UPDATE Dan Kahan has replied in Comment #54.
So much for the theory that skeptics are dumb or uninformed. Fox News reports that a new study shows that when people are quizzed about climate science, the skeptics outscored the believers.
Dan Kahan at Yale did the study on 2,000 people, but with only nine questions, so there is limited insight here, but it fits with his previous study which found people who knew more about maths and science were more likely to be skeptical. Readers of skeptical blogs (who chose to respond to surveys and list their qualifications in comments) are likely to have hard science degrees. The world is slowly waking up to the fact that the skeptics are more knowledgeable about science.
In a proper science quiz, the gap would probably be even larger. On two of the nine questions, skeptics got the science right. But believers “outscored” skeptics at repeating the propaganda (which shouldn’t be a question in a survey about scientific knowledge). I’d like to see all nine questions (can anyone find a preprint or the paper?)
Skeptics get science right:
One question, for instance, asked if scientists believe that warming would “increase the risk of skin cancer.” Skeptics were more likely than believers to know that is false.
Skeptics were also more likely to correctly say that if the North Pole icecap melted, global sea levels would not rise. One can test this with a glass of water and an ice cube – the water level will not change after the ice melts. Antarctic ice melting, however, would increase sea levels because much of it rests on land.
Believers (including believers who design surveys) get propaganda right, but science wrong:
Liberals were more likely to correctly answer questions like: “What gas do most scientists believe causes temperatures to rise?” The correct answer is carbon dioxide.
A question of propaganda, not science?
The design of the questions was sloppy and not well informed. Asking “which gas do most scientists believe causes temperatures to rise” is not about science, but about opinions. It’s a social science or cultural question, not a question about our natural world.
There are another two big problems with this question. Kahan assumes most scientists would say “CO2”, but as far as I know the question has never been asked across a representative slice of the disciplines of science (or even among the sub-group “climate scientists”). Since half the meteorologists and two-thirds of geoscientists and engineers are skeptics — it is far from obvious what the scientific world at large would say to this question. Worse, in terms of scientific accuracy, the correct answer really is not CO2, but H2O. Even the IPCC says that “Water vapour is the most important greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.” (IPCC AR4, p 632). Kahan reports the results as if they are about “climate science”, but what he asked instead was a question about PR. Scientifically, he’s wrong, but giving points to believers for making the same mistake as he does.
The question of science versus opinions-of-science underscores a major problem with the whole survey design. There is conflict in the reporting: on the one hand, the questions are described as being about where people thought “scientists stand on climate science”, but on the other, the results are expressed as knowledge of climate science itself, not a knowledge of the sociology of scientists opinions. Does Kahan really understand what science is?
The eternal problem of unstated assumptions, confirmation bias and “cause and effect”
Kahan assumes that skeptics are politically motivated, but no studies have looked at the leaders of the skeptics movement, or why people switched sides, nor have studies sorted out cause and effect.
The study’s author, Kahan, also says that the global warming debate has become so politically polarized that people pick their side based on politics rather than what they know about science.
Do skeptics vote right because they “were born” that way, or do they vote right more often because there is no other option? While many studies find right-leaning voters are more likely to be skeptics, those studies are no use for figuring out cause and effect. Many skeptics (like me) were originally quite left-leaning politically. What choice did we have once we realized how futile and unscientific the left leaning policies are? Many left leaning skeptics realized the consensus was wrong and later changed their vote.
“The position someone adopts on [global warming] conveys who she is – whose side she’s on, in a hate-filled, anxiety-stoked competition for status between opposing cultural groups,” Kahan writes in his paper.
Again, this is true of the left, but not what I’ve experienced on the right. Skeptics and believers co-exist on the right — I’ve seen polite discussions and agreements to disagree when I’m at right-leaning events. I’ve yet to come across a left-leaning group that welcomes skeptics. There is political “hate” that runs from either side, but believer versus skeptic hate in my experience is mainly a “left” thing.
One of the other reasons there are more right leaning skeptics is probably that there are open discussion on the right. Right leaning groups are more likely to encourage and respect free speech, as well as being stocked with better informed people (as this study shows). It is a banal truth that conservative believers have a much higher chance of discovering that the science is not settled, because they are more likely to come across well informed and skeptical friends. Conservative media outlets are also more likely to show both sides of the debate. Left leaning ones (Fairfax, the ABC, Guardian etc) almost never expose their readers to the rational side of the skeptic argument. (Go on, list the major skeptics who have been given column space or air time? What’s the ratio? 99:1?)
The political bias of skeptics and believers is mostly a creation of the left. Left leaning believers are far less likely to hear both sides of the debate. They are shielded from it by coercion, namecalling, and aggressive tactics to stop polite discussion. In Democratic and Labor circles, skeptics are exiled, called “deniers”, and treated like dirt equivalent to pedophiles. The right leaning side asks for open debate. The left leaning side does everything it can to avoid debates, and uses smear campaigns and ad hominem arguments to silence public discussion and try to prevent skeptics from even being allowed to speak on radio and TV.
Is the left leaning side driving polarisation? Let’s can quote Dan Kahan. He thinks it is newsworthy to mention that being a patronising namecaller is unlikely to win friends and influence people. He is, of course, talking to left leaning believers when he says this.
Kahan says that if global warming believers really want to convince people, they should stop demonizing and talking down to their opponents, and instead focus on explaining the science.
“It is really pretty intuitive: who wouldn’t be insulted by someone screaming in her face that she and everyone she identifies with ‘rejects science’?”
Skeptics have been saying the same thing for years. It’s just good manners really.
Like so many science papers, the press releases appear to have gone out before the study itself is available. Apparently it was published on Jan 21, but there is no active link through the journal. This is a shame. We can hardly discuss it properly without the paper. It’s another case of “Science-for-PR” rather than science for science’s sake.
Roy Spencer of course, understands what is going on:
“It’s easy to believe in the religion of global warming. It takes critical thinking skills to question it,” Roy Spencer, a climatologist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, told FoxNews.com.
H/t Climate Depot
REFERENCES
Kahan, Dan (2015) Expressive Rationality and Cultural Polarization: Theory and Evidence, Advances in Political Psychology, Vol 2, ISSP Site (not available yet?)
Kahan, Dan M., Wittlin, Maggie, Peters, Ellen, Slovic, Paul, Ouellette, Lisa Larrimore, Braman, Donald and Mandel, Gregory N., The Tragedy of the Risk-Perception Commons: Culture Conflict, Rationality Conflict, and Climate Change (2011). Cultural Cognition Project Working Paper No. 89. Available at SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=1871503
Because, as a skeptic (to anything), when we hear something we think “hold on, that doesn’t sound convincing. Let me go and look that up myself.”
Believers just believe what theyre told. And if theyre told it by a guy in a suit, well, that must be true!
“Al Gore? Wasnt he president of Africa or something? He must be telling the truth!”
570
And speaking of propaganda. . . heres today’s gem. . .
Droughts in the latter half of the 21th Century could be even more severe than previously predicted, according to a study published in this week’s issue of Science Advances. Analyses suggest the drying could be the worst in nearly 1,000 years. Scientific American has more.
Full of ‘ifs’, ‘maybes’, ‘mights’, ‘the models predict’. . . but 100% believable!
330
Warcroft,
I love those stories, particularly the ones with a time framed qualifier that in the latter half of the 21st century:
“… suggest the drying could be the worst in nearly 1,000 years.”
So if the alarmists are prepared to acknowledge similar conditions existed historically…
250
Any professional scientist or engineer easily shows the Enhanced does not exist just by measuring the mean temperature drop from the Earth’s surface to its adjacent ~30 m atmosphere. To get 157.5 W/m^2 ‘Clear Sky Atmospheric Greenhouse Factor’ thermalised would need it to be ~15.5 K.
It’s actually set by Lapse rate at ~0.1 K. As for the non-enhanced GHE, that is kept near zero by the water cycle.
137
Enhanced GHE!
40
It is that tiny -0.1 C that sets the opposing radiance from 14-200 microns thus limiting any surface flux to 0.7 W/m^2 in that whole band. The surface need not radiate at all, as the atmosphere is a better radiator to space that the surface can be.
68
The partial surface Irradiance for any self-absorbed GHG band just outside the surface equals the same temperature atmospheric Irradiance on that plane for the same wavelength range.
Maxwell’s Equations via the Poynting Vectors then state that the two mutually annihilate; no net surface IR.
77
You and I seem to be part of the very few that accept thermal EMR as a form of wideband electromagnetic effect, rather than a thermodynamic effect. Do you know of others? How about Alex M. 🙂
77
For 50 + years. US Atmospheric Science has been teaching incorrect Physics, claiming the single S-B equation predicts a real energy flux instead of the Radiant Emittance, the Potential energy flux to a sink at Absolute Zero.
Here is an MIT course making this mistake: http://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL/thermodynamics/notes/node134.html
The next module transposes Emittance for Emissivity. This is why Climate Alchemists can’t communicate with real scientists and are pushing the ‘missing heat’ claim instead of accepting that they have fouled up the science.
Real engineers like me always use the S-B equation difference of Irradiances (=Emittance for a collimated beam) to predict the real net IR flux. This means that the real mean net IR flux for the Earth is (396 – 333) = 63 W/m^2, 40 via the atmospheric window to Space, 23 in non self-absorbed H2O bands absorbed over kms.
Because local atmosphere temperature is very near surface temperature, there is by definition near zero net surface GHG IR emission, hence the Enhanced GHE does not exist. The non-enhanced GHE is near zero because of the action of the water cycle. The warmists and the lukewarmists hate me for showing how stupid they have all been, but in Science that’s the way the cookie crumbles. it’s winner takes all!
114
near zero net surface GHG IR emission in the self-absorbed GHG bands
84
We agree
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/09/do-greenhouse-gases-warm-the-planet-by-33c-jinan-cao-checks-the-numbers/#comment-1123141
http://joannenova.com.au/2012/09/do-greenhouse-gases-warm-the-planet-by-33c-jinan-cao-checks-the-numbers/#comment-1123435
33
turnedoutnice February 15, 2015 at 1:51 pm ·
“For 50 + years. US Atmospheric Science has been teaching incorrect Physics, claiming the single S-B equation predicts a real energy flux instead of the Radiant Emittance, the Potential energy flux to a sink at Absolute Zero.”
Indeed! Now the physics [snip] with a PHd, making them only [snipped],
claim that every physics textbook says the same thing. The meteorologists refuse to accept EMR at all. They consider the tropopause as an isotherm that absorbs all sensible heat.
“Here is an MIT course making this mistake: http://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL“/thermodynamics/notes/node134.html
A Heat Transfer Textbook by [Lienhard, J.-V and Lienhard, J.-IV] 2011. What a team. About ten of the given view factors are also wrong. Does no one teach projective geometry for understanding of the very relativistic EMR? With a bit of optics experience the whole thing becomes somewhat understandable.
“The next module transposes Emittance for Emissivity. This is why Climate Alchemists can’t communicate with real scientists and are pushing the ‘missing heat’ claim instead of accepting that they have fouled up the science.”
Dr. Kirchhoff never claimed such nonsense. They skip the part where “at or above temperature for radiative equilibrium” a translucent gas absorbs no incident radiative flux. Both WV and CO2 in this atmosphere are such gases. they translate frequency but absorb nothing.
“Real engineers like me always use the S-B equation difference of Irradiances (=Emittance for a collimated beam) to predict the real net IR flux. This means that the real mean net IR flux for the Earth is (396 – 333) = 63 W/m^2, 40 via the atmospheric window to Space, 23 in non self-absorbed H2O bands absorbed over kms.”
My measurements give much lower numbers, window is 13W/m^2 to 1/3 space, 19W/m^2 to 2/3 cloud bottoms and a very hard to measure 70 mW/m^2 for all other wavebands. I must admit the difference in flux from a mirror surface and a black surface “may” include some difference in convective flux.
54
Joanne is this better?
turnedoutnice February 15, 2015 at 1:51 pm ·
“For 50 + years. US Atmospheric Science has been teaching incorrect Physics, claiming the single S-B equation predicts a real energy flux instead of the Radiant Emittance, the Potential energy flux to a sink at Absolute Zero.”
Indeed! Now the physics -snip- with a PHd, making them only arrogant pompous -snip-,
claim that every physics textbook says the same thing. The meteorologists refuse to accept EMR at all. They consider the tropopause as an isotherm that absorbs all sensible heat.
“Here is an MIT course making this mistake: http://web.mit.edu/16.unified/www/FALL“/thermodynamics/notes/node134.html
A Heat Transfer Textbook by [Lienhard, J.-V and Lienhard, J.-IV] 2011. What a team. About ten of the given view factors are also wrong. Does no one teach projective geometry for understanding of the very relativistic EMR? With a bit of optics experience the whole thing becomes somewhat understandable.
“The next module transposes Emittance for Emissivity. This is why Climate Alchemists can’t communicate with real scientists and are pushing the ‘missing heat’ claim instead of accepting that they have fouled up the science.”
Dr. Kirchhoff never claimed such nonsense. They skip the part where “at or above temperature for radiative equilibrium” a translucent gas absorbs no incident radiative flux. Both WV and CO2 in this atmosphere are such gases. they translate frequency but absorb nothing.
“Real engineers like me always use the S-B equation difference of Irradiances (=Emittance for a collimated beam) to predict the real net IR flux. This means that the real mean net IR flux for the Earth is (396 – 333) = 63 W/m^2, 40 via the atmospheric window to Space, 23 in non self-absorbed H2O bands absorbed over kms.”
My measurements give much lower numbers, window is 13W/m^2 to 1/3 space, 19W/m^2 to 2/3 cloud bottoms and a very hard to measure 70 mW/m^2 for all other wavebands. I must admit the difference in flux from a mirror surface and a black surface “may” include some difference in convective flux.
44
Example, the political relentless negativity around Australia at this time pushed by ABC/MSM left leaning journalists on behalf of the Labor Greens that seems to almost completely focus voters away from the very positive achievements of the government since September 2013 and what voters really should be concerned about, such as a very serious budget financial crisis created by Labor in government, handed over with their 2013/14 Budget.
230
I think you will find that most scientists do not think that a free flowing gas is a source of energy that causes any temperature to rise …
90
I agree,
For most all, but perhaps not some scientist with a PHd, would understand that such gas would do nothing, except perhaps, play footsies with some girlie gas. OTOH that may be exactly what is known as a temperature rise. You cannot win, you cannot even break even!
03
They even turn Valentine’s Day into an excuse to blame the dreaded “climate change”.
40
Interesting. Who knew that grapes and chocolate only grow in one place on the planet…….No, wait, I remember reading about grapes growing as far north as Maine.
It seems California is not the only source of grapes. What, then is the problem? I suppose it could be that Californians have limited farming skills and fear loss of income and livelihood…….
By 2030, cocoa will be affected, Really? They can’t predict a cocoa crop 3 years out, let alone 15 or more.
40
I used to grow grapes in Prince George, British Columbia. Check where that is on the map.
I must admit they are not as abundant as the California variety.
60
All well and good to say that, but for many quite ‘reasonable’ people that’s not always an easy thing to do. Over-estimating what sceptics and potential sceptics can and are likely to do, leaves one open to misjudging the climate (so to speak).
20
Uh, did someone mention David Suzuki? ha ha ha ha ha ha
Actually, I’ve long realized that the skeptical/realist climate students have far more intelligent, circumspect positions. For a very clear example of this, I’d refer you to the Climate Audit thread on the Marotz paper, and then go read the SkS thread on the same subject. The difference in the issues being raised is amazing.
All that said, I wouldn’t trust this sociology poll as far as I could kick it. The poll questions could have made it easy for the alarmists and believers. If anyone really wants to test this question, they need fair questions. I’ve not seen a single climate alarm poll with what I consider fair questions. They need a truly random, representative sample, another very difficult proposition. They need to have full participation in the random sample, not 7% with 93% refusals. I’ve had legitimate polling groups call me, and when I refused, they called back multiple times and they badgered me, trying not to have a refusal on their stats. Refusals, in great numbers, spoil polls, because they MIGHT be hiding one of the positions being polled. This is stuff that people like Lewandsowsky and Cook can’t care about, because they know that if they asked fair questions and sampled randomly, their hot buttons would be a lot cooler.
10
I liken the CAGW nonsense to a large balloon inflated by a lot of hot air.
Than all it takes is one ( ahem ) prick to come alone to defalte it all….
I guess the logical repsonse is in a very Wizard of Oz analogy – if it ( CAGW ) has to be that carefully grown and protected, clearly it has no substance….
You only need to see how ferociously the establishment defends its ( faulty ) position on something to “maintan the rage” to see how important it is to it to maintain the illusion.
I can think of one event very recently whereby the medical mafia were out in force , teeth bared, defending the indefencible….
20
“medical mafia”? Which one was that?
00
Gore told us Kilamanjaro would be ice-free years ago, why is it covered with ice and why is the US experiencing record snows in some places ? Must be global warming !
10
Truth is that skeptics tend to know quite a bit more about the topic then the typical believer who kind of just goes with the flow. In fact believers are often quite surprised to find out about things like Climategate, the pause, and let alone the CO2 lag and how Gore lied to us in his movie.
And, in publicly viewed debates between warmists and skeptics, low-information believers are likely to learn a thing or two and possibly convert to being skeptics. On the other hand, the skeptics in the audience are not likely to be converted the other way because they already know well. Almost invariably, if an audience is polled, skeptics win the debates! And btw, warmists never used to be leery of debates.. until they realized that they lose the debates virtually every time.
430
Perhaps this has to do with using Bill Nye, the science guy, as the spokesperson for global warming. Perhaps skeptics just expect a bit more expertise from the side that is on the “correct” side of a science debate.
90
“Bill Nye, the science guy, as the spokesperson for global warming.”
Oh great choice there, how about I get,
– Peewee Herman as an expert bicycle mechanic.
– Charles Manson as the Israel/Palestine Chief Mediator.
– Ralph Nader as a judge at the X Games.
– Gary Glitter in charge of Unicef.
– Bill Clinton with a hands on position in RAINN.
– An ex vice president as a scientific expert..(nah too outlandish and unfunny)
110
Maybe Gabby Grecko as the fashion editor.
Or a column for the lovelorn “Dear Gabby”?
20
And the latest issue of the National Geographic (February 2015) is telling everyone what Florida will be like at the end of the century with a 2 metre (6.6 foot) sea level rise.
140
Why Florida?
Because Florida is SINKING!!!!
In the same way many places like the Carteret Islands are also SINKING.
130
…so is Venice!
60
We are sinking!
We are sinking!
We are sinking!
What are you sinking?
30
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0MUsVcYhERY
We are sinking !
00
At over 0.9″ per year they figured I suppose that sealevel rise better get started.
At today’s rate (I think it’s about 7″ per century) we’re looking closer to the year 3000 before we get near 6 ft.
I suggest sometime in the next 300 years or so those living on the coasts start inching their way inland to give the oceans room to grow.
80
Recent studies of Pacific islands have in fact shown that many of them are growing.
100
I’m counting on my inland Florida property to rapidly increase in value as it becomes coastal, with a beautiful view of the Atlantic Ocean.
can’t wait……
80
Not only do believers know less about the science, they all too often think it is beyond the capabilities of the average citizen to know any of the science. They think that the average man is a fool if he thinks he can know anything about it apart from ‘97%, experts, doom, last ten years (or year) hottest on record’. When asked to guess basic numbers, like how much CO2 in the atmosphere? or How much warming? they get it wrong by a factor of 10 or more. Often they complain that they find talking about the science ‘boring’, and a waste of time because it is settled anyway.
You can usually guess someone’s position just from their job. Engineers rarely believe. Lawyers are more likely to. Public servants usually believe.
The Oreske’s line that skeptics are only skeptics because of their politics is false. The right didn’t start this, the left did, and it took off because it suited the politics of the left.
500
Declaring that skeptics are only skeptics “because of politics” is tactic to silence debate. It’s an ad hom remark that has nothing to do with science and everything to do with denying that skeptics have a view that might be informed and worth listening too.
There are skeptics and believers who are “only in it for the politics”, but there are many who are not. There will never be a resolution of public opinion, scientists and politicians until there is major series of open public debates between the best scientists and best science communicators on both sides.
The right want this. The left don’t. We all know why.
680
From Dan Kahan’s web site:
“The test for motivated cognition is not whether someone gets the “right” answer but how someone assesses evidence.
A person displays ideologically motivated cognition when, instead of weighing evidence based on criteria related to its connection to the truth, he or she credits or dismisses it based on its conformity to his or her ideological predispositions.
Thus, if we want to use public opinion on some issue — say, climate change — to assess the symmetry of ideologically motivated reasoning, we can’t just say, “hey, liberals are right, so they must be better reasoners.”
Rather we must determine whether “liberals” who “believe” in climate change differ from “conservatives” who “don’t” in how impartially they weigh evidence supportive of & contrary to their respective positions. ”
Impartiality that is totally lacking in the Fox and Marano comments and they continue to display “ideologically motivated cognition”!
217
SF,
Or just believe alarmist supported hype from the ABC and Fairfax.
How about real puplic debate, instead of public alarmist opinion?
81
I’m open to scientific argument but not the personal opinions of those who patently have no valid science to support their arguments. This is demonstrated by the philosophical (and [snipped]) disregard for even the basics of atmospheric physics.
219
SF. Would you say that Richard Lindzen,in your words has ”
Yes or no will be sufficient.
60
I agree with both GRL and USNAS: his last papers were properly and correctly rejected. So no!: he has no valid science to support his latest inane arguments. Pity really that he falls so far!
217
So here’s your chance to do some actual science yourself.
This will be the second time I’ve suggested (challenged) you calculate the cross-correlation coefficient between the Veizer plaeotemperature (published in peer-reviewed literature, and cited by others) and the Berner & Kothavala GEOCARB III (published in peer-reviewed literature and cited by others) data sets.
Tell us how well carbon dioxide and temperature correlate. We’re all tired of hearing the crickets … … … (insects, not the game … … … )
70
SF,
Fully agree that the debate should be public and on the science of atmospheric physics.
So to begin:
Are you for or against long showers in the morning because the affects of water vapour as a green house gas on our planet are far, far greater than any limited effect of the trace of extra CO2 that may or may not be attributed to human activity?
90
And so to end. Short term yes, H20 is the most powerful greenhouse gas(depending on humidity levels), but as everybody knows that the water cycle is limited in duration, mostly weeks. The evidence from radiosondes indicates increasing evaporation from warming oceans thus there will be changes in precipitation.
This statement: “the affects..are far far greater than any limited effect of the trace of extra CO2 that may or may not be attributed to human activity” is an example of your limited knowledge of atmospheric physics, the water cycle, the carbon cycle, measured anthropogenic emissions and the impact or forcing of increased GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, as well as the evidence of atmospheric warming, surface warming, ocean warming, ocean acidification and the cooling effect of aerosols. QED & AMEN
011
SF,
Most of your reply is gobbledegook, misdirection and propaganda, politicians and nigerian solicitors use that stuff, just simple observations with some commonsense conclusions should be enough.
The warming has paused for nearly 20 years yet the CO2 has increased from 320 ppm to about 400pmm. There are many peer reviewed papers accepted by the IPCC that explain many different reasons for the ‘pause’.
Given that the ‘pause’ is peer reviewed and IPCC accepted and given that the atmospheric CO2 has increased, and given your previous response, my limited lnowledge of science stuff and your unshakeble belief – how can there be a pause?
“Ocean acidification”:
Which part of what acean is acidic? I thought rainwater was acidic and the PH of the oceans depended largely upon hydrolysis, outgassing and temperature and remain within normal margins?
“Aerosols”:
Aren’t volcanic erruptions the greatest cause of upper atmosphere aerolsols and particulates?
“QED & AMEN”:
Oh, I guess that means the debate is over before it starts, typical of you climate extremists, running off when you can’t answer the questions, and there are so manyy things left for you to learn.
140
… … crickets … … … … …
40
SF,
Okay then, maybe some ‘specificity’:
“water cycle is limited in duration, mostly weeks.”
When I wake in the morning I see dew, sometimes fog or mist, just about all the time I see clouds, the water cycle seems to me to be continuous, like peddling a bike one peddle goes down, one peddle goes up and the wheels turn continuously.
So…
What has the water cycle got to do with water vapour acting as an affective green house gas unless you are trying to convince me that each few weeks there is no water vapour in the atmosphere and it has to wait for the evaporation part of water cycle to replenish it?
“This statement: “the affects..are far far greater than any limited effect of the trace of extra CO2 that may or may not be attributed to human activity” is an example of your limited knowledge of atmospheric physics, the water cycle, the carbon cycle, measured anthropogenic emissions and the impact or forcing of increased GHG concentrations in the atmosphere, as well as the evidence of atmospheric warming, surface warming, ocean warming, ocean acidification and the cooling effect of aerosols.”
Okay – so what caused historical warming periods and the ebb and flow of numerous ice ages including the very recent Little Ice Age and why is this specific warming period different?
60
Turtle, a classic example of this is the old catch cry “Are you a climate scientist?”
120
To which the response has to be NO! I tell the truth.
100
As Doctor Who responded: I am every kind of scientist.
The only requirement to be a scientist is an open and enquiring mind.
40
The right didn’t start this, the left did.
While I can agree with much of what you have written (excepting that those in engineering are far more sceptical than you suppose), I cannot agree with your “Who started it” claim.
True, the professional Left from one side of the planet to the other are now the proud owners of the global warming hoax (but wait there’s more! With every purchase of GoreBull Warbling you get a free Malcontent Turncoat!). They bought it, they own it and their purchase comes with a lifetime guarantee of credibility free shame.
But the truth is the truth. Margaret Thatcher played an instrumental role in reviving Callendars 1938 work to win a political battle. Yes, she later recanted, as did Australia’s John Howard, but the damage was done. She helped create a monster that the professional left, from activists, journalists and politicians, sought to use to further their Fabian fantasies.
The global warming hoax was not necessarily a product of the Left, but they bought it and they alone own it now. While I rail against pseudo science, I have to laugh. While I disrespect the corruption of science for political gain, the idea that the Iron Lady played Pied Piper and lead an entire generation of the professional Left to their doom (from beyond the grave!) is just soooo delicious 😉
236
Konrad,
If only Maggie had not recanted, she’d have had bouquets instead of brickbats at her funeral – the left will forgive anything else except the questioning of their current ideology.
150
I don,t think Maggie helped at all. This was already in motion with the Club of Rome well before her. The fact that she changed her mind after attests to her strength of character not weakness.
Johnny responded to Kevin,s crud instigation believing that this would reverse labor,s poll popularity increase. He did not believe GW crap and he said that.
50
I distinctly remember about 2006 most of the Howard-Costello cabinet correctly labeled it as a religion. How right they were.
40
From John Howard 2007:
“Australian action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions since 1990, led by my government, will prevent about 87 million tonnes of climate changing carbon a year entering the atmosphere by 2010.
That’s a massive reduction and a tangible example of the Coalition’s commitment to the climate change challenge……
I will also be announcing a ‘cap and trade’ emissions trading system that will help Australia substantially lower our domestic greenhouse gas emissions at the lowest cost.
Stabilising atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will be difficult, but not impossible. We do not have to sacrifice our economic prosperity to tackle the problem.
Australia will more than play its part to address climate change, but we will do it in a practical and balanced way, in full knowledge of the economic consequences for our nation.”
How “right they were” until the Minchin led Abbott ascendance to LNP leadership.
218
Ah I see, just like your pals who seem to think that because some organization or other holds a particular public stance on an issue it must mean that everyone in the organization holds that view you believe that because Howard stated something that his entire cabinet held the same view?
Good to see you making a fool of yourself again, however as expert as you have become at it you really don’t need to repeatedly demonstrate it.
141
87 million tonnes of “Climate changing carbon”- for one, that is such a minute quantity (just how many days worth from China do you think that is?- Hint China emitted, that they admitted to- 8287 million tonnes p.a. in 2010 of which we supposedly as a best case scenario offset 87- brilliant.
Now secondly, how much of that 87 million tonnes was merely transferred to China to emit instead of us, so that any reduction by us was offset by them emitting more of it instead than they would if we had produced it here?
Come on “stupid mule”, please tell me how, for example, Alcoa closing down and not emitting “carbon” in their smelting of aluminium here, saved these same emissions when the Bauxite we still mined was then transported at the great expense of further emissions in transportation to China for smelting, almost certainly at the same or possibly greater emissions there, and then transported back with again the expenditure of “carbon” in shipping back to their market again- i.e. us?
What makes you think this carbon accounting is anything more than a mirage, a pretend effort by charlatans to cut fictitious emissions by transferring to someone else to emit them? And that doesn’t even allow for the increasingly obvious fact that CO2 does not actually drive climate, that there is no imminent or even distant danger from CO2 emissions, and the world is heading off an economic precipice precipitated by bed-wetters like your good self who haven’t done the “science” properly and objectively, haven’t shown due diligence as to the socioeconomic damage their proposed “actions” undertaken based upon their advice , and haven’t bothered to analyse that the proposed solutions may be worse than the problem they allegedly sought to solve. The fact that you were able to pressurise a political leader like JWH to play along with this international scam under duress, when even now he acknowledges he only made those statements out of political expediency, doesn’t endorse in any way your philosophy or your belief system, quite the reverse actually. If it was good policy, no one would need to be pressurised.
When the SHTF, and this is all shown to have been an expensive and wasteful furphy, don’t be at all surprised when some calling to account occurs for attempting to mislead the public and costing billions which could better have been spent on things which are actually important, like the health and welfare of citizens, like research into cancer treatments, Alzheimer’s disease and other neurodegenerative and neurodevelopment conditions, to alleviate hunger and improve sanitation and basic food, water and energy to the developing world, and other such matters which improve the lot of the mass of humanity, rather than line the pockets of politicians, banksters and multinational carpetbaggers like GE and Seimens to name but two of the culprits in this sad travesty.
140
By the way silly,
I hope you paid your due homage to the jaguar goddess, Ixchtel, this morning. Christina will be most displeased if you haven’t sacrificed a virgin or two in her name by lunchtime.
110
Silly Filly,please read.
U.N. Official Reveals Real Reason Behind Warming Scare
Christiana Figueres, executive secretary of U.N.’s Framework Convention on Climate Change, admitted that the goal of environmental activists is not to save the world from ecological calamity but to destroy capitalism.
“This is the first time in the history of mankind that we are setting ourselves the task of intentionally, within a defined period of time, to change the economic development model that has been reigning for at least 150 years, since the Industrial Revolution,” she said.
The cat’s out of the bag. There is no approaching ecological calamity. The aim is to destroy capitalism.
As Patrick Moore wrote:
The collapse of World Communism and the fall of the Berlin Wall led to the environmental movement being hijacked by the political and social activists who learned to use green language to cloak agendas that had more to do with anticapitalism and antiglobalization than with science or ecology.
Is this what our Pollies signed us up for?
Maybe They should have asked we THE PEOPLE first!
We await your next comment.
80
SF,
And like many former alarmists now recant, retract and disavow the AGW platform.
Name one sceptic that became an alarmist?
40
hopefully all of them James.
02
I only want one name, Gee Aye.
30
James- every scientist casts a skeptical eye over new claims and assesses it and either agrees or not. So name one scientist who is an “alarmist” who was not skeptical to start with.
04
Semantics, name one, Gee Aye.
60
Okay, easier question, name one sceptic that became an alarmist then became a sceptic again and then returned to being an alarmist?
30
Richard Muller of BEST fame became convinced of the reality of AGW on the evidence. BTW what was the maximum natural CO2 content in the last 800,000 years of the ice core record. Meanwhile ~30,000,000,000 T of anthropogenic C02 (let alone other GHGs) pumped into the atmosphere every year and you parrot Jo BJ ‘don’t you worry about that’.
Extremely sorry that you aren’t conversant with the intricacies of scientific evidence for AGW, as your statement clearly indicates:
“Most of your reply is gobbledegook, misdirection and propaganda, politicians and nigerian solicitors use that stuff, just simple observations with some commonsense conclusions should be enough.”
That not realism, that’s just living in the fantasyland of ignorance.
19
sillyfilly February 16, 2015 at 11:12 am
Grin!
33
That was meant to be a red thumbs down to you Silly Filly . A slip on the screen on my part. You seem to be wilfully blind to the truth.
10
SF,
Misdirection and cherry picking, Muller said in The Guardian August 2012:
*”there is plenty of room for scepticism”
* That’t be us.
Referring to examples he added “I just hope that some people will read my books and papers, and read what I say – ** not what people say I say.”
** That’d be you, SF.
And referring to wild exagerations and outright lies of the extremist propaganda he said:
*** “90 per cent of what’s said about climate change is nonsense. That when people attribute Hurricane Katrina, or dying polar bears, that’s not based on any science whatsoever. In fact in many cases, it’s wrong. So there’s plenty of room for scepticism.”
*** That’t be you again.
Finally Muller said:
**** “What we have addressed is the critical issue of temperature change, and we’ve come up with answers that I think illustrate what happens when science is done in a straightforward and transparent way.”
**** And Back to us once more – no one diputes the weather is warmer, it’s very pleasant from the long, deep winters of the 60’s, what is in dispute is the cause and consequence – millions of years of similar warming would suggest that this current 30 year warming period is natural – you need to prove why it isn’t.
So, SF, what are you so afraid of that you find it necessary to hound, abuse and mock people that don’t share your beliefs, we are all entitled to an opinion, your actions are really no different to any other zealot with extremist fantasies.
PS I’m sorry that I can’t accept your answer as Muller is obviously not an alarmist.
50
Berkeley Earth Robert Muller Sep 2013:
By the way Muller is not an alarmist nor am I, we both understand the reality, some semblance of which you appear to have no concept.
And so to end,
QED & AMEN
07
SF,
Again with the QED.
“The current pause is consistent with numerous prior pauses. When walking up stairs in a tall building, it is a mistake to interpret a landing as the end of the climb.”
If the current pause is consistent with prior pauses then the current warming must also be consistent with prior warmings, and prior warmings are always followed by a cooling.
When does a pause become a plateau?
No wonder you don’t want a debate, all your arguments so far are self defeating.
70
Those long, deep winters of the 60’s may not actually be over. The East Coast of the US is buried in snow and cold and has been for a month, with no end in sight.
50
SF(aka Cherrypicker),
Muller wrote in the same article, Berkeley Earth Robert Muller Sep 2013:
“Most of us hope that global warming actually has stopped. (Not everyone; some argue that the warming is good.) Perhaps the negative feedback of cloud cover has kicked in, dampening global warming, or the ocean absorption of atmospheric heat is playing a new and more decisive role.”
In view of this paragraph of Muller’s summary, I stand by my question to you “when is a pause a plateau?”
30
Sheri,
It’s been a fairly average to cool mid/late summer here in my part of Australia, our combined efforts should bring those global averages down for the Berkeley Earth Report 2015.
40
I hope so. I’ve been waiting for the cooler temps that seem to be global to actually affect the global average. Hard for me to think of this as local when the locales are everywhere.
40
SF. In 2007 the stats still showed an increased overall rate of temperature rise, thanks to the rise pre 1998.
Given that the AGW push was clearly more partisan political than scientific, Tony Abbott made what turned out to be the correct decision to support scepticism in regard to AGW alarmism.
Another eight years of stability has completely cancelled the increased rate of rise demonstrated in the 1990s. Indeed without new record highs of more substance than that claimed recently, the rate of increase will decrease.
10
SF. If you realised that your ~30,000,000,000 T of anthropogenic CO2 contains ~21,818,181,818 T of O2 no longer available for breathing you would really panic!
10
Ummm yeah. That’s part of what makes them sceptics.
Sceptics think. Believers accept.
Simply accepting stuff is much easier than thinking about what you are being told.
450
Precisely.
Why? The unambiguous and colossal emotional investment in their centrist sociopolitical beliefs, sanctioned top down, beyond reproach and coupled with the physical installation of policies eg.
U.N. climate chief Christiana Figueres
Segue to the UNEP and mechanism of implementation.
Finally, the truth. It’s a matter of public perception. The job of the MSMBC fourth estate puppeteers becomes blindingly clear.
The answer, to vigorously and persistently call the UNEP and IPCC out on every lie, obfuscation and adjustment, to continue to relentlessly undermine any confidence in their centrist, unaccountable and unelected claims of authority, and to spurn them as one would a rabid dog.
140
Bernd,
I do believe you are right … I think.
10
The Heartland Climate Debate Podcast – 12th & 13th February 2015
Steve Burnett talks to Lord Christopher Monckton about the Climate Debate, and what is behind the false information put about by what seem to be official Government bodies. Who is behind the bogus agenda, and why are they doing it? Lord Monckton explains why models got their predictions wrong, and how he and some eminent scientists have written a peer reviewed paper to explain why the IPCC and others got the science wrong.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yG6ROsfP0y0
130
erm – it should be Sterling Burnett
30
Dan Kahan does sometimes recognise that when he uses the word politics he really means a person’s world view. However he then slips back by saying things like “global warming debate has become so politically polarized that people pick their side based on politics rather than what they know about science.” To be fair, the US is much more politically polarised and maybe a greater proportion of people do just base some of their decisions by what their party line is.
However, how does he explain the UK where four of the major party leaders all agree on AGW but the public are split. Without last year’s floods the sceptic side would grown and we all know that weather is not climate (well sceptics do).
He wants sceptics to be wrong but he’s too good a researcher to fudge the results like Dr Lew. This leads him to much genuine head scratching. His world view obscures the real answer, that there is room for real debate on the issue but (as you explained) the other side won’t let there be one. I read a lot of his stuff over a year ago and wrote him off but recently was persuaded to look again and he has moved his stance. I have some hope he will eventally start to see sceptics without his warmist filter.
I too spotted the CO2 question and thought it could be answered a number of ways. It could even be viewed as asking which gas, molecule for molecule leads to the most warming?
50
“Skeptics were also more likely to correctly say that if the North Pole icecap melted, global sea levels would not rise. One can test this with a glass of water and an ice cube – the water level will not change after the ice melts. Antarctic ice melting, however, would increase sea levels because much of it rests on land.”
Jo:
The above quote early in your post is misleading.
The ice-caps are on land and their melting could lead to a rise in sea-level.
In contrast, melting of sea-ice does not raise sea-level nor does melting of an ice-cube in a glass of water. The reason is that water expands as it freezes and occupies less volume when it thaws.
41
“In contrast, melting of sea-ice does not raise sea-level nor does melting of an ice-cube in a glass of water. The reason is that water expands as it freezes and occupies less volume when it thaws.”
No, the reason the water level does not rise as FLOATING ice melts is that the ice has already displaced a volume of water equal to its mass. Thus the total volume remains the same. That is except for small amounts of thermal volume change.
120
Exactly, the water in the glass will rise if I ADD ice cubes to it, the mass of the ADDED ice will displace a certain amount of the water raising the level. Once I stop adding ice the level will stabilize and if I allow the EXISTING ice in the glass to melt the level will not change. Maybe I understand displacement because I have always been fascinated by ships. I seem to recall it being taught in school at some point, long before I reached high school.
30
Yes, it does take staying awake during third grade science class to learn that bit of practical knowledge.
Judging by the quality of their science, the so called climate scientists didn’t even attend the third grade let alone remaining awake during science class.
30
Wasn’t there an Ice-breaker that got stuck in the ice somwhere in the Arctic,in the last couple of days?
Must have believed Al Gore!FOOLS.
10
The ‘Anthropogenic‘ component to global warming is only an assumption. In fact, it is very hard to say that there is any global warming… what with the ‘pause’ and all.
The Earth’s climate in the past has been both hotter and colder than what we experience now. Man’s contribution to any ‘climate change’ fits somewhere in the last couple of hundred years.
If I were handing out grant money to study man’s affect on climate I would first look to the grant application/applicant for some proof that man’s contribution to this whole climate changy thingy actually and provably could overcome natural climate forces that caused greater variations in the past RECORD. That is, not just that CO2 causes warming as is the claim, but man’s contribution to CO2 input in the atmosphere can be proven to swamp the combined natural contribution by other factors (water vapor, sun, volcanoes, PDOs, El Ninos, La Ninas, etc…) that have demonstrably caused greater climatic swings than we currently experience.
Or maybe just prove that the westward expansion in the USA was undertaken with SUVs instead of Conestoga wagons.
I doubt either could be proved by the warmer-mystics.
And, I doubt I would be handing out any grant funding for this climate cluster … flop. Most probably I would roll up the application and swat the offending individual across the nose with the admonition ‘Bad, bad scientist’ as if some smelly token of their visit had been deposited on my office floor.
Pardon my implied french.
80
I have challenged warmists far and wide to provide statistical evidence in the temperature record for CO2 “forcing”.
They cannot, because it does not exist.
110
Funny you should mention statistics…
http://www.stats.org/climate-change-statistical-significance-and-science/#comment-148
When you can’t get the bad conclusions to fit your ‘model’ within acceptable scientific accuracy I guess changing the acceptable error fixes that little problem.
It was only a matter of time, I guess.
What scares me is what comes next?
60
Sceptic that I am, I have to disagree that an anthropogenic component to climate is an assumption. It really was a logical inference from laboratory physics. The hitch in the logic however is that the “theory” of AGW assumes a knowledge of climate systems that is loaded with assumptions. The biggest assumption of all is that there is some huge overarching “system” beyond weather that they can point to and call “climate.” That is pure assumption and a reification of a gernalization about our experience. Weather varies from month to month and geographically. we generalize those perceptions into climate. The unjustified generalization that we call “climate” is not limited to AGW faithful either. Warmists, luke warmists, and most sceptics accept climate – even global clime as a reality. It is not and never was.
20
Jo, don’t forget vice versa.
In one of those pretty little symmetries of which Nature is so fond, believalists invariably know more about denialism than we—its supposed practitioners—do!
90
The left rely on narratives.
In these narratives, they are always good, caring, thoughtful and intelligent. There is always an evil character in these narratives: “old white Christian men”, big business, western culture, conservatives, some religions, but not others.
The best way to set themselves apart from the “evil ones” is to:
* take hold of a negative scenario
* set themselves up as being against it
* embellish the story to emphasise how bad the situation is (truth and facts come in handy, but are not needed)
* place the blame for the bad situation squarely on an easily identifiable scape goats (best if you give them an evil sounding name like “deniers”)
The situation (formerly known as Global Warming) is the perfect opportunity to appear on the side of the righteous! Especially when the enemy can be so easily framed as “denier”, “anti-science”, and associated with “big oil companies” and other western fossil fuel driven economies. And even better they can have mascots like polar bears and beautiful island in the south pacific and every wheather event will count in their favour ……
200
Yes Snickersnee, the professinal Left do rely on “narrative”. Not what is the truth, but what they wish was the truth. Funny thing, most of which they wish was the truth is bad news, just like their CAGW narrative. The left have no vision, they are defined, not by what they aspire to, but what they claim to be fighting.
The thing to remember about the professional Left is that they are victim vampires, always needing fresh “victims” to sate their lust. “Gaia” was the ultimate voiceless victim they could claim to help while helping themselves.
The success of sceptics is truly amazing. Up against billions of propaganda dollars armed only with tip jars and the new media, sceptics have managed to stop all the activists, journalists and politicians of the Left virtually dead in their tracks.
Establishing and controlling a “narrative” is now old school. Lame scream meeja technique. It still works on twitface and spacechook, but it doesn’t work on blogs. The lame scream meeja are no longer the gate keepers of opinion or record. The forth estate is now the fifth wheel. Sure the Left have almost full control of the LSM, but they cannot win on the Interwebs. Note how warmist blogs and sites relentlessly censor. They cannot fight without their opponent’s voice restricted. Those days are over.
Brace, Brace , Brace. Incoming! A good number of the professional Left are only just now waking up to what they have done. They have left a permanent Internet record of their calling sceptics who were right “holocaust deniers”. Those going down with the hoax are going to go full feral before this is over.
Be assured, the professional Left are going to fight tooth an nail to keep their inane hoax alive. They all bought into it, and in the age of the Internet no individual can hide the shame of being a believer, or worse vilifying sceptics. They fight because they have no idea what else to do. “Run” would be my suggestion 😉
The general public is trending sceptic. Soon they will be asking for names. Sceptics know all the names….Every. Last. One.
92
Agreed, the damage they have inflicted upon themselves and their cause, is slowly sinking into their comprehension .
Hence the sudden demands to “control” the internet.
81
Why should believalists waste time trying to understand science?
They’ve already accepted it’s true—so what exactly do they stand to achieve by studying it any further? That’s the stuff of <OCD.
Listen: the whole pointof picking a side in this quote-unquote War—”yep, I reckon I’ll go with science”—is so they don’t have to know anything about it any more.
It lets them move on.
Now they can turn their attention to the BIG questions, the ones that are going to MATTER to them and their families in the very near future (how fast, how bad, how long do we have left, how much canned food and ammo is “enough,” and so on).
92
No Brad, the important questions are like “why do the haters hate gay marriage?”,
“are we doing enough muslim global outreach?”,
“is there something else we could do to make sure we get lots more illegal aliens?”
“who’s Ellen’s guest today?”,
“why are angry white men so angry?”,
“why do so many racists hate Obama’s policies?”,
“did you see that dress Kim was wearing?”,
“who will The Bachelor choose?”
With the science being settled these important questions that impact human existence can finally be discussed openly… on “The View”.
[Clearly this is very much tongue in cheek. I am approving it as such, but it is not an invitation to start O/T threads on any of the ‘important questions’ posed by Mike. – Mod]
170
Mods, thanks for raising the possibility that mike is just being tongue-in-cheek, which hadn’t initially occurred to me. I read your theory just in time to avoid submitting the 1500-word rebuttal I dashed off in a moment of dudgeon approaching Homeric altitudes. Read in that light, I suppose mike’s ideas would become marginally less repugnant, so I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt.
Can I make a general request that all commenters remember to include a /face, /flip, /friv or /paro tag if they don’t intend to be taken literally, or if they’re not sure whether or not they actually believe their own arguments?
I’m not trying to be a killjoy or anything—ask anyone on my shift and they’ll corroborate not only that I definitely have a normal, healthy grasp of humour but that when break-time comes I can be quite the office clown (metaphorically; it’s actually a restaurant). In fact, let me go out on a limb here and submit that there may be room for kidding around even in a literally existential controversy like the climate debate, provided it’s done with a sensitive touch and isn’t aimed at criticising or ridiculing anyone. I’ve never bought into the popular idea that jokes have to contain a kernel of negativity in order to be funny.
All I’m suggesting is that we all do our bit to keep Jo’s site a safe place (for people’s feelings, I mean—don’t worry, I’m not some OH & S Nazi or anything like that LOL!).
40
PS satire or serious, the kind of ideas mike is trying to promote in his comment are utterly toxic. While I do realise (now) that he might not actually mean what he writes, I still don’t think anyone should put up with intolerant mindsets like mike’s in this day and age, with everything we know now thanks to science and humanities. Please evolve!
35
Update:
I like to think of myself as an above-average reader, or pretty damn close to it, but there’s a certain limit even to my competence.
Having just read mike’s “argument” (if you can even call it a formal argument!) for what must be the ninth or tenth time, I can honestly say I have even less of a clue what genre it belongs to than I did 2 hours ago.
One minute he’s implying something so ludicrous nobody could ever be dimwitted enough to take it at face value (could they? you really do owe us an explanation, sir)—the next minute he’s suggesting something new! Almost from one sentence to the next! ROFL
Dude, you cannot be serious. The mere fact that you can say this stuff, with a straight face, is almost beyond parody.
I don’t know which is more hilarious: that people like you actually hold views like yours, or that you almost appear to think that kind of mentality a joke. Seriously, if that entire “counterargument” was just your laughable attempt to be funny then for god’s sake: don’t resign from your main paid occupation or take reduced hours in order to cultivate a hobby in standup. You’ll be laughed offstage. (Better you hear this now, from a complete stranger who doesn’t know the first thing about you as a person, than from a discerning audience.) I’d be guffawing uncontrollably right now it wasn’t so unfunny.
By the way, my peers are equally polarised. I showed it around and nobody could achieve consensus—really, not one person—as to whether the purpose of your “rhetoric” is one thing or the diametric opposite. Sure, they’re not the brightest sparks (they flip burgers for a living, FFS) but it’s a sizeable crew. We’re not talking one guy’s opinion here.
Talk about confused!
You really don’t know WHAT you’re trying to say, do you, mike?
15
Brad,
Are you a graduate of the Arts ?
11
Why, so you can scream “Ha! Hoax! A science communicator on the internet who isn’t even a scientist wasn’t 100% clear in how he represented himself—therefore by some warped logic our planet’s whole climate, plus a large chunk of radiative physics, is discredited!”
ROFL… do you have any idea how…. unmedicated you sound when you type this stuff, Ed?
Did you even so much as pause—in your mad rush to “prove” reasonable doubt in the case of Organic Life As We Know It v. Carbon—to consider the possibility that maybe, just maybe, I’ve been guilty of nothing more sinister or nefarious than misspeaking?
The most hilarious thing here is the double standard. One minute you’re tying yourself in Clintonian knots to make excuses for Brian Williams and the next minute you’re outraged, outraged I tell you!!, that a few dozen scientists whose politics pose a threat to your daily commute are caught overrepresenting scientific facts?
(Not even exaggerating an UNTRUTH, mind you, but the truth? How dare they!)
So, no. I’m not even going to dignify your ad-hom witchhunting expedition by Replying, Eddie. Why should I make my CV available to you when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?
03
” (how fast, how bad, how long do we have left, how much canned food and ammo is “enough,” and so on). ”
Brad,
Do you really think believers think about such practicalities, liked canned food and ammo ?
10
Do you really think believers think?
04
Been trying this question on believers but not getting much response.
“How can you believe in a future predicted event when you cannot
explain the science of the possible causes leading to that event?”
174
Yes Richard 111, that should be put to all believers including those at realclimate who certainly are not real scientists. There needs to be stronger emphasis on free speech and calling out of the people who have no understanding. Just because someone is a Professor does not mean they have any understanding. Take Flannery -he has no qualifications, experience or understanding of heat transfer. Al Gore is a lawyer who is good at twisting the truth (as has been found in court) and has no technicalunderstanding. Prof Ian Lowe was found in a tribunal hearing to at minimum be exaggerating by 13 times (he should have been charged with perjury). Many may not recall that Justice Einfeld (the one that was jailed) obtained a PhD certificate by mail order ($US10000) from a so called university in USA. It has been found that some have paid outsiders to compile their thesis (often with plagiarized inserts). Friendly, reviews are rife in many university departments (you do me a favour and I do give you a favour in return -peer review, multple authors, pigs in the trough etc
61
Despite his cult status, Kahan is a push-poller, and not even a glorified one.
80
No, just as correct is water vapor, or methane or any other GHG.
100
Please describe the actual properties of your GHG?
Please detail how any of them can possibly “cause” any temperature rise of the surface or atmosphere?
28
GHG’s cause eveporation, which has a cooling effect on the surface.
We are talking about what scientists (in general) believe, not what I believe.
Thank you.
82
Is the survey available?
10
When I point out the problems of the actual science to a believer, assuming they will listen, they almost always conclude that even if the science doesn’t support their view that “it’s still a good idea to go forward with the proposed solutions because it will make (they believe) the world better.” Aiding in this view is the reclassification of co2 as a pollutant. And who doesn’t want to reduce pollution? To the believer, it’s not about the science, it’s really about the proposed solutions. The “science” is just a means to an end.
100
[…] Nova also has an analysis here Rate this:Share this:GoogleTwitterFacebookStumbleUponRedditEmailLike this:Like Loading… […]
20
The other day Obama said climate change is more of a serious problem than terrorism. Then his spokesidiot repeated that claim and added that “more people right now are being affected by climate change than terrorism”.
My followup question, and possibly a great idea for an article, is who are these people, where are these people, can we talk to them, can we help them, and what exactly is their situation????????
Perhaps some of the astute readers here, or Ms Nova, could help me figure out what these alarmists in the WhiteHouse are talking about!
200
http://www.socialism politics.
30
Sorry I did not mean to post a link that wont work, I was referring to the worldwide web of socialism
60
A scheme, hatched by the UN, to part you from the contents of your wallet, and control your brain.
30
Well that won’t work, as has been shown time & again in the last century alone.
00
I did a blog post on this. At the rate these people are going, we won’t need skeptics to discredit them. Using Bill Nye as a spokesperson and saying climate change is worse than terrorism? It’s bordering on, if not crossing into, irrational at this point. Climate change more dangerous than terrorists? Okay, it might sell in the US among the elite, but no where there are people who actually are affected by terrorism, like the Christians being slaughtered by ISIS and the children being indoctrinated into terrorism at kindergarten ages, being show horrific videos of executions and the like. Only someone totally isolated from reality could believe climate change is a bigger threat. It will, in the end, show just how out of touch the entire group pushing this idea is.
120
1,192 separate Federal Government funded bodies consuming cash;
http://www.michaelsmithnews.com/2015/02/1192-separate-australian-federal-government-bodies-consuming-cash.html
Jobs for the boys & girls.
70
Typical Kahan, what “scientists” believe?
Poll meaningless until he defines scientist.
I have read enough Dan Kahan over at Judith Curries to now not bother.
The man will be a historical footnote of failure to see past your blinders.
Of course believers accept the blessed dropping of their high priests, they would not be believers if they cursed the scumbags for crapping in the well, would they.
Argument from authority works well on spineless followers, much less so on independent persons who have seen the kind of “help” they are being threatened with, before.
first line of resistance to an authority demanding your assets and assistance to tear down your home, is” What and who are you?”
Not “Oh OK”.
60
“The study’s author, Kahan, also says that the global warming debate has become so politically polarized that people pick their side based on politics rather than what they know about science.”
That’s been true since the very beginning. When Jim Hansen testified before Congress in 1988, expressing his 99% certainty that AGW was upon us then, he wasn’t speaking of science. He was speaking from his politics.
The entire reason the debate is so politicized, is that the AGW crowd made strictly political arguments from the very first.
Whatever science was recruited to their cause was superficial and tendentiously presented. Much of what was represented as science was (and remains) in fact pseudo-science.
I have Michael Mann’s hockey stick specifically in mind. But virtually any projection made using climate models, or their off-shoots, falls under the same pseudo-science label.
The reason they’re pseudo-science is because no projection includes physically valid error bars. That makes them physically meaningless all the while they’re represented as heavy with portentousness. Jim Hansen’s 1988 projections set the standard. It’s been pseudo-science through-and-through ever since.
And then, 25 years on in this farce, people like Kahan come along expressing surprise that the debate is so politicized. Such people are mindless to the core.
110
Jo asks “Do skeptics vote right because they “were born” that way, or do they vote right more often because there is no other option?”.
I’ve always been a swinging voter, principally because I refused to just accept the party line and do as they said to do. I would evaluate each party politics and each leader on their merits at the time of election.
It’s taken many years for me to recognize the pastern of Labor; making statements that I liked and doing the opposite of what they state, every time. They are not just liars like all politician are, they strategically lie to deceive knowing full well they are lying at the time they make their election bid. Labor seems to attract the power hungry, the cheats and lairs. I’m stating this simply so I can now say, I’ll continue to be a swinging voter, but Labor are off my list of option. They will always be last, even behind the Greens.
On another note. I’m involved in Aspergers and Autism as well, and I’m constantly disappointed in books written by experts who make statements based on their own interpretation, when all they have to do is ASK. I’m looking at you Dan Kahan, and Tony Attwood.
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Greg,
Thanks for your generosity in sharing your insight. My son, now 20 years of age, has very severe Autism. Although this umbrella diagnosis of Autism has a very broad range across a spectrum that IMHO covers a group of (rather than singular) behaviourally aligned illnesses, Ryan has the true low functioning textbook variation, with no ability to even chew his food (so lives on purée), can speak in one word commands or responses but seldom initiates communication, has poor receptive language, has no interactive social skills, and is fully dependent for clothing, bathing, toiletting, etc. He is a sweet and passive boy who will remain in perpetual babyhood till the day he dies. If I had a dollar for all the dud advice I received over the years I would be a millionaire.
I share your skepticism regarding the prognostications of experts, who often never allow a lack of knowledge stand in the way of having firm, often intransigent opinions. In fact, I would contend that the less that is known on a given subject, the firmer and more stubbornly those opinions are held. It is a cover for the embarrassment of not knowing, they find the acknowledgement of ignorance the most difficult task, and progress to better understanding and knowledge would be far quicker to resolve if people were a bit more humble, and a lot more honest in this regard.
I hope you and your family are coping well with the issues you continue daily to face.
120
My heart goes to both of you. I have autistic boy too. Fortunately not as a bad as your son Winston.
Yet I don,t believe in government support. I pay for everything myself. The best that government can help is to make these expenses tax deductible not provide grants that are open to fraud and overcharging.
60
Dariusz,
Thanks for your comment, Without wanting to speak for either of you, I think the fact that our children have such difficulties makes us more aware of just how egregious the waste of multiple billions of taxpayer dollars on pixie dust, pie-in-the-sky and fairies at the bottom of the garden really is.
I would also like to let you know how much I have appreciated your insights into growing up under the thumb and jackboot of Marxism in Eastern Europe as a recent addition to the blog. Your valuable contribution to the blog has been very welcome.
40
Props to you all. I too have a low-functioning autistic son and have taught many autistic children in my time as a high school teacher. Every single one of these children has been a joy to be around.
So little is understood about autism. If only a fraction of the billions wasted on the likes of Michael Mann’s ‘research’ had been spent on research into conditions such as autism I believe all our children would have been better off.
Right now, all we can do is give our children all the love we can.
40
One can never be sure beforehand of such critical decisions. But I think in this case I’ll take a risk, see what happens. I am high functioning Aspergers. While I have the usual sensory/perception issues, I can work with it or around it. I work in engineering as a day job, and have diploma’s in computer programming, engineering and music.
The best books I’ve found are written by Olga Begdashina.
And if you want an insight into Autism, Donna William’s books are excellent.
50
Following on from yesterday’s ‘interesting’ thread, the Left has it all over conservatives when it comes to PR; the Greens and the warming worriers more so when it comes to sceptics. One of the main reasons is because they keep their message simple and consistent (even if it’s wrong, it doesn’t matter). For example, all that is required is for the BOM to say that 2014 was the hottest on record. The counter is not vast quantities of data and long dissertations that very few will read or understand, what’s required is something simple from the outset such as:
BOM: 2014 was the hottest year on record
1. The BOM has got it Wrong (a simple message with a bit of rhyme)
2. The years A, B, C, D and E were hotter than 2014. (easy to understand what were the hottest years and how many)
3. The BOM is Wrong. (repeat message)
This is the simple, above the line, message that needs to be constantly repeated until the BOM starts to dispute this. The actual detail can all be contained in the below the line statements and evidence, but it also needs a synopsis without a lot of detail in-between. The same applies to all statements of impending catastrophe.
The following are ostensibly questions that will never be answered (there is no compulsion to answer them):
It doesn’t matter how knowledgeable one group is over the other, it’s the best message that gets across that matters. That’s one reason why people always get the government that they deserve.
100
It’s the first message to get the ink and air-time which counts.
After that, recognition and absorption is all downhill, where the hill closely
approximates a vertical cliff …
30
It’s always the person and NEVER the issue.
If you were to survey the same people you would find that ‘believers’ are much more responsive to peer pressure and much more prone to mentally masturbate – that is, to seek social rewards by advertising what they see as high-minded and virtuous beliefs. And that is why global warming has become a phenomenon of the Left, because those same weaknesses distinguish the Left (the New Left, not the Old Left) from well-adjusted, self-aware people.
60
This is not surprising.
I guess it’s the difference between trying to understand something to formulate ones own position versus taking the intellectually lazy road of appealing to a consensus.
40
Some sceptics have been studying and observing weather and climate for far longer than any alarmists.
It has been a passionate interest of mine for the past 60 years.
Anyone who has studied natural climate variability in the past has no silly illusion that recent changes are anything other than ordinary.
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Stephen
I have seen your posts before and I value your opinion.
I would like to ask you something that I have been afraid to ask before.
When the discussion concerns “climate change”, what climate are they discussing? It appears to be some sort of “world climate”.
The definition of “climate” is: “The meteorological conditions, including temperature, precipitation, and wind, that characteristically prevail in a particular region.”
In fact, until recently discussions of climate were in reference to the 26 categories established by Koppen and later expanded by Geiger.
So what is this “world climate” and how is it defined? Surely the climate of Dubai is different that that of McMurdo Base? Vladivostok has a different climate than Honolulu? What sort of algorithm could possibly draw them all together to represent a “world climate”. How would one attempt to measure such an entity? And remember, if you can’t measure it , you can’t tell whether it has changed or not. The answer is none. It is a nonsense. Regions that have a specific climate classifications can expand or contract, as you have been observing for 60 years. Perhaps, although I am unaware of it, comparison of a Koppen Geiger map from 1950 might illustrate that an entire region has jumped from one classification to another. If so, that is hardly the “climate change” most people seem to believe in.
This simply illustrates that “climate change” is just a misinterpretation of temperature change, since the other parameters of climate, being precipitation and wind, cannot possibly be taken into account. What is the “world precipitation”? What is the “world wind”?
Now, if all the discussion is about “temperature change”, then it is necessary to be able to measure it. Otherwise, how would we know if it changed? Is this some sort of “global average temperature”? Because if it is, it is just more nonsense. The concept of a “global average temperature” is thermodynamically and mathematically impossible. “Discussions on global warming often refer to ‘global temperature.’ Yet the concept is thermodynamically as well as mathematically an impossibility, says Bjarne Andresen, a professor at The Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, who has analyzed this topic in collaboration with professors Christopher Essex from University of Western Ontario and Ross McKitrick from University of Guelph, Canada.” In other words, it is all nonsense.
I want to use this logic with some warmists, but I am conscious of the concept Joanne has often repeated that it does the argument more harm than good to use a flase argument. However, I am simply arguing from the standpoint of the logic of Socrates.
61
You call them geologists and I am one of them.
20
In religion ‘believing’ is fine,
Like faith in matters divine,
But in science ‘believing’,
Is akin to deceiving,
And where skeptics are drawing the line.
200
I’ll bite my tongue and avoid a sarcastic remark about the 97%. But it’s no surprise.
50
It’s hard to say but if the paper is “Climate-Science Communication and the Measurement Problem” then this might be the link to the abstract where it indicates a draft can be downloaded: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2459057
20
nfw,
The paper being discussed is:
Kahan, Dan (2015) Expressive Rationality and Cultural Polarization: Theory and Evidence, Advances in Political Psychology, Vol 2
And it hasn’t been published yet.
Abe
20
“What gas do most scientists believe causes temperatures to rise?” The correct answer is not carbon dioxide; it is water vapor.
Climate modelers working with the IPCC believe that doubling CO2 by itself will only cause about 1C of temperature increase, but will increase the amount of water vapor to raise the temperature about 3C. That means water vapor will cause twice the warming of CO2.
30
The most important finding of Kahan’s previous studies is I think that people are more polarized the more science aware they become. I.e. the skeptics become more emphatically skeptical and loose believers become more emphatic supporters of the climate consensus. Because Kahan himself pins climate orthodoxy to an ‘absolute truth’, he cannot make much sense of this result, and comes up with the highly unlikely mental condition of ‘duality’, i.e. highly compartmentalized thinking of the science aware skeptics. See:
http://www.culturalcognition.net/blog/2014/8/19/what-exactly-is-going-on-in-their-heads-and-in-mine-explaini.html
Imo this is a dangerous step along the path of saying all these folks must be crazy.
His own bias blinds him to the real answer, which is that this type of polarization is in fact extremely common in society. Cultures enforce a consensus about the unknowable, and one merely has to acknowledge that CAGW is a culture for the bricks to fall into place. Hence the Consensus is a cultural construct and not a scientific truth. A detailed critique of Kahan’s analysis along these lines is at Climate Etc here:
http://judithcurry.com/2015/01/30/climate-psychologys-consensus-bias/
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Andy,
I read your post at Judith Curry’s blog on
Right off the bat I’d like to say that your article pegged all of the flaws in Kahan’s reasoning.
Although a bit long it was well worth the read. Then again, given how pervasive Kahans own confirmational bias is, I’m not sure making your critique any shorter would have done justice to task at hand.
If I may, there is one bit of constructive criticism I’d like to put forth. While I tend to agree with the overall conclusion that you came to, I’m convinced that if you replace the idea of culture with the more narrow concept of religion, your thesis would be much more on the mark. That’s not to say that there isn’t a culture that has been constructed around the AGW meme. But it wasn’t that culture that came up with AGW to prop itself up.
In a series of replies to daveandrews723, one of the commenters to your article, I listed some quotes by Tymothy Wirth, Maurice Strong, Ottman Edenhofer, and Christina Figueres. As you can see by their own words, the global warming meme is just a tool for the creation of a culture based on socialist principles.
These people, and others like them, use CAGW to scare people into becoming adherents to their new belief system thereby bringing them into the fold. The more adherents they get to join the congregation, the stronger and more able they are to spread their socialist culture.
Notwithstanding my observations here, I’m certain that skeptics everywhere will join me in thanking you for your excellent, in-depth rebuttal of Kahans logically flawed paper.
Abe
20
Thanks Just-A-Guy, and yes indeed one cannot meaningfully critique the huge and complex assemblage Kahan has built regarding climate change, in just a few words.
Regarding religions, these are just subsets of culture. So for instance there can be many shared attributes with CAGW (emotive drivers, canon of orthodox knowledge etc), and indeed the same underlying social mechanisms drive both. Yet there are clearly differences too (e.g. the central narratives in religions are almost always about deities and creation myth, this is clearly not the case for CAGW). The nearest I’ll go is that it’s a decent approximation to think of CAGW as a ‘secular religion’. Maybe we can meet at that 🙂
Regrading whether men (and women) drive the culture, or the culture drives *them*, which is what your comment regarding Maurice Strong et al amounts too I think, is an interesting question. The comparison with religions above provides a clue. Religions have developmental trajectories lasting millennia, which evolve in ways that none of the individual promoters within the trajectory could possibly have imagined. Hence to a large extent at least, religion is driving the men. On the other hand, any part of the trajectory is clearly influenced by the agenda of the more active individual promoters of the religion at any specific time (e.g. particular Popes etc). I suspect this is similar to wave-particle duality in physics; i.e. both propositions are simultaneously true, yet each solution is more emphasized depending upon how you look at the problem. This is easier to grasp if one understands that individuals are shaped by culture as they grow up, yet cultures also evolve to the needs of individuals because attracted individuals are their life-blood. It is a mutual entanglement; cultures and individuals egg each other on.
So returning to Maurice Strong et al, yes they have their personal agendas. But how were they so convinced of the need for those agendas in the first place? e.g. malthusian outcomes or other unlikely disasters. Why by negative memes from previous and overlapping (e.g. far left) cultural waves of course 🙂 Most mainstream cultures rehash many memes from older cultures, and CAGW is no exception to this. So these individuals are helping to drive a limited-time section of the trajectory, yet it was culture that inculcated these goals into them in the first place. Culture that came from (many) *other* people, not them, cultural memes with histories measured in centuries or sometimes millennia, some even longer (fear of climate is a constant in human development, probably stretching back to before we could even talk).
Bearing this in mind, I think it’s more productive to understand and combat the culture than its torch bearers. Few torch bearers will go down, and for every one that *is* brought down, a new one will always pop up to replace him/her. The real trick is to out evolve them; i.e. recruit more skeptics from the neutral pool than CAGW can recruit believers.
Thanks Just-A-Guy, and yes indeed one cannot meaningfully critique the huge and complex assemblage Kahan has built regarding climate change, in just a few words.
Regarding religions, these are just subsets of culture. So for instance there can be many shared attributes with CAGW (emotive drivers, canon of orthodox knowledge etc), and indeed the same underlying social mechanisms drive both. Yet there are clearly differences too (e.g. the central narratives in religions are almost always about deities and creation myth, this is clearly not the case for CAGW). The nearest I’ll go is that it’s a decent approximation to think of CAGW as a ‘secular religion’. Maybe we can meet at that 🙂
Regrading whether men (and women) drive the culture, or the culture drives *them*, which is what your comment regarding Maurice Strong et al amounts too I think, is an interesting question. The comparison with religions above provides a clue. Religions have developmental trajectories lasting millennia, which evolve in ways that none of the individual promoters within the trajectory could possibly have imagined. Hence to a large extent at least, religion is driving the men. On the other hand, any part of the trajectory is clearly influenced by the agenda of the more active individual promoters of the religion at any specific time (e.g. particular Popes etc). I suspect this is similar to wave-particle duality in physics; i.e. both propositions are simultaneously true, yet each solution is more emphasized depending upon how you look at the problem. This is easier to grasp if one understands that individuals are shaped by culture as they grow up, yet cultures also evolve to the needs of individuals because attracted individuals are their life-blood. It is a mutual entanglement; cultures and individuals egg each other on.
So returning to Maurice Strong et al, yes they have their personal agendas. But how were they so convinced of the need for those agendas in the first place? e.g. malthusian outcomes or other unlikely disasters. Why by negative memes from previous and overlapping (e.g. far left) cultural waves of course 🙂 Most mainstream cultures rehash many memes from older cultures, and CAGW is no exception to this. So these individuals are helping to drive a limited-time section of the trajectory, yet it was culture that inculcated these goals into them in the first place. Culture that came from (many) *other* people, not them, cultural memes with histories measured in centuries or sometimes millennia, some even longer (fear of climate is a constant in human development, probably stretching back to before we could even talk).
Bearing this in mind, I think it’s more productive to understand and combat the culture than its torch bearers. Few torch bearers will go down, and for every one that *is* brought down, a new one will always pop up to replace him/her. The real trick is to out evolve them; i.e. recruit more skeptics from the neutral pool than CAGW can recruit believers.
20
Sorry it printed twice for some reason. Maybe finger stutter…
00
Perhaps I can answer that for you. Strong grew up in Oak Lake Manitoba. The revolution in Russia at the turn of the century ignited an explosion of Marxist /Leninist sentiment in that part of the world. Hence the Winnipeg General Strike of 1919, in which Strong’s parents were deeply involved. Although this sort of movement died out during the 1920’s, it was not fully extinguished. Leading up to WWII, the Nazis were spreading their venom around the world, and one place where it began to take hold was in Winnipeg. Again, the Strongs were in the thick of it. Is it any wonder young Maurice grew up hating capitalism? His story is nearly a parallel with that of the POTUS. Young Maurice learned the strings to pull, and the organisations in which to pull them. When the Trudeau government, sympathetic towards Communism, pushed along by the Mar4xist New Democratic Party virtually nationalised the oil industry, who became the CEO of Petro-Canada? That would be Maurice Strong. After wreaking havoc in the oil industry, he garnered power in the UN, with his fingers deep into the pie of Agenda 21. I hope that is some help in answering your question.
40
Which gas causes the most warming?
Doug Cotton devotes a chapter of his book to a comparative study of average temperatures at locations around the Earth, which are matched for latitude and altitude but with differing rainfall. In every case the location with the wetter climate has lower maximum temperatures and lower average temperatures than the drier climate.
The night time minimums are generally higher in the wetter climate. That might be due to overnight cloud cover. However a cloud is not gas or vapour!
Doug Cotton is not the only person to publish a comparative location study like this. I can’t find the other one at present. The locations were different but the outcomes were the same.
Consequently, it seems that H2O, causes cooling of the Earth and not heating.
42
I have re-read Doug’s narrative find that I have misquoted him slightly.
To correct the record:
1. The comparative study was an appendix at the end of his book, not a chapter,
2. His method was to take 15 cities/towns in the southern hemisphere. All cities are located in the zone 16-24S. To correct for the variation of latitude, and hence insolation, only the hottest month of the year was considered, which turned out to be January (when the noon sun is directly overhead). Cites had to be more than 100km from the coast to minimise any local ocean effect. The Cities were divided into 3 groups, based on rainfall and the average minimum and maximum temperatures compared.
Both average maximum and average minimum temperatures were higher for the middle group than the wet group and higher for the dry group than the middle group. The average maximum temperatures were about 5 degrees cooler in the wet city group and the minimum temperatures were 2C cooler in the wet cities.
The following statement was not part of Doug’s study: “The night time minimums are generally higher in the wetter climate. That might be due to overnight cloud cover.” My memory was faulty there. My apologies to Doug.
20
A simple test in any general climate discussion with a ‘believer’ is mentioning Archimede’s Principle of Water Displacement.
In every, and I mean every climate discussion/debate I have ever had (I do not exaggerate) with a ‘believer’, when confronted with the question of Archimede’s principle, is met with a blank stare.
At this point, I remind them that I too, had forgotten this piece of science 101, only re-stumbling upon it when I decided to do more than listen to the politicians of all colours.
I also try to re-assure them I am not trying to prove I am smarter or anything, as I was just as amazed as they when the reality dawned on me.
Then I offer the alternative information of land ice melting, and that sea level will indeed rise if all this ice melts. No debate there.
But, I then ask them at what temperature does ice melt, also pointing out the average minus zero degree temperatures at the arctic poles.
You may have to prompt the answer for assurance, but, the unanimous response is agreement with me that the sea level scare is false, or, “Not gonna happen anytime soon.”
Sceptics knowing more?
I don’t think I know more, just bothered to enquire about something I thought I needed to forget.
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Handjive, hear hear!
Archimedes has always been my standard, and I agree totally with you about the blank stares, because that’s all I ever get also.
Then I even have to explain that as well, what it means, because it seems that when the time came to learn that at High School, probably first year high school science, it seems they learned it just enough to answer the (possible) question on the exam paper, and then, having done that, promptly forgot it.
Even then, it’s difficult to try and explain to them, how sea ice already floating in the Arctic Sea will not raise the World’s water levels at all if it all melted completely and totally.
Then they (nearly all of them) mention the Antarctic and how all that ice is on land, and they think that they have me on that point. Here, this is always the (now expected by me) diversion away from the embarrassment of having been shown up on Archimedes and the Arctic.
I ask them what the average Winter temperature for Antarctic is , and again blank stares. (Minus 40C to Minus 70C) I then ask them the average Summer Temperature when they all expect that ice to be melting, and again, blank stares. (Minus 15C to Minus 35C)
I then ask them what temperature that ice forms and above what temperature does ice melt, and some actually know that is at zero C.
So, even with the Summer temperatures colder than the ice melt temperature, the ice ….. over the land will never melt, and at Wilkes Land just the ice itself is 4,776 METRES thick, almost 5 KILOMETRES thick.
They then say (every one of them) that the ice at Antarctica does melt, because it is warmer at the periphery (they say edges) of Antarctica, and I agree with them, again asking what ice this is which is melting, and again, blank stares, every one of them. The Antarctic ice which is melting is (all of it) sea ice, and because of that, then Archimedes also applies here.
And after all of that, the stock reply from nearly every one of them is what would I know, as I’m not a climate scientist, and those climate scientists all say that the sea levels will rise if those two polar ice stocks melt.
It’s a very rare thing if I can make even one of them believe the most simple science that they themselves learned at high school.
They just do not believe a word I say.
The same applies when I tell them that burning one ton of coal produces (on average) 2.86 tons of CO2. The incredulous and astounded looks I get when I mention that are even greater than for Archimedes, and again, that is an application of first year high school science that every one of them was told about, and have promptly forgotten.
Tony.
120
Numbers – oh no. I’m no good at them. I’ll have to defer to the experts about that.
Worry and feeling good – yeh, I can do that.
30
Handjive,
A few weeks ago I was waiting on line at the supermarket when I overheard a discussion between a couple of 10 or 11 year olds. It went more or less like this:
At that point It dawned on me that the central issue is not just that the AGW adherent will appeal to authority when discussing the issues involved. And it’s not even because they are lazy, ignorant or even stupid. It’s because they believe that an appeal to authority, “my father says”, is actually the correct and appropriate way to receive and accumulate knowledge about the world around us. They don’t accept that a person can develop their own opinion through individual investigation and verification because they have been taught that people with training and degrees are the only ones that can inform them as to what the truth actually is.
When looking into the Common Core educational iniciatives being promulgated around the world, it was clear that the only core that was common to this program was the overwhelming focus on precisely this type of group-think.
The truth of the matter is that any intellectually mature adult will not accept some fact as being the gospel without applying their own reasoning abilities to that fact. And it doesn’t really matter how intelligent an individual is. The mature adult will mostly apply reasoning before acceptance.
The opposite is true of the adult who has not reached intellectual maturity. The sad thing is that they actually believe that they are right. They actually believe that they are intellectually mature. And because of this, any challenge to their consensus, “my father says”, is seen as denial.
This is all just an overview of my thinking over the last couple of weeks. My hypothesis is actually supported by a lot more that just that conversation quoted above. For now I’d appreciate yours an possibly other peoples opinions.
Abe
50
My experience on the green/left blogosphere is that they know nothing on the science and link to the SS bible.
80
speaking of religion and bibles in comments above –
from BBC last nite:
Pope Francis appoints 20 new cardinals: One of the new cardinals, Soane Patita Paini Mafia, hails from Tonga, a Pacific island where a tiny Catholic community of some 17,000 is threatened with losing its home because of climate change…
from AP’s Nicole Winfield today: One hails from Tonga, where climate change is threatening the very existence of the archipelago…
Tonga has never before had a cardinal, and Mafi’s concerns about climate change are very much in line with those of the pope, who is writing an encyclical on the environment that has already irked climate change deniers in his own church…
Daily Mail today: Mafi represents a region grappling with climate change, which is one of the major concerns of Pope Francis. In a recent interview with the Jesuit magazine America, Mafi spoke about the “permanent vulnerability” low-lying Pacific islands such as Tonga face from global warming.
Francis has said climate change is mostly man-made and is expected to lay out his call for greater stewardship of God’s creation in an upcoming encyclical that has elated environmentalists and alarmed climate change skeptics, including those within the church…
12 Feb: Reuters: Vatican mulling new department to tackle environmental issues
The Vatican is considering setting up an environmental think tank, a spokesman said on Thursday, which could influence the opinion of the world’s 1.2 billion Roman Catholics on such thorny issues as climate change…
“We see a growth in the awareness (of environmental problems) and in the importance of reflection, commitment, and study of environmental issues and their relation to social and human questions,” he told reporters at a briefing.
Pope Francis has said that man is destroying nature and betraying God’s calling to be stewards of creation.
Last month, he said he believed man was primarily responsible for climate change and he hoped a U.N. summit in Paris in November, due to agree a global pact to limit greenhouse gases, would take a courageous stand…
The pope’s keenly awaited encyclical, or message to the whole Church, on the environment is due in ***early summer…
http://in.reuters.com/article/2015/02/12/pope-environment-idINL5N0VM52420150212
***right in time for the Bonn Climate meeting, no doubt.
30
We always knew Climate Change was a religion – this just make it official.
60
This worship of the false prophet they call “The Science” is just mental masturbation. Treating a process as a figure of authority is absurd.
Since the pope (along with the bulk of mainstream religious officials) is ready to name people who do not submit to this new religion of the Church of Climatology as “deniers” I think it is time to label them “mental masturbaters”.
80
While I agree with the sentiment, I doubt the Pope will go with the “deniers” term. The media may imply this, but the Pope seems to be running in the “nonjudgmental” arena, possibly veering close to allowing his religion to lose its moral compass. This has happened before, and it will again. Unfortunately, religion can be hijacked as easily as science.
30
There is far more immediate danger from that erupting submarine volcano, then from any climate change.
20
deja vu. was this the same agenda Kahan was pursuing in 2012? remember, it is Yale.
May 2012: CarbonBrief: Ros Donald: Inaccuracy through two degrees of separation – Mail mangles science literacy findings by misreporting Fox
Mail Online mangles Fox report on Yale study
Lead researcher says difference between skeptic and non-skeptics’ science literacy is not statistically significant
According to the Mail Online yesterday, “Global warming sceptics are BETTER-informed about science than believers”. Pretty arresting. But a closer look at the article reveals that the Mail’s top line, reporting on research just out, mangles not just the study, but reporting on the findings by Fox News…
As we discussed earlier in the week, the study explores whether levels of science literacy among ordinary people or their unconscious tendency to fit their beliefs to those of their social and cultural groupings are the most accurate indicator of public concern about climate change.
The study finds finds that contrary to the first theory, the most scientifically-literate members of the public aren’t the most concerned about climate change. Instead the result fits much more closely with the second theory – surprisingly, science-savvy people tend to be even more polarised according to their social groupings than those less well-informed…
We emailed the lead author on the research, Dan Kahan, to find out where Fox got the information from in the first place. He told us:
“Who gets science more — the people who believe in climate change or those who don’t?” was a question people asked me periodically about the working paper. When they did, I sent them this graphic:…
http://www.carbonbrief.org/blog/2012/05/mail-mangles-science-literaacy-study-through-fox-news-slipup
2012: Nature: The polarizing impact of science literacy and numeracy on perceived climate change risks
by Dan M. Kahan, et al
Members of the public with the highest degrees of science literacy and technical reasoning capacity were not the most concerned about climate change. Rather, they were the ones among whom cultural polarization was greatest. This result suggests that public divisions over climate change stem not from the public’s incomprehension of science but from a distinctive conflict of interest: between the personal interest individuals have in forming beliefs in line with those held by others with whom they share close ties and the collective one they all share in making use of the best available science to promote common welfare…
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/v2/n10/full/nclimate1547.html
10
That is why I have written here on several occasions…”Reasoning with a warmist is futile.”
50
”Reasoning with a warmist is futile.”
That is true, because the propaganda has been immensely successful, but in Australia there is a solution.
We need to have a debate within the community on climate change and all that’s required is a sceptic in a revamped science ministry. The warmist media would scream with heightened intensity and vitriol, Dennis and Greg could come to logger heads and the matter would have to be resolved publicly.
The science is on our side, so all we need is a vocal politician to argue our case, “CO2 does not cause global warming.”
Does the PM have the bottle? Doubtful.
60
Professor Kahan’s papers seem to be freely accessible . from his web site.
Could it be this paper—the abstract looks like a possible hit. The paper is freely downloadable from the Download This Paper button on the lower right. I haven’t looked at it, yet, I’ve work to do on my motorbike and I’m running out of time.
Enjoy.
30
In a word, no.
10
LOL.
13 Feb: Yale Daily News: FFY postpones Global Divestment Day action
By Jed Finley and Larry Milstein
With the first-ever Global Divestment Day scheduled for this weekend, Fossil Free Yale looks to revive the campus push for divestment. But it remains unclear if, and when, their efforts will come to fruition.
In fact, the event, which was meant to be held on Saturday, has been postponed indefinitely. FFY Project Manager Mitch Barrows ’16 said the delay is due to unfavorable weather conditions and other logistical issues, including some cancellations from speakers and performance groups…
FROM THE COMMENTS:
Robert Strong: Sorry, Yale. Gotta cancel the Global Warming protest because it’s too cold outside…
Hipnosis: I hope these student are hunkered down in their fossil fuel heated homes. Let them freeze in the cold hugging a wind turbine. The Gore effect strikes again…
http://yaledailynews.com/blog/2015/02/13/with-global-event-ffy-to-broaden-focus/
13 Feb: Daily Caller: Michael Bastasch: It’s Too Cold To Protest Global Warming At Yale
As this reporter writes this article, the weather in New Haven, Connecticut where Yale is located stands at -9 degrees Fahrenheit with wind chill. Saturday is expected to have weather in the low 30s with snow and Sunday will be 20 degrees with snow and rain, according to the Weather Channel…
http://dailycaller.com/2015/02/13/its-too-cold-to-protest-global-warming-at-yale/
20
can’t recall anyone posting this in the comments:
17 Jan: East County Magazine: Miriam Raftery:
WIND TURBINE BURSTS INTO FLAMES IN OCOTILLO
A wind turbine at the Ocotillo Wind Energy Facility burst into flames on January 15th. East County Magazine photographer Jim Pelley, an Ocotillo resident, caught the incident on video…LINK
“There were no injuries,” Jeff Grappone from Siemens told ECM. An investigation is underway to determine the cause of the fire, he stated in an e-mail. The equipment impacted (six turbines on one circuit) has been de-energized, a safe perimeter established and the tower is being monitored continuously, he indicated…
Grappone did not respond to ECM’s inquiry asking whether the turbine contained a fire suppression system in the nacelle…
Park Ewing, another Ocotillo resident, voiced concern over whether toxins were released by the blaze.
This is not the first serious incident at the facility, where among other concerns, a multi-ton blade fell off in May 2013, as ECM reported…
The Ocotillo wind project, though it surrounds homes, is located in desert terrain where fire poses less of a hazard than in places with dense brush such as Campo, where a fire at the Kumeyaay Wind Farm in December 2013 sparked a brush fire that burned close to a home, panicking residents before it was extinguished. A prior explosion at that same facility in December 2010 results in replacement of all 25 turbines, which were off-line for months, as ECM reported. The Campo project was developed by Babcock and Brown, predecessor of Pattern Energy, which built Ocotillo…
Asked whether Siemens has had other fire issues at wind projects elsewhere, Grappone replied,
(VERY FEW – HOW IMPRECISE) “We have a strong fire resistance track record with very few isolated incidents affecting our global fleet of more than 6,800 of this type of turbine in operation.”…
ECM has reported on numerous wind turbine fires in Southern California and around the world…
An ECM reader’s poll back in 2012 found that 51% of readers would support a ban prohibiting industrial-scale wind turbines in wildfire-prone East County, while only 42% would oppose such a ban and 7% were not sure. That was before a spate of wind turbine fires in Southern California drew media attention in our area.
See our prior coverage on wind turbine fires: LINKS
http://www.eastcountymagazine.org/wind-turbine-bursts-flames-ocotillo
10
This situation with science is exactly the same problem I have when writing about all things associate with electrical power generation.
This site is virtually the only one where I am actually believed, and you don’t realise how heartening that is for me.
In fact, after less than a year or so from starting out, I was tempted to actually give up, not because of the flak I was getting, from everywhere I mentioned it, but the fact that I thought I may be wrong, because what I was saying was the absolute opposite of what everyone else was writing about.
Now, what that did was make me doubt what I was doing, and I spent literally Months looking for confirmation that I was correct, and trust me, I didn’t find it, and that disheartened me even more. However, all that searching of a myriad of sites did actually confirm (to me) that I was indeed correct.
What I wanted was not opinion sites, but the actual sites with real data, and in fact, every one of them confirmed that what I was writing about was in fact correct. Along the way, I learned to find the actual data, the methods used to cleverly disguise that data in a manner that the average punter would not understand, so the average non electrically trained reader would believe the blurb, and not attempt to decipher it into the real truth, while the entities proposing it could actually say, hand on heart that they included the whole truth and nothing but the truth, effectively hiding it in plain sight.
Hence, the average reader thought I was making it all up, and then came the usual retort ….. that I was only writing these lies to support a political point of view.
I can’t explain the real truth to people who do not wish to know those truths, because it goes against their belief structure, and as much as I detest referring to it as a belief structure, that is, in fact, what it actually is. They believe what they want to believe and anyone who goes against that is not only lying ….. flat out, but in fact, is a danger, and why I say that word danger is because I can deduce what they are thinking, and that thinking is along the lines of ….. say, what if he is right?
That’s why I’ve given up contributing to a lot of sites, because the only response from the get go was to flame me.
This is the ONLY site where people didn’t do that, the only site where people just asked more questions. Why? Because people did not know, and more importantly, those people really DID WANT TO KNOW, and they wanted it explained to them correctly, in a manner that they could understand.
Exactly the same thing applies with the Science of this climate change fiasco we are now deep inside.
This site has become a danger, not because it goes against what is being said everywhere else, but a danger because there’s every real chance that they think that we may just be right.
That’s why we get the flamers here, and how easy are they to notice now. Virtually every comment they leave is based only in derision, as they (think they) look down on us from (their perceived) height of knowledge.
There is a coterie of experts here at this site now who can handle what is thrown up, be it the Science or in other related areas.
Tony.
140
‘That’s why I’ve given up contributing to a lot of sites, because the only response from the get go was to flame me.’
You should hang in there a little longer and enjoy the moment of battle, until they throw you out in the street and lock the door. Know your enemy and take the abuse, the training will be invaluable in the larger battle ahead to convince the broader electorate who do not understand the science, that the sky is not falling.
50
Tony:
Keep it up.
Don’t stop.
Don’t let them get to you.
I, for one, have always read your posts. They’re informative and I like that.
What’s more, whenever I’ve wanted to check your figures and assertions, I’ve
been able to, and I like that even more.
Nil illegitimi carborundum. (since WWII 🙂 )
50
Don’t give up Tony. I always read your comments.
00
Another boat stuck in Antarctic ice that’s being towed out by a US icebreaker, , obviously the Koch Brothers are filming this on some movie set to fool the world into believing that burning evil fossil fuels don’t have a devastating impact on our fragile bio diversity, conspiracy I say!
Just writing that in jest made me feel queasy, I’ll have to lie down for a bit…
80
And to think we almost decommissioned it. For several years it was operated by the NSF with a Coast Guard crew.
30
Congrats Jo.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/02/14/a-new-book-in-which-i-have-a-chapter-climate-change-the-facts/
50
With the majority of temp stations in Urban areas it’s frightening to think they score 0 for quality.
https://www.wmo.int/pages/prog/gcos/Publications/gcos-34.pdf
go straight to e. population and values put on weather stations-
” urban warming is a phenomenon that the GSN would like to avoid, therefore more weight was given to rural or small towns.
The value they give to Urban stations is 0.
30
“No studies have looked… at why people switched”.
Ahem. There is now one published paper that has done this.
https://ipccreport.wordpress.com/2015/02/11/paper-on-climate-scepticism-published/
20
It’s an interesting paper. Takes them a few pages to get to the part where they realize that skeptics really do question the science, really do have scientific backgrounds and that the attitude at global warming advocate blogs drives people away, but they do finally get there. They are even very good about noting the limitations of their method. Now if the “science is problematic/wrong” would sink in, we might get somewhere. It seems so difficult for these people to understand that they are being questioned because they either don’t answer or the answer does not make scientific sense. If they just presented a clear, concise position and then defended it, if the science is right, there would be no need for skeptics.
30
This is probably relevant to this subject:
http://scottishsceptic.co.uk/2015/02/15/results-of-online-survey-of-participants-of-the-climate-debate-conducted-early-2014/
30
Skeptics like Michael Shirmer founder of the skeptical society and editor of skeptic magazine says Climate change is real, and I agree with him.
03
that’s an unfalsifiable banality though
00
denialists are even more unanimous on “climate change is real” than believalists
00
Skeptics from major “skeptical” groups go by consensus, not the science. They do not understand science, and in what appears to be a cover your behind move, appeal to “authority” in case things turn out to be psuedoscience, they are guiltless and the scientists are the problem. It’s why I ceased to read or support such groups. He is but a mouthpiece for those who believe in scientism, as indicated that the original cause for these type skeptics was to destroy religiion and occult and psychic phenomena. It fascinating that they now support that exact behaviour as scientific because their god—science— seems to promote lack of thought and proof by voting. Most skeptics of his type cannot tell you why the science is right or wrong—it’s based entirely on faith in science.
20
A question like “which of the following are produced by burning fossil fuels a)carbon b)water.” might have been more enlightening.
10
You’re being diplomatic.
This conceptual abortion is something to which science has had absolutely nothing to say in response for, oh, a couple hundred years now. And the last time any scientist in her right mind would have even ventured an “answer,” it would’ve been ‘phlogiston,’ which is false (at best).
That’s a marginally improvement. It’s arguably not such a category salad any more. Heck, it might even be empirically tractable except for one minor detail: it’s psychotically-premised. The scientists alive in 2015 do not, as a matter of contingent fact, believe in ANY gas capable of such a magic trick.
All this item tells me is that “liberals” are “more likely” to give a straight-faced response to a series of words no scientifically-literate person would have mistaken for English.
Nah, now I’m the one who’s being diplomatic. It’s not even that informative.
00
RB,
yes, your question would have been infinitely more enlightening—but to be pedantic, the principle verb (are) might need some attention.
00
Phlogistologists have kindly reminded me that just because something is an imaginary fluid, it doesn’t follow that it’s an imaginary gas.
It appears, then, that I was too generous to the survey question in question.
00
D’oh! I meant, of course,
I had no pejorative intention, I swear. Ask anyone—I’m the most inoffensive, PC guy ever, especially for a Mac guy.
It was an honest mistake. Actually, I lie. Spell-check is to blame.
I’ll need to update its dictionary. On a general note, it’s good practice for everyone to do so regularly. The dysphemism treadmill renders your lexicon out-of-date every 6 months or so.
00
What is the thing called, that converts you into a fire breathing dragon? 🙂
00
The climate debate.
00
God states in Job 41:15, 18-21:
“His strong scales are his pride, shut up as with a tight seal. . . . His sneezes [breathings] flash forth light, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning. Out of his mouth go burning torches; sparks of fire leap forth. Out of his nostrils smoke goes forth, as from a boiling pot and burning rushes. His breath kindles coals, and a flame goes forth from his mouth.”
Seems God,like you, is very good at “stating”! Forth is an interesting language. 🙂
00
Yes. God certainly had a way with the English language, didn’t he?
If he were alive today, however, I’m sure he would have gone into climate science, not propaganda.
Or perhaps even one of the lesser sciences, like chemistry.
Just think what he would have made of things like naphthenic and palmitic acid! The possibilities would have blown his mind.
02
Since God owns/created climate, your comment is nonsensical. Can’t really blow God’s mind either, though your chemistry statement is almost amuzing. Glad you have a new favorite word. Some people have very low entertainment threshholds, it seems. Does explain a lot about your comments here though. “Skeptics” that based their skepticism on religion are such worshippers of science. How quaint. How nonsensical…..
10
By the way Will—
I’ll have to check out that book sometime.
Embarrassing confession: somehow I had this idea that God was a one-hit wonder, like Salinger! How long ago did he come out of seclusion? Has he done any other post-Genesis stuff?
Gotta love the title too. (Is it just me, or does the word ‘Job’ immediately remind you of that Gob schmuck from Arrested Development?)
Anyway, I’ve officially got a new favorite word. Thanks Will!
Not to mention a great excuse to get rid of some dud tiles next time we’re playing Scrabble ’round the faculty lounge.
(Unfortunately there’s not much else to do during the long, dark Canberra winter. Sure, academic holidays are nice for the first couple of days, but by the 3rd or 4th month you’re just praying for the summer thaw to kick in already.)
Best of all it’s risk-free!
Climate scientists aren’t exactly known for their facility with words, so they’ll probably be too impressed by the 13-point score to quibble.
But it’s not even the end of the world if someone happens to say, “dude no proper nouns!”
I can just laugh innocently and pretend it was a test.
01
Brad states: “I’ll have to check out that book sometime.”
I have never seen the book! I was GOOOGILING “fire breathing dragon”.
Sheri should see what the slang version means!!! 🙂
Brad states: “Best of all it’s risk-free!”
Now that’s a fun game! The climateers take auf der Ganzen Welt, “with enough armies”!
Napalm is derived from the words naphthenic acid and palmitic acid. Do not try this at home!
00
Will: I knew what the naphthenic acid and palmitic acid were. The slang version of “fire breathing dragon” comes up first on Google. 🙂
00
The slang is for giggles and embarrassment.
Napalm and historic “fire breathing dragons” may or may not be giggles. 😉
00
Will,
there’re still some holes in your alibi—we’re no closer to knowing how those 3 words in that order comprising that rather specific term of art (let’s say) entered your mind to Google it in the first place. After all you appear to be the first person to use it in this thread.
Is there something you’d like to tell us, Will? There’s no judgement here. ;-D
B
01
Your answer to my question of your use particular use of the language, of course!
Will Janoschka February 18, 2015 at 3:54 pm
“What is the thing called, that converts you into a fire breathing dragon? 🙂 ”
Brad Keyes February 18, 2015 at 6:33 pm
“The climate debate.”
I was just looking for some relationship! This is all your fault!!! Have you abandoned Nuremberg?
“Is there something you’d like to tell us, Will? There’s no judgement here. ;-D
“Not a valid smiley””
Ah! Stating without judgment, do you give lessons? There are many things “I” would like to state of this current physical, most ending in “and a half”. JoAnne would snip all of them! 🙂
11
Brad, Would you correctly parse the following, with suggestion as to better accuracy? Thank you 🙂
“Climate may be described as the variance, but never the average, in weather at any location over time! Ask any Realtor! Therefore: Climate never changes! 😉 “
01
Noting: “Antarctic ice melting, however, would increase sea levels because much of it rests on land.”
???
Is there more sea ice in the Northern polar region than the Southern polar region? What are the quantities?
00
There is more sea ice, in the Northern polar region in February, “and” in the Southern polar region in August.
What are the quantities?
Go ask a Climate Clown, they know everything! 🙂
01
Ted O’Brian.,
Try this google search:
How much sea ice is there in each of the polar regions?
Yes, you can type a question into the google search box in plain English and and get good results almost always.
Enjoy.
Abe
00
I don’t know if the weather’s changing, but the terminology sure as hell is: global warming, sorry, climate change, woops…I meant extreme weather…heck, better make that climate disruption.
10
Hi. I am the study author.
In fact, the study doesn’t say skeptics know more … it says the more people know about climate, the more polarized they are (also that “do you believe in climate change” doesn’t measuring anything related to science knowledge– it measures only partisan identity).
That still might surprise a lot of folks. Indeed, I think that finding still fits the position of the blog post here. I don’t have that position myself but people obviously are entitled to form their own judgment about the significance of the findings; only thing that is important (for me, in this context) is that the findings be correctly characterized! (I think the headline in Fox story was actually much more objectionable than anything in the reporter’s story, which certaintly got the basics correct; there was one guy who made a fool of himself by commenting on study w/o reading it, of course!)
If one looks at how much “skeptics” & “believers” know on average, the answer is pretty close to zilch… Both did little better than coin toss on the batter of true-false questions.
There wasn’t a press release. In fact, the study was only “published” today. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/pops.12244/abstract
Fox story was based on a preprint, which is available here http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2459057
The preprint is not materially differet from study & has advantage of not being behind paywall
23
“If one looks at how much “skeptics” & “believers” know on average, the answer is pretty close to zilch… Both did little better than coin toss on the batter of true-false questions.”
Just who gets to decide how a true/false answer relates to knowledge? You have no findings, only nonsense.
41
Dan Kahan,
I’ve been putting off responding to your comments here because I wasn’t sure whether to give you a gentle nudge or a hard shove. In the end, I’ve decided to just point out the basic fallacy in your research’s conclusions and let you, and the readers, decide which of two you’ve received.
You state here that . . .
and in the paper you state that this is because . . .
An accurate summary of your hypothesis, would’t you agree?
Then you go on to conclude that . . .
So my question to you is, if every individual utilizes their reasoning skills in this way, then that must include you too, Dan, isn’t that correct? And, following your line of reasoning, if you yourself are biased in your apprehension of the science, then your conclusions from this research must also be biased as evidenced by your own statements. Agreed?
That being the case, then there’s really no reason for any one to take your conclusions as having any degree of veracity. They must be biased. . .
10
. . .Furthermore, you, Dan, can’t say that you yourself are somehow immune to this bias, because if that were the case then surely there are others who are also immune to this bias. Where are these other people in your study? Isn’t that the control group you would need to verify that your conclusions are correct? Without this control group, any thing that a skeptic says about climate science can be dismissed as biased making your research unfalsifiable. i.e. not science.
You claim in your paper that you adhere to this concept of falsifiability by quoting Popper.
From the pre-print of your paper . . .
Rather, science treats as facts those propositions worthy of being believed on the basis of evidence that meets science’s distinctive criteria of validity. from science’s point of view, moreover, it is well understood that what today is appropriately regarded as a “fact” might not be regarded as such tomorrow: people who use science’s way of knowing continually revise their current beliefs about how the universe works to reflect the accumulation of new, valid evidence (Popper, 1959)
Abe
10
Final note, Dan,
There’s this thing called Occam’s razor. Have you heard of this?
It states that given two competing explanations for a given phenomenon, the simpler of the two is most likely to be true.
In the case of climate change skepticism, the simpler of the two explanations, that is, that skeptics have a reasonable case based on the actual science, is more likely true, than the more complex explanation that somehow a person’s defense of their self image within a social group will cloud their acceptance of true scientific knowledge.
Abe
00
Abe, it’ll be interesting to hear what Dan has to say. I’ve done a similar twist on warmists that toss out Dunning-Kruger as an insult when in fact DK afflicts everyone (if you trust the DK paper) Seldom do those warmists admit it but the DK paper is clear about it and that makes pointing it out to them even more delicious.
Dan’s paper is so biased that the only thing it demonstrates to me (>95% confidence) is that the Left thinking brain is mush and the Right thinking brain still mostly works. The reason that increasing numbers of people are skeptical is because so much being thrown at them is just plain wrong. The never ending list including the “97%” Cook paper, the weather event of the day, the situation with Polar Bears, coastal inundation from sea level rise, global ice, virtually everything said has not happened or can’t be distinguished from error margins or natural changes outside of man’s reach.
I’m more interested in why Dan felt the need to explore this. He has some interesting points though clearly to me the whole issue of Global Warming is political. There wouldn’t be a need for his paper if that weren’t true. The obvious Elephant in the room is that the Right RECOGNIZE that it IS the political left attempting to re-work the socio-economic globe even toss out democracy to get there. The Right would prefer that they F-off. The Left wrongly believe that it is everything Right that is wrong in the world. They believe in conspiracies from Big Business, Big Oil, Big Whatever. Yet it is exactly Big Eco, Big Green, Big Government, Big Control, that IS doing the conspiring.
PS Dan Kahan, free edit advice: on page 18 the cartoon “beakers” you mention are actually Erlenmyer FLASKS not beakers. I’m sure people in the real science world will know the difference.
10
Mark D.,
Thanks for pointing me to Dunning-Kruger. As I was reading yout comment I was thinking to myself, “Great! Now I have a reference to support my critique of Dan’s paper.” But then I went to verify if that was the case. Unfortunately, the DK Effect is not what my response was aiming at.
As an example, there used to be this philosopher, Kant maybe, that claimed that everything that we experience is just an illusion in our minds. Over the years I always wondered why so many ppl wrote about this and analized it and disected it . . .
. . . when the concept is just a logical error. (I won’t give away which specific logical error just yet, in case Dan decides to reply, although I believe he won’t.) The response to this error is fairly rational and simple enough that a high schooler can understand it.
The answer is that if, according to them, everything is just an illusion in ppl’s minds then, they must be an illusion in our minds, and so is anything they say. So why should we take them, or what they have to say, seriously?
Can you see the difference between this and DK?
Applying this to Dan Kahan, he claims that his paper proves that:
All ppl have a bias. (see his paper)
Dan Kahan is a person.
If all ppl have a bias then Dan Kahan has a bias.
Therefore we can ignore his biased paper.
OTOH . . .
All ppl have a bias. (see his paper)
Dan Kahan is a person.
Dan Kahan is not biased.
If Dan Kahan is not biased then all ppl are not biased.
Therefore we can ignore his false paper.
The reason I don’t believe he will reply is because of the open and shut case of the faulty logic. There is nothing he could say that doesn’t fall into one or the other of these two possibilities.
Truth be told, Dan did leave himself an out. He states that the bias can be removed like it was with evolution. And, admittedly, the split between evolutionists and creationists is around 70 – 30 respectively, while AGW has about an even split between adherents and skeptics.
It would be naive of Dan to go this route because if we accept that the bias has been removed from belief in evolution, then he must explain all the hold outs. Thirty percent represents millions of ppl.
If he does go this route, then there’s a clear, simple and rational way to disprove his paper anyway. But let’s not get ahead of ouselves. Like I said, I don’t think he’ll even show. 😉
Abe
10
Hi, Will. There’s nothing straightforward about designing a valid “assessment” test — on in nature, say, of SAT — on any subject. But basic techniques that inform designing, validating, & scoring “assessments” of that sort informed the “climate science literacy” test. Details in the paper. Obvioulsy, readers have to decide for self, using own judgment, if results the test supports any inferences about likely understands basic mechanisms. Still, I would say that if someone things that CO2 is a “green house gas” but think also CO2 asphyxiates plants by making it impossible for them to engage in photosynthesis, then it’s not that big a stretch to conclude that don’t get basics of climate science.
02
Has anyone tried addressing climate change belief without the political party questions? Those are based on a pre-conceived idea that you set out to prove already having decided the answer. I seriously doubt any researchers ever find to the contrary. It really shows nothing. Looking at internal versus external orientations, ability to think scientifically (NOT answer rediculously naive survey questions—as WHY they don’t believe in evolution. I suspect you’d be surprised. This is a personality trait—trusting in authority, believing in thinking for one’s self, demanding high levels of logical proofs, etc. Try presenting the theory itself in pieces, see who agrees and disagrees and why. Forget the political party—it means nothing.
10
Sheri,
You’re absolutely right, Sheri. You can see the pre-determined outcome is built into the whole paper. For example, he uses the word apprehension of knowledge rather than comprehension. He’s already convinced from the outset that people don’t weigh the evidence fairly and his results show this confirmational bias at work. (there are other examples).
Psycholgists call this projection. Dan Kahan views the world through his own personal lense and so, he believes that everyone else must be the same way too.
Abe
00
I am inclined to say some rather rude things here.
What is climate change? Mr Kahan.
Define your terms,as belief in climate change is universal where as buy in to the Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming meme, AKA Climate Change(while meaning CAGW) is not.
Climate changes, the evidence is nearly impossible to ignore, except by pseudo scientists.
As for scientific knowledge, what standard would a political lackey use to grade other persons understanding of a subject they demonstrate utter ignorance of?
Exactly how does a social studies “graduate” become an expert on the scientific method?
As for the magic gas delusions from your fellow travellers of the Cult of Calamitous Climate.. If CO2 causes the planet to warm, when will you people produce some empirical science to substantiate your claims?
Where for is my global warming?
What caused the last ice age?
And the recovery there from?
Monkeys with flatulence?
10