Headlining Again: Flirting with Insufferable

Confessions of deniers at Judith Curry's blog

You may remember when Anthony Watts at WUWT posted a self-portrait of a denier, which brought out a whole host of other self portraits - predominately from engineers. Now Judith Curry has invited deniers to write about why they reject climate science (archived here). I think it was an open invitation to all, but since her blog is denier paradise, most of the comments are from - you guessed it, climate science deniers.

There were several people who wrote more than one of the 133 comments (as archived). I counted only eight people who accept the science. The rest rejected science (a couple were non-committal). Some described themselves as lukewarmers or fence-sitters. Others were more hard-core.

...Some of the stated reasons for rejecting climate science:

Climategate
Money
Suspect "motives of the UN/IPCC"
"attempts to scare the public re. extreme weather events being linked to climate change" (here)
"mightily impressed" by disinformation
"attempts by the UN and the Progressive Green Mafia to reshape the entire world economy" (here)
"Really Cold in lots and lots of places yesterday and today" (here)
Money ("billions of dollars")
Has "serious doubts about the accuracy and reliability of the global historic temperature records" (here)
"Many of the people pushing the danger are radical extremists" (here)
Found a denier article on a denier blog and was converted
Rarely read any climate articles except those on denier blogs (here and here)
Has "always reacted against conventional wisdom" (here)
Couldn't find AGW in the temperature record (really)
"the entire basis for the movement rested upon cherry-picking and lies of omission" (here)
"got dragged to a lecture by Chris Essex" (here)
Personal incredulity (and strawmen) "the whole idea that some scientists have the global climate system accurately modelled just pegged my BS meter" (here)
"finally had access to the tremendous body of skepticism about AGW" (here)
"read a friend’s copy of Andrew Montford’s book, ‘The Hockey Stick Illusion’" (here)
Has "the feeling that I’m being hustled" (here)
"It struck me as very odd that the ground thermometer readings would continue to be preferred when the satellite measurements became available" (here)
Felt cheated because he sold his house based on his reading of an article in the NY Times (here)
Willingly fell for disinformation from McIntyre and McKitrick (here)
Climate science "was being promoted with a very left wing slant which made me suspicious" (here)
"Not worried about global warming because there is an enormous cold reservoir in the deep oceans that could be employed to cool if it doesn’t deliver the next ice age already on its own." (here)
"Global warming always struck me as stupid because everything that was said to be ‘unprecedented’ was so obviously not." (here)
"It seemed to me that we were, possibly, being manipulated." (here)
Read a Michael Crichton novel "Got into this after reading State of Fear. Before that didn’t realize there were non-crazy people who were actually skeptical." (here)
"the effort to “disappear” the MWP was a watershed moment for me" (here)
"I lean toward the view that the effect on temperature of the large increase in anthropogenic CO2 is small, barely if at all detectable " and in the same comment "reminded us that Mt. Pinatubo was a big event affecting the atmosphere" (here)
"I am a skeptic perhaps mostly because of the work of Dr (sic) Tony Brown" (here)
"I am unable to understand how replacing one out of 10000 molecules in the atmosphere with another one of a meager “greenhouse gas” could possibly disrupt the planet’s entire climatic system to such an extent" (here)
"It seemed like a lot of hype, and darn little in the way of good arguments. " (here)
"After Florida had two severe hurricane seasons in a row, home insurance rates skyrocketed" (here)
"Any warming since 1979 is offset by cooling in 1958-1978" (Yes, really! here)
Judith's blog - how she must swell with pride: "I have only been visiting Judith’s blog since September 2011 but even this shorter period has been enough to make me less open-minded and more convinced that the AGW hypothesis is generally based on sloppy science and even sloppier reasoning when it relates climate change to the advocacy of carbon reduction policies." (here)
"I noticed a lot of people were making huge money from it" (here)
Writes like he really believes this nonsense: "The scientists really were fiddling to get the right results, ruining the careers of people who had different scientific views and refusing to show where the data and workings for the papers used by the IPCC came from." (here)
"I suspect that this government-born new virgin birth of “global warming” is not a scientific issue, now, any longer, but will be a justification for global fascism, in the name of good.. ….as always. ….smile." (here)

George Montgomery said...
"The advanced degrees makes it fairly ludicrous to refer to them as science 'deniers'"
There's no arguing with "ludicrous" logic like that; it's an exemplar of "fairly" putting the 'twit' into 'twitter'.

Quoting 134. BaltimoreBrian:

Addendum:

*** Fiery oil train crash forces W Virginia towns to evacuate

Quoting 134. BaltimoreBrian:

Addendum: see #137

Quoting 124. JohnLonergan:

Quoting 125. RevElvis:

The 12 terrifying ways researchers think human civilisation is most likely to end

1. Extreme climate change
2. Nuclear war
3. Global pandemic
4. Major asteroid impact
5. Super volcano
6. Ecological catastrophe
7. Global system catastrophe
8. Synthetic biology
9. Nanotechnology
10. Artificial intelligence
11. Future bad global governance
12. Unknown consequences

independent.co.uk (LINK)

Tom Harris, Executive Director of the International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC)[/caption]Starting in the middle of December, 2014 and continuing through February, 2015, Tom Harris, Executive Director of the industrial climate disruptionA denying International Climate Science Coalition (ICSC), wrote at least eight nearly identical commentaries. They were published mostly in small local newspapers and websites around the United States, Canada, and South Africa. The stated purpose of the commentaries was to call for scholars and philosophers to engage in the public argument over climate disruption (aka global warming or climate change), and Harris wrote that “philosophers and other intellectuals have an ethical obligation to speak out loudly when they see fundamental errors in thinking6.” As S&R hosts an occasional feature called “Climate Illogic,” we accepted Harris’ invitation and looked through his own commentaries for illogical arguments as well as other issues of concern.
As a result of our review, S&R identified five major areas of concern and a troubling observation. First, Harris engages in what is known as “tone trolling,” attempting to distract from an argument by complaining that the language or tactics used by the debaters is offensive. Second, Harris misidentifies many logical errors he alleges are made by others and he commits several logical fallacies of his own. Third, he misunderstands how science can legitimately draw conclusions that are “unequivocal” and discover “truth.” Fourth, he demonstrates a significant lack of understanding of the scientific method in general, the state of climate science in particular, and the differing levels of expertise between climate disruption deniersB and climate realistsC. Fifth, Harris’ commentaries are found to be less about fixing the tone of a supposedly broken debate and more about undermining climate scientists, poisoning the well against any logic experts who actually engage in the discussion, and derailing the discussion as much as possible. Finally, S&R reviews the fundamental asymmetries between climate realists and climate disruption deniers and how those asymmetries enable Harris and his peers to regularly produce distortion-filled commentaries like these.

Quoting 125. RevElvis:

The 12 terrifying ways researchers think human civilisation is most likely to end

1. Extreme climate change
2. Nuclear war
3. Global pandemic
4. Major asteroid impact
5. Super volcano
6. Ecological catastrophe
7. Global system catastrophe
8. Synthetic biology
9. Nanotechnology
10. Artificial intelligence
11. Future bad global governance
12. Unknown consequences

independent.co.uk (LINK)

No, global warming doesn't lead to more snow:

“The world that we’re creating for our grandchildren is grim. The major concern ought to be the one that was brought up in New York at the September 21 march. A couple hundred thousand people marched in New York calling for some serious action on global warming.

This is no joke. This is the first time in the history of the human species that we have to make decisions which will determine whether there will be decent survival for our grandchildren. That’s never happened before. Already we have made decisions which are wiping out species around the world at a phenomenal level.

The level of species destruction in the world today is about at the level of sixty-five million years ago, when a huge asteroid hit the earth and had horrifying ecological effects. It ended the age of the dinosaurs; they were wiped out. It kind of left a little opening for small mammals, who began to develop, and ultimately us. The same thing is happening now, except that we’re the asteroid. What we’re doing to the environment is already creating conditions like those of sixty-five million years ago. Human civilization is tottering at the edge of this. The picture doesn’t look pretty.”

Quoting 109. Cochise111:
I predict my link will be removed for violating community standards.

Quoting 109. Cochise111:

I predict my link will be removed for violating community standards. Just what are the standards these days? Censor anyone who doesn't agree with AGW?

No, global warming doesn't lead to more snow:

Quoting 116. ColoradoBob1:

109. Cochise111

Your links are rantings of a fool. And poorly educated at that.

Quoting 109:
I predict my link will be removed for violating community standards. Just what are the standards these days? Censor anyone who doesn't agree with AGW?

No, global warming doesn't lead to more snow:

Quoting 100. LAbonbon:

...The second interesting article is Justin Gillis at NYT’s What to call a doubter of climate change? You all probably have an idea where we stand, and we have previously discussed the problematic nature of the use of denier as it gives them easy ammo to dismiss critique of denialist tactics as ad hominem. Unfortunately Gillis fails to actually define the problem adequately, in that he fails to describe the behavior and tactics of denialism. As a result his comment section, already at about 400 at the time of writing, mostly consists of Galileo gambits and comparisons of modern denialists to Einstein or Marshall and Warren. This is a newer modification of the Galileo Gambit which hijacks the work of Thomas Kuhn to suggest the denialists aren’t hacks, but revolutionaries!

Of course, the problem is the scientific revolutions that Kuhn described weren’t accomplished using the tactics of denialism. It’s also very important to understand such revolutions don’t invalidate previous data, which are still true. Einstein didn’t invalidate Newtonian physics, he expanded upon them in areas where they don’t work, such as at high speeds or small scales. Climate change denialists aren’t advancing a radical new theory, or compiling an alternative data set, they’re nitpicking existing science and promoting conspiracy theories about fraud that routinely get pants on fire level ratings. It’s a clever tactic, but totally bogus. When Jim Inhofe says that climate change can’t be dangerous because God is in control, that’s not a scientific revolutionary speaking. That’s a crank.
So Gillis makes a critical error, I believe, in the presentation of this problem because he fails to adequately describe the tactics of denialism being criticized, because the tactics are indefensible, and documented from one side of the internet to the other. It’s psuedoskepticism, and psuedoscience, and the key from distinguishing it from actual science that has the capacity to generate a revolution is to point out that no actual science is being done by these jokers, just cherry-picking, conspiratorial fear-mongering and rhetorical tricks. I think he describes the problem well but has opened himself to undue criticism by not making the issue the tactics rather than the specific belief. (of note Gillis spoke to me in prep for this article about some of the history of the debate)

Quoting 81. Xandra:

The Pentagon & Climate Change: How Deniers Put National Security at Risk