Addressing climate change denial

Question

It seems to me that SE is potentially an ideal format to challenge some of the climate change denial blogs and journalism (names withheld to protect the innocent). Should we have a tag under which such questions should be placed? Personally I'm somewhat wary of taking on some of the points made by these sources as I don't want to end up having this SE become embroiled in perpetual argument, yet I do think some of the blogs do present some ideas which could be addressed here (for instance the heat island and Stevenson screen paint arguments). Personally I refuse to use these sources in other formats such as wikipedia, so long as they continue ad hominem attacks on prominent scientists. I wonder what others think on the matter?

Answer 1

I think the best way to approach this would be to establish Q&A's about some of the data oft cited by the anti-AGW crowd, particularly if data is mis-cited to "prove" a point. If this is noticed, a well crafted and sourced question could be asked about that data and what it is really telling us in context. It would be very important for both the Q and A's for these to be well thought out and cited with reputable sources (plural!).

I think this is more important than what tag you decide to file them under (whoever asks the first such Q can decide what tag they want and the community can figure it out).

The nice thing about SE is that once we have some of these questions asked, they'll filter up to the top of google search results and have visibility among the very pages making the the claims discussed in the Q. It will be a nice resource, and it will drive some traffic our way (for better or worse).

Answer 2

A bit of advice for you guys - take it or leave it.

As you probably already know, there is a very popular Q&A on the Skeptics Stack Exchange:

• Do human activities contribute to climate change?

One of the salient points being made in almost all of the highly-upvoted answers is that it is not a black-or-white, right-or-wrong issue. The question "do human activities affect the climate" is fundamentally flawed, because everything affects the climate, and application of some of the most basic scientific principles will demonstrate that specific human activities (i.e. production of GHGs) are likely to have a significant impact. Thus, the question has little value because it's not what scientists are actually researching and discussing. Scientists aren't interested in the if, they're interested in the how, the why, and the how much.

Much like the issues themselves, people don't simply fall into two "pro-AGW" and "anti-AGW" camps. Some people have extreme views, and those are undoubtedly the people who are going to scream the most and the loudest. But most people simply have a degree of skepticism, and apply it to different aspects of the whole equation.

A common enough position, which I happen to share, is that the data supports AGW with high confidence but the models themselves are not nearly up to snuff, and probably won't be for many years. I find it hard to countenance that a position claiming, essentially, "we need more time to gather data and improve our models" can be considered a "denial". In most other branches of sciences, a model isn't generally accepted until it can be used to consistently predict occurrences with both high accuracy and high precision.

I'm not saying this to establish an argument, I'm saying it to establish one point among a continuum of positions. There are some on the skeptical side who still believe that the data is flawed, or that the theory is flawed, or that the data and theory are sound but their importance is exaggerated. And there are many others on the credible side who opine that the models are good enough but don't agree on the mitigation vs. adaptation question, or disagree on the effectiveness of specific strategies.

One thing you'll notice about the Skeptics question is that none of the answers, anywhere, use words like "denial", "denier", or even "climate change skeptic". All are epithets, the first two being particularly nasty (originally intended as an analogy to holocaust denial) but even the third is clearly ad hominem, intended to imply that "climate change skepticism" is somehow different from any other kind of skepticism.

I discovered this site via the "hot questions" links and specifically the question, What is the 'natural variation' in global temperature that many climate sceptics mention? I was almost immediately put off - not by the arguments themselves, but by the furtive, defensive tone of the question itself and the obnoxious disclaimers and rebuttals in the answer.

Apparently this is developing into a site where people are afraid to ask or answer legitimate questions without metaphorically looking over their shoulder every few seconds and proactively taking steps to ensure that they don't get branded as some kind of heretic. An inauspicious beginning for a fledgling Stack Exchange. The title of this very meta question isn't helping, either, nor is the answer referring to the "anti-AGW crowd", as if there's some coalition of people who have nothing better to do than stir up drama.

I'm not saying that these issues shouldn't be discussed. I am not even necessarily saying that the community should not have a collective opinion on the subject. What I am saying is that you are representing yourselves as scientists, aspiring scientists, or people interested in science, and the scientific community has a responsibility to enforce a higher standard of behaviour.

Like it or not, if you're interested in maintaining a Q&A on climate change issues, then the people in my situation are precisely the ones you want to reach. You're never going to get through to the people who are truly "anti-AGW", nor should you be trying to; it's neurotic and a waste of time. The people who might be interested are the people like me, who are open to reading up on additional facts and interpretations and essentially keeping tabs on an ongoing inquiry, but not really interested in picking a "side".

Some questions were done better. For example, How good were climate models of the 1990s at predicting the global temperature trends of the 2000s/2010s? is asked and answered objectively, although the answer mostly just parrots an external source without offering much in the way of explanation. It's not hopeless, but the community needs to maintain that discipline in order to become a valuable resource on the subject.

Ironically, the religion sites have a pretty good track record for this. There are highly-voted questions on both the Judaism and Christianity sites covering hot-button issues that have calm, rational (within their context) and well-composed answers. I'm sure that both of those questions attracted some less-than-professional answers (hence the former being protected) but the community did its due diligence in cleaning them up and ensuring that answers stayed factual and on topic.

It's fine - great, even - that you're interested in using SE as a resource for AGW and climate change topics. There's an endless barrage of new studies and news articles coming out every week and I can't think of a better place for people to ask about what it all means. But you'll have to do a lot better than you've been doing so far. Stick to the facts, encourage open debate (within Q&A format of course), and don't try to make the skeptics feel unwelcome. Go into this with the right attitude - to create a great Q&A resource on the topic - not to specifically refute the "anti-AGW" arguments or to promote a particular cause. The latter may attract more people, but I promise you it will be the wrong kind of people.