Milkweed why he/she repeats right wing talking points almost verbatim.
Climate deniers - Who are they? What do they believe
- Thread starter fogpipe
- Start date
A point which falls out of this is the fallacious reasoning in the question, whether it be deliberate or inadvertant.
In 2009, the hiatus had not been going long enough to reach any kind of thresh-hold for significance. Because of this, in 2009 I would not have been looking for paralells. Because of the levels of noise in climate data, it takes at least 15 years worth of data for a meaningful trend to emerge. In 2009 there was no indication that this was neccessarily going to happen. As new data becomes available my 'model' was updated.
That's because you're one of the fools Joe was referring to.
Exactly. They politicize themselves into a corner they'd have to acknowledge exists to get out of.
Calling right wing discourse 'talking points' is really a stretch.
The basis is the same.
As sure as the sun will shine.
The myth is that the Kochs are not fabricating lies and propaganda. Their machinations are about them, not their opponents.
The choice is to learn just enough of the science or else to defer to the judgment of experts. The rest has no merit.
The data has been in the public domain since 1824. You have access to raw instrument data at sites like NOAA.gov.
By 1900 the Swede Arrhenius thought anthropogenic global warming would bring comfort to Nordic people suffering Arctic winters. Scientific concern became evident by around 1937 through the work of Callendar, then it spread among related disciplines at the 1950s Geophysical Year, was carried by attendee Roger Revelle to LBJ and from there to Nixon, who created NOAA for further study, then it was carried by Daniel Moynihan to the UN which became the basis for the IPCC around 1980. College student Al Gore ended up in a class Revelle was teaching and the science Gore learned there became the basis for his book An Inconvenient Truth, which followed a parallel path directly to the public during a period of unprecedented ridicule, harassment and obstruction of science and science agencies. The rest is pretty much lies and propaganda.
A lay person has to choose between learning just enough science or else to defer to the experts or else to place faith in lies and propaganda.
If you begin as a skeptic with the cynical view that knowledge of facts and evidence is tantamount to religious faith, then you will end up where you began, as a skeptic, still unaware of the facts and evidence.
If in the process you devalue the seminal work of climate pioneers Fourier, Tyndal, Arrhenius, Callendar, and Revelle, etc., then you are discarding essential facts and evidence needed to make an informed judgment.
The question is how you process the critical facts and evidence.
The single element of social change most urgently needed is a respect for and understanding of the core science, and, failing that, deferring to the judgment of experts.
The agenda of science is knowledge of the truth. The alternative is lies and propaganda.
Manufactured scandals are examples of the glorification of ignorance over the knowledge contained in the relevant corpus of facts and evidence. They are quite effective among a relatively ignorant and gullible segment of society.
The deliberate obstruction of knowledge is better characterized as pathological.
Joseph Fourier anounced in 1824 that there was a natural greenhouse effect. The ignorance which obstructs knowledge concerns anthropogenic greenhouse gases, beginning with ignorance of seminal work by Tyndall (ca 1860), Arhennius (ca 1900) and Callendar (ca 1937). Even they understood that the principal drivers are natural. But by 1900 it was abundantly clear that trace amounts of elevated carbon dioxide could drastically alter the global climate. And in fact we live in a warmer century immersed in higher concentrations of anthropogenic greenhouse gases, at about twice the concentration of atmospheric carbon dioxide.
yes we are. Therefore it is urgent that we universally agree that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are making the planet hotter.
conservation of the planet requires that human impact be minimized.
The opposite is true. We want people to put less faith in ignorance, and to be informed by facts and evidence.
The politicization of anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions began in the 1960's With Revelle's report to LBJ summarizing 100 years of facts and evidence concerning anthropogenic carbon. It took 10 years for the executive branch to form an official scientific agency to study the issue. And it took another 10 years to elevate this to the United Nations. For 20 years thereafter this politicized science operated virtually unfettered by obstruction from the Right. But the energy industries' answer to a presidential candidate carrying a bit of scientific knowledge in his platform was reactionary. They were running amok in the Bush administration. Hence the facts of climate denial apologetics do not hinge on facts of science but instead upon the proprietary desires of an elite base of wealth and power seeking to restore full bore laissez faire economics.
Last edited:
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
I'm not really prepared to express absolutely unquestioning faith regarding anything. That being said, there are plenty of things that I consider likely enough that I don't devote time to questioning them.
When it comes to 'climate science', I'm kind of on the cusp.
If climate science was simply science, argued thoughtfully and dispassionately on its merits, I'd be likely to accept what scientists say about it, much as I accept what they say about igneous petrogenesis or main-sequence stars. I wouldn't embrace those views with absolute unshakeable certainty as the final revealed Truth, but I wouldn't be actively skeptical either.
The problem with the climate issue is that it isn't conventional science. Science might part of what it is, but it's something else as well. There's something angry, strident and almost theological about it. It's a cause and its champions imagine themselves to be on a world-saving mission. Those who fail to believe and conform are condemned with the same kind of vehemence once reserved for pagans, heathens and heretics. Deniers!
Whenever parties to an ostensibly intellectual controversy start labeling their oppoinents 'deniers', that's a pretty good sign that the controversy has gone off the rails.
The rhetoric so obvious in this thread, the denunciatory identity politics, the caricatures of those who disagree and the sometimes bizarre conspiracy theories about their motivations, don't fill me with confidence in anyone's thoughtfulness and objectivity as the subject swerves crazily back and forth between politics and science.
I don't know, perhaps global-warming is excellent science. Not being a scientist, I have no way of actually knowing that. It's certainly being demanded in no uncertain terms that everyone express faith that it is.
What I do know is that even if it is great science, some of its more tightly-wound champions are doing it no service.
When it comes to 'climate science', I'm kind of on the cusp.
If climate science was simply science, argued thoughtfully and dispassionately on its merits, I'd be likely to accept what scientists say about it, much as I accept what they say about igneous petrogenesis or main-sequence stars. I wouldn't embrace those views with absolute unshakeable certainty as the final revealed Truth, but I wouldn't be actively skeptical either.
The problem with the climate issue is that it isn't conventional science. Science might part of what it is, but it's something else as well. There's something angry, strident and almost theological about it. It's a cause and its champions imagine themselves to be on a world-saving mission. Those who fail to believe and conform are condemned with the same kind of vehemence once reserved for pagans, heathens and heretics. Deniers!
Whenever parties to an ostensibly intellectual controversy start labeling their oppoinents 'deniers', that's a pretty good sign that the controversy has gone off the rails.
The rhetoric so obvious in this thread, the denunciatory identity politics, the caricatures of those who disagree and the sometimes bizarre conspiracy theories about their motivations, don't fill me with confidence in anyone's thoughtfulness and objectivity as the subject swerves crazily back and forth between politics and science.
I don't know, perhaps global-warming is excellent science. Not being a scientist, I have no way of actually knowing that. It's certainly being demanded in no uncertain terms that everyone express faith that it is.
What I do know is that even if it is great science, some of its more tightly-wound champions are doing it no service.
Magical Realist
Valued Senior Member
I don't think that's a good argument for the invalidity of climate change. People are allowed to get passionate about their causes. Breast cancer survivors, their friends and family, are allowed to wear pink t-shirts and do walkathons to raise awareness about it. But this religious devotion to prevent breast cancer doesn't mean cancer isn't really as bad as all that. Or suppose your son died in the war, and you become active in peace marches, anti-war politics, veteran benefits, etc. You have a religious devotion to that cause. The same is true of climate change. People are excited about improving the world. About stopping pollution, and supporting green energy, and recycling and so on. So what? The facts of climate change are not effected in the least. And it IS mainstream science, as you can see here:
http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/
Myself, and others have gone to great lengths to present thoughtful and dispassionate answers. I'm not going to apologize for getting irritated when someone who links to what are in essence political blogs dismisses hundred plus word posts with single line dismissals based on fallacious reasoning and addressing only isolated and cherry-picked sound bytes.
You'd think if you encounter it often enough it would get less irritating but it doesn't really work that way.
The question I asked myself is, why was the old branding, called global warming, rebranded into the new the improved brand called climate change? It is like Coke calling itself, Coke plus 2.0. Why would they do that if sales are already good?
From the POV of science and normal science research, research tends to very narrow and specific, since reality is very complicated. Science tends to isolate one variable, like global temperature, since even that one is complicated to quantify especially from the past.
The rebranding into climate change has departed from the normal isolation of one variable approach of science. Climate change has dozens of variables all lumped together. Climate change can be changes in local and global temperature and seasonal changes in rain, snow, wind patterns, hurricanes, droughts, tornadoes, snow melt, snow accumulation, changes in ocean temperature and distribution in salinity, currents, etc, all which impact climate. This multivariable approach is so complicated, it is not status quo science anymore, since how do you connect all those dots, at the same time and pin it on carbon? Global temperature, which is one variable, took 100 years of data and thousands of researchers a decade.
This change from the isolation of one variable, into the whole enchilada of variables, is not how science works and is more like panacea salesmanship. It is like a snake oil salesman who say his medicine (greenhouse gases) will cure all diseases known to man, at the same time. How could he prove that in a scientific way?
Do a test and look at any random journal and see how narrow the topics are. Then try to find any cure all articles, that is not called quack science, that attempts to prove 10 or more variables at the same time as all connected in a system as complicated as the earth. The traveling medicine show, called climate change, is depending on it previous brand popularity, to keep the crowds comings. It expects the crowds to attack common sense people since they are addicts that enjoy horror movies. They found that a transition from science to medicine show works for these people. Maybe it was never about the science?
From the POV of science and normal science research, research tends to very narrow and specific, since reality is very complicated. Science tends to isolate one variable, like global temperature, since even that one is complicated to quantify especially from the past.
The rebranding into climate change has departed from the normal isolation of one variable approach of science. Climate change has dozens of variables all lumped together. Climate change can be changes in local and global temperature and seasonal changes in rain, snow, wind patterns, hurricanes, droughts, tornadoes, snow melt, snow accumulation, changes in ocean temperature and distribution in salinity, currents, etc, all which impact climate. This multivariable approach is so complicated, it is not status quo science anymore, since how do you connect all those dots, at the same time and pin it on carbon? Global temperature, which is one variable, took 100 years of data and thousands of researchers a decade.
This change from the isolation of one variable, into the whole enchilada of variables, is not how science works and is more like panacea salesmanship. It is like a snake oil salesman who say his medicine (greenhouse gases) will cure all diseases known to man, at the same time. How could he prove that in a scientific way?
Do a test and look at any random journal and see how narrow the topics are. Then try to find any cure all articles, that is not called quack science, that attempts to prove 10 or more variables at the same time as all connected in a system as complicated as the earth. The traveling medicine show, called climate change, is depending on it previous brand popularity, to keep the crowds comings. It expects the crowds to attack common sense people since they are addicts that enjoy horror movies. They found that a transition from science to medicine show works for these people. Maybe it was never about the science?
Aren't Climate scientists just a little to blame for Climate Change skepticism?
Their too confident predictions 20 years ago have not turned out to be correct.
Not yet anyway.
Now, when they bring in extra factors to explain the delay in weather changes,
and I am using the word weather deliberately here,
people think they are trying to bamboozle them.
They think that if they were wrong then that they could be wrong now.
I may be misremembering, and perhaps Climate Scientists 20 years ago were very cautious,
and hedged their predictions with many caveats.
But I seem to remember them prophesying doom, and rapidly, unless we reduced CO2 immediately.
Their too confident predictions 20 years ago have not turned out to be correct.
Not yet anyway.
Now, when they bring in extra factors to explain the delay in weather changes,
and I am using the word weather deliberately here,
people think they are trying to bamboozle them.
They think that if they were wrong then that they could be wrong now.
I may be misremembering, and perhaps Climate Scientists 20 years ago were very cautious,
and hedged their predictions with many caveats.
But I seem to remember them prophesying doom, and rapidly, unless we reduced CO2 immediately.
Seems like legitimate concerns to me. Making an accurate one week weather forecast is hard enough as is, and we simply don't have enough data or a successful predictive model to declare that it's different when you're just looking for general trends in the upcoming decades. I'm not pretending I know more about the topic than climate scientists, I'm simply not convinced that they're entirely on the ball and that their results are reliable enough for me to drop everything I'm doing, throw my car in the trash compactor and listen to David Suzuki with his five kids ranting about how people are viruses and overpopulation is poisoning the Earth. Don't forget there are also cycles and variation going on with the amount of light emitted by the sun, the Earth's magnetic field (which carries huge amounts of energy), geothermal heat sources, CO_2 sources and sinks, and so many other gases and variables.
For all we know, human beings might be significantly warming the planet already and this might be the only reason we're not presently in another ice age as the planet might well be attempting to cool off.
I would say the snake oil salesman is being intentionally dishonest and not even attempting to embrace or apply a single established principle of mainstream science, whereas climate scientists are (mostly) doing the best they can with existing technical limits. I think science can be legitimately done when you're only able to consider hundreds of variables simultaneously, and it's done frequently even when testing the vastly more sound fundamental theories, but treating the entire planet like it's a Sims video game is a pretty crazy stretch for me to consider without demonstrated predictive power which doesn't yet exist. But I think while we wait, we can go after some of the the planet's worst polluters and the fascist armies they finance- we'll benefit from that in the long term even if today's climate models turn out to be wrong.
Your selective use of skepticism coupled with repeated refusals in this thread to acknowledge hard facts and science and your attempts to quibble over irrelevant issues seriously errodes your credibility and arguement.
cosmictotem
Registered Senior Member
The alternative to believing the science is real is that the majority of scientists are doing all this work, digging up all these core samples from all over the world, taking measurements, making calculations, developing computer models and publishing all these papers just to get funding to keep their jobs.
There's got to be something easier and less controversial to lie about in order to keep your job in science. That we are being watched by space aliens, perhaps? The public has no problem being down with that.
There's got to be something easier and less controversial to lie about in order to keep your job in science. That we are being watched by space aliens, perhaps? The public has no problem being down with that.
The funny thing is those scientists have jobs regardless of their findings. On the other hand, those profiting from climate change avoid scrutiny while convincing a good portion of the population that climate change just a massive global conspiracy transcending governments and academic institutions across the globe just to give jobs to a few scientists. That shows you what wealth can buy. Why believe evidence, reason, and reputable scientists when you have a massive global conspiracy to believe in?
Last edited:
cosmictotem
Registered Senior Member
Exactly, so why lie about it? And if scientists are such unscrupulous characters, why lie about only climate change? Why isn't DNA research a lie? Or biology a lie? If lying is such a lucrative game for scientists, where are all the other questionable sciences? They should be popping up like banks.
And again, the things scientists allegedly choose to lie about: Why the hell would you choose carbon emissions to lie about? You have the whole weight of powerful billion dollar mega-corporations bearing down on you. Surely, you could make more money and ruffle less feathers by telling rich, powerful people what they want to hear or at least picking a cause for which no one has strong objections or disagreements.
Last edited:
What we are wittnessing with climate change is, unfortunately, all too typical of right wing politics. We saw it with the cigarette industry which for many decades attacked medical researchers and research. It took a cigarette industry insider to put an end to that fraud. We're it not for that whistle blower, the cigarette industry would still be challenging the fact cigarettes are harmful to health.
We have seen it and continue to see it in economics. So this isn't new and it isn't limited to climate change.
Whenever science comes into conflict with wealthy powerful interests the science and scientists will be and have been viciously and relentlessly attacked by those interests. And unfortunately there are some feeble minded folk who always fall for the deceit.
Last edited:
Is that the joke, or does it have a punchline?