On his blog the Albuquerque Journal’s John Fleck offers an interesting commentary on the reactions to yesterday’s hockey stick post:

“[Pielke says] we’re all arguing about the hockey stick as a surrogate for what we’re really arguing about. In the process, we all just talk past one another without getting anywhere. The funny thing, in terms of my premise, is the resulting comments. It’s a whole bunch of people on both sides of the issue who keep rehashing the same old arguments. It’s like they’re so entrenched in their pre-rehearsed arguments that they paid no attention to what Roger was saying.”

It is almost as if people are in a trance, where they can only see arguments about climate science and nothing else, even though they are really arguing about politics and values. I understand why this occurs and have written about it many times. But what is puzzling to me is why it is so difficult for people to see other perspectives and engage them, even if they disagree. I am not sure what to make of this; one might think that it is a function of the self-selected few with motivation to read blogs and comment. But it seems to me that it is a broader characteristic of the climate debate that infuses the media, the blogosphere and political discussion.


With all of the attention being paid to getting George Bush to accept the science of climate change, many are going to be disappointed when they succeed in this task and policies don’t change. As Margaret Beckett, the British Environment Secretary, commented on the climate debate, ” the theology is less important than action._ From where I sit it seems like most people have their priorities in the opposite order, theology trumps action. How to break the trance? I don’t know.