Tiny: I've singled out 'climate change denier' and its shorter forms because I think it deserves special attention and analysis. I agree of course that those that use it should not 'get to pretend' it’s not an attempt to be offensive but I want to go further than that. I also agree and think it's vital to realise that Roy Spencer wasn't calling all warmists 'global warming Nazis', just those that insist on using denier as the lowest form of insult. I think he's dead right to make the distinction.

I can't yet explain fully why I began the way I did. Hilary was objecting that I wasn't spilling the beans a while back. I still haven't. You are going to have to live with that. But what is it with the haste that we seem to be forced into by putting something up on a BH discussion? What if I want to be careful what I say, after an opening I've said was provocative? Perhaps I will have fewer readers by the time I do explain. It wouldn't bother me. This area could do without rash commentary. Those who judged my opening rash will have a chance to reconsider by the end. But only if they wish. I'm not in a hurry to justify myself. I'm much more interested in writing something that, taken as a whole, stands the test of time and has a disinfectant effect on one very nasty aspect of the climate scene.

One thing I will say now: I'd like it if whenever 'denier' is used sceptics said as one "We refuse to accept this abuse" or alternatively "We refuse to accept this hate speech." I not sure if hate speech is the best phrase. I'd love to debate that. But something close to a stock response (though of course unenforceable, given the variety and independence of sceptics worldwide) would quickly I believe become very powerful. In fact, I think in Nick Cohen's very strong remarks this weekend:

The evidence for man-made global warming is as final as the evidence of Auschwitz. No other word will do.

we see a first reaction to a stronger push back from sceptics, partly emboldened by Spencer and the inimitable Anthony Watts. This isn't going to be 'nice'. But better some strong words now than that the 'green shirts' turn black, then spattered red with real blood. And real bloodshed remains a possibility for me, given a number of negative signs today. Another reason to talk about this like grownups, not like my dear children a mile or two into a long journey in days of old: "Are we there yet?"

Tiny, did you see what I wrote fifteen days ago?

Here's where I want to get to with this thread. I don't know by when. These go back to my intro to Global warming Nazis:

1. The deleterious effects of 'denier' on the climate debate
2. Limitations and dangers of the Roy Spencer approach
3. Limitations and dangers of the Andrew Montford approach
4. Respect, as ever, to Dr Richard Lindzen
5. A new analogy with the Holocaust debate
6. Any other business, like how we put an end to 'denier' forever.

Questions and comments now, during, at the end or not at all? Any of the above is fine.

I've begun The deleterious effects of 'denier' on the climate debate and am still in that phase. I don't feel huffy with you. I was though very disappointed with the previous thread - Global warming Nazis - which I considered one of the worst I've ever seen on Bishop Hill. I was determined this one would be different, which it is. I will explain more about that in phase 5 - but please take careful note that I hadn't mentioned it at all until now. I don't agree with those that start threads then say "I wish I could delete that". We all know it's a risk to set something off in BH discussion land and we have to live with that. But we are free to have another go and see if we can steer things in what seems to us to be more fruitful directions. (And not everything on that thread was bad. I just borrowed 'green shirts' from it. And so on.)

If you pick up that I have strong feelings in this area you're right. Here's an example. Quite a lot of UK sceptics make disparaging remarks about David Cameron and some make it clear they would never vote for him and the Tories in the next general election. I was completely unclear about how I myself was going to vote. (Since becoming of voting age I've voted for all three main parties, for UKIP and for independent candidates so I've turned into something of a serial floating voter.) But on 13th September last year, after reading a single news story, I made the decision to vote for Cameron. It's the first time I can remember making the decision this far ahead in my whole life.

I write that to make clear that some things are more important to me than the climate issue. Cameron won my vote by what he said that day, regardless of anything else. I doubt that was true for others on Bishop Hill. We come from different places. Until I lay some more groundwork I'm not ready to explain my take on 'denier' and related issues more fully. I also don't want the subject to dominate all my doings on BH for a month or more. Hence I'm going slowly.

So as of today this thread has been ticking over at less than 2.5 posts per day for 23 days, whereas its predecessor's active phase was only 12 days but 100 posts meant an average of over 8 a day. Much busier but to my mind, despite some unproductive stuff near the start, this one is better and may be better again before long.

And you of course are totally free to disagree with my assessment. I appreciate people like John Shade and stewgreen kicking off long-lasting threads which don't have a rapid post-per-day rate but continue, to me, to provide value by concentrating on something different, from a different angle, from other threads. I'm happy if there's more interaction on this thread than on some of theirs but I won't lose sleep if there's not. It seems a really valuable freedom to nurture such diversity.

US Secretary of State John Kerry on IPCC Working Group 2 today, as reported by the BBC:

In a statement, Mr Kerry said: "Unless we act dramatically and quickly, science tells us our climate and our way of life are literally in jeopardy. Denial of the science is malpractice.

"There are those who say we can't afford to act. But waiting is truly unaffordable. The costs of inaction are catastrophic."

I sometimes think these people have been reading Bishop Hill and Watts Up With That. Today, in response to a growing number of pieces calling for the jailing of 'climate deniers', the attorney Roger Sowell has a article Are Climate Skeptics Legally Liable for Criminal Negligence? Criminal negligence is the key ingredient and of course it's lacking, according to Sowell. But Kerry has the answer to that:

In the law of torts, malpractice is an "instance of negligence or incompetence on the part of a professional."

"Denial of the science is malpractice." Key phrase on the planned route to criminalising all kinds of dissent to climate science or policies, however crazy those policies are. But don't worry, it's only coming from the person in what's called the second most powerful position in the United States.

No matter who it is: WE REFUSE TO ACCEPT THIS HATE SPEECH.

Tiny, Mark Steyn doesn't sound so impressed so far with justice US-style. Behead Those Who Insult the Prophet Mannhammed! is a lot of fun as well. I'm only saying that Kerry and his speechwriters are trying to prepare the ground. They need an even more corrupted legal system presumably to pull it off.

I'm glad to hear about every obstacle in the way of what is, to any fair-minded person, a grotesque and fascistic idea in the minds of those at the extremes of the climate debate, like Adam Weinstein, Lawrence Torcello and the US Secretary of State. Whoever said the price of freedom was eternal vigilance will I'm sure give us a free pass in this case given how insignificant these spokesmen are.

The other thing that struck me in Mark Steyn's piece was his treatment of Roger Pielke:

Phew! For a moment, it looked as if some uncredentialed denialist had slipped through the net to threaten the Chief Commissar of the Environment. Unfortunately, a denialist did slip through onto the new website of statistical wonderboy Nate Silver. It was the notorious Roger Pielke Jr, and the ever-alert Michael E Mann was quick to denounce Silver's new venture as "yet another outlet for misinformation". Mann's fellow self-conferred Nobel Laureate Kevin Trenberth also disparaged Pielke's work. Instead of skulking away in shame, the rabid denialist Pielke launched a vicious personal attack on the two climate heroes:

Pielke a denialist? When he has never even called himself a sceptic, let alone denied that CO2 was a greenhouse gas or anything of that sort? Yet I'm sure Steyn is right, because he's using the term not as we, but as Mann and Trenberth, would want it used. That 'big tent of denialists' is part of what we're trying to explore on this thread. But a bit at a time, with the help of the real experts, like Mr Kerry.

hunter: Yes, it's hard to see how history will look kindly on this latest intervention.

Double agreement with Peter Hitchens on the double falseness of 'climate change denier' here:

As for their use of the phrase ‘climate change denier’, that is just disreputable. The expression is doubly false. Nobody denies that the climate changes. It’s a proven fact that it has done many times. The question is whether it is changing as dramatically as the zealots predict, and whether this is caused by human activity. To be a ‘denier’ is a) to be a person who refuses to accept a proven fact, which nobody is doing and b) to be smeared by association with Holocaust deniers, who *do* deny a proven fact, and do so for disgraceful reasons. This, as John Henry Newman once said in another context, is not just the rough and tumble of robust debate. It is poisoning the wells.

Is 'denier' just the rough and tumble of robust debate - in which case this thread may have been a waste of time - or is it poisoning the wells of genuine dialogue? Hat-tip again to the Bish for his eagle eye expressed at the top right of this page.

I found this striking from east Ukraine, as reported by the BBC this afternoon:

Asya Kreimer has a big laugh. And laugh, she says, is what she did, when she logged in on Facebook a few days ago and saw a leaflet that ordered Jews to register, pay a tax or leave.

"It seemed ridiculous," she said, as she sliced kosher chicken for a Passover meal in her kitchen in Donetsk. "We have never had any problems here. My Ukrainian and Russian friends respect me for being a Jew. So to see that piece of paper was at once disgusting and laughable."

Important in its own right and the 'disgusting and laughable' exactly corresponding to how I've seen Richard Lindzen react to 'denier' over the years. At some point I'll give references. Meantime, blessings to all in that region as real guns are involved and an Easter truce is declared.

That's quite right Robin. But there's also this from October 2007:

Earlier this year, Boston Globe columnist Ellen Goodman hurled one of the worst insults imaginable at the skeptics' camp. "I would like to say we're at a point where Global Warming is impossible to deny," she wrote in February. "Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future." This sort of declaration, understandably, makes global-warming skeptics feel persecuted. Lindzen lost almost all of his father's family and most of his mother's to The Holocaust, and he says he considers Goodman's comments "mostly stupid, and a bit disgusting as well." ... Lindzen doesn't mind getting bashed—the criticism bolsters his sense that he's fighting for the truth. "I feel that my field is being raped, and someone should do something about it," he says.

Mostly stupid, and a bit disgusting as well. That's what I was remembering as I read the piece from Ukraine. That used to be at http://outside.away.com/outside/culture/200710/richard-lindzen-2.html. It'll be on the web archive I'm sure. But I'm off to hear an Anglican bishop from Perth. They say she's very good.

That article about Lindzen, An Inconvenient Expert, dated 28th September 2007, is still on the OutsideOnline site, it turns out, just at another URL. Meantime Thomas Sowell wrote this yesterday:

Anti-Semitism may have the dubious distinction of being the oldest of the group hatreds. You might think that the world would have gotten over anti-Semitism by now, but Jews have been singled out for separate treatment by the Russian insurgents in Ukraine.

thus picking up the news I'd noted here. It's hard to know what to say about such matters and not just for us cast as 'deniers' by the modern climate police. Here's Haaretz two days ago on the Pope's visit to Yad Vashem:

Another survivor in the audience, Miriam Aviezer, said she wished the pope had seized the moment to say something about anti-Semitism, particularly given two developments in the last two days: a shooting at a Jewish museum in Brussels, in which four people died, an attack outside a Paris synagogue short aftewards and the startling success of the far-right National Front in European parliamentary elections.

“His words were emotional, but not very concrete,” said Aviezer, who came from Croatia and was hidden as a child during the Holocaust. “The pope has the power to influence Christians all over the world and he could have made a strong statement against anti-Semitism that would sway many people.”

Complex, often horrible, world. As some of us rejoice in the rise of UKIP, purely for energy policy reasons, say, Miriam Aviezer's surely right to note the concurrent rise of anti-semitism in other parts of the continent. Even the Pope struggles to find the right words. (And, as a British nonconformist, I like this Pope - very much indeed.) No wonder we climate sceptics don't find it easy to agree the right response to 'denier' and its hateful variants. But we can but fight where we can.

And take courage where we can. A week ago I saw a film devoted to someone I'd only learned about that morning in London's free paper, The Metro. I had the chance to meet the Hungarian director and tell her that I considered her subject one of the most important people of 20th century. Regina Jonas. Anyone know without looking for what she is (or should be) famous? I'd never heard of her. But the leading female Rabbi of the UK (a valuable clue) said simply at the end "I watched and said again and again 'I could never have done that.'" Courage there always is if we know where to look.

Not blank - but intentionally left alone by the originator for two weeks. That's all about to change, when I hit Create Post :) One reason for the pause/hiaitus/standstill/warming as usual is that I hit a number of relevant bullseyes - on the darts board of my mind - in Geoff Chambers' discussion B*gger Godwin, which began on 23rd May. There are a number of valuable insights on 'denier' and our best response from other BH regulars there too.

But now I'm back here. Let me start with this contribution from ptw on 11th May:

I have an interest in maths but singh is not an author I feel inclined to.

to be honest I do not know the affinity of most capable math authors I DO feel inclined to , and that is a pre chomsky/aulinsky state of affairs really. the day it changes I step out of maths as well, and just start to shoot people.

'Just starting to shoot people' is the key danger I see with Roy Spencer's proposed response of global warming Nazis to those who insist on calling him and other mainstream sceptics deniers. Violence is incipient in the climate debate. Although I'm sure Roy would never go there, lesser lights like Anders Breivik already have. (Hardly the only reason, of course, but, as far as I've seen, he was 'one of us', just as the Unabomber was 'one of them'.)

Anything that encourages violence (including the ptw post above, which should definitely have been snipped, in my view, in a perfect world) is out. But, despite this, I prefer Spencer's approach to that of Curry and Montford, as I outlined on Geoff's thread. How come? More on that, soon, I'm hoping.

I didn't see the editorial this refers to but it sounds a corker:

Your editorial “Ebola in America” tries to draw a false analogy between denial by many West Africans of Ebola’s existence and scientifically based skepticism about significant man-made global warming (presumably due to the release of carbon dioxide by human activity). A better analogy would have been to the denial of the reality of ghosts and demons.

Carbon dioxide is a colorless, non-toxic, non-irritating gas — a natural component of the atmosphere. The Clean Air Act and subsequent amendments do not list carbon dioxide as a pollutant. On the contrary, it is of vital importance for plant growth and the support of all life on Earth. Agricultural crops are starved for carbon dioxide and need more. We should be thanking China for emitting so much into the atmosphere and thereby greening the Earth.

That's Fred Singer responding to the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Virginia, a week ago.