Very interesting.
Haven't had time to read it yet, but the full paper is here:
http://web.missouri.edu/~segerti/capstone/LewandowskyClimateChange.pdf
Climate deniers - Who are they? What do they believe
- Thread starter fogpipe
- Start date
Very interesting.
Haven't had time to read it yet, but the full paper is here:
http://web.missouri.edu/~segerti/capstone/LewandowskyClimateChange.pdf
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
While I'm not a 'climate denier' exactly, I can probably be described as a 'climate change skeptic'.
(And yes, I think that it's highly probable that the moon landings really took place, and no, none of my thinking has anything to do with these semi-mythical 'Koch brothers' (a favorite boogyman of the looney-left.)
I'm not a scientist. Even if I was, I don't have access to the raw data upon which many of the more alarmist global warming conclusions are based. So for a layman like me, the whole thing starts to look like a demand that everyone display the requisite faith.
While I do often accept scientists' pronouncements on faith, that faith is never absolute and is typically probabilistic. I weight some things that scientists say more highly than others, based on my own judgement.
And I have to say that I'm put-off by some aspects of global warming rhetoric.
Most obviously, there's how politicized everything is. Just read the earlier posts in this thread for evidence of that. This isn't a dispassionate scientific discussion, conducted solely on its intellectual merits. It's already joined at the hip to an urgent political agenda for worldwide social change.
One starts to wonder whether the agenda is being driven by the science, or whether the science is being crafted so as to justify the agenda. Hopefully the former is typically the case, but events like the 'climate-gate' scandal suggest that the latter is happening as well.
Another thing that puts me off is use of words like 'denier'. They emit the same rank odor as 'heretic', 'heathen' or 'kaffir', and for much the same reason. Devil-worshippers. Individuals who disagree with orthodoxy in this matter aren't just championing a different theory or interpretation. They aren't even simply mistaken. They are personally evil.
As for my own views, I have little doubt that the world's climate is changing. It's always changing. The last ice-age only ended about 12,000 years ago, which is almost nothing in geological time. It seems that the world's climate has experienced tremendous variations in the past, ranging from periods when the planet didn't have any polar ice-caps at all, to several occasions where it looks like it was completely frozen, even at the equator. None of this had anything to do with human beings or their activities. The point being that there are massive large-scale natural drivers of climate change and at the current time they remain poorly understood.
Of course that doesn't mean that human activities aren't impacting the world's climate at the present time. I think that they almost certainly are. And it doesn't mean that reducing that impact might not be a worthwhile thing to do. I'm just expressing my own skepticism about whether science has quite as good a handle on what's currently happening as those who speak on its behalf would like the lay public to believe.
Given the overt politization of the topic and the moralism that surrounds it like a cloud of Chinese air pollution, I've become less confident that what the elites tell us on this particular matter should just be embraced uncritically by everyone else as the revealed truth.
(And yes, I think that it's highly probable that the moon landings really took place, and no, none of my thinking has anything to do with these semi-mythical 'Koch brothers' (a favorite boogyman of the looney-left.)
I'm not a scientist. Even if I was, I don't have access to the raw data upon which many of the more alarmist global warming conclusions are based. So for a layman like me, the whole thing starts to look like a demand that everyone display the requisite faith.
While I do often accept scientists' pronouncements on faith, that faith is never absolute and is typically probabilistic. I weight some things that scientists say more highly than others, based on my own judgement.
And I have to say that I'm put-off by some aspects of global warming rhetoric.
Most obviously, there's how politicized everything is. Just read the earlier posts in this thread for evidence of that. This isn't a dispassionate scientific discussion, conducted solely on its intellectual merits. It's already joined at the hip to an urgent political agenda for worldwide social change.
One starts to wonder whether the agenda is being driven by the science, or whether the science is being crafted so as to justify the agenda. Hopefully the former is typically the case, but events like the 'climate-gate' scandal suggest that the latter is happening as well.
Another thing that puts me off is use of words like 'denier'. They emit the same rank odor as 'heretic', 'heathen' or 'kaffir', and for much the same reason. Devil-worshippers. Individuals who disagree with orthodoxy in this matter aren't just championing a different theory or interpretation. They aren't even simply mistaken. They are personally evil.
As for my own views, I have little doubt that the world's climate is changing. It's always changing. The last ice-age only ended about 12,000 years ago, which is almost nothing in geological time. It seems that the world's climate has experienced tremendous variations in the past, ranging from periods when the planet didn't have any polar ice-caps at all, to several occasions where it looks like it was completely frozen, even at the equator. None of this had anything to do with human beings or their activities. The point being that there are massive large-scale natural drivers of climate change and at the current time they remain poorly understood.
Of course that doesn't mean that human activities aren't impacting the world's climate at the present time. I think that they almost certainly are. And it doesn't mean that reducing that impact might not be a worthwhile thing to do. I'm just expressing my own skepticism about whether science has quite as good a handle on what's currently happening as those who speak on its behalf would like the lay public to believe.
Given the overt politization of the topic and the moralism that surrounds it like a cloud of Chinese air pollution, I've become less confident that what the elites tell us on this particular matter should just be embraced uncritically by everyone else as the revealed truth.
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To even contemplate that the Moon landings never took place, is the height of looney-ism.
Also as a layman, who hasn't really researched too much in relation to "climate change" and "global warming", and even accepting that doubt exists re humanity's contribution to climate change, I see the possible consequences as quite critical and firmly believe that if we as a human race, are going to err, it is far better to "err on the side of caution"
Well for starters , there is nothing mythical about the Koch brothers. They are very real and really do use their wealth to grow their wealth and power economic through massive missinformation schemes. Name calling as you did doesn't change reality. Acknowledging reality, facts and reason doesn't make one an ultra leftist. I don't find it surprising to see you attempt to downplay the Kochs. After all the Koch family became wealthy developing oil fields for Stalin.
Here is something else I find odd. In your previous posts , you believe whatever Putin says, no matter how demonstrablly ridiculouslous and fallacious it is. You believe it without question. But when all relevant scientific organizations have come to a consensus on climate change you suddenly become skeptical.
That makes me think your skeptism is driven more by your love of Putin. Without oil, Mother Russia has no economy.
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So what about the predictions of Quantum Mechanics (and/or Simple harmonic motion), the Kinetic theory of Gasses, The Beer-Lambert Law, Blackbody Radiation, and the conservation of mass and energy?
These are the principles that the predictions are made on. Do you think any of them are wrong?
Really? Highly probable? You mean like it is highly probable that Japan exists?
If you think the Koch brothers or their influence on the CO2 boost debates are semi-mythical, it's no surprise you don't recognize their influence on your opinions regarding climate change.yazata said:
The entire line "climate is always changing" is straight from their financed PR operations. So is this:
The "climate-gate scandal", unlike the Koch brothers, is mythical - and they were among the major financiers of its tactical deployment.
Ouch!
OK Joe...
Put it into context.
Show me whats misrepresented. Is it the email or isnt it?
James R has already explained this to you. But if you need more,
http://www.ucsusa.org/global_warmin...misinformation-stolen-emails-climategate.html
Science is SUPPOSED to work the other way around. Its not working that way with IPCC mandated find a human fingerprint in climate... and its revealed in again and again is peer reviewed science articles (as the jo nova links shows)
The snipped email was part of a bigger comment at the journal which retracted the paper. I encouraged people to read all the comments. The email was talking about how to change the existing record to reduce the warming blip of the 40s (observation which didnt fit into the models).
OK But none of that address the email I quoted. I am really not interested in their opinion, I was asking you to put that email into context. Show me whats misrepresented in that email. Not a single one of the alleged inquiries addressed the email I quoted. Not one.
Well that's just it, isn't it. You don't care what the science says. You don't care what people say if it differs with your biases. James R has explained it.
The email you cling to has been misused, misconstrued and taken out of context by folks like you. And that has been verified by virtually all scientific organizations and governments who have investigated the issue. But you don't care.
You have all the passion and zeal of a religious zealot. Evidence and reason are not required or wanted.
Yazata
Valued Senior Member
Really? Highly probable? You mean like it is highly probable that Japan exists?
Yes, precisely.
Actually, I'd give Japan a somewhat higher probability of existing than the Moon landings. For one thing, my family has connections to Japan, so there's personal experience there. But in both cases I think that the probabilities are high enough that I feel quite confident in accepting the reality of both of them.
I'm an epistemic fallibilist. That's the idea that no matter what it is that we believe is true, there's always going to be some possibility that we're mistaken. Even in the case of logical proofs, there's the possibility that we are making an error or misunderstanding something. That suggests that absolute 100% certainty is more of cognitive ideal than something actually encountered in real life. What we do in real life is try to reduce the likelihood of our being wrong to a low enough level that it can safely be dismissed. (Two philosophers particularly associated with fallibilism are Charles Peirce and Karl Popper.)
In other words, while I think that the that the likelihood of the Moon landings being faked or Japan not existing are so low that I'm totally confident in labeling these beliefs 'false' , their probabilities still aren't quite zero.
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You keep claiming that its 'out of context' but cannot reveal how so.
Reykjavik Before Data *cough* Adjustments
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=620040300000&dt=1&ds=1
Reykjavik After Data Adjustments
http://data.giss.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gistemp/show_station.cgi?id=620040300000&dt=1&ds=14
Want more? While I do not particularly favor Steve Goddard, he is presenting newspaper reports on the topic at the time, not 50 years after the fact adjustments.
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/02/17/the-importance-of-getting-rid-of-the-1940s/
It is not me who has been indoctrinated. I remain skeptical of sciences claim on discovering a human fingerprint in the alleged Anthropologic warming of the 80s/90s.
And none of you has addressed my original point; This Paper Has Been Retracted! (all the while clinging to "the science says".)
Even if we accept this interpretation of the e-mail in question, it's still only relevant if we accept the oft presented misrepresentation of the anthropogenic warming hypothesis.
Exaggerated warming in the '40s does not contradict the hypothesis which, to be clear, asserts that:
1. The earth as a grey-body emits over a range of frequencies in long-wave radiation.
2. Some of the gasses in the earths atmosphere are predicted, and observed, to absorb long-wave radiation across certain bands. We call these gasses greenhouse gasses.
3. That energy is predicted, and observed, to be stored as kinetic energy - IE Heat energy.
4. The conservation of mass predicts that for every kilogram of carbon burned four kilograms of carbon dioxide are produced.
5. The conservation of mass also predicts that every kilogram of carbondioxide put in the atmosphere stays in the atmosphere until it is removed (usually by natural processes)
6. The conservation of energy predicts that energy stored by the atmosphere is retained by the atmosphere until it is released by the atmosphere in some form.
7. The beer-lambert law predicts that as the partial pressure of a gas increases, so does the amount of electromagnetic radiation that it absorbs, and that this is true across all absorption bands. This has also been observed to be true.
The corrollary of 4 is that:
8. As we burn fossil fuels, the partial pressure of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere increases at some rate that is the balance of the rate at which it is going out versus the rate at which it is going in.
The prediction of these eight points, the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming, is that we expect to see a generalized warming trend over long time scales super imposed on top of natural climate cycles. This is where the denier fallacy creeps in. You would only expect to see a monotonic increasing function in the temperature if there are no natural climate cycles. But we know we don't have that. The idea that periods of exaggerated warming or stasis somehow contradicts the hypothesis of anthropogenic warming is a denialist myth based on a strawman fallacy. The hypothesis of anthropogenic warming does not predict that anthropogenic warming somehow magically supplants natural climate cycles, but rather, it predicts that anthropogenic warming acts in addition to the natural climate cycles, reducing the impact of cooling phases and exaggerating the impact of warming ones.
This is why the blip in the '40s and the current slow-down are actually pretty much irrelevant to the basic prediction If I have two functions, one of which is linear and monotonicly increasing - f(a), the other of which varies as a wave and has positive and negative phases - f(b), then the total function, f(c) where f(c)=f(a)+f(b) is going to display an overal positive, linear, monotonic trend when considered over a long enough period, however, it's also going to show, over shorter periods, areas with an exaggerated slope, and areas where the slope is negative, approximately zero, or only very slightly positive, depedning on the difference between the first derivatives of the two functions.
There are other reasons as well, for example, have you ever actually looked at the temperature record for yourself? Or does all of your research come from right-wing blogs? The reason why I ask is this - the warming blip in the '40s is not unique, neither is the current slow-down.
I removed 1-6 because they negate/balance each other.
How does Beer-Lambert apply during the various warmings/coolings during this (and past) interglacials/glacials. After all, they are a part of 'climate norms'. *note as I understand it, no 2 glacials/interglacials are exactly alike.
Beer-Lambert applied during the hiatus/slowdown with an approx 13% rise in co2. Wait. Beer-lambert didnt work in observation as predicted on paper.
Earth’s comfort temperature range, is being controlled by something a whole lot more influential than atmospheric CO2.
People who believe in one conspiracy theory are more likely to believe in another
because they believe that members of the establishment are joined in plots to deceive and to harm them.
An understandable although probably incorrect conclusion.
because they believe that members of the establishment are joined in plots to deceive and to harm them.
An understandable although probably incorrect conclusion.
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fogpipe
Disappointed.
The scientific paper
http://web.missouri.edu/~segerti/capstone/LewandowskyClimateChange.pdf
It combines lack of imagination with the stating of the bloody obvious.
Is there anything revelatory in it?
Disappointed.
The scientific paper
http://web.missouri.edu/~segerti/capstone/LewandowskyClimateChange.pdf
It combines lack of imagination with the stating of the bloody obvious.
Is there anything revelatory in it?