#aboutframing

[neverendingaudit]

Scientific Opposition Research

[Herein it is shown that our Beloved Bishop's hit piece may not deserve Matt King Coal's accolades.]

Craig Loehle introduced the expression “good science”. We also saw how Loehle himself was advocating good science. While reading the many threads dealing with the Tiljander affair, we encountered a related expression.

Deming had recently created a temperature reconstruction for the last 150 years, based on boreholes in North America. In his study, he concluded that North America had warmed somewhat in the period since 1850, but had little to say bebond that. This was good, solid science but not the stuff of newspaper headlines.

Here are some expressions in the following sentences:

“considered highly important in climatic science circle”

“with the expectation that temperatures were being driven upward”

“storyline of rising temperatures”

“global warming industry”

“who [the global warming industrialists] thought they saw”

“they thought I was one of them, someone who would pervert science”

“flash of light [...] murky shadow”

“the aim was to erase it in the climatological record in its entirety”

My interest here is not in the Deming affair as such [1], but in the function of portraying Deming as doing “good, solid science”, immediately before the intriguing portrait of consideration, expectation, storyline, industry, and other institutionalized thought processes and interests. Beloved Bishop is not known to be knowledgeable in borehology. The statement of his opinion regarding Deming’s work deserves due diligence. As the Auditor might ask his readership to ponder: why?

Here’s my hypothesis. Our Beloved Bishop is framing the Deming affair as the story between a noble scientist versus global warming industrialists. One (or two, if we count Richard Lindzen) against a powerful multitude. A sudden revelation of tainted intentions. Pure light among the murky shadows of climatology.

We can see that defining “good, solid science” is quite secondary. We’re not into the realms of scientific criticism, but more something like scientific opposition research. The way scientific opposition research operates deserves due diligence.

[1] Our Beloved Bishop's Dossier certainly deserves due diligence. For instance, it is claimed that “Lindzen of MIT has confirmed that the email was written by Jonathan Overpeck.” But note 12, which follows this claim, points to an Arxiv document authored by Lindzen. There is one mention to Overpeck in that document: a signature to an international conference invitation. The only mention of “getting rid” of MWP cites (Deming, 2005) as authority. Here is when the Auditor might revive yet another introduction to check-kiting.

See also: http://judithcurry.com/2012/01/05/error-cascade/#comment-156288

[kippbakr]

View to a Winter's Day A look towards the northwest of Fort Worth's 7th Street near the Museum District on a cold , rainy day LAST winter. We may see another one yet? #winter #fortworth #fortworthtx #fortworthtexas #fortworthwhile #fortworthartist #blackandwhitephotography #fujifilm_xseries #fujifilmxe2 #museumdistrict #7thstreet #aboutime #aboutframing #aboutfocus #aboutasenseoftime #patternfinding #layeredphotography #phototheday #photographylovers #blackandwhite #blackandwhitephoto #blackandwhitephotography (at Fort Worth, Texas)

[kippbakr]

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[kippbakr]

"Two figures" an image which was part of a #3manshow in the fall of 2016. Image is derived from a corrupted video feed then printed with #archival #pigment #ink on 13x19" #hahnemühle #photorag #paper and framed with 8ply museum matte board ina 20x24" simple black frame #fortworthtexas #fortworthartist #fortworth #817 #fortworthwhile #aboutfocus #aboutframing #aboutposition #aboutsenseoftime More at http://pixure.com Follow @mrpixure on FB & other social media (at Fort Worth, Texas)

[kippbakr]

Inspired by my memories of art from Frank Stella and Piet Mondrian, this photo abstraction for a #tbthursday - this comes from a Shell gas station near TCU where the architectural forms assembled in my camera one sunny spring day. The station was razed for a small branch store of Chase Bank. It's architecture - while nicely emulating the nearby structures of the TCU campus - will never, I'm afraid, speak as powerfully. #TBT #ThrowbackThursday #painterly #artist #colorfield #americana #tcu #oneofaseries #modernism #atthemoment #artofphotography #fortworth #fortworthphotographer #fortworthtx #fortworthtexas #Texas #texasphotographer #fortworthcamera #composition #abouttime #aboutframing #aboutfocus #aboutasenseoftime #minimalism #printmaker Follow @mrpixure on IG, FB, FLICKR and other social media - interested in workshops? Register on the Contact Us page of www.pixure.com to be informed about upcoming workshops on lighting, lightpainting portraitphotography and much much more! ::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: (at Fort Worth, Texas)

[neverendingaudit]

Illiberal Status Competition

I find that very reassuring, actually.

Everything conspires to confirm what we knew all along, Dan.

Here’s how I understand your argument against consensus messaging as a communication strategy: it mistreats the nature of the problem, it diverts resources from your research programme and unspecified alternatives with better chances for success, and it predictably toxifies ClimateBall. That's almost verbatim, shortened for style and expendiency. In what follows, I will address the three arguments in reverse order.

I interpret your third argument that consensus messaging of climate change is “toxic” as a suggestion that it poisons the well. If correct, your argument relates to what you call elsewhere external validity, which I would call verification, i.e. in the communication environment. Here are some counterarguments:

(1) the well is already poisoned, as climate change has already become a wedge issue, and it's hard to believe it could get detoxified by any discrete set of communicative actions;

(2) the assumption that this predicament has been caused by consensus messaging lacks in historical details beyond "but Al Gore";

(3) the concept of "consensus messaging" may be kept indefinite to overcompensate for this lacuna, e.g. how is Al's messaging connected with Lew's exactly is not made clear;

(4) "but Al Gore" fails to mention dissensus messaging (defined here as "the opposite of consensus messaging, however you define it") as an active ingredient in well poisoning;

(5) the evidence basis for your own research programme has yet to be externally validated the same way Al Gore's weight has been celebrated, i.e. the national level;

(6) the potential for consensus messaging still needs to be acknowledged unless you wish to argue against the efficacy of the bandwagon effect in advertizing, e.g.:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/cherylsnappconner/2013/07/04/bandwagon-marketing-how-leading-brands-turn-perception-into-reality/

(7) your toxic rhetoric begs the question of real "toxicity" effects, besides being overly moralistic ClimateBall, and perhaps also having itself toxic effects.

The second argument only supports your position indirectly, by reinforcing its relevance. This relevance should go without saying: there are resources involved in communication strategies, so we ought to pay due diligence to them. Granted that "cultural cognition" and "consensus messaging" are two competing research programmes, how can we establish means of comparison? Here are two.

Since your main argument against consensus messaging is its impact on beliefs about climate change, we might ask you how your approach fares regarding climate change cognitions. I don't think your Florida experiment indicates any belief revision, nor does it argue in favor of dismissing the importance of changing attitudes and beliefs. Cultural cognitivists can’t claim being better at changing attitudes if they simply bypass that task. A case could be made that beliefs can be changed via through indirect means, say à la George Marshall. However, any such mean needs to be identified. While “consensus messaging” refers to something like an action, “cultural cognition” only posits something about cognition.

Belief revision also needs to operate at a specific level. As hard as one may try to go bottom-up, local, value-based, consensus-building, and whatnot, your argument against consensus messaging applies at a national level. How does your approach fare at that level? I don’t think we have external validation of this. This point is important, for this is where the “bottom-up” rubber meets the “political” road. This is when Fox News, CNN, and all the other media outlets transform stories into identity-based issues. At the national level, I don't think it's possible to extricate politics from science. Therefore, there’s no reason to expect that we can bypass the adversarial system with yet another paradigm shift.

Lastly, your first argument rests on your "two climate" story, or what Warren Pearce calls an "heuristic." I duly submit that this story may very well contain an equivocation. Take all your examples of conservatives doing things that affect crops and stuff. What you have shown is that people take weather forecasting seriously. This can be distinguished from climate science, which mostly deals with projections.

While there's a debate among scientists regarding where weather ends and climate begins (H/T Michael Tobis, pers. comm.), I think the distinction between weather and climate is quite robust. This distinction may also indicate something about the "nature" of the problem: weather is tangible, while climate is an abstracta. Let cognitive scientists explore that idea. They could for instance compare meteorologists’ and modellers’ beliefs. Even if that only leads to the rediscovery of the old divide between empiricists and rationalists, it might be worth a shot.

As far as I can see, the two research programmes are not incompatible. How could they be when “cultural cognition” and “consensus messaging” are two orthogonal concepts? Moreover, assuming the two programmes prescribe two specific and comparable strategies, they need not be implemented at the same level. They may compete for the same research grants and Al's honey pot. While this may explain the need for your “toxic” rhetoric, there’s evidence it comes from elsewhere:

Studies of the phenomenon of cultural cognition, however, suggest that individuals naturally impute socially harmful consequences to behavior that defies their moral norms. As a result, they are impelled to suppress morally deviant behavior even when they honestly perceive themselves to be motivated only by the secular good of harm prevention. The paper identifies how this dynamic transforms seemingly instrumental debates over environmental regulation, public health, economic policy, and crime control into polarizing forms of illiberal status competition. It also proposes a counterintuitive remedy: rather than attempt to cleanse the law of culturally partisan meanings - the discourse strategy associated with the liberal norm of public reason - lawmakers should endeavor to infuse it with a surfeit of meanings capable of affirming a wide range of competing worldviews simultaneously.

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=963929

As far as I can see, you’re applying the good ol’ liberal argument to ClimateBall. The risk, it seems to me, is that your "toxic" rhetoric looks a lot like a polarizing form of illiberal status competition.

TL;DR -- the concepts of "climate," "consensus messaging" and toxicity need to be clarified if you want to build a more convincing argument for your approach.

Source: Dan's

[neverendingaudit]

Media spectacles demonstrate who has power and who is powerless, who is allowed to exercise force and violence, and who is not. They dramatize and legitimate the power of the forces that be and show the powerless that they must stay in their places or be oppressed.

Douglas Kellner

[neverendingaudit]

If climate change were a dude, via bird and moon

[neverendingaudit]

Dr. Eric Chivian suggests we transpose environmental problems in terms of health.

[neverendingaudit]

the Obcene

Raypierre's favorite word for the climate period we bring.

[neverendingaudit]

Community of meaning

Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson,in **The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism**, about Fox News, broadcasting consistent narratives.

[neverendingaudit]

[W]hen you are hot, it gets easier to imagine a world that is suffering the effects of global warming, and that increases your belief in global warming.

Art Markman, reporting three psychological studies

[neverendingaudit]

Sooner or later it’s always about getting laid.

Dan Thompson, understanding the battle for the hearts and minds and gonads of America, and the world.

[neverendingaudit]

And as for the rest of what you wrote, of course, when considering the ethics of climate science Tiljander. Which is not to say Tiljander. Because as we know Tiljander. Moreover, Tiljander. Tiljander. Tiljander. Oh, and btw, Climategate Tiljander.

Steven Sullivan, but Tiljander.

[neverendingaudit]

Change your Words, Change the World

[neverendingaudit]

Pure Aristotelian tragedy: A good man commits hubris (attempting to shame those he opposes) and makes a tragic mistake (hamartia), which produces catastrophe and pathos.

Jonathan Gilligan