At http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/05/06/respect-lies-and-power-politics/ … EM Smith tries to untangle the different ways of thinking about CAGW – and how those differences might arise. Its a nice, not too serious, blog post, and it can equally be applied to other debates too.
On a similar basis we have the mainstream attempting once more to suppress the Younger Dryas Boundary event as possibly due to an impact or something akin to that. The main author is a proponent of the idea that human hunting was responsible for the mammoth extinctions. See for example http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/05/13/what-caused-a-1300-year-deep-freez… … where it is alleged the impact theory has ruffled feathers. This is one of those posts where the comments are more interesting than the subject matter – which is pretty much likely to be mauled when the YDB team get going. Lots of commenters weigh in with the point of view that the consensus is probably right and the impact lobby are oddballs. Rather than make a common link between CAGW hype and establishment corralling of the evidence, and a mainstream unenthusiastic about catastrophic events such as impacts at the YDB (as it upsets the rosy nature of the Uniformitarian world view), most commenters come down in favour of the new paper. This confirms my suspicion that a lot of sceptics on Watts Up With That are really opposed to CAGW for political reasons (US politcs, anti Obama, anti hippie, etc) rather than on purely scientific reasons. They can quote the sceptic mantras – but it too often is repetitive, and boring. Okay, Al Gore has made a lot of money out of the scam – they have a point. He is also on the other side of the political spectrum (although his altruistic motives are not as sharply defined). In other words, CAGW sceptics are not necessarily sceptical when it comes to other subjects that involve science – especially the ideas they were taught and learnt in education establishments. For example, the Ice Age theory goes unchallenged and is recited as fact – by many of the commenters. Hence, looking for a clue to what caused the Younger Dryas via climate change (and glacial theory) will continue to stump mainstream – and most of Anthony's commenters. These people like to project themselves as free thinkers – and criticise the CAGW crowd as a brain washed bunch of freaks (or words to that effect) and yet they are exactly the same when it comes to Uniformitarian theories (and a general condemnation of anything out of line with consensus science. Remarkable. It also makes a bit of a mockery of what EM Smith has to say – or does it? Read his blog post (above) and see what you think. Why are people so willing to conform to being one of the little people – one of them told what to think and what to do by an elite who consider themselves somewhat superior (in various ways, including their breadth of knowledge).