[beaner]

This guy's Twitter thread doesn't seem like a great defense, because he doesn't make any specific scientific claims. It's all just ad-hominem that this org are "climate deniers."

More troubling is his claim that they are "weaponizing" reproducibility against climate change. Doesn't that raise a red flag? If you're worried that reproducibility poses a problem for something, doesn't that mean you might just a little bit probably have beliefs not based on reproducible science, but on faith? And that the irreproducible science has a chance of being wrong?

I'm not trying to deny climate science, I think it's real. But it seems like there's a real problem with this person's stance and how they're trying to argue and obstruct.

I'm kind of a believer that people can think for themselves. Let anybody attend anything - if it's a science convention that isn't promoting science it seems like it's not going to get very far, no protesting required.

Who are these people who feel that simply listening to someone speak is equivalent to endorsing them?

[tshaddox]

> This guy's Twitter thread doesn't seem like a great defense, because he doesn't make any specific scientific claims.

No one is hiding scientific claims about climate change. It wouldn't be difficult to list scientific claims, but that's not his point. He is complaining that this organization is misrepresenting itself and the nature of its event in order to trick people into attending or appearing to support something they do not actually support.

He doesn't claim that climate deniers' arguments are incorrect because of something about their character or motives (that would be an ad hominem attack). He just doesn't want people to be deceived regarding this organization and its conference.

> More troubling is his claim that they are "weaponizing" reproducibility against climate change. Doesn't that raise a red flag?

No. Why should it raise a red flag? People can invoke the name of true and important criticisms in the defense of beliefs that are incorrect or harmful.

> I'm kind of a believer that people can think for themselves. Let anybody attend anything - if it's a science convention that isn't promoting science it seems like it's not going to get very far, no protesting required.

It seems like this person would agree with you: and that's why he has made an effort to inform people that (in his view) this conference is not promoting science. Moreover, how is this so-called "cancel culture" incompatible with people thinking for themselves? This person can write criticisms about an organization in a Twitter thread. Someone from that organization can write a WSJ article in response. People can and do choose what to believe. This Twitter poster (presumably) does not have the ability to unilaterally cancel anything, nor is there some cultural rule that if his tweets get a certain number of likes then the target of his criticism automatically gets cancelled.

[meowface]

Are there recordings or slides of the presentations at this conference? I think that would provide a better way to judge to what degree they're scientific or non-scientific, rather than all this theoretical back-and-forth debating on Twitter and HN. (I think you both have valid points, though.)

[MaysonL]

Why are they calling themselves NAS? No reason suggests itself except deception. Name another?

[toomim]

Because they are part of the National Association of Scholars. It was founded in 1987.

[fsh]

The "real" NAS (National Academy of Sciences) was founded in 1863. Their choice of name is certainly suspicious.

[toomim]

It's not right to say that only one is real. That's biased thinking, and shows that you're trying to push politics rather than find the truth.

Furthermore, the organization you're talking about isn't even NAS -- it's NASEM: the "National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine". [1,2]

[1] https://nationalacademies.org/

[2] https://twitter.com/TheNASEM

This was all described in the article.

Furthermore, there are a bunch of other groups with the acronym NAS:

    Nationaal Arbeids-Secretariaat", a trade union federation in the Netherlands from 1893 to 1940
    National Academy of Songwriters, a music industry association for songwriters
    National Apprenticeship Service, the official UK government body responsible for apprenticeship coordination
    National Archives of Scotland, in Edinburgh, Scotland
    National Association of Scholars, an educational organization based in the United States
    National Association of Schoolmasters, a former trade union representing teachers in the UK
    National Association of Seadogs, a Nigerian confraternity
    National Audubon Society, an American environmental organization dedicated to conservancy
    National Autistic Society, an autism-related charity in the United Kingdom
    National Salvation Front (South Sudan), a South Sudanese militant group
    Nautical Archaeology Society, a British archaeology charity
    Nord Anglia International School Dubai

These are all very real.

[modo_mario]

"More troubling is his claim that they are "weaponizing" reproducibility against climate change. Doesn't that raise a red flag? If you're worried that reproducibility poses a problem for something, doesn't that mean you might just a little bit probably have beliefs not based on reproducible science, but on faith? And that the irreproducible science has a chance of being wrong?"

If I encounter an organisation with a name that tries to make me sound reputable primarily funded by Marlboro If I take not of the fact that they make the claim that cigarettes are not unhealthy. If they support this claim by picking and choosing data and misconstruing and twisting the words of reputable sources and scientists to make them fit their claim. (See their mention of a Claudia Tebaldi statement in the report this mess is about and other fud they've written in the past of course completely disregarding anything else she'd say that conflicts with their views) If disregarded and bashed for this I then see them rethink strategy and simply start saying there are too many studies showing the negative effects on health are not reproducible (not defining what is too many which can be anything from hundreds to a single one) and drawing a link to "anti cigarette dogma"

Can I then not say they are weaponising reproducibility without being accused of just "being afraid I'm wrong"?

[tfehring]

For reference, here's the spreadsheet with the screenshotted link [0], I've copy-pasted the climate change deniers and corresponding sources below.

Anastasios Tsonis https://www.businessinsider.com/scientists-who-deny-climate-...

Elliot D. Bloom https://www.independent.org/aboutus/person_detail.asp?id=403...

Patrick J. Michaels https://climateinvestigations.org/patrick-michaels-climate-d...

S. Stanley Young https://errorstatistics.com/2014/12/13/s-stanley-young-are-t...

David Randall https://undark.org/2018/04/18/national-association-of-schola...

David Theroux https://blog.independent.org/2012/10/27/its-official-no-glob...

Peter Wood https://undark.org/2018/04/18/national-association-of-schola...

Overall, I'm mostly underwhelmed by the evidence he presents. Anastasios probably falls into the climate change denier camp, though I know him from my time in UWM's math department and I believe he's a genuine skeptic acting in good faith. On the other hand, I turned up an awful lot of unscientific nonsense peddled by Elliot Bloom in my short time looking into him [1].

I haven't looked into the rest other than by following links above, which again are off-putting but not completely damning. I will add that the National Association of Scholars does appear to publish a lot of articles on climate change by clear climate change deniers and authors with significant links to the oil and gas industry [2], including:

- Leo Goldstein, whose website makes such claims as "CO2 in a greenhouse does NOT warm it. 'Greenhouse gas' is a misnomer.", "Higher CO2 concentrations in atmosphere do warm the surface, but only insignificantly.", and "Of all potential global dangers conceivably related to human activity, nothing has been studied better and found more harmless than anthropogenic CO2 release." [3]

- Edward Reid, who has at least 26 years of experience in the natural gas industry [4] and "fifty years of experience in the energy industry".

- David Legates, who according to Wikipedia "is a senior scientist of the Marshall Institute, a research fellow with the Independent Institute, and an adjunct scholar of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, all of which have received funding from ExxonMobil." [5]

[0] https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/136FNLtJzACc6_JbbOxjy...

[1] For example, the graphic at 1:17:08 of https://youtu.be/1zrejG-WI3U?t=4628 is based on the same data as the graphic in http://archive.is/qlqA8, which is debunked here https://blog.hotwhopper.com/2014/02/roy-spencers-latest-dece... and in the follow-up linked at the top of that page

[2] http://web.archive.org/web/20180921133012/https://www.nas.or...

[3] https://defyccc.com/summary-of-science/

[4] https://www.therightinsight.org/Ed-Reid

[5] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Legates

[triceratops]

> Who are these people who feel that simply listening to someone speak is equivalent to endorsing them?

There are certain topics that are so settled, that to engage with anyone with a contrary view is tantamount to giving them credibility and a platform to reach the uninformed. Some topics simply don't have "both sides" in any meaningful sense. Flat eartherism, Holocaust denial, and antivaxxerism are ones that immediately come to mind. Anyone who denies the mainstream consensus on those subjects is either a moron, a dishonest person with selfish or malicious motives, or both.

Denial of human-caused climate change is close to being in that bucket by this point (the next 2 decades will determine the truth of it). From the perspective of those advocating for action against climate change, deniers have blocked any sort of meaningful action for nearly 30 years. Their actions have led to unprecedented, potential economic, humanitarian, and ecological crises.

[beaner]

Yeah but climate science is complicated by the fact that it is overwhelmingly political.

You could say the same thing about geocentrism, germs [1], fat vs sugars, etc. - which all turned out to be false, given time and scrutiny.

Scientists have to learn the science to understand it, and that means encountering it from all perspectives. As new generations of people learn, they all have to go through it all again.

To not do so is to promote faith, not science.

Plus if denialism is wrong, then there should be nothing to worry about anyway. Assuming scientists are scientific, they will consider it, consider other evidence, and come to the correct conclusion.

[1] https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/532074/how-promoting-han...

[baddox]

> You could say the same thing about geocentrism, germs [1], fat vs sugars, etc. - which all turned out to be false, given time and scrutiny.

Those things were not proven false by simply exposing the supposed political influence in the practice of science! The validity of a scientific theory does not depend on the political influence of the institutions that researched or proposed the theory. They were proven false and replaced by better scientific theories.

[triceratops]

> Plus if denialism is wrong, then there should be nothing to worry about anyway.

I don't follow the logic of that. If denialism is wrong, but it's influencing society and policy, how is that not something to worry about?

[neetle]

It feels vaguely like Pascal's wager.

The payoff for anthropogenic climate change existing and us doing something is much higher than the price of it not existing and us doing something.

[catalogia]

Even if climate change wasn't happening (it is), it seems plain to me we'd all benefit from less sulfer in the air. Not even coal miners like smog (though if they live far away from the smog they may be apathetic towards it.) The universal appreciation for fresh air should be more than enough motivation for anybody.

[overgard]

If your side is failing to convince people, the solution shouldn’t be “shut up the other side”, no matter how right you may be. It’s intellectually dishonest.

By engaging in cancel culture, it gives the silenced side way more credibility, because they can say “why are they afraid to let us speak?” It’s not just that cancel culture is morally bad, its also ineffective.

[triceratops]

When the "other side" is arguing in bad faith, you're damned if you let them speak and damned if you don't. Someone like that isn't going to play by the rules of logical, rational discourse - such as sticking to the facts - so there isn't much to be gained by letting them speak versus not giving them a platform. I point you to Holocaust denialism, which has a long, rich tradition of ignoring, obfuscating, or concocting elaborate alternative explanations for any truths that run counter to their dogma. Or for something more benign, the flat earth movement or the Apollo landing conspiracy theorists.

It's easy for a bullshitter to make up more bullshit, and people love to believe "contrarian" bullshit so they can appear smarter than the next guy. Refuting bullshit takes time, energy, and effort that could be spent on more productive activities.

It's absolutely a worry that legitimate contrarian speech (I get that that's an oxymoron to some people) might be suppressed. But that's not what's currently happening.

[jdauriemma]

An analogous historic example can be found in lead toxicity denial and denial of the harmful effects of tobacco. It took generations to chase away the bad-faith actors in the scientific and medical communities.

[JamesBarney]

Geocentrism wasn't really a scientific theory, because we didn't really have scientific theories yet. This was just a thing people believed.

Fats vs sugars I don't know what you're referring to, but it hasn't really ever been a scientific theory.

The germs article about a discovery in the 1800's. And if that is a allegory about climate change, the doctor's who denied germ theory are the climate deniers.

> Plus if denialism is wrong, then there should be nothing to worry about anyway. Assuming scientists are scientific, they will consider it, consider other evidence, and come to the correct conclusion.

Scientists have already considered it and come to the correct conclusion. And if climate change denialism is wrong (which pretty much every scientist who has studied the subject believes) and we choose not to act that could cause billions to trillions of dollars in harm and many lost lives.

Also climate change science is pretty simple. If you take a green house and fill it with carbon dioxide it will get hotter. Do the same thing to a planet and it will get hotter. Not to mention the global temperature record has told a very consistent sorry over the last decades of warming.

[specialist]

"...climate science is complicated by the fact that it is overwhelmingly political."

We shouldn't use science to inform policy?

[ALittleLight]

Holocaust denial is offensive and frequently a precursor to Nazi ideology. Antivax leads to children not getting medicated.

Flat Earth though seems pretty valuable to me. It's an intellectual exercise to argue a challenging position, and to do so you must learn the evidence you're arguing against. Until flat Earth advocates start getting into NASA or something I can't see how they're doing any harm.

In general, I tend to think that even if some ideas are toxic and should be kept from children or the mentally disturbed, there's nothing wrong with discussing ideas of any kind between people speaking peacefully and consensually.