Do you think James Delingpole is representative of your average global warming contrarian?

Most contrarians will believe anything they are told, so long as it is what they want to hear. This is why their core beliefs regarding science are aligned directly with their self-interest. It would be no different if they were considering cancer treatment for a loved one (or themselves) because if you are unable to objectively process information in one subject area, there is no reason to think you can magically become objective concerning something else. Delingpole is representative, and probably also equates the expertise regarding climate science with 14th century medical practises.

The colloquialism is "thinking with your glands."

If Delingpole was smart, he would have dug a hole in the ground to hide when he saw Sir Paul coming, but Delingpole is not a smart man. Before the meeting I think that Delingpole had delusions that he was in some sense on an equal footing with Sir Paul. Sir Paul disposed of Delingpole as casually as he sips his tea. Is Delingpole representative? I'm from Canada and Canadians are too polite to say what they think (most of the time).

The program was very interesting in several ways.

One way was how it used editing rather than words to make Delingpole look like an idiot. Nurse explained what Phil Jones had actually done and said, then allowed Delingpole to first say it was a great hoax and then admit that he had no idea what he was talking about. Nurse did not have to say he had no respect for Delingpole because Delingpole has no clue how science progresses -- he just let viewers come to their own conclusion.

Then the show moved to the guy who does not believe AIDS is caused by HIV. The guy had his own idea that was counter to all research and he clung to it without good reason ... and yet he remained healthy for 13 years with a diet that addressed what he believes causes AIDS. Nurse showed a great deal of respect for the guy even as Nurse admited that as a scientist he was certain the guy was wrong. At least the guy was thinking and seemingly proving an alternate theory. He explained that he was interested in why the AIDS guy thought the way he did, while he left the impression that Delingpole is a complete muckraking idiot.

The show was pretty rough on Fred Singer too. I don't wish to defend Singer and he might deserve to be made to look like an idiot, but as a student of media I chuckled at how the show got Singer to say his beliefs were based on just one cave in Arabia and then cut away from him. It wasn't quite up to FoxNews' using video un-related to the event in order to tell lies, but it was truly a great example of how editing followed by narrative can make a target look foolish. This was not a program that needed more Singer face time, but I'm sure Singer was not happy about being made to look so bad by the Royal Society. Talk about getting slammed!!

I don't know if he is 'average' or not, but frankly, I'd like to see the skeptical scientists funded so they can study the existing data and see if there is reasonable doubt in terms of the hypothesis. If what the skeptics and contrarians are telling us is true, funding is not available for anyone who disagrees with the consensus that mankind is accelerating natural processes. And if that is true, it would seem to run counter to good scientific research. However, I'm not aware of any solid evidence that funding is not available for skeptical scientists other than claims made by a relatively few number of people, and I've never heard of a scientist who claimed he or she was denied funding to research a solid hypothesis that ran counter to the broadly accepted scientific conclusions. Maybe I'm just behind in my reading.

I personally like the cancer analogy and think it is quite germane taken in context. Expel makes an interesting and valid point about treatment before the fact but I think the perspective is taking Nurse's analogy out of context. Essentially he is discussing politics and economics when Nurse and Delingpole were discussing the science. I think we should be very, very wary of treating the issue of climate change with the equivalent of economic or geopolitical chemotherapy. My opinion is that most skeptics, contrarians and deniers (however you want to label them) outside of the scientific body are trying to debate with science based on their political and economic fears and fail to see the contextual contradictions in their arguments as a result. If Delingpole doesn't 'have time' to study the research papers himself, he's never going to present a balanced and effective argument against the science.

No since a good anti-AGW supporter uses AGW peer reviewed papers and point out the fallacies that are in them. Such as the IPCC written off warmer climate periods that occurred for sure over all of Eurasia which is a good portion of the land mass of the World. I mean, the best argument against man caused climate change is the actual AGW science itself. Take for instance NOAA stating that 2010 is the hottest on record when it only statistically ties 1998 as warmest and ties 2005 as second warmest. All three occurred during strong El Nino years also. So much for CO2 causing record temperatures.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that the average contrarian is that bad... He is representative of those who deny AGW, however.

I found the whole of "BBC Horizon - Science Under Attack" here, BTW:

http://www.youtube.com/user/MultiInternetfreak#g/u

I thought that it was very well done, especially his interviews with the "skeptics". I thought Delingpole was about to start crawling backwards up the wall or start scratching his skin off...

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Fortunately, most contrarians do not have blogs with readership in the tens/hundreds of thousands. So in that regard, he is not representative. Unfortunately, most of the most notorious contrarians do have contacts with people like Dellingpole to publicise their mistakes and deceptions as widely as possible.

Yes.

It seems as if global warming denial and "skepticism" follows the telephone game I played while in elementary school. We'd all stand in a line, the first person would whisper some phrase to the person behind them and on down the line. By the time the last person heard the phrase it was completely different from what was originally said.

That's basically what you're doing by interpreting anothers interpretation of a scientific article.

But that seems to be the status quo for most politicians, pundits and journalists anyhow...

Pretty good analogy actually. Obviously you know nothing about chemotherapy. If you do not know whether you have cancer, you would not want to go through chemo. I would sya that if you told me that I might have cancer, that just may start to cause me some problem 40 years down the road, I would certainly listen to options of making some changes to reduce my risk. What I would not do, however, is go through chemo. You all have some idea that something may be wrong, pretned like it definately is cancer and we are going to definately die, and offer chemo as a solution. Not exactly how a moral doctor would act.

As for whether one skeptic "looked good" or had a nice witty comeback ready. I could truly care less.

You could say the same thing with just about anything. I am reading a book about 14th Century England and if you had cancer, your treatment would certainly be bloodletting. The level of our knowledge of the climate is in similar infancy.

The problem with his analogy is that not all doctors agree. I realize that concensus is something that the political hacks have worked tirelessly on to fool the gullible but there is no concensus for catastrophic warming.