Elevated from a comment left on WUWT about the Quote of the Week – sensationalizing for the greater good. See note below.

Brad Keyes

climatenuremberg.com Submitted on 2014/01/21 at 9:57 pm

As the poster of the “astonishing statement,” I have been distressed, disturbed and demoralised by a tattoo of remarkably closely-synchronised assaults on my integrity launched from the direction of the flat-earthosphere. Obviously I can’t even begin to put myself in the shoes of a world-leading researcher like Dr Michael Mann, but I now know exactly how he felt in the darkest hour of his own Garden of Gethsemane*: hounded by politicians crowing over every typo, dogged by deniers baying for blood, ratted out by soi-disant “colleagues” and and mobbed by the bleating, myth-parroting mouthpieces of the Murdocracy (or should I say HERDocracy).

I’ve always gone out of my way to display patience and tolerance for folks who voice doubts, misconceptions and incomplete knowledge regarding climate change, even if their questions have been soundly debunked and/or dismissed by scientists, provided (of course) that their difference of opinion is a matter of sincere ignorance; but it seems it was naive of me to hope for your folks’ respect in return!

To those who have described my comment as “plagiarism” (a mastertrope of dog-whistling, ad hominem and Islamophobia obviously intended to liken me to Edward Wegman’s “foreign,” “non-American,” “A-rab!!!” grad student):

Paranoid much? Think “Skeptically” for a second. If I were stealing statements from climate scientists then how, pray tell, could I have obtained sentences like:

“THEY are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people THEY’D like to see the world a better place… So THEY have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts THEY might have.”

Notice how I refer to climate scientists in the 3RD PERSON? Are you seriously suggesting these are Steve Schneider’s expressions? LOL—OK, riiiight. How anybody could be familiar with the Professor’s lectures and writings on the planetary climate crisis without noticing his favoritism towards the 1st person is beyond me. Even for climate-debate standards, that would be tone-deaf.

The passage you thought you recognized was, in fact, a PARAPHRASE of the climate-scientific ethics Schneider expounded so memorably in a wide-ranging Discovery interview.

Sure, it was that article which first opened my mind—and that of a whole generation of non-climate-scientist readers—to these ideas, but I’ve met literally dozens of climate consensualists who’d confirm and agree with Schneider’s principles, so it seems both supererogatory and arbitrary to demand I attribute them to the individual researcher who just happened to articulate them first/ best to a muggle audience.

We’re having a discussion (or Conversation) about the way **climate science** works (and how it differs from the public’s idealized, black-and-white caricature of science as “just the truth, ma’am”)—which didn’t die with the late great Professor Schneider!

This is something around which many misconceptions still exist—let’s raise some awareness. Imagine how much colder the planet would be if so-called Skeptics stopped being so negative and made constructive contributions?

Instead of impugning my entire life’s work (what’s next? rats on the doorstep? a burning cross on my lawn?), you folks could do some CLIMATE COMMUNICATION with the people who read The Conversation—most of whom, in my experience, still labor under the understandable misconception that climate scientists are pure, dispassionate, asexual truth-machines, who have seen the future and describe their observations. There’s still nowhere near enough appreciation (let alone sympathy) out there for the bewildering flowchart of moral dilemmas, compromises and pitfalls scientists began to encounter (starting about 25 years ago) when determining how, what, to whom and what not to communicate.

Yours in defending the science,

Brad

* Speaking of trials, it seems someone upthread has had the audacity to take a soundbite from the Bible completely out of context and imply that it is somehow incompatible with Schneiderian/Mullerian/Kopaczian climate ethics:

“Why not say–as some slanderously claim that we say–”Let us do evil that good may result”? Their condemnation is just!”

Pure disinformation. While technically this is an accurate statement by God (or his Greek interpreter), my critic disingenuously fails to mention that it does NOT come from a climate scientist. In fact Christ and his apostles hadn’t even heard of the work of Arrhenius, so their ethical code, while admirable for the time, was obviously unable to take into account the seriousness of the apocalypse now facing us (if one believes the IPCC’s revelations)—and it is grossly dishonest to insinuate (by omission) that two millennia of advancements and rethinks in ethics, most dramatically in the last two decades, never occurred!

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NOTE: for somebody who espouses “patience and tolerance” in one paragraph, while using the “flat earth” and other less savory labels in the next certainly suggests your claim isn’t rooted in sincerity, something also indicated by your About Page. However, in fairness to you, since we covered your statement (via Susan Crockford’s polar bear blog) in Quote of the Week – sensationalizing for the greater good. I’m giving your rebuttal full visibility. – Anthony

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