Sunday, September 23, 2012

Climate Tribalism

Judy Curry deserves some praise for pointing this out:
The main point of this post, however, is to explore the following statement:
“I am not one of the sceptics,” insisted Mojib Latif of the Leibniz Institute of Marine Sciences at Kiel University, Germany. “However, we have to ask the nasty questions ourselves or other people will do it.”
IMO this statement is enormously telling in terms of the debate surrounding climate science:
  • Asking questions is at the heart of the scientific method, and science has been characterized as ‘organized scepticism.’
  • The questions are referred to as ‘nasty’, since presumably they are inconvenient for the audience (the UN).
  • Not wanting to be identified as a ‘sceptic,’ in spite of the fact that the perspective that he presents is consistent with with what many sceptics say.
  • There is a ‘we’ versus ‘other people’ , in terms of who is acceptable in terms of asking questions.  If this doesn’t define climate tribalism, I don’t know what does.

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