18 Responses to “The Possession”

1. EdG says:

   December 5, 2011 at 5:26 pm

   Well, what does the bottom line – the real world results – tell you?

   How’s Durban going? What is the US position there? Why is Canada pulling out of Kyoto? And why didn’t the US, even with Gore as VP, even sign that?

   This is a bit like asking if the Climategate emails mattered. Look at the results since then. All downhill for the Team.

   It is not so much the ‘influence of skeptics,’ but the incredibility of the so called evidence. Crying wolf has inevitable consequences.

2. Anteros says:

   December 5, 2011 at 5:48 pm

   I’d guess that it varies. It sounds like sceptics have an influence on Republican politics…
    
   In the UK I don’t think sceptics have any influence at all. Certainly not in government. Policy simply comes up hard against reality and an impasse is reached.
    
   I’d ask another question – how much fossil fuel has been left in the ground as a result of policy over the last 25 years. I think ‘none at all’ is a reasonable answer – if so, either sceptics are incredibly influential [which I don’t believe] or the problem is much much tougher to address than it appears.
    
   Roger Pielke’s take on the issue is here –
    
   http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com/2011/12/about-those-skeptics.html
    
   I would actually answer your question simply with a ‘yes’.
   I’d also suggest that climate alarmists are also less influential than they – or their counter-parts in the sceptical community – would have us believe.
    
   Otherwise I think we’d have seen Co2 reductions since 1990 rather than a 50% increase.
    
   Maybe no-one has much influence…
    
    

3. kdk33 says:

   December 5, 2011 at 6:05 pm

   Policy simply comes up hard against reality and an impasse is reached.

   Yes.  Eventually you run out of other peoples money.

4. huxley says:

   December 5, 2011 at 6:18 pm

   Boy, Keith is on a real “have you stopped beating your wife?” tear with skeptics today.

   I don’t remember skeptics claiming that they were important and influential. That is a claim that the orthodox make, as can be seen in the YF article.

   The real truth is that the climate orthodox are not as important and influential as they believe they should be.

   Well, as the Philosopher Jagger once said, “You can’t always get what you want.”

5. Sashka says:

   December 5, 2011 at 6:29 pm

   Keith,
    
   When you say “they”, which subspecies do you have in mind?
    

6. Anteros says:

   December 5, 2011 at 6:34 pm

   kdk33 –
    
   Indeed – and they get seriously pissed off when they realise the money has all been flushed down the toilet

7. huxley says:

   December 5, 2011 at 6:39 pm

   I think the climate has been important and influential.

   If global temperatures had continued increasing in the 2000s as they had in the 1990s, I believe the climate orthodox would be taken more seriously today.

   However, temperatures plateaued. Yet the orthodox kept up with the “Even worse than we thought!” news stories.
   One way or another people tuned out the climate orthodox, especially now with huge immediate financial worries.

   It’s hard to say how much of a role skeptics might have played in that or Climategate, but the fact remains climate orthodox have lost their influence for now. Typically, they are casting about for others to blame.

8. Fred says:

   December 5, 2011 at 7:20 pm

   Those who do not believe in global warming have as a rule (except for on this site) had their posts deleted or edited and been blocked from even posting on warmist sites. The line has been “the science is settled.” Given this treatment it is hard for us to believe our position is “important and influential.” 
    
   Proposing that those who do not believe in global warming are not important and should be ignored in establishing policy has been standard operating procedure for the warmist establishment for some time and is nothing new.
    
   The problem in implementing warmist energy policies eschewing carbon based energy is that at the present stage of the technology they will cause society to collapse. The warmists just don’t believe in their case enough to push it. They had the presidency and booth houses of Congress and cap-and-trade failed. It wasn’t the “deniers” who stopped them. A few sane people realized that limiting carbon use to the per capita levels of 1867 by 2050 was inconsistent with maintaining civilization without alternative energy sources in place. And there is no guarantee they will be developed in time.
    
   Now the science is indeed moving against the warmists and they may have much more pushback. See:
    
   http://heartland.org/policy-documents/climate-change-reconsidered-2011-interim-report
    
   The science is getting settled, just not in the way the warmists anticipated.

9. Keith Kloor says:

   December 5, 2011 at 8:01 pm

   The cluster of climate skeptic posts today is coincidental. I wrote my Yale post yesterday–it happened to go up this afternoon. And I the Anteros comment–which I highlighted today–dovetails with previous attempts by me to clarify the different types of climate skeptics. As some of you may recall, those posts generated much displeasure, too.

   Sashka,

   The batty ones that belong to the Morano/Monckton/Watts species.

10. harrywr2 says:

    December 5, 2011 at 8:04 pm

    Are climate skeptics less important and less influential than they “” and their counterparts in the climate-concerned community “” would have us believe?
    Let’s just change the point.
    Would the anti-vaccine people be influential it the cost of a polio vaccine was $4,000 per year per household?
    
    
    

11. huxley says:

    December 5, 2011 at 9:42 pm

    Since the usual suspects have not shown up to beat their drums against the skeptics, I’ll take it that the question this post asks is beside the point, if not flat stupid.

    Skeptics are arguing against the “science is settled” claims of the orthodox, not for the importance and influence of skeptics.

12. Bill says:

    December 5, 2011 at 10:17 pm

      First and foremost It is political, economic and technological reality that has derailed the carbon crusade.

      The total lack of warming in the past decade, and the efforts of the sceptics, is only having a mild, though cumulative, effect.

13. willard says:

    December 5, 2011 at 10:41 pm

    Keith,

    Justin Halpern’s dad might disagree with you:

    > Thirty years from now the President of the most powerful country in the world is going to be some little shit who sat at his computer and hurled insults three feet away from his mommy’s tit like it was no big deal. 

    http://www.funnyordie.com/articles/322261cd73/why-internet-commenters-will-eventually-end-the-world

    But we already know that Justin’s dad voicefully disagrees with lots of things. 

14. Barry Woods says:

    December 6, 2011 at 4:58 am

    than ‘they’ would have us believe !!

    that made me laugh…

    It is the ‘warmist’ for want of a better word, that ‘believe the sceptics have a massive impact… how elese to explain the failure of 20 years of politics…

    In the real world.. China India and the devloping countires will do what is best economically for them, build coal pwered powerstation.  all the countries ‘talking’ about emission and doing very little, again purely their own economic interests.. 

    Possibly in the USA, but Obabma couldn’t sway his own side to get legislation.

    People like Michael Mann, Trenberth, Hansem, Gore, etc NEED to have ‘deniers’ to fight agaginst.. lessmore moderate politicians/ scientgists take an interest and ask questions.. The vitriolic debate prevents this happening..

15. Neven says:

    December 6, 2011 at 6:13 am

    I don’t know, Keith. Practically every person I have talked to in the past few years in the Netherlands, Germany and Austria about global warming, managed to come up with some fake skeptic myth or other, such as ‘it’s the Sun’, ‘in the 70s they said it would cool’, ‘I read an article that convinced me it’s not a problem’. So I’d say they have influenced a large part of the populace with their guerrilla disinformation strategy.
    On the other hand, they have it easy. The populace doesn’t want to be woken up. Everyone favours business-as-usual, because that’s what we know, it feels safe.

16. Barry Woods says:

    December 6, 2011 at 7:11 am

    15

    maybe, just maybe those people were thinking for themselves…  and thnking the environmentalists over egging the pudding.. ie metres of sea  level rises, doomed polar bears, etc and may think SOME people unable to discuss anything, without calling people names… 

17. willard says:

    December 7, 2011 at 9:58 am

    Barry Woods,

    I can’t recall a comment where you discussed anything.

    Maybe, just maybe you’re not here to discuss anything. 

18. jeffn says:

    December 7, 2011 at 11:43 am

    Willard, I’ll bet he’s here to discuss this Guardian story that backs up his comment. I’ll bet he’s not the only one who’s read the signs in the photo that accompanies the story.
    Maybe, just maybe, everyone is starting to notice that the messages in those signs advocate policy that wouldn’t have the slightest affect on emissions.
    http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/dec/07/public-support-climate-change-declines