At this point, I think you are playing the victim card and just looking for ways to take offense due to those nasty liberals.
dsp, on 05 June 2014 - 08:20 AM, said:
2) The "denier" label is overused. If someone disputes that a cap and trade policy is a good solution for emissions, that fact doesn't necessarily make the person a denier. Disagreement with liberal policy ideas is not the same thing as denial.
The denier label is actually used quite accurately. Show me some serious discussions where people present alternatives to cap and trade, but they get slammed as "deniers". Now if all they do is say "I believe in man-made global warming but, but, but ... CHINA! INDIA! There's nothing we can do!" then they are denying something else completely. Still, it's just another brand of denial, something I've been predicting for years would occur.
dsp, on 05 June 2014 - 08:20 AM, said:
3) The honorable word "skeptic" has been ruined by people determined to make the word synonymous with denier. In my experience, the guilty parties are mainly ideologically motivated, liberal pundits and public intellectuals without science training and a political agenda.
I'm sorry, but you are flat out WRONG! The honorable word "skeptic" has been ruined by denialists claiming to be skeptics. Do a bit of research on the leading denialists out there like Christopher Monckton, Anthony Watts, Richard Tol, Heartland Institute, etc. Here are a good sources for you to grasp what real skepticism actually is and how the denialists have co-opted and destroyed the meaning of the word "skeptic",
NOT "people determined to make the word synonymous with denier." (Well, actually I may be totally wrong. The deniers calling themselves skeptics ARE trying to make the words synonymous for their own purposes.)
http://www.realclima...a-real-sceptic/
http://www.skeptical...al-science.html
dsp, on 05 June 2014 - 08:20 AM, said:
4) Nate Silver uses the term "healthy skepticism," basically a person who accepts AGW is happening but is appropriately skeptical about some particular point or other, and who does not veer into claims AGW is not happening at all.
5) Nate Silver, not Heartland or any other RW org, put me onto the points about the models. Silver has math training. His specialty is directly relevant to a key aspect of the debate: the reliability of models for making accurate predictions. My points about the models are from The Signal and The Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail But Some Don't, Chapter 12, "A Climate of Healthy Skepticism."
6) I went back and looked at that chapter. Silver quotes one specialist affiliated with Heartland. He also quotes Michael Mann, among others, on the other side. I'm not going to make up my mind about Heartland until I can do more research. Meanwhile, I trust that Silver has enough expertise and judgment not to quote a person with no credibility at all on the topic.
You're sounding like you believe climate scientists have no skepticism. On the basics, they really don't. Why? Overwhelming evidence. That's how science works. On specifics they have many. And I'd love to know who the "one specialist affiliated with Heartland" is so I can see if Silver understands the source he selected. BTW, does Silver note just how right the climate scientists have been on the big trends like global temperatures, sea level rise, loss of polar and glacial ice mass, etc.?
There are many specific things being debated and studied further in climate science today, and that's good and necessary. The problem is, they aren't really being debated in the political world, only the scientific world. And those who don't want to do anything about the problem now (mostly due to profit motives) have no interest in the separation of settled science and real skepticism, even though they call themselves "skeptics".
Simply put, you're pissed off at the wrong people.