How to answer this one?

From Pajamas Media

Now, I am not a scientist. I am just a mother who raised 9 kids and trains horses for a living. Nothing scientific about that, but it seems to me everything should always be open for discussion. The idea that a subject like man-made climate change is a done deal just doesn’t make sense to me, yet reply after reply let me know in very certain words that there is nothing to talk about.

In addition, the shared attitude of arrogance towards me or anybody who would even consider such “propaganda” as an alternative view was surprising. Humorous at first, but then a bit hurtful. My intelligence, my character, and, just a few days ago, my faith were attacked by men, all much smarter then me, who for some reason felt they needed to smear me and our simple, small-town event.

Outrageous to me was one scientist who claimed our high school students would not be able to understand the information and especially when the opposing side was paid off and presenting lies.

All the replies seem peculiar to me. If my career had been based on investigating something and I was so certain of my data, why would I not want to defend it? Suspicious, to say the least. It’s like pleading the fifth; it usually means you are hiding or protecting something.

I wonder what these scientists are hiding.

Well, let's leave aside the business of what the 9 kids tells us about you, and how much time you've had to think about complicated grownup stuff. I'm not sure you want to go there, really. (NOTE: I seem to be in violation here of some social rule I didn't fully understand. Apparently grumbling about large families is tantamount to sacrilege in some quarters. It is this aside that has called so much attention to the present article. That wouldn't be so bad if people actually were willing to consider the actual point I was trying to make.)

And as for "If my career had been based on investigating something and I was so certain of my data, why would I not want to defend it?", this is obviously trickery. Science is not data. We are not collecting fingerprints. We are describing what is actually happening. The data are of course a consistency check, but this isn't a question of data at all. This, however was an out-and-out blunder. "Science is not data". OK. I stand by that. Data is part of science, but science is more than data. "It's not a question of data at all" is wrong and silly, though.

But neither the saccharine mom-n-apple-pie stunt nor this sleight of hand about science are the most interesting debating tricks used here.

The most alarming of all is here:

The idea that a subject like man-made climate change is a done deal just doesn’t make sense to me...

Outrageous to me was one scientist who claimed our high school students would not be able to understand the information and especially when the opposing side was paid off and presenting lies.

The question of whether scientists are hiding anything depends crucially on whether "man-made climate change is a done deal" and indeed whether "high school students would not be able to understand the information and especially when the opposing side was paid off and presenting lies". .

It is not clear how the writer would recommend addressing these matters if both of these facts are in fact true. Instead, the very idea that they could be true is greeted with mockery. There is not even an attempt at a pretense of an intellectual approach. There is just a rapid slam of the Overton window.

It's a very remarkable debating approach: you cannot hold these positions, which greatly weaken my case, because I will mock them as unreasonable, without any explanation as to why they should be unreasonable.

The peculiar fact that baseless acccusations are frequently self-referential appears here. They accuse us of evasiveness and defensiveness, yet they simply adopt a posture of refusing to consider on which side the dishonesty originates. This is just a distracting way to duck the serious questions: 1) are there professionals lying about climate science? (well, in fact this is exactly what they themselves claim, so I wonder how it can be so outlandish. We are just asking which side the liars are on!) 2) can high school students really get a clear picture of science when there are professional careers for people to lie about it?

Just who is being evasive and defensive here?

It's also an explicit know-nothing revival. A modern society cannot continue to exist for very long when people take this attitude of contempt toward expertise. No average person doubts that Colt McCoy is a better athlete than they are. Why do people refuse to acknowledge that there are smarter people than themselves? It is not just arrogance and ignorance. It's dangerous.

We are proud of our athletes in America. We used to be proud of our scientists too.

Update: Welcome, Climate Depot readers! It's been awhile! Pull up a chair, set a spell!

Here's something you might want to look at. Ask your buddy Marc Morano what, exactly, the US military's position is on climate change. There's news on that front, you know. You didn't know? Oh, a minor oversight, I'm sure. The climate change portal will be covering it in depth very soon I am sure.

Update: A couple of very useful and relevant links from the comments, from Steve Dutch and Julian Sanchez, with thanks respectively to King of the Road and Scruffy Dan.

Update: Modest backpedalling here.

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Pictured: Texas Quarterback Colt McCoy (AP), who throws a ball better than you ever will, and Texas A&M Chemistry Nobelist Dudley Heschbach, via TAMU, who is smarter than you'll ever be.