Tuesday, December 12, 2017

Rising to the Red Team - Blue Team Challenge. Get Strategy.


“Scott Pruitt, the deeply mistrusted head of the US Environmental Protection Agency, confirmed ... his plans to launch a “red team-blue team” exercise on the subject on climate change could reach fruition as early as next month. …”
“Scott Pruitt’s call for a ‘Red Team, Blue Team’ debate on climate change is a farce and a distraction,” said Peter Frumhoff from the UCS after Pruitt’s hearing. “If he has questions about climate science, he should turn to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, not hacks from the Heartland Institute. …”
Scott Pruitt Confirms “Red Team–Blue Team” Climate Exercise Could Launch As Early As January  |  December 11th, 2017 by Joshua S Hill  
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The internet is abuzz with handwringing over the prospect of Pruitt's "red team - blue team" competition to "establish" the validity of the scientific understanding of human caused global warming, (see the recent SkepticalScience.com article I’ve reposted below.)

Trump Administration is looking forward to making a theater out of climate science and scientists are rightfully upset.  

Yet, it seems to me this exercise provides a wonderful opportunity for some savvy science and history communicators with the right stuff  to stand up and turn the table on these fraudsters.  

Reject their script and use this opportunity to expose the contrarian mishmash of inconsistent nonsense, lies and slander.

Use the moment to expose their dishonest rotten underbelly!

(originally posted at my new ConfrontingScienceContrarians blog)

Presenting the consensus evidence is straight forward.  

“There it is.” 
“Now please list your perceived problems with this fundamental understanding?”

We know they have nothing of substance.

This is where they start their circus.  Be ready for it.

When the Red Team comes with their contrived memes, they will be reruns of talking points based on innuendo; on deliberately misrepresenting scientists and the science; on projecting an a priori assumption of malfeasance on the part of scientists; on a deliberate disconnect from the reality of our physical Earth and her geophysics; etc., etc..

Put Heartland's dishonest talking points on trial !  

Demand proof from them.

Publicize the provenance of these deliberate frauds.  

Establish how serious science is built on honesty, skepticism, competition, acknowledging we need each other to keep ourselves honest.  
Discuss the foundation of observation based facts driving understanding and such.

Call out calumny when they come with their malicious meritless attacks on Mann, or Trenberth, or Santer, or any of the others. 

Publicize the money trails, and EXXON’s covered up research on the impacts of runaway fossil fuels consumption.

And so on.  

There really isn't much choice, is there?  Either that, or continue being stuck singing to the tune Republicans keep pounding away on.

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2017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #49

Posted on 10 December 2017 by John Hartz

Story of the Week…

A Spectacle At The Coliseum — 
US To Hold Public Climate Change Debate As Soon As January, EPA Head Says


Much of modern politics amounts to nothing more than spectacle and entertainment at this point. Getting people to actually think about anything, rather than to stare blankly while taking part in whatever scapegoating or lynching frenzy is in effect at the moment, is essentially a lost cause. It’s so much easier, after all, to just assume that one knows everything, that one’s peers speak the unvarnished truth, and that everything that goes wrong is someone else’s doing/fault than it is to live in the highly nuanced and unpredictable world that everything actually resides in. And anyway, someone has to be wrong, and it’s not you, right?

With that background haze firmly in mind, the new head of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Scott Pruitt, has announced that the EPA may launch a “public climate debate” as soon as January. In other words, rather than dealing with the issue in any real way, the idea is that some monkeys can get together on TV and yell past one another — and that can substitute for an actual discussion of the civilization-wrecking issues now facing the world.

A return to the coliseum, in other words. Though, observing the nonsensical but gore-filled visual noise that passes for entertainment nowadays, it appears that the coliseum has been with us for quite a while now. To the credit of the Romans, though, at least the violence of the coliseum was real in its way and made some kind of sense (even if it was essentially intended as tribute to the foreign Carthaginian god Ammon, established as part of the evocatio preceding the Punic Wars). The depictions of violence seen in popular culture nowadays have about as much to do with reality as a child’s make believe does. 

A Spectacle At The Coliseum — US To Hold Public Climate Change Debate As Soon As January, EPA Head Says by James Ayre, Clean Technica, Dec 8, 2017
Also see: Scott Pruitt’s terrible plan to “objectively” assess climate science by David Roberts, Energy & Environment, Vox, Dec 7, 2017
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Trump administration lining up climate change 'red team'by John Siciliano | Jul 24, 2017 
http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/trump-administration-lining-up-climate-change-red-team/article/2629124 

“The Trump administration is in the beginning stages of forming an adversarial "red team" to play devil's advocate in a plan to debate the facts behind global warming and take on what skeptics call climate alarmism.  …”
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Picking 'red-team' roster presents minefield for Pruitt
Scott Waldman, E&E News reporter
Climatewire: Thursday, October 26, 2017

“U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt faces a predicament: If he picks certain climate skeptics for an attempt to poke holes in mainstream climate science, he risks alienating others and undermining the entire effort.

Yesterday, lists of candidates that a conservative think tank is promoting for the climate "red team" were made public by an advocacy group. The lists were sent to EPA by the Heartland Institute, according to the environmental group Climate Investigations Center, and include names of dozens of scientists and economists skeptical of mainstream climate science whom conservatives want to be part of the effort. …


2 comments:

john said...

The idea there is some debate immediately points out the total disconnect from reality.
This is rather like saying the power comes to my home because of not physics but physic powers this is rather akin to burning all books done by some in the not so distant past we are seeing the same kind of NO Learning rubbish from a so called Government.
America I feel so sorry for you being lead by people of no knowledge learning or understanding.

citizenschallenge said...

Too true and tragic.
That we allowed it go this far I find mind boggling.
But, here we are.