Jimmy Kimmel featured a video of scientists reacting to climate change denialists.
It raises an interesting question. Why? Why do some people think climate scientists are telling the world about anthropogenic climate change? I’d really like to know.
Do they think scientists somehow profit from this? Because they don’t. The people with all the money are the oil and coal interests. If a scientist wants to make money, they should be sucking up to Exxon-Mobil.
Is it ideological? Do they think scientists just have an irrational hatred of the rich, or desire to see the end of the world? Because that isn’t the case, either. If they were welcoming the apocalypse, the best thing to do would be to advocate for more neglect and more consumption.
You know, we don’t have a holy book that revels in an end-of-the-world story. Scientists really don’t get much fame and glory, and no money at all, for coming to difficult conclusions.
I can understand why the deniers deny: wishful thinking — like us, they don’t want global warming to occur — and ignorance cultivated by the corporations that do profit from burning more oil. But I’m unable to figure out what they think we’re thinking.
This is also the case for creationists. I can understand their religious commitments that lead them to deny the evidence, but what do they think scientists gain from supporting evolution? Evolutionary biology is not lucrative. There is no religion of evolutionism. I’m interested in seeing the evidence evaluated rationally, but that’s about it: if there were good evidence that the Earth couldn’t be more than 10,000 years old, I’d be discussing that.
What do the anti-vaxxers think? Why would doctors be promoting a series of treatments that didn’t work? Do they believe that autism is some sort of highly profitable illness, or that doctors are racking up big stacks of bills with low cost vaccinations?
I confess to a total failure of empathy. I can’t put myself in their shoes when it comes to putting themselves in my shoes. I’ve talked to creationists one-on-one about this before, and they can’t tell me what I’m thinking at all accurately — it’s usually some nonsense about hating God or loving Satan, and it’s not at all true. But at the same time, I’m able to explain to them why they’re promoting creationism in a way they can agree with.
Maybe it’s that I can’t empathize with someone who is totally lacking an ability to empathize with others.
It’s very hard to understand isn’t it. Maybe it’s some sort of mental illness?
>>I don’t understand what’s going on in denialist’s heads
Neither do I. I have read several “explanations” going from ignorance over compartmentalisation to outright lying and I find none particularly convincing. It is a mystery to me.
“…but what do they think scientists gain from supporting evolution?”
Obviously, we only claim that evolution is true because we hate God (whichever one of them they think is the right one). And by denying God´s existence and coming up with an alternative explanation we don´t have to follow the “Truth (TM)” and can sin all we like. Without the excuse of evolution we would all have to admit that the theists are right, break down, repent and live good, God-fearing lifes.
I think it IS ideological – if it clashes with your ideology, it MUST be wrong. Whether that ideology is religious or political (and really, are there any other ideologies that cause people to deny facts?) doesn’t seem to matter; we see it with creationists, global warming deniers, anti-vaxxers, Trump supporters, etc. To paraphrase Hitchens, “extreme ideology poisons everything”.
jonmelbourne said:
I’ve toyed with that explanation, and I have some experience with psychotic people, but it still does not make much sense. Even someone who is überpsychotic or over-the-top delusional usually still manages to understand that 2 apples and 1 pear do not make 7 kiwis and half a durian.
Tribalism seems to be a big part of it. They’ve picked a side and now anyone who disagrees with their side is an enemy. The rationalisations come later, and I don’t think they are at all critically examined. “Scientists stand to benefit financially” might well be an easily refuted claim, but it would justify the tribal position, so it must be true.
I have experienced a similar thing with smoking. Both of my parents are heavy smokers. I hate this, and have tried to get them to stop my entire life. They won’t listen, though. Apparently the scientists who tell us that smoking kills people are part of some lucrative anti-smoking industry (as opposed to, say, those charitable, not-for-profit tobacco companies…). And it’s all because the government doesn’t want people to have any fun because they’re easier to control when they’re miserable (apparently smoking is the only fun thing in the world now the sixties are over). Sometimes it’s also a concerted attack on my parents’ working class heritage (which apparently consists of drinking and smoking themselves to death and nothing else, that being the sum total of working class culture in this country…). I can sort of see how the last one works – smoking was the norm in my parents’ social circles growing up, now it’s rare and frowned upon, so it feels to them like trendy young whippersnappers are trying to overturn the world they are used to. Which they are, to be honest, though not for the sake of upsetting Kentish sexagenarians from working class families.
All these are flimsy, post-hoc rationalisations. I definitely think there’s a big case of not wanting to be in the wrong, inertia and a fight against change, and in this case actual chemical and psychological addiction to cope with.
I think it’s lazy thinking. Some people, more so than others, hold on to an idea that everything else then has to fit with. So they think that we all have some schtick or other. Therefore the scientists are pursuing their schtick, & getting handsomely rewarded for it. So they all jump on the profitable bandwagon.
Of the two people I know who are verging-on-denialism – one friend, one family member – it’s a combination of conspiracy thinking (there was a study that proved that proved it’s not happening, but then their funding got cut! the powers that be are just using it as a cover! it’s all about the money!) and a sort of elitism: they know the truth, not like these other people who are taken in by the lies.
Because I value my relationships with them, I choose not to engage when they start on about it. I’m pretty sure I can’t personally change their minds but I could burn bridges I’d rather not, so at this point I’m just going to grit my teeth and try to change topic.
Could someone point me to a reference on what is the actual mechanism is that causes the warming? I know it is caused by greenhouse gases, mainly CO2, in the atmosphere but why does that cause warming? I’m not a sceptic by the way, far from it.
The “sin all we like” argument doesn’t hold up, either. Scientists, in my experience and my example, tend to hold a fairly conventional morality. It’s not like passing an evolutionary biology course is rewarded with “Woo hoo! Orgy time!”
fal1, @9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_effect
It’s the same basic idea as a greenhouse.
Light goes from the sun to Earth. Some of it gets absorbed into wherever it hits, and some gets reflected back up towards the atmosphere as heat energy. Some of that heat energy penetrates the atmosphere, while the rest gets absorbed and re-radiated back down into Earth. Thus, a bigger proportion of the heat energy is retained than would usually be at a lower concentration of said gasses, making Earth the baked potato in the metaphorical microwave bag.
Having come from that background (though more than a decade ago), I can relate to some of the motivations. Some people are incredulous that something “as small as a human” could impact something “as big as the planet.” For the religious, this can be reinforced by the idea that God is in control of the big stuff – so human action couldn’t change something on such a large scale. This can also be reinforced by the idea that science changes its mind all the time about big things – so why should we take them seriously about big things? It doesn’t pass their sniff test, and they weigh that more heavily than the arguments in favor of the conclusion.
Others, of course, believe that there is a brilliant and evil demigod who is the fundamental force behind secular culture, and who has deceived all us poor unfaithful. When you seriously believe that Satan is a literal being, you tend not to trust things like evidence and reason: a powerful force out there in the world is constantly trying to deceive you, and only God can protect you from that. So only people strongly aligned with God are reliable.
In a word, yes. This is what the people I work with think, anyway, and all the other deniers I know. And they think discussing global warming makes Al Gore rich (uh, I think it was growing tobacco that made the Gores rich).
I also think there may be something about guilt. If they accept global warming, it means that now they need to do something or be “bad” people. They do not perceive themselves as “bad” people, but they don’t plan to change anything, so cognitive dissonance takes over.
With the ones I know personally, the conspiracies and denialisms stem from what they see as a failure in their lives. See, they were supposed to be someone! Who exactly they were supposed to be I have no idea, and neither do they, but they were to be important and admirable. It was also supposed to be handed to them on a silver platter, with little to no effort on their part to obtain it, though they try not to admit that much. Anyway, they were meant to be kings and riding on high, yet they have problems paying basic bills much less splurging on luxuries.
So, at the end of the day, it comes to a choice: are they in the position they’re in because they sat on their asses and expected life to hand them something good, or was their birthright denied them due to nefarious forces (minorities, the gay agenda, politicians, the Rothschilds, etc…) aligning against them? Also, unless you happen to be someone they like, if it’s your life that sucks it’s your own fault and you need Jesus.
After the recent heartbreaking news about the bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef, I would just like to give a hearty fuck you to the shitheads pushing this anti scientific propaganda. Not only are they putting the lives of millions of humans in jeopardy due to sea level rise, increased drought and famine and higher likelihood of diseases, you are also draining the colour and beauty from one of the natural world’s greatest wonders. The attempts to delay action by these assholes are making the world a shittier, duller place for the next generation.
A lot of the failure to understand the motivation of rational people comes, I suspect, from projection. They have reached their conclusions first and then mentally filter all the evidence to fit them, and they assume (consciously or otherwise) that we work in the same way. They simply don’t believe us when we say new evidence could make us change our minds, since that generally isn’t the case for them.
Yes, they do. Many laypeople don’t understand that grants are spent primarily on staff and equipment (and overhead), they think it goes into the researcher’s bank account.
For example, the news about Willie Soon who didn’t disclose conflict of interest included a lot of hyperventilating about how he was scoring ONE POINT TWO MEEEEELION DOLLARS over TEN YEARS from the fossil fuels industry. Overheads are about 50%, so Soon was making $60k/year — not bad, but not mad riches, especially in Boston. The actual scandal was that his research was garbage, but because he could bring in the grants, the Smithsonian kept him on board.
Another common misconception: that conferences are just vacations. Everyone seems to understand the need for business travel, but the need for research travel is pretty fuzzy for a lot of people.
I find it maddening.
My parents are into ‘alternative medicine’ and are anti-vaxxers. Why? Because they like to think that they are smarter and better informed than ‘the rabble’. They think that it makes them part of the elite.
Because they are so arrogant they cannot accept the idea that someone knows more or is smarter than them.
Because to accept that they might be wrong suggests a need to change, and they refuse to cope with change.
Because admitting they are ignorant or wrong directly impacts their egos, because their egos are based on being ‘elite’ and ‘well bred’, not on work or achievements, or even on making an effort. I remember my mother being rude about my friend because she had to work to get good grades. (think about that, working towards success is apparently a source of shame and derision)
This is why education doesn’t work, logic doesn’t work, evidence doesn’t work. People choose to shut their eyes and ears in order to fit into the right tribe, and convince themselves that their tribe is infallible and omniscient.
My parents really do believe that there are big conspiracies fueled by profit, and fed wholesale to ‘the rabble’ who are incapable of thinking for themselves. They really think they are ‘free thinkers’ and smarter because they refuse to accept widely available evidence.
I actually studied the denialists for several years. Some things stood out:
1. Doing something about global warming (and ozone depletion before that, acid rain before that etc.) requires government action. And this goes against there small government crapola.
2. It goes against their economic interests.
3. God made, so humans cannot damage it.
They are very much like the creationists (and are often the same people). Facts only matter if they support their views. What is important is The Truth.
Anti-vaxxers, at least, do think that Big Pharma profits are behind vaccines. And since Big Pharma is pretty creepy a lot of people buy into it in spite of whether the companies make much money off of vaccines or not. I think that this is one of the reasons anti-vaxxers will not go away, their evidence on vaccines is garbage but “big Pharma” has earned everyone’s distrust.
And yet people apparently trust “business” as an entity and are willing to nod and smile when Cruz and Trump talk about how the FDA makes it hard to get drugs to the consumer and we should trust business to produce medicine without interference. People are strange.
This is also the case for creationists. I can understand their religious commitments that lead them to deny the evidence, but what do they think scientists gain from supporting evolution?
To be honest, I don’t think they think about this at all. They simply never question why scientists, doctors, etc. say what they do, they only attack that which differs from their delusion. They’ll claim a great NASA conspiracy for example (as well as every other scientist on the planet) yet never pause to wonder why that conspiracy exists. All you get is a cheap, canned regurgitation of something, often tied to scientists trying to push their worldview and deny the bible (for example) that is effectively devoid of any cognitive efforts on their parts.
So the question isn’t “what do they think scientists gain?”, it’s more “why don’t they think about what scientists would or wouldn’t gain?”.
Wrong quote tags. Dang it.
fal1 wrote:
You should be. Skepticism is not about denying, it is about questioning and evaluating the evidence or absence thereof.
Well, if my father, who swallowed the Fox News kool-aid some time ago, is typical, I’d say a lot of denialists think “liberal bias” is a sufficient explanation. I had a particularly frustrating conversation with him once in which he basically said he could dismiss ANY finding by social scientists that didn’t fit his prejudices on that ground. And he believes “liberal bias” also sufficiently explains the warnings of climate scientists. People in his view are so besotted by their ideology that it trumps reality for them–and of course they reinforce the ideology by rewarding those who conform to it and punishing those who don’t. All praise, all the big grants, and what not come to scientists who toe the line. I asked him what about the sometimes enormous subsidies that the fossil fuel industry pays to the few remaining scientific denialists. “I’m not aware of such subsidies,” he said.
But perhaps describing the thinking of my father and others like him doesn’t really explain the phenomenon. What gets them to this point? My father was a leftist when I was a kid, and like other “Yoostabees” he can point to any number of hypocritical leftists or liberals, any number of absurd arguments made by people of a leftish bent as part of the reason he changed. I’ve tried to convey to him that progressive values are really a matter of basic decency–not to be surrendered because Teddy Kennedy drowned a young woman or Jane Fonda made some ill-considered comments in Hanoi. So far I haven’t succeeded.
@ P.Z. Myers #10
I agree that we normally don´t do all the sinning that theists accuse us of, but that is one of the arguments they often use: If we would believe in God, then we would behave, so we have to find a reason not to believe. Of course this implies that theists only behave because of sky-daddy’s rules, otherwise they would sin the whole day long. Projection much?
P.S.: I would like to do theists a favour and do some more sinning, but somehow I never find the time or energy for it. And yes, those pesky morals that we atheists obviously don´t have without some holy rules sometimes prevent me too from “going bad”. :-)
The scientists I know who are called “skeptics” have a few motivations. One is that some language used in this field is not scientific. For instance, the American Physical Society had an official statement calling this evidence on this topic “incontrovertible.” This led to several APS Fellows, including at least one Physics Nobel laureate and several National Academy members, to leave the APS, etc.
Another issue they have is that the warming has not been consistent. Yes, 2015 and 2014 were the warmest years on record but 2013, 2012, etc. were not the warmest back then. They were warmer than most of the past 150 years but it has not been getting warmer year after year.
I would argue that climate scientists do get things by speaking loudly about climate. They can argue for more money, and do get more famous because of it. They do increase their importance. Most scientists do not work in fields where this is possible.
I don’t think conservatives understand the motives of liberals, period, on any issue. They think we all hate America and want to see it fail or something.
A while back Cracked interviewed one of the father of a boy slaughtered at Sandy Hook, who was being harassed by denialists. One thing he said about them was this:
“For some people,” says Pozner, “that helps them cope with how uncertain and fragile life really is.” Sandy Hook was, after all, an especially powerful reminder of life’s fragility. So while we might stereotype hoaxers as lonely basement dwellers, Pozner noted that a lot are parents with kids who can’t process the idea that what happened to Pozner could happen to them. “They don’t want to believe that someone could look a six-year-old child in the eyes and pump bullets into their face. No matter how fantastical the [conspiracy] theory might be, it’s easier to accept than that reality.”
It may be that some people on some level simply CAN’T grasp the concept that this is a thing that’s happening, so “it’s a all a LIE made up for reasons” is just easier to wrap their heads around.
Either they deny the disasters are happening AT ALL, or, if forced to acknowledge them, they deny that we are causing them. Which both absolve them of culpability and suggests that the increase of climate related disasters is just a fluke that will eventually pass and everything will be OK and safe again.
Basically, it’s either WE didn’t do something that killed the Great Barrier Reef, or burned half of California, or generated deadly super-storms! Those things JUST HAPPENED, all on their own, and people that say otherwise are just lying liars that lie. Or, they just deny those things ever happened at all, saying they’re all “hoxes”.
TL;DR, Denialism makes people feel SAFE.
“Incontrovertible” applied to the evidence is perfectly reasonable. You don’t get to pretend the facts will go away. You can argue with the interpretation of the evidence, but you don’t accomplish that by dismissing the evidence.
No one expects the warming to be consistent. I could be losing weight overall, for instance, but I still would expect to see daily fluctuations.
…what ? Be specific. Successful research programs get rewarded with more grant money, but that does not go into the scientists’ pockets — it goes to fund more research. Scientists increase their importance by getting the stories right: nothing can demolish their reputation more than falsifying evidence or presenting dishonest interpretations. And that is true of every field.
seems part of naive denial, comes from lack of imagination about alternatives. If heat and transportation and electricity depend on fossil fuels, then without fossil fuels everything we depend on goes away. So rather than think of how to get all the benefits from something other than fossil fuels, just deny the ill-effects, of fossil fuel, as propaganda worth denying.
This is thoroughly encouraged by the people whose wealth depend on propagating fossil fuels. They don’t want to see their profits go over to the renewable energy providers.
—
creationists want the bible to be believed literally. To allow any of it to be incorrect, opens the rest of it to be questioned. That’s why you often hear them making wild extrapolations.
shit html tag fail again. I just wanted to bold those X Y variables
I don’t know of any other science which uses that language. Skeptics I know view that language as religious rather than scientific.
If a scientist gets more money for their research they are definitely more likely to get raises, invitations to speak, etc.
As far as the consistency, that is an obvious issue with the video. By using 2014 and 2015 he avoids the previous data which doesn’t help his argument.
You know nothing about science.
1. The worst thing scientists can do, the one thing they have nightmares over is…being wrong. Being wrong can sink your career and sometimes end it. Money and fame are far down the list.
Scientists just describe reality and call it the way it is.
2. There isn’t much money and fame in science. Your argument is just wrong.
3. What climate scientists have got is endless death threats and other abuse including witch hunts by GOP politicians. It’s not fun. One guy has been checking under his car every morning for years. For bombs. Some of them now live in secure, undisclosed locations.
Another dead strawperson. It’s a reality denialist thing.
1. Climate science doesn’t predict that it will get warmer every year. In fact, it predicts the opposite. We are looking at a slow uptrend superimposed on yearly fluctations in average temperature.
2. This is basic climatology. Which means you understand as much about climatology as you do science. Which is near zero.
This is creationist level thinking. They always say that evolution doesn’t occur because a cat never gives birth to a dog. Which isn’t what evolution predicts anyway. It predicts the opposite.
I don’t think anyone will claim that scientists get NO tangible reward from successful research. The important question here is: how can someone just assume that such rewards are SUFFICIENT evidence that scientists are lying or deluded?
A similar trick is performed in Holocaust denial: Jews, of course, have an obvious bias, so the testimony of the actual victims is dismissed; perpetrators were hoping for leniency, so their admissions can be discounted; bystanders, also, were hoping for an award or fearing punishment, and so on. A good historian knows that EVERYONE is biased, everyone has some stake or other—these banally obvious facts are not enough by themselves to discredit testimony.
Denial comes first, rationalization comes second. It’s not that there’s any independent reason to think that scientists are all crooked, it’s that denialism requires a narrative to explain why the weight of scientific expertise is persistently against them. So it concludes that scientists are rotten and uses that in circular fashion to explain itself.
I try to understand what conservatives think, and I think some of these things are going on:
– Mirror-image fallacies: conservatives want government to be small as an end in itself, and so they think liberals must want big government as an end in itself. Therefore the meme that GW promotion is all about getting environmental restrictions in place, because we apparently love restrictions for their own sake, or for the abstract “power” they bring. (think Agenda 21 conspiracies)
– Actual conspiracy-theory-type beliefs
– They have the idea that “the left” strictly enforces ideological orthodoxies, and so nobody can contradict leftist dogma without getting their careers ruined, tarred and feathered, etc. They see this actually happen with anti-vaxxers, GW deniers, creationists in some fields, etc. Ties in with the Christian veneration of persecution. I think some of this comes from people not well versed in the arguments, so when they get immediately shouted down after saying e.g. “look at my charts that show via phrenology that black people are naturally servile (or whatever)” they think “OMG they won’t even entertain this viewpoint! What fascists!” when in reality it’s more like “we’ve seen this so much already, we already know why it’s wrong, we don’t want to waste our time refuting it yet again” (see: creationists new to Internet argument, Paul Krugman with econ zombie & cockroach ideas, etc.)
….because radiative forcing isn’t the only factor that affects global climate….?
Most of the formal AGW denialists (i.e., the kind of people who churn out press releases or run blogs dedicated to the cause) are doing one of two things: acting as flacks for the fossil-fuel industry (e.g., Mark Morano) or seeking cheap notoriety (e.g., Tony Heller). The former types know that they’re wrong, and the latter usually do but are often merely manic agitators with too much time on their hands. In neither case are they people with an objective eye or a comprehensive understanding of the intricacies of climate change.
Then there are the rank-and-file deniers who get on the bandwagon for one reason only — AGW has been painted as a liberal cause, and therefore they will not give in inch in that direction even under the threat of, say, beheading, even though beheading such people would not result in the loss of vital organs. These are your mouth-breathers who can’t assemble coherent sentences longer than six words, your Jesus-lovin’ True Patriots who Love random Capitalization, yet claim to have properly read the literature and come to conclusions about AGW on their own (remember that one idiot named Skip from years ago that wanted me on his “radio show” and wouldn’t debate same-sex marriage on the Internet? Guys like that). They would deny that water is wet if some highly placed right-wingers started in with that chorus. They are numerous, useless, and the reason people you would never think could be elected to public office are elected to public office.
I was going to respond generally to the question of whether deniers think climate scientists are in it for the grant money, but since we have a live one here…
Hey Truthlover: Remember 10 years ago? Were you alive then? Because that was part of the 8 years when George W. Bush was in charge of the agencies giving out grants to climate researchers. Perhaps you recall the stories of government scientists being told not to talk about climate change, or government reports being modified by upper management to eliminate discussion of climate change.
Do you remember that?
Now, do you also remember climate researchers at the time publishing lots of research showing climate change was not happening, because they knew it would please their bosses and keep the grant money coming? I’ll give you a minute to search for that.
..doo dee doo doo doo dee doo. doo dee doo doo doop! doo doo doo doo doo…
Yeah, didn’t think so.
Truthlover also wants to see data earlier than 2014. Okay, here’s GISTEMP monthly data, smoothed with a 12 month running average. Look at this and tell me temperature only started rising in the last two years:
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/gistemp/mean:12
@6 Cartomancer– yes, tribalism is a big part of it. My ex’s brother is a very bright engineer who never questioned evolution back in the 90s, and yet now when our daughter mentions something about the comet and the dinosaurs, e.g., he will bellow “that’s only ONE possible explanation!” If liberals have a stance on something, then it must be wrong. Eating healthy food, for example. In the 60s and 70s and 80s it was pretty much a national consensus that a good diet was a sensible thing. But now conservatives are egged on by their jackbooted lockstep media to eat deep-fried twinkies wrapped in bacon, just to annoy Michele Obama. The government wants to take steps at protecting pregnant women in mosquito-prone areas from Zika? Benghazi!!!
I once challenged said brother-in-law why it was that global warming denialism was an integral part of conservatism. He had to think for a good twenty seconds or so, before he blurted out “carbon taxes”.
“Wow”, I replied, “that was digging deep. But your fear and loathing of taxes doesn’t explain why you claim it’s not real”
He thought again for a while, then, as if a voice from on high had bestowed an epiphany upon him: “Al Gore is richer now than he was as vice president”.
“But Al Gore’s father was the richest man in Tennessee. Al Gore got into Harvard with 1100 combined SATs, hardly higher than Dubya’s. Because his father was one of the longest-serving members of the Senate, and the richest man in Tennessee. Why the fuck would Al Gore need to concoct a conspiracy and bribe all the world’s weathermen, and sell the whole world thermometers and yardsticks that are mis-calibrated to show higher temperatures and water levels, and have the complicity of scientists in Venezuela and Cuba and Russia and China who you’d think might have an incentive to not join the U.S. in a secret plan to fool people into believing it’s hotter? For money? The dude’s worth a quarter billion!”
He thought for another many seconds, then concluded: “the Democrats will figure out some way to fuck it up, build a new agency, force us to install solar panels — it’s just an excuse for government tyranny”.
Well, he had me there.
Finally, truthlover doesn’t like the use of the word “incontrovertible” in science. Of course, his example is not a scientific paper, but a policy statement from a scientific body. But hey, let’s take a look to see whether the reason he’s never seen the word in a scientific paper is simply because he doesn’t read scientific papers:
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_vis=1&q=%22incontrovertible+evidence%22&hl=en&as_sdt=1,21
(Spoiler alert: About 18,300 results)
Just to give an idea of what the other side says, the following video has been all the rage on conservative news sites and forums this week, with over 600,000 views. It’s by Richard Lindzen, emeritus Professor of atmospheric sciences at MIT.
It dishonestly portrays the scientific debate as between two equal sized groups of scientists, but I’m afraid it will be convincing to laymen because of Lindzen’s qualifications.
Johnny Vector #45
Thanks for that! I was wondering how I could find links like that.
Now let’s see if truthlover will come back with any more of his devastating “evidence” against climate change.
Ealloc #46
Lindzen appears to be attacking a strawman — one he knows that the right-wing rank-and-filers have created so they can take vicious swipes at it. I don’t think that most people who even pretend to know anything, or are reputable in this area, are saying that coal-burning plants are going to cause coastal cities to be underwater within a few years or whatever.
And at the end — Prager “University”? He goes on about how the media, environmentalists and politicians are all just using climate change and then announces that a notoriously right-wing asshole is underwriting the video?
Having been on the Right-side of the spectrum For the most part,
Part of what may be going in could be hinted at in one class of “argument” which drives me around the bend: The denier assumes a (typically absurd) “solution”, and because the solution is silly, then declares the problem, AGW, doesn’t exist. E.g., a denier some years ago on this very blog (I think it was at the SciBorg site) said something to the effect
Assuming that sort of “argument” is similar to the thinking, it suggests some deniers don’t like the idea of doing something, or possibly of doing anything, and so decide to do nothing, so nothing needs to be done, so there is nothing to be concerned about. Rationalizing away any concern about the alleged problem because the presumed “solution” is (possibly correctly) not so good.
I speculate such rationalizing-away would be re-enforced by various other tendencies people have noted or suggested.
However, do not make the error of think all deniers deny for the same(-ish) reasons. There is, presumably, a spectrum of reasons, some overlapping, some mutually re-enforcing, some contradictory, some actual mistakes or misunderstandings, some malicious, and so on.
@aaronbaker
What frustrates me about what you’re dad’s doing is that he’s using accusations of “liberal bias” to dismiss outright any research that doesn’t conform to his beliefs. Somehow, he doesn’t seem to register that his attitude itself constitutes conservative bias. He isn’t judging research based on what evidence it presents. He just automatically assumes that any research that doesn’t tell him what he wants to hear is made up. He’s put himself into a position where, if he’s wrong about his beliefs, he would never be able to figure out that he was.
So, off the top of my head, I recall a book by Frank Turek and Norman Geissler stating the reason to be so that they have an excuse to deny God’s moral law…or something similarly ridiculous. It follows from that “If we’re just the result of an accident, then we can do whatever we want!” “logic” that apologists tend to use on the topic of morality.
I see that strangerinastrangeland @3 has already posted much the same. I agree with PZ @10 that it doesn’t make sense. But, I have had personal interaction with some religious coworkers who have bought this argument hook, line, and sinker. Also, their response to PZ’s point @10 is either (1) that God has placed morality on our hearts, so there is no escaping it as much as we try to deny it or (2) that we are borrowing from their worldview. Either way, they find some excuse to tie our behavior back to their religion.
Also, climate deniers never seem to recognize that the researchers that oppose climate change would likely have conflicts of interest themselves. It’s not just Willie Soon:
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/mar/25/fossil-fuel-firms-are-still-bankrolling-climate-denial-lobby-groups
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/mar/30/us-oil-donated-millions-climate-sceptics
Climate deniers are willing to base their attacks on a couple of out of context emails and baseless accusations of ideological motives, but are willing to dismiss any evidence of bias on their side. Apparently, climatologists are willing to invent an entire environmental phenomenon to gain raises and give speeches, but it’s impossible for climate “skeptics” to be biased in favor of their purse-string holders.
@Leo Buzalsky
Do the god botherers have any evidence that morality is caused by subliminal influence from their deity? You can explain morality as a code of conduct to keep societies functional that far predates the abrahamic religions. You don’t need a god to explain why it’s a good idea for people to treat each other with mutual respect. The Christian argument here is one of those slimy, weasely, borderline unfalsifiable arguments they try to use to suck everyone else into their tiny, simplistic worldview.
As I mentioned before, pre-Christian societies had codes of moral conduct, and Christianity didn’t begin the practice of moral philosophy. Besides, I actually think that a lot of fundamentalist Christian “morality” is anything but. The misogyny, homophobia, rape apologia, disregard for the environment, disregard for the poor, and so on lead me to question the idea that Christianity is the source of all morality.
emergence @51:
Yup, my thoughts exactly.
The new Hate really got me into the conspiracy theorist mind, and in many respect I find a lot in common with them and denialist/creationists/etc. Glodswag’s main contention is that people who believe in conspiracies tend to think of the world in terms of morality. There are no coincidences to them, everything that happens has a purpose. So if things don’t go the way they want them, then there is a conspiracy preventing that. Everything is black or white, and no grey in between.
Sorry folks, I started writing this on my phone and had to put it aside without knowing I somehow posted it. Let me try again:
Having been on the Right-side of the spectrum, I can definitely say it’s ideological. As I learned from early 1990’s Rush Limbaugh and other conservative commentators. environmentalists are among the last factions (along with feminists, civil rights groups, the ACLU, and college professors) of Soviet-style communism. Acid rain, ozone depletion, dioxins, and global warming are all just scare stories cooked up by hippie-dippy Marxists out to destroy America and capitalism, from which all great things flow. If they get their way, we’ll all be forced to eat tofu and live in mud huts because eating meat and modern technology will be outlawed to save the whales, or the spotted owl, or some other worthless animal.
There is supposedly nothing to worry about. There is plenty of clean air and water. There are plenty of trees. There is plenty of oil and other resources. There is plenty of room for a few billion more people. Everything is just fine and anyone who says otherwise is lying to take away your “freedom.”
That’s what we’re up against folks.
Ah, but that’s not “bias!” There is no such thing as “conservative bias.” Liberalism is biased, but conservatives beliefs are justGood Old American Truth®!
Akira MacKenzie @57
So, the Conservative party line is based on a desire to exploit natural resources without any concern for consequences, and they make up wacky conspiracy theories about communists to attack people who point out that their attitude is irresponsible, greedy, and short-sighted. That sounds about right.
ruby @30 has something there. I think it is very basic. Their understanding of reality of the way things are is based on their beliefs and assumptions any and all ideas and evidence that conflicts is wrong. Life is precarious and fragile and above all short. Anything that threatens their view of reality must be wrong. They have a fear of reason and a fear of conflicting evidence. It is that fear that is behind all of it. They would rather fight with their imaginary devils and vast conspiracies and cabals of evil than face the implications reason puts on life the universe and everything .
Wasn’t in Martin Luther that said that reason was a whore?
the comforting story even one with tragedy in it is the one in which we and I are the center rather than one in which I am not.
uncle frogy
It is the other way around.
Xianity and the bible aren’t our sources of morality!!!
Much of the bible’s is illegal and obsolete. Stoning disobedient children, heretics, adulterers, sabbath breakers, atheists, gays etc. to death is no longer done.
Our modern ideas on morality and ethics have been adopted by the…xians.
Akira Mckenzie @ 57:
This is what gets me the most, the complete refusal to look at the reality of the situation. Out of a grim curiousity I looked up the replies to the tweets by one of the scientists who surveyed the Great Barrier Reef. Now, for the most part it was mainly concerned people asking questions about coral bleaching and what could be done. But when the one or two deniers came around, woo boy. One kept insisting that it was natural and nothing to worry about*, no matter how much evidence was thrown at him. While the other came up with an inane conspiracy theory that it was the fecking oil companies that prop up the AGW hoax! It was after that that I thought “why am I reading this drivel?” and logged off. Pisses me off that these numbnuts refer to themselves as “sceptics”.
*Isn’t it odd how anti environmentalists are especially fond of the appeal to nature?
Both my parents deny global warming. It is completely due to the fact they are life-long Republicans. Both have college degrees and are not stupid. They accept all of the orthodoxies the party preaches – it defines them, their place in the world and how the world works. And because they and their friends consume only right-wing media, they have had years of reinforcing messages and social support for denial.
emergence @ 59
When I was on the right, it wasn’t about “greed” it was about fear of losing a world that we insisted was perfect (well, for us anyway). Most rank-and-file conservatives know that they won’t become fabulously wealthy via their absolutist free makes beliefs, that’s a privilege for the really “talented” and “unique.” What they do hope for is the comfort and self-suffiency promised by the “American Dream” mythos that’s been loudly advertised since the 50s: ranch house, white picket fence, 2.5 kids, 1.5 cars, Sunday mornings at the socially approved church of your choice, Labor Day cookouts, etc.. Only freedom (i.e. white, male, cis-gendered, heterosexual, Christians calling the shots), rugged individualism (i.e. swaggering machismo) and capitalism (I.e. untaxed and unregulated, for-profit, commerce) would make that dream come true, and anything that challenged those concepts was automatically “evil.”
Therefore, just as feminists are portrayed as penis-hating lesbians out to figuratively and literally castrate males and civil rights activists are stereotyped as anti-white “reverse racists,” environmentalis is similarly vilified. Someone who associates with ecological causes is viewed as a neo-Luddite “watermelon”* 60s throwback, who dresses tie-dye and denim, stinking of BO, stale pot, and petchulli. They care more about snail darters and redwoods than a human fetus, maim loggers with spiked trees, and want to use “Big Government” drag humanity back to the Pleistocene.
*”Green on the outside, Red on the inside.”
w00dview @ 62
Welcome to the Age of Digital Solipism! If you don’t like the reality of the situation, an online connection and a search engine can help you find the “reality”—with it’s own news sites, “scientific” studies, and political action commitees—to fit your preferred situation. All viewpoints are equally valid! Everyone has the RIGHT to their own opinion!
Continuing on the (ludicrous) idea that scientists have made up warming, for sweet-sweet funding; Australia’s current conservative government has abolished and defunded every climate body it possibly can. Jobs in climate research have been decimated. And, they tried to specifically make a climate denying body run by Bjorn Lomborg. Were scientists making up data for government funding, they’d be faking the data in the opposite direction.
Let me add in my personal take of a related thing: There’s another facet to that which I see in anti-welfare Republicans, conservatives, and libertarians. The facet is the belief that the world is inherently just, as if by magic, aka the “Just World” fallacy. For example, poor people are themselves at fault for being poor. If only they worked harder, then they wouldn’t be poor.
I’m heavily tempted to conclude that the “Just World” falalcy belief is at the heart of a lot of motivations of the Christians. You described it from another perspective: If something bad happened to someone, it cannot be a coincidence, and IMHO they believe this because of the deep-seated belief that it’s just plain unfair, and very unfair things just shouldn’t happen, and therefore(?) they don’t happen, and therefore it must be a coincidence – or so their reasoning goes.
It appears to be very emotionally difficult to accept that the world just sucks, and that bad things happen to good people, and so they retreat into this fantasy, and that forces them to invent factually bullshit things in order to escape from the suckiness of the world. Unfortunately, this lack of courage and honesty just makes the world worse.
Also let me touch on what Akira said in 64: The “Just World” fallacy is also closely related to the American Dream, which is the one of the biggest bullshits ever. “Just work hard and you’ll be rich.” What a load of shit.
Sorry, I wanted to add: The “Just World” fallacy is also at the heart of most religions. “It’s not fair that I’ll die. I don’t want to die. I didn’t do anything wrong. Therefore, I won’t die. Therefore, there must be life after apparent physical death.” It’s wishful thinking taken to the extreme, and the seeming emotional inability (well, great difficulty) to deal with reality.
For some belated sharing, my experience with people joining the climate denier crowd that Ive known sounds a bit similar to what Akira was saying.
It’s not religious, nor even ostensibly political (ostensibly. Most weren’t sophisticated enough to have communist fears in the forefront of their rationale). But they took an almost ecstatic joy in getting something to use against those damn hippies and greenies. They were just so happy the bleating Left was wrong about something big like that.
In Australia this fits more in with offending the “She’ll be right!” sensibility. It might give us a happy-go-lucky sort of outlook people admire, but I tend to think it’s also at the heart of a lot of our business and institutional corruption over the decades. You’re not supposed to bring up ‘concerns’ that slow down people’s enjoyment of life and pursuit of their enterprises. That’s Un-Australian! Getting one over on self important do-gooders interrupting other people’s business is just too good to pass up.
Ok, I’ll bite. I am what you and the commenters here would call a “denier.”
Let me start with that phrase, because if you’re really interested in getting to the heart of what divides you and I, it begins there. The word “denier” is meant to invoke feelings similar to those of Holocaust deniers: those people whose anti-Semitism is so great that they feel compelled to downplay the size, scope, or aftermath of the Holocaust. The left likes to use the phase “denier” not because it is an accurate description of their political opponents, but because they think it will win more people over to their side. Calling someone a “denier” is designed to other-ize. It’s not a way to start a dialogue.
I’m going to lay out what I call the Michael Crichton case for climate change skepticism. He is the first person I heard make this case and he took a LOT of flak for it. You can read one of his talks here: (http://stephenschneider.stanford.edu/Publications/PDF_Papers/Crichton2003.pdf). Interestingly, he and PZ are in agreement about SETI, which is something else he describes in detail in the talk.
Let me pull one quote from that talk which stuck with me as it regards to climate change: “This is not the way science is done, it is the way products are sold.” Looking at the debate through this lens over the past 10 years has been instructive.
Think about how the subject is discussed just in this post, or for that matter on this site in the past year or so. Never is actual science bandied about. Nowhere have the bands of climate sensitivity been debated. No one has done the math on renewable energies or nuclear energy and how they could meet our energy needs in the future. No, it appears to be all about virtue signaling here. Those “other” people are bad and we’re the good ones. No one is quite sure exactly what “good” means, or exactly what not being a climate change “denier” means, but we’re all on board with….well…something.
The heart of Crichton’s case for skepticism on climate change is this: we are horrible at making predictions about the future, the earth’s climate is a complex, non-linear system and the climate models aren’t good at figuring out what’s going to happen down the road.
If you were to read sites like Wattsupwiththat.com or Judith Curry’s blog, you would find detailed and scientific discussions of topics like this. In fact, I just went to Curry’s blog and her latest post is about this very subject: “Science into agitprop.” Phil Plait makes an ignominious appearance.
Back to my first point – when you call me and others “deniers”, what is it that you think we’re denying? Here is my view: the climate is changing, as it always has. Our current period is not unique in that regard. The burning of fossil fuels has contributed in some measure to that change, but the amount of that contribution is likely small. We have no idea what the future consequences of that change will be and none of the models we currently have are able to predict those consequences (if they do it will be accidental). It is equally likely that increasing CO2 will have beneficial effects, like greening the planet. Additionally, in 75-100 years there is little chance fossil fuels will be our primary means of energy production (I would be surprised if it were more than 5% worldwide). If you let the free market work and encourage innovation, the human race will find a solution to the fossil fuel problem – to the extent it was ever a problem to begin with.
Which brings me to my next point – why is this subject so politicized? There is a bit of confirmation bias going on here on both sides. In general terms the progressive left sees climate change as an opportunity to gain more government control over the economy through taxes or regulation or both. I would imagine that for nearly everyone here including PZ sees this is a feature, not a bug, of the climate change movement. Those farther to the right, myself included, are highly suspicious of government intervention especially as it relates to predictions about the future because we don’t have a good track record of being right.
The population bomb, the Club of Rome, Y2K, or even something like the government’s recommended diet – the food pyramid – have all turned out to be wrong and in some cases destructive. China’s one child policy was based on the fallacious population bomb argument and it is hard to underestimate the upheaval that caused in Chinese life for 30 years.
Climate science is littered with bad predictions: the Arctic is supposed to be “ice-free” already, “snow” is supposed to be a thing of the past in some places (don’t tell that to Europe, it was still snowing here last week). Discrepancies between the models and observations continue.
Climate science, as it exists today, is almost predicated on the idea that current climate change is man-made and dangerous. The funding chasm is astronomically one-sided – governments and environmental groups have at least one order of magnitude more money pouring into the debate than do fossil fuel interests. I would highly doubt that any universities are interested in hiring any climate scientists who don’t tow the CAGW line, and there is a large publication bias in that direction as well. For goodness sake there are yearly conferences dedicated to trying to sell (there’s that word again) the idea of climate change to the worlds’ governments.
If you are sincerely interested in empathy, it starts with diversity. Not the “diversity” the left talks about, which is not real diversity. The only diversity that really counts is diversity of thought, which is why I will occasionally read this blog. I challenge you to read Curry, read Lindzen, read Crichton. Try to really understand what they are saying and try to see their arguments from their point of view. Question your own assumptions. Question your own behavior – why am I calling that person a hateful name (denier) when I’m not even sure what he believes? All of those are good places to start, if you’re really serious about understanding the mindset of the other side.
One further note – when you look at CO2 emissions, the US and the rest of the developed world are either maintaining a relatively steady level of emissions or are falling (much of the decrease is due to the use of natural gas, made more popular through fracking).
China is #1, India is climbing the charts and as a whole Asia is the dominant world “polluter” of CO2:(https://www3.epa.gov/climatechange/images/indicator_figures/global-ghg-emissions-figure3-2014.png). If the US were to completely embrace the progressive left’s agenda on climate change, would it make a difference? I think the data shows that the answer to that is probably no.
Which leads to an interesting question. How certain are you of the science? Certain enough to go to war?
Let’s assume China continues to increase their CO2 emissions to the point where they emit more than the rest of the world combined. And no matter what diplomacy we try, we can not get them to stop. Would you advocate for a military invasion of China in order to prevent them from destroying the planet? Are you that certain of the science that you would risk millions of lives?
I’m genuinely interested in the answer to that question. My answer is obvious, I’m not at all certain of the science. But I’d like to hear what actual hard-core advocates have to say.
That’s fucking irrelevant to the discussion “is human-caused climate change a real, immediate, and serious threat?”.
Of course, this is very relevant when discussing “what should we do about it?”, but that’s not a global warming denier, and I doubt anyone here would would use that description for a hypothetical person who says “it’s a real, immediate, serious threat, but there’s nothing we can do about it”.
Fucking bullshit. Isotopic analysis shows that the change of CO2 levels in the atmosphere is very much primarily human-caused.
Also, for the moment ignore climate change. IMHO, that’s not the real problem. IHMO, the real problem is ocean acidification. Before the industrial revolution, ocean pH was about 8.2. Today it’s about 8.1. Depending on who you talk to, we might be seeing massive ocean extinctions by 2050 when the ocean pH drops to 8.0. Even if you don’t buy that, wait another 50 or 100 years, and the ocean pH will drop even lower. We would be extreme fools to risk the mere plausible possibility of such massive ocean dieoffs if there’s something that we can do about it.
There’s no ambiguity here. No complex models. It’s a simple matter of how much CO2 we produce, and the relatively constant-rate CO2 sinks, and the determination of what ocean pH will cause massive ocean dieoffs. It’s something that a middle schooler could understand and do the math for.
Fucking bullshit.
I am an outlier here on the forum. I will agree to the position that it will be extremely difficult to solve the CO2 problem if the alternative is more money-costly than fossil fuels, no matter the negative consequences. It’s the mother of all collective action problems. For the individual, sure global warming is bad, but going from no electricity to some electricity is huge. It’s a matter of life and death. It’s food refrigeration, hospitals, running water, etc. Energy is the basis of quality of life.
I am also an outlier because I am currently convinced that conventional nuclear fission and next-gen nuclear fission (specifically IFR and the various MSRs, especially ThorCon) are the only existing technology that can fix this problem which is cost competitive with coal. I also believe that it can scale, and that we can build it to scale in the time needed.
So, I don’t think we need to go to war. We need to get nuclear that is safe, plentiful, and cheaper than coal. I think we can do that. Unfortunately, I believe taht the biggest opponents that I have on this plan are the same kind of people who make up the majority of commenters on this thread – the same kind of people who believe that global warming is a real, immediate, and severe threat. ~sigh~
Well, being a climate scientist here in Australia certainly isn’t a lucrative or even stable career – our federal government basically re-organised the CSIRO (the Commonwealth Scientific & Industrial Research Organisation) with a set of directors whose first action was to effectively de-fund the climate science division (and indeed any other division which couldn’t pull in the requisite corporate dollars from the notoriously research and risk averse Australian corporate sector) on the grounds that “the science is done now”. Which led to a number of rather cranky climate scientists, and a lot of yelling from other climate scientists around the world, because the guys who were being de-funded were doing some very useful work. They’ve since relented a little – by keeping on some of the scientists and moving the whole section down to Hobart (which is the equivalent of moving the whole business from New York and Washington to the outer regions of a small town in New Mexico, or in business terms, sending a troublesome manager who keeps pointing out the problems with the CEO’s plans to administer a small branch office). Not much prestige, or even much reputational influence to be gained there (Tasmania being the Australian equivalent of the sorts of areas of New England that Stephen King writes about).
gjpetch @65 – Oh, the Lomborg thing was fun.
They wanted to have it located at the University of Western Australia. Now, there’s a reason for this: WA has two universities which are pretty much not only chock-full of “lefty” academics (i.e academics who produce research which doesn’t agree 100% with the opinions of the Australian Institute of Public Affairs[1]), but also on the leading edge of various disciplines – Murdoch University has been well regarded as the university which produces the most consistently high level of environmental research for decades, and Curtin University (which started life as the Western Australian Institute of Technology) is actually pretty well regarded in the social sciences and humanities. UWA is the more conservative of the universities in Perth – it’s the oldest of the bunch, and it’s one of the “Big Eight” universities Australia-wide.
So the proposal was UWA would host the Lomborg Foundation (because one of the hidden glories of the plan from the Federal government’s point of view is it takes at least a day to get from Perth to Canberra, and thus protesters against the idea wouldn’t be able to just pick up from the university and carry on to the Federal Parliament) and be producing “research” to counter the horrible ideas coming out of these two lefty campuses here in Perth.
The idea fell down horribly, because the students at UWA – and let’s not forget, this is the prestige university in Perth, the one the local wealthy send their sons and daughters along to in order for them to get their degrees and meet the Right People before taking up their proper role in society (as stalwarts of the Liberal Party of Australia[2]) – protested against it and wouldn’t stand for it. I repeat: the students at the most conservative university in Western Australia protested heatedly against the idea of having the Lomborg Institute hosted at their university, and the UWA board of regents decided to pass on the idea.
[1] A right-wing think tank, whose main positions appear to be divinely inspired by Rupert Murdoch and Gina Reinhart.
[2] Our right-wing political party, whose policy positions of late appear to have been dictated by the IPA.
transient; you must surely be aware, given the last ten years, that the term denier comes from the fact that this movement you are a part of in some form or another spent much of its recent popularity saying climate change wasn’t happening at all. At All! None of it was real, scientists were all liars or at best totally misreading their own work. Monckton dined out on this version for years and it carried him to the halls of power everywhere. And every single thing he said was wrong. It will go down in history as one of the great con jobs.
Watts, Curry and Lindzen were all a part of this too, for their part (Watt. So to re-brand themselves as skeptics just asking questions is wildly disingenuous and misrepresentative of the movement. Sure they might be merely skeptical now, I guess that means they can be swayed by the evidence
You might say “Well I never said it wasn’t happening”. That’s nice. It’s still why the term denier gained some currency.
Most of your objections are sadly commonplace. You put some principle of suspicion about prediction before evidence, you then over-weight the long term modelling aspect of climate science and by association damn the science largely by damning media reporting about it as much as anything else. It’s pretty fallacious. A person can criticise modelling until the cows come home (usually without any delving into the substance of how the model is constructed or anything like that, but on principle). Sometimes it might even be right. None of it changes the observations though. That’s the main game. No one’s been able to shoot that down yet. And unless someone is willing to go so far as to dispute the actual science of the way Co2 behaves in retaining infra-red radiation they won’t be able to. (Actually I’m sure someone has cast enough doubt on every climate reconstruction ever made, not just the hockey stick but right up until the present, and disputed every facet of knowledge in every ice core and tree ring there is. They and their readers never really read the responses to that and why it’s probably wrong. That there was room for some doubt to sooth their confirmation bias was enough)
I’m intrigued that you would so boldly state what is basically a paranoid conspiracy theory about “The Left” like that. It’s really amazing actually. You open with an appeal to empathy, an ability to see other sides as reasonable people and a reservation of any broad brush usage, then that appears as matter-of-fact-ly as the weather (not to be confused with climate). Lefties sometimes may be less likely to consider government intervention as inherently evil, but they’re not entirely clueless about the risks associated with government authority (they were, by and large, created in opposition to unchecked authoritative power after all).
But any debate about any ‘nature’ of the left with thought and its followers that is irrelevant really. Your supposed sketicism here seems inextricable from nefarious left wing motivations, that you insert, impugn and second-guess. That’s not very skeptical of you. Half your criticism of climate science and activism seems to be wrapped up in assuming the motivations of those who do so and forecasting disastrous interventions to stop it. Well, one, I thought we were terrible at forecasting and doomsaying and two, in order to even have a conversation on what the interventions ought to be we need some sort of agreement (or at least less obstruction) around it being a problem in the first place.
You’ve put your paranoid conspiracy cart before the climate science horse!
And, look, I know you wanted more friendly discussion without name calling etc etc and I won’t call you a denier if you like because you don’t strictly deny. However it’s going to cause offense to call all this left wing stuff you’ve woven in there a paranoid conspiracy theory, I know. But that’s what it is.
Enlightenment Liberal:
It would be helpful in this discussion if you would refer to what I actually wrote. I wrote the following: “Here is my view: the climate is changing, as it always has. Our current period is not unique in that regard. The burning of fossil fuels has contributed in some measure to that change, but the amount of that contribution is likely small.” I made no claim as to the change in CO2 levels in the atmosphere.
Also, I’m not quite sure when “Fucking bullshit” became an argument. Perhaps you could ‘enlighten’ me.
You missed the point of my hypothetical. I’m assuming that the “we” we’re talking about is the US or even the US with the rest of North and South America. That “we” can’t force China or India to do anything. We can’t force them to go nuclear. They will either do it or they won’t. My question is: if they won’t, are you certain enough about the science of climate change to go to war?
Muz –
First of all, I didn’t realize I was part of a “movement”. I’m simply a person, reading and thinking and making up my own mind as evidence comes in. So to the extent there is a “movement”, I’m not a part of it. Please don’t ascribe to me the views of this movement, I have readily and happily supplied you with my own views on climate change.
This sentence is evidence that you really don’t understand climate science or how it intersects with public policy. Long term modeling is the only reason we are talking about the catastrophic effects of climate change. The really bad effects of climate change are 75-100 years off. Here is some discussion about the assumptions going into these types of predictions: https://fabiusmaximus.com/2015/11/05/visions-of-dark-climate-future-90153/ (linked from Judith Curry’s blog). In one of his talks, Crichton takes a few minutes to detail some of the ideas, concepts, and things that would have been un-imaginable to a person living 100 years ago. If you told a person in 1910 that there would be 300 million people in America their first thought might well be that we’re going to need a lot of horses just to get around (and a lot of people to clean up after all the horses).
I completely agree. And in case you haven’t been paying attention, the observations are not keeping pace with the long term predictions. In other words, the models are running hot.
You repeatedly assert that parts of what I wrote are a “conspiracy theory”, perhaps you could point me to the exact sentence. I made generalizations about each side of the political spectrum, none of which would occur to me as being part of a “conspiracy theory.”
My wonderful comment was swallowed in which I ran down the list of all the flavours of reality-deniers I know about, supporting the view that looking for one root cause is a fool’s errand. It ended with me making the case for evangelical Christianity fitting the behaviours of a cult, it was a hell of a comment but I see a climate denier has turned up so it wouldn’t get read.
I was initially thinking this guy was just a conspiracy theorist, but that’s not quite right. He sounds more tribalist to me, especially in some of the language. We see some of that here in Australia – the greenies are on The Other Side, so therefore They Are Always Wrong and the question is finding out how. So long as you can assemble some bullshit that flatters your pre-conceptions, you’re gravy. I do not for a second believe that the right wing is alone in this.
Unfortunately, the American right wing is basically insane, having been captured by a succession of failed ideologies that bunkered down and built their own separate realities. In one reality, evangelical Christianity was never exposed as being completely full of shit by its insistence that black people weren’t human, that slavery was sanctioned by God and that mixed races marriages weren’t. In one reality, the wisdom of the market wasn’t made a mockery of by bankers who’d completely captured the system and smashed the economy, upending millions of blameless people. In one reality, the great strides made in recent years to correct the shameful record of discrimination are upsetting normality, how things ought to be and now everything is harder and apparently good, innocent, ignorant people are now ‘the bad guys’, just because they stood by and made excuses while other humans had the shit beaten out of them.
They share one commonality: the outsiders are working against whatever this obvious truth happens to be. How could you be a decent person and deny reality like this? Clearly, they all agree, liberals are monstrous, and that justifies what we have to do. If they were truly human, they’d agree with us.
Thanks for coming, guy. Hope you find something thought-provoking!
Anyway, this jumped out at me:
Because I just so happen to work at a research institute in Australia that has done the math on renewable energies and how they could meet our energy needs in the future. (I am support staff, to be clear.) We based our work on previous work done in Germany, so that’s two countries.
If you want anybody to take this seriously, you’re going have to quantify what you mean by “likely” and “small”, and show how you derived that estimate. There is a very substantial body of detailed, peer-reviewed evidence that shows that anthropogenic forcings account for between 50% and 160% of the increase in global average surface temperature since 1951, with a confidence level of 95%. The best estimate is 110%.
Transient #75
Previously you wrote
Progressive Left Agenda, political dog whistle for a conspiracy theory. Yep, you are a denialist.
transient:
Why do you think that?
As of the middle of last year the CMIP 5 ensemble average model output, using the known volcanic, solar, and human forcings, was spot on the measured temperature.
As you may know, the 8 months since then have been the 8 hottest months since we started measuring, with 5 successive record-breaking months. That puts the current temperature above the models. The models are not running warm.
You would do well to get your climate science from someone other than a science fiction writer.
transient:
For that to make sense, as I posted upthread, liberals would have to view bigger government as an end-in-itself. Nobody does (except for actual Communists, who are few and far between and certainly don’t include PZ). Conservatives have their reasons for wanting smaller government as an end-of-itself (the distortionary effects of taxes, say), but liberals don’t want more government because it’s more government, we want the government to do particular things because we think it will be to net benefit.
We can just walk by dead canaries for the next 75 years and act all surprised when the really bad effects happen. Great argument. I’m convinced!
So, what? Are you arguing that massively larger CO2 levels in the atmosphere has a “likely small” effect on global temperatures? That’s a ridiculous description. The physics of CO2 gas in the atmosphere are well known and not under dispute. At this point, the difference may well be semantic, but I strongly object to your description “likely small”. Much more accurate descriptions are “substantial”. CO2 levels in the atmosphere, and other greenhouse gases, are the single biggest contributor to global temperatures by far. IIRC, the only other metric that in the same ballpark that can substantially vary is surface albedo.
Yes, they have. Nuclear can easily do it. The question right now is merely “how much will it cost, exactly?”, and we have good reasons to believe that it can be cost-competitive with coal. We have every reason to believe that one of the next-gen breeder reactors will work as advertised, whether it’s the IFR or ThorCon or some other reactor.
We’ve done the math on the energy-returned-on-energy-invested on nuclear back in 1959.
http://energyfromthorium.com/energy-weinberg-1959/
It’s energetically-allowed to mine literal everyday common rock (i.e. granite) for its uranium or thorium content for use in breeder reactors. We are never going to run out of nuclear fuel because we are never going to run out of rock. The sun will go out before we run out of nuclear fuel.
Nuclear reactors do not have other common mode failures (unlike solar and wind). They can totally power our society, just like coal and nat gas does right now.
Throw on some solution for trucking, shipping, and air travel, such as synthetic hydrocarbons, and/or batteries, and we’re good.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-diesel
> US navy synthesizes jet fuel solely out of seawater; costs $3-6 gallon
http://www.zmescience.com/research/us-navy-synthetic-jet-fuel-seawater-0423432/
What other math needs to be done for feasibility? What are you talking about?
You’re conflating nuclear and renewables, for what appears to be absolutely no good reason, and for what appears to be part of rationalizations to support your particular dogmatic world view.
…
Psst:
https://bravenewclimate.com/2014/08/22/catch-22-of-energy-storage/
OH god, not the nuke/renewable debate again. It never ends.
Anyway, a nit: in denier-land, there *is* denial of the greenhouse effect by some. It’s a big tent over there; theories don’t need to be concordent.
I have seen some very convincing arguments come from the contrarian side of this debate if you read them in a self contained fashion without doing any research I can see how people could be convinced by them.
Add to that the way the media handles this question on both sides and I am not surprised at all.
For me at least it was pretty obvious who was being intellectually honest after I started cross referencing what climate scientists were saying about different subjects and what the Contrarians were saying. That process took me a couple of months of part time research to be confident that I wasn’t missing something.
Fortunately Transient showed up and brought up some of the more popular contrarian arguments at the moment.
“Here is my view: the climate is changing, as it always has. Our current period is not unique in that regard. The burning of fossil fuels has contributed in some measure to that change, but the amount of that contribution is likely small.”
This seems to be the most popular one at the moment. It’s basically answering a question that nobody asked – nobody is arguing that climate doesn’t change naturally, everybody understands that “climate change” in the 21st century is short-hand for “rapid climate change as a result of human changes in land use and burning of fossil fuels”.
The point is that we are seeing changes in the atmospheres composition in decades that normally takes thousands of years for a rapid natural event (when we look at past records). We know from past records, I have a friend researching this currently, what the likely outcome of those changes are for the earths surface energy budget. We have a good grasp of the basic physics involved and that those things are in fact happening from the pattern of warming, at least to be confident within an order of magnitude of where we will be for a given amount of fossil fuels.
“Climate science is littered with bad predictions: the Arctic is supposed to be “ice-free” already, “snow” is supposed to be a thing of the past in some places (don’t tell that to Europe, it was still snowing here last week).”
What was reported was “The Artic could be ice free as early as [give a year]” – meaning that in the worst case senario the Artic would be Ice Free by [year], what the scientist calculated is a range because that’s how complex systems sciences (like medical science) work. The Artic isn’t ice free but all that means is that the worst case scenario didn’t happen; we are still at the lower end of the range that was predicted. I find it telling the way the contrarian set has twisted this.
“The funding chasm is astronomically one-sided – governments and environmental groups have at least one order of magnitude more money pouring into the debate than do fossil fuel interests.”
Only if you count the research money as funding for one side of this debate, IE the money that gets spent collecting data, and trying to make sense of it.
“I would highly doubt that any universities are interested in hiring any climate scientists who don’t tow the CAGW line, and there is a large publication bias in that direction as well.”
You could characterize things that way, and to some degree you might be right. It could also be that like Evolution there is a large body of observations that need to be explained by a competing theory which nobody has managed to do very well.
Either way it would look the same from the outside. What you want to avoid doing is saying possibly therefore probably.
What would help the contrarian case would be producing a paper that was rejected by peer review that shouldn’t have been.
“I challenge you to read Curry, read Lindzen, read Crichton. Try to really understand what they are saying and try to see their arguments from their point of view.”
These people make good arguments when taken in isolation, I find them less impressive after cross referencing. but with more intellectual honesty than people like Monkton,
You denialists keep talking arguments. Philosophy. We scientists talk evidence to back up our arguments, and that is missing from your arguments. Peer reviewed scientific literature. Which is why you get nowhere when you come to a site like this, where we know the difference between obfuscation and true science.
wow. Same as it ever was around here, I see.
NoR still hasn’t learned to read for comprehension, preferring instead to go off rudely half-cocked on people who actually agree with him.
(And there’s even yet another Dictionary Atheist thread! Round and round and round.)
NOR, there are times when you are your own worst enemy.
Sven
What do you want?
Can’t you just delete the bookmarks?
NOR – you beautiful bastard, I write a post about context being the thing that most people are missing – to which you take something I say and ignore the context.
sometimes you have to enjoy the delicious, delicious ironing.
dannicoy@89: I don’t know; Nerd’s quote looks like a clear and self-contained summary of what you actually said. Then a non sequitur happened and Nerd goes off denier-hunting.
A slight twist on the “because the alleged ‘solution’ is absurd, the problem ‘does not exist'” bogosity (see @50) is offered by the “government” in Ozland, Greg Hunt [Australia’s environment minister]: no definite link between coal from Adani mine and climate change. What makes this relevant to this thread is the report is based on court documents / testimony, and hence can be presumed to provide an insight into the “thinking” — i.e., into some of “what’s going on in [some] denialist’s heads” asked by the OP:
By that reasoning, no coal mine, directly(e.g., its operation) or indirectly(e.g., its output (coal)), contributes to AGW, and hence coal does not contribute to AGW. Which is known to be bullshite.
That this bullshite is coming from Australia is particularly frustrating since “Australia has one of the highest per capita emissions of carbon dioxide in the world. [… I]f every person in the world produced the same as each Australian, the world would produce approximately 560% more Green house gas emissions. Australia uses principally coal power (70%) for electricity […].”
transient: It’s true I might be overreaching, but, since you asked, here you say these things :
“In general terms the progressive left sees climate change as an opportunity to gain more government control over the economy through taxes or regulation or both. I would imagine that for nearly everyone here including PZ sees this is a feature, not a bug, of the climate change movement.”
and then later:
“If the US were to completely embrace the progressive left’s agenda on climate change, would it make a difference? I think the data shows that the answer to that is probably no.
Which leads to an interesting question. How certain are you of the science? Certain enough to go to war?”
Couching the first in explaining each side’s confirmation bias doesn’t really undo what it’s saying. The right gets off fairly easy in your assessment of its failing on this, for one thing. But to ascribe an agenda like that, as a sort of olive branch to showing you get “our” thinking says a great deal to me. There’s a chasm or two between thinking regulation and law might help the problem to “gaining greater government control over the economy”. It could just be phrasing, but that’s how I’m looking at it. Then to take the argument of to war with China fairly swiftly says even more.
You might all be just rational, reasonable individuals dispassionately assessing the science (and yes everyone says this in the whole ‘movement’), but this line of thinking colours the whole debate and has since the start. Now it isn’t a discussion about policy and science. Now there’s an opposition with fairly concrete goals or a fairly well understood trajectory if they win. You can probably find some people who fit the bill here and there, but it’s largely false to misleading. A convenient truth, you might say, to unite the right to the climate skepticism cause.
It’s prejudical of me, yes, but I see all of it in what you say, what subjects you choose and the implicit assumptions about who you’re arguing with and what they think. I’m not trying to out you, per se, but you want to know where I see the conspiracy theory is in what you say and that’s it. And I have met people who seem unaware of this in their own thinking on the subject.
What’s interesting is you find the same category of error(s) being used to argue against climate activism via this infectious theory. As you have linked yourself there, catastrophic predictions about the future rely on relatively consistent present trends which are themselves debatable. Well indeed. Likewise if the “progressive left” “wins” and it works, why are we even talking about war with China? What a pointless, scaremongering line of thought. There’s a myriad of ways for the left to “win”, a myriad of ways for CO2 to be reduced and a myriad of ways China might go (on track to be the largest renewables and nuclear nation in the future too). And we haven’t even talked about technological mitigation and solutions yet. How does all that figure into this ‘model’? It would seem to be all about accusing people of dogma and its consequences rather than any reasonable forecasting.
Laterly,
“This sentence is evidence that you really don’t understand climate science or how it intersects with public policy. Long term modeling is the only reason we are talking about the catastrophic effects of climate change. The really bad effects of climate change are 75-100 years off. ”
Yeah, so? This is the bugbear of supposed-skeptics, as you have said. don’t like models, don’t like predictions. I think I do understand how it intersects with policy actually (and my god how much policy relies on projections already? Finance, notoriously shakey, is fine though right?). I think you’re pushing that barrow that no one would have done anything if it wasn’t scary sounding. This is possibly true. But, as you like trying to sympathise and see things from the other side, imagine you saw all this stuff and saw the potential for it at worst and connoted how long it would take to change our habits. You would say nothing? Or would you try to get people to listen?
That doesn’t mean the scare stories haven’t hurt as much as helped sometimes. But the opposition seems to be opposed to prediction at all. The models are wrong is the mantra. Well, as explained elsewhere, they aren’t that far off really. They also cover a range of options. And, three, they aren’t that important if you concede to the basic observations at all. Thus the obsession with them by opponents seems more political that anything else.
If you accept what CO2 does in the atmosphere, you accept the climate record, you accept the 20th century data, the isotopic analysis etc (and people don’t, I know)- all observed data, as well as being the basis for the models btw- then the argument is over. No modelling necessary.
So again I would come back to a reading that you can’t actually be properly well versed in this and still be worried about the skeptic talking point of models and scare stories unless you see that as part of an agenda to lie and dishonestly manipulate for nefarious purposes. And that itself is a lie.
You might disavow such thinking, and you might be right. But based on what you’ve said here, subtract the essence of the leftist conspiracy from your thinking and you have no real opposition left. The sensible course is to act and act quickly. Now we just need to figure out how.