some of the lines of criticism (Anthony’s alternative survey, the hunt for the sceptical blogs which were contacted, the timing of Lew’s mail from Germany) were wood that hid the trees – inevitable in the kind of rowdy unorganised discussion which blogging encourages. I’m not sure that ATTP or some of his colleagues wouldn’t fancy a discussion/debate. I’m sure they’ve got the same amount of Dunning Kruger in their veins as we have.
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Perhaps suggest a few possible debate topics, Geoff. What do you have in mind?
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Len,
As I said at 1;06pm “What exactly do we disagree about?” but that could be rephrased in a number of ways.
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Barry, those comments are mega, thank you. Marshall ain’t so nice in equating us with holocaust deniers after all. As for this
That deserves a main post all of its own.
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You could start by finding out among yourselves whether you actually agree about anything much scientific beyond hating Mann, Lew, Cook and the hockey stick.
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Clueless numpty hasn’t even read our about page.
It’s amusing that even the climateers who come here regularly (Lenny & Kenny) still have no understanding at all.
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It’s amusing, Paul, but not at all surprising. It goes with their unquestioning acceptance of anything that declares the planet is doomed, no matter how bonkers it turns out to be.
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Like I said, Paul, you don’t agree among itself about anything apart from hating Mann et.al. Debate with such an entity by scientists is pointless. You could probably not even agree an opening statement on any given subject (apart from the obvious, Mann etc).
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You really are a little twerp aren’t you Len? Do you not recall anything? Look back at previous discussions, you will find an enormous degree of agreement about the essentials of the CAGW scam.
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The really odd thing is that if Len would ever stoop to summarising what 97% of shredded wheat eaters believed about climate change, most of us would agree with it. This is what is driving his discontent – the fact that if he wants to show a difference between “properly sceptical” Lenny and Kenny and the people he calls “us”, he has to defend Mann and Lew and the other demented chaplains of the Faith
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Maybe about trivia, but I doubt you can agree about whether CO2 is a GHG, whether the GHE is a significant factor controlling temperature, whether temperatures are going up or at what rate or even whether it will be colder or warmer in 20 years’ time. You might agree with Tom and Geoff might agree with Paul, but you can’t possibly all agree with the weasel, Barrel, hunter etc?
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Five out of ten, Len. Describe the consensus. You didn’t get very close
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Len’s ability to miss the point is so profound he might be able to fall and miss the floor.
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Alan, what? “enormous degree of agreement”? Rubbish! 🙂
Seriously, though, the point is, I couldn’t give a toss about exactly what topics we all agree with each other about. It shouldn’t be necessary to spell this out again, since as I said above, this point has been up on our about page for 2 years.
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Paul, To temporarily take on the mantle of the United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld : there are enormous degrees of agreement about what we all disagree about, a moderate degree of agreement about what we agree with and absolutely no agreement with Len.
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Hunter. A perfect quotation for you:
“[M]y spelling is Wobbly. It’s good spelling but it Wobbles, and the letters get in the wrong places. ~A.A. Milne, Winnie-the-Pooh, 1926
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Puzzling questions, Len, but not beyond all conjecture. More pressing than what we certainly know, is what (if anything) we should do. Most of us who read this blog are not convinced that we need to spend trillions on trying to stop something that is not necessarily going to happen, or if it does may not be all that terrible, by methods which at best are far from certain to work. That is what we are sceptical about. The faith that we must do this is what we deny.
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Thanks, that is AA Milne, pre-Disneyfication, was wonderful. The books still are.
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Len Martinez,
What does Climate Science have as evidence for manmade Global Warming, that is better than Mann’s Hockey Stick, Cook’s 97% Consensus, and anything with Lewandowsky’s name on it?
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Osseo, trillions are not hard to come by; US Congress is in the process of borrowing one or two just to give them away to rich folks.
I’d agree with you on methods; Paris and all that leaves me cold. A straightforward carbon tax and related regulations would be better in my opinion.
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In other words, given that the UK taxes fuel so massively, we don’t need any more climate action in the UK! Hurrah!
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Len’s inability to analyze climate is apparently matched when it comes to tax issues.
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looks like Marshall – Climate Outreach have finally hit he gravy train of big NGO donors.
“Exciting times at Climate Outreach as we continue to grow rapidly. If you are passionate about climate change and are a creative, ambitious individual then this could be the job for you.”
loads more staff/people than just a few years back.
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Barry, you know there are days when I sink into despair that the overwhelming forces of climate oppression are winning hands-down. I commonly felt that way at UEA. News about Climate Outreach drags me down. Think I’ll climb back into bed.
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The John Ray initiative have a write up of the event.. Hayhoe/Marshall event
“http://www.ethicsdaily.com/too-many-believe-climate-change-wont-affect-them-cms-24518
extract:
“The relationship between science and faith was also a focal point of Hayhoe’s presentation, and she used the example that science can tell you which is north, south, east and west, but cannot tell you which way to go.
Science can tell us the statistical impact of climate change, but cannot tell us what to do. This comes from the heart.
We find very little to offer us hope in the science; science shows us that we have underestimated the effects of climate change, but we need hope because if we have no hope, we will fail.
Hayhoe offered glimpses of hope: the provision of solar energy for the poorest in the world; the fact that China and India are leading the world in renewable energy; the fact that 30 percent of the U.S. economy, represented by cities, states and corporations have signed up to the climate change principles; and especially that her personal faith gives the assurance of the possibility of change.
So, Hayhoe urged us to present hope, which does not come from science, but from our faith – “the fear is in my head; the hope is in my heart.”
She encouraged us to read her favorite Bible verse. “For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline” (2 Timothy 1:7).”
http://www.jri.org.uk/introduction/people/
President – John Ray Initiative
Sir John Houghton CBE FRS is President of the John Ray Initiative. He was chairman of Scientific Assessment for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Director General of the UK Meteorological Office, and Professor of Atmospheric Physics at the University of Oxford
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LOL – Adam Corner – Climate Outreach
Prince Charles’ Ladybird book is a climate communications masterpiece
http://www.climatechangenews.com/2017/03/10/prince-charles-lady-bird-book-climate-communications-masterpiece/
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Notice the pattern of how the climate creeps avoid actually dealing with reality.
The pause, which many scientists write papers describing and exploring, now never happened in the consensus world.
The fact that many papers are published showing low to little climate change is dismissed by the cobsensus to make the assertion that it is much worse etc.
And too many polar bears?
Ignore that inconvenience and blame bloggers and attack the person who pointsciut the inconvenience.
And keep sucking down public and private money….not to lift a finger to help the environment but rather to “communicate climate “.
And the tweedle dee and tweeedle dumbers think that is all sciencey and great.
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Hunter:
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Hunter: “Len’s inability to analyze climate is apparently matched when it comes to tax issues.”
You think causing an extra trillion or two in borrowing by cutting taxes on rich folks and companies doesn’t amount to borrowing money to give to the rich? A post-truth, post-morality Republican, evidently.
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On Climate Outreach’s YOutube page you can see George Marshall reporting from Kazakhstan a couple of weeks ago. Earlier this year he was in India. Clocking up the airmiles isn’t he?
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Catriona Mckinnon – Climate justice – million pound grantee. is off to Tasmania soon. https://www.climatejustice.network/
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Barry Woods, the pseudoscience psychobabble in that link is worthy of an Oscar. It finishes with this gem:
“The Conference will follow a sustainable, no or low carbon model, to be reflected in catering, printing and other aspects of Conference Management. Participants flying to Hobart are asked use a reputable carbon offset provider.”
How many trees will not be cut down, to make this event possible?
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economy, business, first
Your flight:
From: London (GB), LHR to: Hobart (AU), HBA, Roundtrip, Economy Class, ca. 34,900 km, 1 traveler
CO2 amount: 7.4 t
Your flight:
From: London (GB), LHR to: Hobart (AU), HBA, Roundtrip, Business Class, ca. 34,900 km, 1 traveler
CO2 amount: 14.2 t
Your flight:
From: London (GB), LHR to: Hobart (AU), HBA, Roundtrip, First Class, ca. 34,900 km, 1 traveler
CO2 amount: 22.1 t
that one flight (economy) is higher than an ave uk citizen per capita emissions fro a year.
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If you would wish to create some form of Monty Python sketch to lambast the pomposity and downright weirdness of this conference you would deliberately site it where it would demand using the greatest amount of airmiles. Hobart would be a likely venue. All that is needed now is the requirement that all participants for the duration of the conference be called Bruce or Sheila.
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‘Catriona Mckinnon – Climate justice – million pound grantee. is off to Tasmania soon. https://www.climatejustice.network/‘
Prof. Steve Vanderheiden of the University of Colorado will be there too. He’ll be chairing a meeting called Climate Justice: Where do we go from here? My guess is Fiji or Costa Rica or the Maldives. (Prof. Vanderheiden is currently working on a book called Doing Our Bit: Individual Responsibility for Climate Change. It’ll be a cracker: his last book, Atmospheric Justice, won a Harold and Margaret Sprout award.)
Then there’s Prof. Linda Steg, a Dutch environmental psychologist whose research focuses on…
She’ll be flying to Tasmania to ask What Motivates Individuals to Act on Climate Change?.
#AlGoreIsFat
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I must admit to being more than a little peeved that a low-grade academic sucking millions of pounds in funding to demean, marginalise and delegitimise legitimate scepticism of man-made climate change is off on a free jolly to Tasmania, a place I have always dreamed about visiting, but probably never will. In fact, it pisses me off no end if I am really honest.
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Jaime Jessop, you could do some carbon offsetting to salvage the consciences of the grant suckers. Just imagine you have an area of land the size of Wales covered in beautiful forests, then imagine yourself not cutting down any trees.
The Carbon Offsets come flowing in, and you don’t even need a chainsaw or vehicle, or land, just some imagination and an aura of Green Blob entitlement to other people’s money.
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Len should try to be sceptical for once and try exercising any residual analytical functions that survive in his credulous brain. Try this for size
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Len, innumeracy fits your profile like a hand on a glove.
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No Hunter, immumeracy fits Len like a foot in a glove.
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“The less affluent may, however, benefit from the bill’s maintenance of tax breaks for out-of-pocket medical expenses and graduate student tuition stipends.”
What sort of empty-headed nonsense world do you two (and author of that twaddle, politics lecturer Dr Green) live in when you think that *not* taking away existing tax breaks represents a ‘benefit’ to anyone?
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Len Martinez, do you now accept Judith Curry’s concise summary, and want to change the subject?
Judith Curry:
“This is absolutely the stupidest paper I have ever seen published”
Michael Mann wrote about The Climate Science War. Harvey et al has developed the War, not necessarily in Climate Science’s advantage. This was Peer Reviewed, so there can be no doubt that it represents the best that Climate Science has to offer.
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Because it is a benefit, really.
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Is that the best you can do, bot, carping are a miniscule detail? Have you considered that in the proposals
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Sure it’s a benefit. Just like when the management gives itself a 10% rise and they say to you, “well you benefit too because we haven’t cut your overtime pay”, you’ll be sure to be grateful that you are benefiting from their pay rise. You live on a different planet.
If you are going to cut and paste, at least choose text that relates to the tax plan. Your quoted healthcare text continues:
“If you have a chronic illness, your costs would rise. That’s because you’d have to rely on the ACA plans on the exchanges. As healthy customers leave those plans, the companies will raise prices to remain profitable.
National health care costs would rise at a faster rate than under Obamacare. With the ACA, costs rise around 5 percent a year. In 2014, they increased 5.3 percent. In 2015, they rose 5.8 percent. In 2007, they rose 6.5 percent. From 2000 to 2004, health care costs rose 7 percent each year. Obamacare helped more people receive low-cost preventive care before they needed high-cost emergency room care.
Trump’s plan could also add to the debt. As the ACA costs rise, so would the cost of subsidies. That increases the deficit and debt.”
(https://www.thebalance.com/how-could-trump-change-health-care-in-america-4111422)
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For the chronically hard of understanding, if benefits are removed from one group but retained for another group, one group benefits and the other group suffers. Why is that so hard to understand? And it is so much fun making bots search for material. It must be so irritating for the bot network to have to find stuff rather than making up shit on their tangential and irrelevant lines of attack
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