Again. I've written on this before, more than once. I think it's a huge issue and is a key part of my disgust with the gaggle of political and cultural thugs in the left/Democrat/environmentalist organized crime syndicate.

Long-time observers of public debates about environmental threats know that skeptics about such matters tend to move, over time, through three stages. First, they tell you you’re wrong and they can prove it. (In this case, “Climate isn’t changing in unusual ways or, if it is, human activities are not the cause.”) Then they tell you you’re right but it doesn’t matter. (”OK, it’s changing and humans are playing a role, but it won’t do much harm.”) Finally, they tell you it matters but it’s too late to do anything about it. (”Yes, climate disruption is going to do some real damage, but it’s too late, too difficult, or too costly to avoid that, so we’ll just have to hunker down and suffer.”)

All three positions are represented among the climate-change skeptics who infest talk shows, Internet blogs, letters to the editor, op-ed pieces, and cocktail-party conversations. The few with credentials in climate-change science have nearly all shifted in the past few years from the first category to the second, however, and jumps from the second to the third are becoming more frequent. All three factions are wrong, but the first is the worst.

A climate scientist responds.

Holdren has created a GSM (Global Skeptic Model) that accommodates his view of the “observations” of some skeptic’s behavior and gives him a sort of comfort level to explain what he thinks he sees in a way that keeps his beliefs intact. I suppose we all have an innate drive to try and make sense of what we observe in a way that is consistent with our beliefs.

As with any model, it is over simplified, not able to account for all situations and is inconsistent with predictions (i.e. several folks have apparently announced becoming skeptical having been non-skeptics in the past).

Human behavior is too difficult to model in such a situation … humans can and will take irrational pathways. The climate is rational, but so complex, much of it is unknowable and its pathways seem chaotic anyway.

No one has eliminated natural variability as the primary cause of the temperature variations of the past 100 years.

Who am I? I’m an actively publishing climate scientist who is skeptical of the current set of climate models, having been influenced by many empirical studies of the past 20 years which test the claims of these models. These include very recent studies that show the climate system is relatively insensitive as well as studies which show much less dramatic changes in the system than those promoted in the media. Arguments from authority (i.e. consensus documents, learned society declarations, etc.) mean little to me as someone who looks into the guts of the climate system at a level few people do.

This is the first I’ve seen of the Holdren piece … I don’t consider material he writes as something on which to spend otherwise productive time.

Ouch. But the author of the silly article, "John P. Holdren, the head of Harvard’s Program on Science, Technology and Public Policy and a longtime advocate of prompt curbs in greenhouse gases", richly deserved that and much more. The problem is that climate scientists have become political activists.

Climate scientists keep testing that turbulent world between data and society — an arena far less safe than the laboratory or field camp, where a researcher becomes a potential target for both darts and laurels from those threatened or bolstered by his or her views. One new experiment is a nascent blog at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with a fresh contribution by Josh Willis, whose work on ocean temperature trends has been discussed here. Dr. Willis says those who grasp at short-term wiggles in ocean or atmospheric conditions as evidence of global warming or cooling are like gamblers seduced by a hot streak into thinking they can beat the house.

This is nonsense because there is nothing safe about real scientific publication. There are just as many darts and laurels in the noogie wars between scientists as there are when activist scientists go political and so engage with society at large. What may be different is that activist scientists lose respect as scientists. When they engage in political mud wrestling they no longer are viewed as higher beings, made men above the fray, they are just ordinary people with at least as many warts as others. They demean themselves.

As Roger Pielke Sr. notes:

His analog to gambling only fits in that he is gambling on a set of data of which he is not working on, and ignores the importance of his own accomplishments which show no upper ocean warming since mid-2004. This is hardly a wiggle!

The more appropriate analog is to a bank account. Joules must continue to be accumulated in order for global warming to occur. In the last 4 years there has been an absence of deposits. To make up for this deficit in the next 4 years, for example, the accumulation of Joules must be double the rate that occurred in the 1990s. Josh Willis is gambling, but it is in accepting the models as reality.

As John Christy noted in his response to the Holdren screed: "Arguments from authority (i.e. consensus documents, learned society declarations, etc.) mean little to me as someone who looks into the guts of the climate system . . ."

Global Skeptic Models, like global climate models, confirm the biases of some but fail to provide any useful evidence. They are scenarios that couple some observations with theories about the meaning of the observations. Observations that are not consistent with the theories are ignored, and the full complexity of reality is not addressed. Such models and scenarios can help by imposing some structure on disparate fragments of data while groping for understanding. But, they must be viewed skeptically to have this value.

The Global Skeptic Model is pure hokum, pernicious stuff from the tawdry world of antediluvian politics, the realm of the left/Democrat/environmentalist political and cultural thugs that disgust me. It is possible to find some skeptics that fit that description, but many others do not and the model has no predictive power. Its purpose is merely to smear those who have differing views, to trivialize them as humans since their arguments are too difficult to engage. If you can't beat them, psychologize and mock them.

These intellectually, ethically and aesthetically bankrupt behaviors impede the important effort to understand the climate system and adopt effective policies in response. They fail at every level and we would do well to speak out about it. Whether you find the theories compelling or not you should object strenuously to these behaviors, insisting that skeptical arguments be engaged since they advance understanding even when they prove to be wrong, and that is not always the case.

FWIW, I do find the theories to be compelling. What isn't clear is how great the effects will be, and far more importantly, what effects the proposed prescriptions can have. As I understand it, regulating CO2 and other GHGs from urban and industrial point sources in developed countries will have no significant effect on emissions despite having large effects on society. It is merely penance, and will increase risk. It is precisely the wrong thing to do if you are convinced that the threats are real and significant. If you are merely playing politics, seeking to exploit the perceived threat for gain, then this may work. And, if your real objective is to hamper society, then this is a good way to do it, though I think that you are insane to pursue this objective and constitute a greater threat than climate change.

To me, climate change is irrelevant. The real issue is the need for improved energy systems capable of satisfying demand for a fully populated and highly developed world. A related aspect is the need for improved agronomic systems capable of providing food and fiber for said world, and that requires, among other things, restoring soil carbon levels to their pre-agricultural levels, and increasing those levels beyond that natural state in many if not all cases. This is a lot of carbon and will all but drain the atmosphere if done vigorously. In the end we'll be scouring the solar system for loose carbon, mining the gas giants and asteroids, and celebrating this precious substance for what it is, the foundation of life. For me, one measure of the insanity of climate activists is their efforts to define CO2 as a pollutant. That's like calling oxygen or water pollutants. Too high a concentration of any of them can be problematical, but they are never sensibly called pollutants.