How do you determine that the basis for their opposition is not what they say it is?

Do you “look into their souls?” Or you have them take lie detector tests?

The post by Roger Pielke, The Uncertainty Trap, that prompted my post, Charm School, resulted in a useful discussion between Pielke and Gavin Schmit, one of the founders of the RealClimate blog. Readers of Prometheus will now how much…

The post by Roger Pielke, The Uncertainty Trap, that prompted my post, Charm School, resulted in a useful discussion between Pielke and Gavin Schmit, one of the founders of the RealClimate blog. Readers of Prometheus will now how much we value the hon…

However, (as you might have expected) I do not agree that trying to make the science clearer to the lay public is therefore a waste of time. The principal reason is that there is a huge mass of people in the middle who have not formed any opinion on the subject. If all they read are the WSJ or Washington Times op-eds or watch the Day after Tomorrow, all they hear are the dissemblers. People who know better (like real scientists) have to (at least occasionally) stand up and say what they think. That we can do this on the web in a way that reaches more people than me talking about it at a cocktail party is a good thing.

We obviously don’t believe that we’re going to convince Myron Ebell or Senator Inhofe to change their minds. We are not going to change the terms of the debate on Kyoto. However, we might help educate people who would not otherwise have seen any actual discussion of these topics outside of their talk radio station.

Let me make one more thing clear: we are not taking a political stand on this. That someone else decides to support their political point by using bogus science is not our fault. If we correct their errors it is because we don’t want to see bogus science used at all. It does not necessarily imply that we are taking a stand against their political premise.

Of course the science is not the right battleground for political issues. Those who want to push forward the policies would be well advised to say this as often as they can. But leaving the popular science field to the those who would mislead, distort and dissemble is an abdication, not a step forward.

Roger Pielke argues that climate scientists are being punked. Those … opposed to acting on the options currently on the table, like Kyoto or McCain/Lieberman, invoke “scientific uncertainty” about climate change as the basis for their opposition. Of…