I don't like it but I would roll with it if that is the pragmatic solution.
How do you propose to win?
So, to be clear, your "pragmatic" solution is to deceive the public, because you think you are smarter than they are.
Well, you're about 23 years behind:
On the one hand, as scientists we are ethically bound to the scientific method, in effect promising to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but — which means that we must include all the doubts, the caveats, the ifs, ands, and buts. On the other hand, we are not just scientists but human beings as well. And like most people we’d like to see the world a better place, which in this context translates into our working to reduce the risk of potentially disastrous climatic change. To do that we need to get some broad based support, to capture the public’s imagination. That, of course, entails getting loads of media coverage. So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest. I hope that means being both.
--Stephen Schneider in APS News, Aug/Sep 1996, p. 5.
Which raises the question: what if you are one of the public?
I've propose appealing to emotion, which I don't think needs to include deception.
>Which raises the question: what if you are one of the public?
I am absolutely am, though I've also done my own climate reconstructions from raw, unadjusted data, which was the beginning of me deciding which 'side' of this debate was correct and honest, and which side were clowns. That is to say after doing the math myself it became clear one side was not even arguing in good faith, or incredibly ignorant.
There are people on the other side of the issue who have done the same thing and come to the opposite conclusion. For example, over 500 scientists and engineers recently signed a letter to the U.N. saying:
· “Nature as well as anthropogenic factors cause warming” · “Warming is far slower than predicted” · “Climate policy relies on inadequate models” · Carbon dioxide is “plant food, the basis of all life on Earth” · “Global warming has not increased natural disasters” · “Climate policy must respect scientific and economic realities”
Signers of the letter include: MIT professor emeritus Richard Lindzen; Freeman Dyson of the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton, and Stanford University professor emeritus Elliott D. Bloom, as well as several signers formerly affiliated with NASA.
Are they all "incredibly ignorant clowns, not even arguing in good faith"?