The Frank Luntz playbook is fascinating. Delayers are commmited to "making the right decision, not the quick decision." Anyone pushing for action now is a "global warming alarmist." From a political standpoint, and this is all politics now, I think Luntz has laid out effective strategies to manipulate the general public's strong preference not to treat anthropogenic climate destabilization as an immediate crisis. Thus, even though the scientific community now basically seems to be screaming crisis, the MSM balances its reporting by quoting "skeptics" and covering distractions such as the revelation that Al Gore lives in a big house and still relies on air travel to do his work.

Politically, the delayer/delayer-1000 crowd deserves to be isolated. The posts on this and other blogs suggest that there are two basic categories of delayers: ideologues and water carriers. Ideologues will defend beliefs to the point of societal collapse (e.g., they are modern equivalents of the historic Greenlanders who chose starvation over eating fish). Water carriers view regulatory efforts as a zero sum game and will represent their own narrow and immediate self interests to the detriment of everyone and everything else, including future generations. It's hard to see either ideologues or water carriers, once properly identified, garnering much public support.

The bigger problem, as Joe Romm has suggested in this series, is that the delayers are at least somewhat effective at working the refs. This delays public understanding and response to the scientifically accurate crisis message that the public needs to hear. In turn, absent a coherent, timely, and accurate public response to the information (which will still include the delayer response), the political response will also be imperfect and delayed at a time when we can least afford it.

You're right that it's a variegated assemblage -- any large group of people will be variegated. But there is something that unites them all, a reason they're considered part of a movement, a reason they're all going to the same conference: they all oppose strong government action to reduce carbon emissions.

I don't care what name that goes by, but don't pretend there's not a salient commonality.

grist.org

Re: "I see comments from a lot of delayers who intensely dislike being linked to 'Holocaust deniers.'"  -- Joseph Romm

Re: "Politically, the delayer/delayer-1000 crowd deserves to be isolated." -- Hal 2000

I agree with Joseph Romm that "skeptic" is a little too flattering a term for the folks whom I would prefer to call "greenhouse deniers" or "global responsibility shirkers."

I understand that the folks who deny the reality of global warming, or who deny the validity of the greenhouse gas theory, or who deny the responsibility of humankind for the yearly surplus of greenhouse gases, must be mighty displeased to be called "deniers."  This is for me not sufficient reason to use a "nicer" word.

Moreover, I disagree with Romm that the comparison with Holocaust deniers is inaccurate.  There are different degrees of denial of the Holocaust, just as there are different degrees of denial of the three-step causal sequence "global warming caused by greenhouse gases caused by human activity."  For example, there are Nazi sympathizers who try to push as much responsibility for the Holocaust as possible onto the Soviets.  They don't deny that the most massive genocide in recorded history happened; they just deny that Germans were solely or even primarily responsible for it.  The shrewdest (and most insidious) deniers in this vein are those who merely compare the Holocaust to other historical massacres and slyly suggest that it "wasn't so bad" by comparison.  These deniers are not so very different from global-warming deniers who specialize in denying one or another link of the aforementioned three-step causal chain that is global warming theory as we understand it.

If we want to be really honest, then we can choose our words carefully.  One denier may be a global warming denier, another may be a greenhouse-theory denier, and third may be a denier of human responsibility for greenhouse gas emissions.  A denier of one is not necessarily a denier of all three -- but one denial is enough!

So I say, let's call them deniers, and if they don't like it, tough beans!  Their annoyance may be an indicator that we are on the right track.  If you want to score political points, then you have to hit a few tender nerves.

As Hal 2000 reminds us, our goal is to ISOLATE global-warming deniers -- not to win them over.

Don't think it is historically and unfair comparison. Many Holocaust deniers also don't deny outright the Holocaust happened. They deny it is was intentional: "those were work camps, not death camps: the deaths were from disease and malnutrition". Or: "OK some people were deliberately killed. It was not the overall intent of the camps, there were a few bad apples". Or even "Yes, they were death camps but the number killed was exaggerated, at most there were 2 million dead". And then there are still the complete deniers.

But is this really not pretty comparable to the lines the warming deniers take?

Joe Romm, David Roberts, is there some way you could work out an arrangement to have only one of Romm's posts get comments post?  Grist is republishing so many posts that appear first on Climate Progress that it's becoming very difficult for readers to track the discussion -- where a comment appeared or where you saw a particular insight.  This makes it difficult to follow the discussions and renders them less helpful than they should b.  I know of many other blogs that allow these reposts from other blogs, but the reposting site turns off comments and appends a note saying "Comment over there."

Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.

I suggest your time would be better spent thinking up a new description for yourself that you will need when the earth starts cooling.

Immortal?

You also might want to do an operational risk management assessment on your reputation.   Additionally, whatever you can do to prepare for cognitive dissonance would be helpful.  

Let's suppose for a moment that someday soon, most of the world's atmospheric scientists prove to be wrong and a tiny minority prove to be right.  In this case, I'll be ecstatically happy with the state of the world and mildly disappointed that I was formerly mistaken in my opinions.  I believe I can handle this kind of "cognitive dissonance," thank you.

But I pity the fool who today believes whatever he finds convenient (prevailing science be damned), delays actions that might have made our planet more livable, and someday soon has to cope not only with the incontrovertible fact that he was wrong, but also the knowledge that his inaction has only made things worse.

There's cognitive dissonance, and there's knowing that you're a victim of your own bullheadedness.  Frankly, I'll take the dissonance.

I have looked at several websites that trumpet the Manhattan Declaration as if it were the Fifth Gospel, but none of these sites provided the names of actual scientists (or actual residents of Manhattan, for that matter) who endorse the Manhattan Declaration.  You'd think this would be their main feature!

Then I tried Wikipedia, and everything became clear.  As I discovered here -- and as I believe most people reading this thread may already know -- the "Manhattan Declaration" was issued by the "Heartland Institute," a front organization for ideologues from Exxon and Philipp Morris.

But if you're not already aware of this, don't take my word for it!  Check out the documentation in Wikipedia under the heading "Heartland Institute."

I am German, so I know about that H word.
In my youth I often had to listen to and tried to debate folks from my grandparents' (and even +/-WWII born parents') generation who engaged in various forms of Holocaust denial (e.g. relativizing numbers or causes of deaths; see JakobFabian01 above).
Nowadays I often have to listen to and try to debate folks from my parents' generation who engage in AGW denial. The psychology is quite similar. Sometimes it feels like deja vu.

This is one reason why I stick with the denialist word.

The other reason is another parallel to Holocaust: Not denial after the fact, but the looking-away while it was in the making.

While the term may be imprecise, "denier" is a much more effective term, precisely because it links the hacks and ideologues with  racist holocaust deniers, nutty flat-earthers and other lunatic fringe groups. On a similar note, the term "climate change" should be studiously avoided and replaced with "catastorphic climate imbalance," "climate catastrophe," "climate crisis" or at the very least the tried-and-true "global warming."

This is war, folks. The fossil fuel industry is not going to give up their monopolistic profits and market entry barriers easily, the future be damned. As Dubbya infamously quipped when asked about how history would judge him: "History? We'll all be dead."

In the light of Romm's statement - "The delayers, however, are very different and far more dangerous. They are trying to persuade people not to take action on a problem that has not yet become catastrophic, but which will certainly do so if we listen to them and delay acting much longer."

How would we classify the following passage? Is it denial? Is it "delaying"? Is it scpeticism?

Whatever it is, it contradicts Romm's language. And the problem for him is that the words are not from a sceptic, but a senior climate scientist. The reason climate alarmism has worked is because shrill language like "denier" and "catastrophe" doesn't bear scrutiny, and isn't supported by the science. Yet Romm asks us to take his word for it that it does. Inventing new language isn't going to help his cause.

--------------------------

over the last few years a new environmental phenomenon has been constructed in this country - the phenomenon of "catastrophic" climate change.

This discourse is now characterised by phrases such as "climate change is worse than we thought", that we are approaching "irreversible tipping in the Earth's climate", and that we are "at the point of no return".

...

Why is it not just campaigners, but politicians and scientists too, who are openly confusing the language of fear, terror and disaster with the observable physical reality of climate change, actively ignoring the careful hedging which surrounds science's predictions?

...

The language of catastrophe is not the language of science. It will not be visible in next year's global assessment from the world authority of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

To state that climate change will be "catastrophic" hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science.

Is any amount of climate change catastrophic? Catastrophic for whom, for where, and by when? What index is being used to measure the catastrophe?

The language of fear and terror operates as an ever-weakening vehicle for effective communication or inducement for behavioural change.

...

I believe climate change is real, must be faced and action taken. But the discourse of catastrophe is in danger of tipping society onto a negative, depressive and reactionary trajectory.

The posts from Andy Revkin and George Mobus provide much-needed clarity about names and labels in the climate controversy. However, for climate activists and others attracted to the notion of framing, the takeaway message should not be that we need to find the one "right" label that will win the day.

Instead, it would be more productive to keep all these labels in play, using them to highlight and distinguish various tactics of adversaries in a specific situation. This could also help activists think more carefully about how communication tactics fit with larger political strategies and overarching goals--something that is central to George Lakoff's thinking about frames but largely ignored in much of the popular discussion of his work.

In the bigger scheme of things, focusing on labels is really small-bore, Luntz-ian thinking. The more significant communication issues are how to craft compelling narratives that motivate action, and how to adapt those narratives to different contexts and audiences.

~Steve

"how to craft compelling narratives that motivate action, and how to adapt those narratives to different contexts and audiences."

Narrative #1: The world is f**ked, and we're all gonna die.

Narrative #2: Unless you do as we say.

Narrative #3: Blame the failure of narratives #1 & #2 to achieve political success on an "industry-funded denial-machine".

Narrative #4: [Variant of #2, etc] ...

"Lying swine" works for me.

"The more significant communication issues are how to craft compelling narratives that motivate action, and how to adapt those narratives to different contexts and audiences."

Good luck with that.  Having worked up such a good rapport with the people you're trying to convince, I'm sure you'll succeed.  

Not!

Gaia system tipped by hominid CO2 spill into doing chaotic attractor basin jumping driven by amplifying feedback.

Sounds not that catastropho-doomy?

benp: 'Martin Rees is a doomsayer like no other. "Our Final Century"...'

Let's see. Martin Rees, Astronomer Royal of England, long, esteemed career vs. benp, a climate change denier with no visible publications. Tough choice on who to attend to, I must say.

BTW: it's "Our Final Hour" if you are referring to the book.

George Mobus, Associate Professor, Institute of Technology, University of Washington Tacoma, and Professional Student for Life

It is funny that George points us to his blog, optimistically titled 'question everything', yet then determines the validity of an argument on the weight of publishing histories -- mine versus Martin Rees' -- afterRomm has told us about 'nullius in verba', which he translated as 'take nobody's word'. George isn't looking to 'question everything' at all, and wants us to take things on the words of someone, illustrating at least one fundamental inconsistency betweenRomm and Mobus.

He continues, "But benp will probably object that there is a distinct difference between real avalanches and the mathematical theory. I hope this time s/he provides us with an explanation of what that distinction is."

I would argue instead that there is a difference between humans and snowflakes. Do snowflakes panic about an imminent avalanche, or global warming, even when it's not likely? No, but humans do worry that the combined weight of their effects on the world will cause a precipitous change which is necessarily bad - when evidently, it is also good. Snowflakes cannot question anything, let alone everything. Have we fully questioned today's preoccupation with catastrophe? No. We take it for granted, and catastrophe has become the keystone of contemporary political discussions from climate change to the war on terror - all of which captured by Rees. But doom saying cannot be explained mathematically. There is something different about humans.

George pitches my publication record against Rees' (which I agree reveals no contest), but if he needs all arguments to rest on authority, he could read my previous posts more carefully. As MikeHulme said, 'to state that climate change will be "catastrophic" hides a cascade of value-laden assumptions which do not emerge from empirical or theoretical science.' And in this battle between received wisdoms -- taking different people's words for it -- Hulme is a climate scientist, and Rees is an astronomer. I win.

But I don't win, because it was never my argument that scientific arguments can be settled by pissing contests about qualifications. I prefer to question things, unlike George.

It does not follow from 'the climate is changing' that 'there will be a catastrophe'. Our vulnerability to climate is not simply a measure of what the climate does. We can organise ourselves in a way that snowflakes can't - by responding to the ideas on this blog, for example and cutting CO2 in the hope of preventing climate change. On the other hand, we can see that different societies have adapted to similar and changing climates, with different levels of success. Where people are poorer, they are more vulnerable to climate, whether it is changing or not. Instead of taking George's mathematical determinism for granted, we could try questioning the logic of responding to the imperatives issued by 'mathematical' projections, on the basis that humans organised are not equivalent to predictable entities in a simulation. George wants us to organise ourselves according to the simulation, and this appears to be acknowledging on the one hand that humans can organise, but on the other that they are necessarily vulnerable to climate. The consequence of organising society on the basis that humans live within their 'ecological means' is (or would be) that they are necessarily more vulnerable to a changing ecology, and less able to escape it. George's mathematical determinism is a self-fullfilling prophecy; it is a way to guarentee ecological disaster as a consequence of our own, deliberate actions.

Some of us who speculate about the possibility of catastrophe do so because we began to question the received wisdom of economists and politicians in the first place.

You have missed something incredibly important in the motives of those of us who study the science behind these issues. You assume we have a priori assumptions and biases (perhaps because you do yourself, I don't know). But the fact is that I am actively looking for alternative explanations. It's part of my job. It's called science. But when the evidence continues to point in a certain direction, and when there is growing convergence (not consensus mind you) of lines of evidence, it becomes pretty hard to not start drawing conclusions and raising the points.

You seem to be afraid of something like self-fulfilling prophesies. Well I think that is a valid point. But you need to show a plausible counter argument (one climatologist on one subject does not an argument make) and further demonstrate the vector by which people panicking will do more harm. You claim it, but don't actually demonstrate its feasibility.

George
PS. If it were only Martin Rees, I might agree. But it isn't just one astronomer (who, BTW: actually has done more than astronomy!) Also, authority has to be weighed when judging whether to use it or not. In other words it is legitimate to question authority. But when the basis of that authority can be validated because of the public works of that individual, especially in science, one might tend to put more weight on their claims than, say, those of a voice in the wilderness.

George Mobus, Associate Professor, Institute of Technology, University of Washington Tacoma, and Professional Student for Life

George says something interesting here.

'Some of us who speculate about the possibility of catastrophe do so because we began to question the received wisdom of economists and politicians in the first place.'

This seems to me to be a fairly bold indication that George's catastrophism is both political, and prior to scientific observation. Curiously, he then says,

'You assume we have a priori assumptions and biases (perhaps because you do yourself, I don't know).'

I don't think I have assumed it. It is there in black and white.

There are problems with politics and economics, of course. But it seems that you're looking to science to fill the vacuum that's been left by abandoning them. The problem is that now "science" is a stand-in for morals, values, principles, and politics and economics; it is being asked to determine a direction in the way that those things previously did. But it can't do it. That's why the science you seem to be offering needs catastrophe for currency and legitimacy. Without the narrative of catastrophe, questions about how to live, or what to live for, that go beyond mere survival emerge, but cannot be answered by scientism. Without "science" underscoring the catastrophic narrative with superficial plausibility, there are no moral imperatives, no emergency measures, and no urgency driving collective purpose.

Similarly, the only way you seem able to challenge economists and politicians is by appealing to disaster. But this does not reveal a sophisticated, principled objection to what politicians or economists are saying, or offering a way that things might reasonably improved. Environmentalists, for example, do not challenge the excesses of capitalism on the basis of fundamental moral problems with organising society according to the principles of lassez faire, but because "it doesn't work", according to "scientific" observations of the climate. And interestingly, the things which are regarded as failures, are in fact its successes - it's ability to deliver innovation, and cheaper products, and so on. In other words, the reason that capitalism is "bad" is because of all the things that are in fact otherwise morally good. The understanding of what is good and bad in environmentalism is determined not by the quality of human relationships, but by environmental "science".

George says that I need to show a 'plausible counter argument ... and further demonstrate the vector by which people panicking will do more harm'. But I'm not making an argument about the difference between two harms. He also says, "One climatologist on one subject does not an argument make", seemingly asking me to provide the names of some more researchers who have evidence that counters Rees and Lovelock, etc. The IPCC, AR4 report does not talk about catastrophe, as Hulme indicated it wouldn't. The language used in the blog post above, such as catastrophe, and "a very grim fate for our children", isn't in any of the IPCC reports, and so to legitimise their use, Romm has to say instead that the IPCC "understates how dire things are", and asks us instead to look at the work of just Hansen instead of the "thousands of scientists" that elsewhere on the blog, we're being asked to invest our confidence in, against the paid-off mavericks in the sceptical camp. Similarly, the language used by the alarmists you cite is not matched by the IPCC. The "consensus" position provided by the IPCC is different to the scenarios given by alarmists. That's not to hold the IPCC beyind challenge - I believe the reports are very changeable. It does however, show that the matter is much less clear than you, or Romm claim it is, and that the alarmists - Romm included - are as 'out there' as the wacky denialists. In this respect, it is the IPCC versus the alarmists, not Hulme versus Rees and Lovelock.

One classic questionable wisdom of economists and politicians is continuous exponential growth. They forget Earth is round (hence finite). Who forgets this steers toward disaster. Basic math/science. Period.

Science should be a tool of politics and economics, not replace them (for they are different realms).

PREDICTING DISASTER IS NOT APPEALING TO DISASTER.

Science is not about morals or values. But who disregards scientific principles has no real morals or values, for he does not care about the real world.

If science challenges economists and politicians by scientificly predicting disaster then this is a principled objection to what politicians or economists are saying.  Science can offer ways how things might be reasonably improved, but the decisions (e.g. the money) lay in the hands of politicians or economists.  Science is not technology.

First comes the objection, then comes the attempt to change (or research into how to attempt that). Without such objection (first cause of action) that would be meaningless.

----------------
And BTW, the IPCC "consensus" is the least common denominator of what everyone consider sufficiently solid scientific fact. Thus it is necessarily conservative. Meanwhile observations of e.g arctic ice have confirmed this: Catastrophe is way ahead IPCC "schedule".

If we really want to get down to brass tacks, how about calling the deniers/delayers the "Guardians of Evil"? After all, what is it they're denying, in order to delay action? They're denying that human activities are about to make the planet uninhabitable through systemic disruption and destruction of the web of life.

And what are those activities? Well, they can be summed up as the Industrial Growth Society and its dependence on usury; a philosophy of otherness nourished through economic cannibalism; all founded on dominator control hierarchies that promise its sycophants they can enrich themselves at the expense of those others.

In my cosmology/ideology, anything that separates or disconnects people from each other, from other aspects of the natural world or their own inner nature, that doesn't support the prime activity of living systems -- which is to self-organize mutually supportive relationships -- is evil. So, those who espouse delay because it threatens the economic growth of their special interest masters are the guardians of evil.

Peace _on_ Earth requires peace _with_ Earth.

Could we call them "enablers", as in "climate change enablers"?  In a relationship where one partner has addictive traits or other mental health issues, if the other partner chooses not to deal openly and quickly with the situation, that person is said to be an enabler.  Their lack of action enables the situation to continue to go from bad to worse.  When we are dealing with people or institutions who are in denial about what is happening here, and why, their foot-dragging and attempts to confuse are enabling delays in response, and the damage to continue.

"Delay is the deadliest form of denial."

 C. Northcote Parkinson

Wow!  The name-calling and hot air rhetoric on this thread is getting out of control.

"The delayers, however, are very different and far more dangerous. They are trying to persuade people not to take action on a problem that has not yet become catastrophic, but which will certainly do so if we listen to them and delay acting much longer."

The statement is correct that AGW has not (yet) become catastrophic.  The key fallacy is in the claim that it "will certainly do so".

Bring the evidence, not just hot air.

I remain rationally skeptical of this whole hysteria.

Max