Personally, In This Heat, I’m Just Denying The Existence Of Snow

First, just a quick reminder to everyone out there regarding Tim Minchin’s White Wine in the Sun and how it’s now going to help an autism charity.

Regarding skeptics and climate change, I am immediately reminded of the Australian Skeptics National conference in Adelaide, 2008, which featured a ‘climate debate’ between professors Ian Plimer and Barry Brook. So, in this country, there isn’t really a ‘dearth of people involved in Australian skepticism  looking at the topic’. I did attend the debate, and found myself more tending towards Brook’s arguments by the end. I guess I just consider myself more ‘taking a punt’ on caring for the environment in general?

James Randi – as one of the people that would be considered on the very far left of the ‘long tail’ of skepticism which Reed Esau writes about – gets quite a lot of attention for his views, as you might expect. He recently published an article on SWIFT on the subject of global warming. PZ Myers promptly wrote on how James Randi joins the ranks of the climate change denialists; there’s also Data, Skepticism, Judgment from Cosmic Variance. Quackometer features James Randi, Global Warming and the Nature of Scepticism:

However, it was not that Randi questioned the science so much, as that his article was full of so many quite obvious logical fallacies. The Master of Spotting a Phony Argument from a Hundred Paces appeared to fall for his own flawed rhetoric. He appeared to use, astonishingly, arguments from personal incredulity, and arguments from popularity. But, we must not be too harsh here, for there are very important differences between the style of Randi’s arguments and those of the more foaming end of the climate discussion. We see plenty of places in his argument where he lays forward his own lack of knowledge, expertise and capacity to be wrong. I do not believe for a moment that his mind is made up and that he is quite capable of receiving arguments that would show him he had “erred in coming to a certain conclusion”.

Ben Goldacre in the comments writes:

can anyone think of a case where the vast overwhelming majority of scientists, in their own field, all around the world, for a long period of time, by virtue of conspiracy (since that is the commonest accusation) or foolishness, held an opinion that was demonstrably wrong with reference to the facts available the time? and unanimously refused to concede to good quality arguments against their position? i’d be interested if there were any.

Cubik’s Rube (who also reflects upon the recent and odd ‘there’s-no-global-warming comedy performance’ of Johnny Ball at ‘Nine Lessons And Carols For Godless People, a science-themed comedy and variety show orchestrated by Robin Ince), writes in his post Ball, Randi, and climate change denialism that The Lay Scientist was even harsher on Twitter.

Cubik’s breakdown is certainly well worth the read – I particularly like how he links to ‘On Denialism’ by Jack Of Kent – who will be appearing on a Skeptic Zone podcast this week:

Instead, I believe that it is appropriate for laypeople to form their own views, to try and evaluate the evidence, and to try and assess the policy options against that evidence.

No longer should laypeople be deterred from raising critical questions about climate change and global warming because of the risk of being dubbed a Denialist. It may well be that they never should have been deterred; but I for one was, and I know of others.

And those proponents of climate change and global warning should no longer rely on the Denialist weapon. We all need to understand why the supposed Denialists are wrong, not just be told that they are so and for their books to be banned from even being recommended by a science charity for me to read at Christmastime.

My views? Well, I don’t yawn and rudely dismiss the opportunity to discuss global warming, but I did like seeing variety at the most recent Australian Skeptics conference after two years (Tasmania and Adelaide) of featuring the topic. I guess that the overall attitude towards Randi is that it’s been generally ‘a bad move’ to raise it on Swift and I won’t be surprised if a response is in the works.

In the meantime, go check out Atheist Charities at Effort Sisyphus, since I was recently asked on Twitter to suggest some variety in terms of charities – perhaps you might like to support those too.

Tagged as: atheist charities, Barry Brook, blogging, climate change, Cosmic Variance, Cubik's Rube, denialism, global warming, Ian Plimer, Jack of Kent, James Randi, long tail of skepticism, on denialism, PZ Myers, quackometer, Reed Esau, secular charities, skeptic charities, SWIFT, Tim Minchin, White Wine in the Sun