For as long as predictions will be difficult, especially about the future, “denialism” will as a matter of course remain appropriate only in the context of past facts, i.e. in the “denial” that they actually occurred.
So let’s set aside the widespread, idiotic name-calling against anybody having any question regarding impending climate catastrophes: because the real Climate Deniers are very easy to spot.
And it’s the people that to this day still live in the fantasy world where Climategate was a non-event and had no consequence (esp. on the science of climate change). You know, the people that haven’t read Andrew Montford‘s GWPF report, or the findings of the Muir Russell review, or Lord Oxburgh’s comments about reconstructing temperature trends for the past 1,000 years (Q36 in the link) (or, erm…my preface to the Italian translation of Montford’s report).
Or they have read the lot, but due to their denialist attitude they can’t fathom the meaning of what’s written in there.
Everybody else might have instead noticed by now that a major. widely-funded, “independent, replicable, inclusive, transparent…approach [to] estimate…global temperature change” (and “the uncertainties in the record“) is expected to come to fruition sometimes next year. And yes, Climategate had an important role in getting Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) up-and-running.
QED…all those labelling of non-believers as “deniers” has simply been a kind of preventative attack. And finally, it has backfired.
ps my predictions on the BEST results:
- According to the Berkeley group, the Earth’s surface temperature will have risen (on average) slightly less than what indicated by NASA, NOAA and the Met Office
- Differences will be on the edge of statistical significance, leaving a lot open to subjective interpretation
- Several attempts will be made by climate change conformists and True Believers to smear the work of BEST, and to prevent them from publishing their data
- After publication, organised groups of people will try to cloud the issue to the point of leaving the public unsure about what exactly was found by BEST
- New questions will be raised regarding UHI, however the next IPCC assessment’s first draft will be singularly forgetful of any peer-reviewed paper on the topic
- We will all be left with a slightly-warming world, the only other certitude being that all mitigation efforts will be among the stupidest ideas that ever spung to human mind.