Monbiot is having a bad day

[Húrin]

Monbiot.com The Unpersuadables

In this article Monbiot goes on an uncharacteristically unfocused ramble in complaint about the apparently growing trend of AGW denial in Anglophone societies.

There is one question that no one who denies manmade climate change wants to answer: what would it take to persuade you? In most cases the answer seems to be nothing. No level of evidence can shake the growing belief that climate science is a giant conspiracy codded up by boffins and governments to tax and control us. The new study by the Met Office, which paints an even grimmer picture than the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change(1), will do nothing to change this view.

The attack on climate scientists is now widening to an all-out war on science. Writing recently for the Telegraph, the columnist Gerald Warner dismissed scientists as “white-coated prima donnas and narcissists … pointy-heads in lab coats [who] have reassumed the role of mad cranks … The public is no longer in awe of scientists. Like squabbling evangelical churches in the 19th century, they can form as many schismatic sects as they like, nobody is listening to them any more.”

...

Perhaps we have to accept that there is no simple solution to public disbelief in science. The battle over climate change suggests that the more clearly you spell the problem out, the more you turn people away. If they don’t want to know, nothing and no one will reach them. There goes my life’s work.

Does he not realise that most of the public do not know very much about "climategate" controversy, or about climate change and policy in general? I suggest that the principal reason for this trend is the heavy snowfalls in Europe and America this winter.

If we were to have a scorching summer, the polls would go the other way and Monbiot would be thinking that his strategies are working.

The real battle in climate politics is not between AGW proponents and sceptics. It's between those who prescribe profitable but unworkable "solutions" to the problem and those who promote solutions that are in the interests of the majority of the world, not a wealthy western minority. Monbiot knows all about these and he should understand this.

[kerdasi amaq]

what would it take to persuade you? In most cases the answer seems to be nothing.

Nothing, yes, nothing; that's because if I thought you were right: I would support you, Moonbat.

I've been reading both sides in this controversy. The nays have it; as it is obvious that AGW is a crude attempt to stampede an ignorant public into taking actions which are to their disadvantage, based on, what can only be regarded as bogus, false science.

[ibis]

Somehow it doesn't surprise me that virtually the only piece of Monbiot writing I've thought anything of turns out to be the one Húrin doesn't like!

[jmcc]

Somehow it doesn't surprise me that virtually the only piece of Monbiot writing I've thought anything of turns out to be the one Húrin doesn't like!

But your approach to AGW seems to have always been based on science, Ibis,
Húrin's has, from what I have seen, been that of the classic political activist's approach. With science, there is always the possibility for change and then for reevaluation. However with the 'true believer' approach used by Húrin and others, it is like finding out that some idol has feet of clay or in this case, secretly uses incandescent lightbulbs.

Regards...jmcc

[ibis]

But your approach to AGW seems to have always been based on science, Ibis,
Húrin's has, from what I have seen, been that of the classic political activist's approach. With science, there is always the possibility for change and then for reevaluation. However with the 'true believer' approach used by Húrin and others, it is like finding out that some idol has feet of clay or in this case, secretly uses incandescent lightbulbs.

Regards...jmcc

I hope nobody will be concerned by discovering that I secretly use incandescent lightbulbs. Well, not secretly, as such.

[Húrin]

Somehow it doesn't surprise me that virtually the only piece of Monbiot writing I've thought anything of turns out to be the one Húrin doesn't like!

It's not that there is nothing to the article. It just doesn't seem as well-sourced, focused, important or incisive as most of his work.

I also thought it would be a good platform to point out that the public agreement with the AGW theory literally changes with the weather. The 'Climategate' hype is secondary.

[ibis]

It's not that there is nothing to the article. It just doesn't seem as well-sourced, focused, important or incisive as most of his work.

Well, it's something of a musing sort of article.

I also thought it would be a good platform to point out that the public agreement with the AGW theory literally changes with the weather. The 'Climategate' hype is secondary.

That remains regrettably the case, but it's hardly surprising, given the shallowness of public understanding of the science, or even knowledge about the science. Someone who has no idea that there's literally thousands of studies that form the corpus of the science, and that of the perhaps tens of thousands of scientists who have worked on it over the last generation or so, 99.99% of them see the science as sound and definitive, that there has been consensus agreement on the basic outline of what's happening for nearly thirty years, and a theoretical basis stretching back over a century, will no doubt find a cold snap - or a carefully abstracted quote from an email - just as compelling as anything else.

After all, it would certainly be much nicer if there wasn't a problem. One less thing to worry about.

[Mouroux]

Oh for god's sake... not another 'green journalist' wetting the bed again to justify a raise in salary...

[seabhcan]

That remains regrettably the case, but it's hardly surprising, given the shallowness of public understanding of the science, or even knowledge about the science. Someone who has no idea that there's literally thousands of studies that form the corpus of the science, and that of the perhaps tens of thousands of scientists who have worked on it over the last generation or so, 99.99% of them see the science as sound and definitive, that there has been consensus agreement on the basic outline of what's happening for nearly thirty years, and a theoretical basis stretching back over a century, will no doubt find a cold snap - or a carefully abstracted quote from an email - just as compelling as anything else.

After all, it would certainly be much nicer if there wasn't a problem. One less thing to worry about.

I am a scientist. I've worked in university and private sector research for years. I know first hand, that it is quite possible for 'thousands of scientists' to get something wrong.

The truth is that there are indeed thousands of scientists working on climate change. I'm good friends with a few of them. They work with plants and ecosystems, etc. But hardly any scientists at all work to study the connection between and increase of 150ppm CO2 and warming. Its taken as an assumption.

My fear is that even if warming is manmade, there is a reasonable probability that it is not the tiny concentration of CO2 that is to blame, but some other chemical.

[fiannafailure]

I hope nobody will be concerned by discovering that I secretly use incandescent lightbulbs. Well, not secretly, as such.

Shame on you ibis, shame. I hope at least that they are of the improved efficiency type of incandescent, which can be actually more efficient than CFL's.