Confessions of deniers at Judith Curry's blog

Note: This thread is closed for comments. The discussion that was taking place can be continued here at Rob's Gallop.

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Addendum: see below for Judith trying to defend her denier fans, and her own conspiracy ideation.

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You may remember when Anthony Watts at WUWT posted a self-portrait of a denier, which brought out a whole host of other self portraits - predominately from engineers. Now Judith Curry has invited deniers to write about why they reject climate science (archived here). I think it was an open invitation to all, but since her blog is denier paradise, most of the comments are from - you guessed it, climate science deniers.

There were several people who wrote more than one of the 133 comments (as archived). I counted only eight people who accept the science. The rest rejected science (a couple were non-committal). Some described themselves as lukewarmers or fence-sitters. Others were more hard-core.

I read the comments and categorised them in different ways. Here is some of what I found from the 133 archived comments. Once again, engineers dominate:

• 21 deniers say they are engineers
• 1 historian
• 1 forester
• 3 studied physics, including one who is also an engineer
• 1 retired doctor
• 1 meteorologist
• 1 BS in chemistry
• 1 retired geneticist

Some of the stated reasons for rejecting climate science:

• Climategate
• Money
• Suspect "motives of the UN/IPCC"
• "attempts to scare the public re. extreme weather events being linked to climate change" (here) 
• "mightily impressed" by disinformation
• "attempts by the UN and the Progressive Green Mafia to reshape the entire world economy" (here)
• "Really Cold in lots and lots of places yesterday and today" (here)
• Money ("billions of dollars")
• Has "serious doubts about the accuracy and reliability of the global historic temperature records" (here)
• "Many of the people pushing the danger are radical extremists" (here)
• Found a denier article on a denier blog and was converted
• Rarely read any climate articles except those on denier blogs (here and here)
• Has "always reacted against conventional wisdom" (here)
• Couldn't find AGW in the temperature record (really)
• "the entire basis for the movement rested upon cherry-picking and lies of omission" (here)
• "got dragged to a lecture by Chris Essex" (here)
• Personal incredulity (and strawmen) "the whole idea that some scientists have the global climate system accurately modelled just pegged my BS meter" (here)
• "finally had access to the tremendous body of skepticism about AGW" (here)
• "read a friend’s copy of Andrew Montford’s book, ‘The Hockey Stick Illusion’" (here)
• Has "the feeling that I’m being hustled" (here)
• "It struck me as very odd that the ground thermometer readings would continue to be preferred when the satellite measurements became available" (here)
• Felt cheated because he sold his house based on his reading of an article in the NY Times (here)
• Willingly fell for disinformation from McIntyre and McKitrick (here)
• Climate science "was being promoted with a very left wing slant which made me suspicious" (here)
• "Not worried about global warming because there is an enormous cold reservoir in the deep oceans that could be employed to cool if it doesn’t deliver the next ice age already on its own." (here)
• "Global warming always struck me as stupid because everything that was said to be ‘unprecedented’ was so obviously not." (here)
• "It seemed to me that we were, possibly, being manipulated." (here)
• Read a Michael Crichton novel "Got into this after reading State of Fear. Before that didn’t realize there were non-crazy people who were actually skeptical." (here) 
• "the effort to “disappear” the MWP was a watershed moment for me" (here)
• "I lean toward the view that the effect on temperature of the large increase in anthropogenic CO2 is small, barely if at all detectable " and in the same comment "reminded us that Mt. Pinatubo was a big event affecting the atmosphere" (here)
• "I am a skeptic perhaps mostly because of the work of Dr (sic) Tony Brown" (here)
• "I am unable to understand how replacing one out of 10000 molecules in the atmosphere with another one of a meager “greenhouse gas” could possibly disrupt the planet’s entire climatic system to such an extent" (here)
• "It seemed like a lot of hype, and darn little in the way of good arguments. " (here)
• "After Florida had two severe hurricane seasons in a row, home insurance rates skyrocketed" (here)
• "Any warming since 1979 is offset by cooling in 1958-1978" (Yes, really! here)
• Judith's blog - how she must swell with pride: "I have only been visiting Judith’s blog since September 2011 but even this shorter period has been enough to make me less open-minded and more convinced that the AGW hypothesis is generally based on sloppy science and even sloppier reasoning when it relates climate change to the advocacy of carbon reduction policies." (here)
• "I noticed a lot of people were making huge money from it" (here)
• Writes like he really believes this nonsense: "The scientists really were fiddling to get the right results, ruining the careers of people who had different scientific views and refusing to show where the data and workings for the papers used by the IPCC came from." (here)
• "I suspect that this government-born new virgin birth of “global warming” is not a scientific issue, now, any longer, but will be a justification for global fascism, in the name of good.. ….as always. ….smile." (here)

It's threads like those that would make for some interesting research on what motivates people to reject science, and to see the lengths some people will go to rationalise their denial. Most of the comments struck me as coming from people looking for a reason to reject it. Some latched onto a paper, like the deeply flawed McIntyre and McKitrick paper. Or they were drawn to like minds on fake sceptic and pseudo-science blogs. Some people tried to justify their denial by claiming to have found something in the temperature record. Others demonstrated personal incredulity. Some claimed they rejected science because they felt that someone was rude to them once, on a blog somewhere or the other. I'd say the level of education was higher than at WUWT, but the cognitive dysfunction was similar to that seen on any denier blog.

One thing is obvious. Judith Curry's blog is mainly for climate science deniers. There are very few normal people who comment there these days. And if the comments are any indication, Judith's blog is not taken seriously by anyone who matters.

Addendum - Judith Curry's conspiracy ideation

I just checked Twitter and see that this article generated quite a bit of chat. (I had 99+ notifications - I guess that's as high as Twitter can count. I don't recall any HW article generating that much noise on Twitter before.)

I'm guessing it was Judith who probably started the ball rolling. She got all twitterish and decided to defend her denier fans, tweeting that many of them have higher degrees. Well, we know that already (see the list above - mostly engineers). Bob Carter has a degree and he rejects science. Ian Plimer has a degree and he rejects science. Judith Curry has a degree, too. 'Nuff said!. Cognitive defects relating to world view are not restricted to people who haven't been to university. (Dan Kahan did some work suggesting that the more highly educated are more, not less, likely to be polarised based on their ideology. He wrote of "conflict between two levels of rationality". Nothing to do with science or facts. It may come down to the brain's ability to distinguish reason from emotion, and the heightened sensitivity to fear of the right wing brain.)

What will tickle you more was Judith going all conspiratorial and paranoid, and claiming that she knows a lot of people who won't "come out" as science deniers because they are too scared of the big bad wolf (guvmint).

@theresphysics @rgrumbine @SouBundanga worried about blow back from govt employers, worried about losing their job (mortgage, kids all that)
— Judith Curry (@curryja) February 16, 2015

That supports "fear" as a driver with the right wing ideologues. (I don't see Michael Mann or Stephan Lewandowsky or Ben Santer or James Hansen or a myriad others "quitting" or being afraid to speak out, despite all the flak they get.)

Judith doesn't refer to any scientific findings that disprove science. She doesn't talk about people finding evidence that they'd like to publish but are too scared to do so. I'm guessing that's because it's got nothing to do with science and all to do with world view and ideology. In fact, Victor Venema said he knows people who would like to reject science. But it's got nought to do with science:

@curryja @rgrumbine I know 2 such scientists well, they cannot give good reasons, just emotional aversion & hope theory will fail some day.
— Victor Venema (@VariabilityBlog) February 16, 2015

If Judith's ideological mates, who happen to also be scientists, have a tendency to science denial then it makes sense for them to stick to facts and not broadcast the fact that they find it hard to "believe" what they observe. Judith has tried that on her blog. She doesn't publish denier papers though she skirts around it adding her name to borderline papers by others (Nic Lewis and Marcia Wyatt). She mostly saves her denial for her blog and the US government committees.

There's one more thing. I only write about it because deniers are so impressed and tweeted it to and fro. It feeds all their tendencies for conspiracy ideation. I almost, but didn't include the reply by Judith Curry to a comment by one David Small, who said he couldn't hack it when his work was questioned by others, and ended up leaving science altogether in a fit of pique. He's okay. The financial sector would provide him with much better remuneration than a life in academia. His 'sour grapes' comment got this response from Judith:

curryja | February 15, 2015 at 1:27 pm | Reply

David, thanks for posting, that is a stunning story

She is easily impressed.

Added by Sou 7:00 pm AEDT 17 February 2015