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Vote for Climate Denial Crock of the Week at Brighter Planet

Posted on 14 May 2010 by John Cook

Climate education is more important than ever. One important contributor to this is Peter Sinclair who produces the Climate Denial Crock of the Week video series. These YouTube movies are entertaining and educational, boiling complex scientific concepts down to easy-to-understand language (which is not an easy thing to do - take it from me). To obtain funding to continue to produce the videos at a high quality, Crock of the Week has submitted for funding at the Brighter Planet's Project Fund.

Go check out the page yourself - here's an excerpt:

Climate Denial Crock of the Week is a successful series of YouTube videos which lay out the science of climate change in a fast paced, amusing mash-up of video clips, cartoons, music, graphs and images.

As one of the original 1000 Climate Project trainees, working to deliver the truth of climate change science, I realized there are a small number of what I call “Climate Crocks”, crunchy nuggets of disinformation that take only 10 seconds to say, but might take a real scientist an hour to refute.

I launched “Climate Denial Crock of the Week” as a platform to refute, in entertaining style, the canards of climate deniers.

Since its launch a year ago, CDCW has gained an enthusiastic audience and inspired praise from scientists and professionals in the field around the planet.

To make the videos even more effective, I need funding for better software, a good video camera, computer upgrades, sound clips and stock footage.

To obtain funding, he needs votes. So if you consider video and YouTube a useful tool in communicating science, and you think Crock of the Week does a good job of explaining climate science, I suggest you vote for Climate Denial Crock of the Week at Project Fund.

Just to pad out Peter's resume some more, here are some impressive quotes from some highly credentialled people:

“…arresting graphics and straightforward explanations to point out what the science really says, how the contrarians distort and misinform..”
Gavin Schmidt, Goddard Institute for Space Studies, NASA
Michael Mann, Director, Earth System Science Center, Penn State University
“Brilliant job… among the finest, most reasonable stuff I have seen..”
Stephen Schneider
Professor, Department of Biology and
Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment
Stanford University
“Sinclair manages to pack a whole lot of useful and accurate information into each video. All in all, it’s a really superb resource and I applaud his ongoing effort.”
Professor Barry Brook
Sir Hubert Wilkins Chair of Climate Change
Director of Climate Science
University of Adelaide,
Australia

UPDATE 18 May 2010: Great news! Climate Denial Crock of the Week won the Project Fund grant.

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Comments

Comments 1 to 14:

  1. Already voted on Monday! When do we get to vote for your site? Type...you have: “Brilliant job… among the ?nest, most reasonable stuff I have seen..” It should be “Brilliant job… among the finest, most reasonable stuff I have seen..”
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    Response: Fixed, thanks for the tip
  2. Just remember that there are 3 votes for each voter - I used my 3 votes on Peter Sinclair, he is doing a great job :)
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  3. "Since its launch a year ago, CDCW has gained an enthusiastic audience and inspired praise from scientists and professionals in the field around the planet." And for me CDCW are too simplistic, does not stimulate the logical thinking process, circumventing the problem too complicated. Skeptics (especially recently) are more effective - increasingly more efficient (use more precise analysis - instead of propaganda - public relation). For example, in the U.S.: "To no surprise, the American public is less worried about the threat of global warming than at any time in the past 13 years. According to Gallup's global warming poll, 48% of Americans now believe that the seriousness of global warming is generally exaggerated, which is up from 41% in 2009 and 31% back in 1997. Also, 19% of Americans say that the effects of global warming will never happen, while 16% stated that the effects of global warming will not happen in their lifetime." "In a sharp turnaround from what Gallup found as recently as three years ago, Americans are now almost evenly split in their views of the cause of increases in the Earth's temperature over the last century," according to Gallup. 50% of Americans believe that increases in the earth's temperature over the last century are due more to human activities, while 46% say it is due to natural causes. These numbers were 61% and 35% respectively back in 2007. [??? ...]"
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  4. I'm one of those who really like Sinclair approach to the problem. I find it stimulating critical thinking, he always shows a denialist claims and contrast it with the science. It's very efficient in showing in an easy yet rigorous way both what science says and the errors, and sometimes the flat lies, of the AGW deniers. This should be contrasted with the approach used by many denialist blogs, where the they use fake science to push their agenda. No critical thinking, not a tiny drop of skepticism despite they like this word (not its meaning) a lot. They only act as amplifiers of a propaganda probably elaborated elsewhere with the support of professional PR. This is why they're so efficient, they are not forced in the narrow lane of reality. In mathematical terms i'd say that the two are incommensurable.
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  5. tiny error in the top post. Should be Michael Mann (not Micheal Mann). I'm also going to vote for Peter Sinclair whose videos are very straightforward, truthful and impactful (and also quite funny sometimes).
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  6. Arkadiusz Semczyszak wrote : "Skeptics (especially recently) are more effective - increasingly more efficient (use more precise analysis - instead of propaganda - public relation)." Where is any of that 'precise analysis' ? Can you give some examples ? And you don't believe they use propaganda ? Come off it - you're not being serious, are you ? Or don't you read WUWT ? As for the Gallup poll you refer to (with quotes from ACCUWEATHER ?), a majority still agree that global warming is real (79% say the effects of the problem have already begun, will do so in a few years/within their lifetime, or will happen to future generations); that the warnings are correct or underestimated (49%); that it is human-caused (50%), and believe that most scientists accept that it is a human-induced problem (52%). All those are down, of course, but, after a cold Winter and the efforts of all the so-called skeptics, those figures could have been a lot worse.
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  7. JMurphy #10 Arkadiusz Semczyszak #3 I agree with #10. I regularly dip into WUWT and Climate Audit, but I cannot ever find anything like what you would call "a more precise analysis". Pick anything, like Arctic Sea Ice, or Urban Heat Island effect, and you will find the analysis is more obscurantist than precise. Arkadiusz, give us some examples of where the denialist analysis is "more precise" than (to take one) this blog. Here is some more discussion on environmental opinioni polls. http://climateprogress.org/2010/05/13/opinion-polls-underestimate-americans-concern-about-the-environment-and-global-warming/ "... when asked, “What do you think will be the most serious problem facing the world in the future if nothing is done to stop it?” 25 percent said the environment or global warming, and only 10 percent picked the economy. In fact, environmental issues were cited more often than any other category, including terrorism, which was only mentioned by 10 percent of respondents." Meanwhile, I am off to vote for Peter Sinclair.
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  8. I think Peter's doing a great job taking up the cause of defending science. He really deserves all our support.
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  9. Arkadiusz, WUWT comes to mind; as if the carbonic snow thing wasn't enough, now Goddard is arguing that Venus atmospheric temperature is due to pressure instead of GH effect. Some analysis. A comment in the thread compares that with a hair dryer, which, as we all know, heats up the air by compression (!). Precise analysis is raging indeed...
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  10. I first noticed Peter Sinclair when Anthony Watts tried (and failed) to have his videos removed from Youtube by erroneously asserting copyright infringement. Sorely lacking in the public sphere are good science communicators - those who can present science accurately and concisely to the public. The public domain is littered with dubious contrarian material, severely out of whack with the peer-reviewed literature. Textbook example of a non-sequitur by Arkadiusz: Public opinion on scientific issues is a result of good precise analysis? If only! Creationists must be engaging in good precise analysis that stimulates logical thinking, unlike those propaganda-pushing evolutionists with their simplistic peer-reviewed voodoo science, and elitist academic cred. http://www.religioustolerance.org/ev_publi.htm
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  11. Seriously Arkadiusz, if the "skeptic" arguments are so precise, then why have all the major skeptic arguments been so easily debunked? Don't believe me? Well consider: Urban Heat Island effect-debunked (several times). Ocean Oscillation effect-debunked (this one didn't even last long enough for the ink to dry on the original paper). Sunspot Activity-debunked (the paper I read was actually really excellent in showing past correlations between sunspot proxies & temperature proxies-& its to his credit that the Danish researcher behind this paper was one of the first to correct his error regarding the last 30 years). Medieval Warm Period-not debunked, but no-one pushing this has been able to show why natural warming in the past somehow negates the possibility of man-made warming in the modern age-especially given the lack of natural forcings, & how much faster the modern warming period has been. Indeed, I'd argue that the tendency of "skeptics" to rely on ad-hominem attacks & publicity stunts like Climate-Gate & ambit criminal prosecutions highlights the lack of precision in their arguments. Meanwhile, in spite of constant & increasingly ruthless attacks by vested interests, the simple theory that greenhouse gases trap outgoing long-wave IR radiation has stood up strongly-even in a country like the US of A!
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  12. Yea, too bad we're only given three votes. John, thank you for the heads up on this - was happy to vote for one of my true heros I hope he gets the grant - do let us know.
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  13. Given Pete my votes! He does a brilliant job!
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  14. I used to live in the same town as Peter, and have met him or heard him speak a few times. He is a great guy. Please give him your support.
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