For the Twitter afficionados amongst us, the past couple of days has been enlivened by the #climatechapman hashtag. This picks up tweets from an AGU climate communication conference currently being run in Colorado and being attended by many big names in climactivism, such as Mann, Schmidt and Gleick.
Much fun is being had with delegates tweeting to their fellows not to engage with anyone who disagrees with them.
Here goes another troll war. Stop engaging, stay on meeting topics.
Don't engage with trolls. Spend time with people who are actually interested
This is a strange approach for a conference with communication as its aim, although it has to be said that it's typical of climate communicators, who are often a bit of a contradiction in terms. I wonder, however, if this "block first and ask questions later" approach, as manifested by American Meteorological Society President Marshall Shepherd the other day, is turning into a specifically American phenomenon. In the UK, engagement across the lines seems to be alive and well, as manifested by the recent debate featuring Tamsin Edwards and Jonathan Jones. Tamsin's match report is here and there is another one here. This is from Tamsin's version:
...the mood of the event was absolutely wonderful throughout. Almost all the “battles” were respectfully teasing, filled with humour. We laughed a lot, which must be a first for a discussion about climate change, scepticism and policy! I put this down to the warm and respectful relationships between the panel members (even though Claire and Jonathan had only just met), to our joyfully provocative chair, and to the audience who quickly created the serious and light atmosphere we hoped for. It was a privilege to have such an interested and supportive audience, such thoughtful, interesting and honest co-members of the panel, and a fun chair who dug into us to make us react and think more deeply about our answers.
The climate debate was poisoned for many years by the Hockey Team, with their attempts to silence dissent. It seems that those efforts continue in North America. But perhaps there is now light at the end of the tunnel, on this side of the pond at least.