5 ms·

Sadly Brian Cox stepped into the common pitfalls (like mentioning "consensus") when arguing with climate sceptics. You can shut down any climate sceptic with tw

by sprash 10y ago

Sadly Brian Cox stepped into the common pitfalls (like mentioning "consensus") when arguing with climate sceptics. You can shut down any climate sceptic with two points which can be easily measured and verified in any laboratory: * We know the absorption spectrum of the CO2 molecule to be true * We know the first law of thermodynamics to be true Hence global warming. Finished. Arguments like the fact that some models can not accurately predict the exact amount of heat oceans can absorb or that the NASA data might be biased are suddenly irrelevant.

ocschwar 10y ago
Not quite. There's still the matter of the Callendar effect: CO2 increases. -> World warms a litte. -> Baseline level of water vapor in the atmosphere increases. -> water warms a little more. -> Baseline level of water level... That's where computer modeling becomes important.
reitanqild 10y ago
As a former more than sceptic: The first sentence is spot on. Sadly (or not, I'll come back to that) I think the rest is a misunderstanding: These two points are easy. What you are arguing against is people like my former self who accepts measurable physics but find (found) the A of AGW thing fishy for other reasons: * The broad push that seems to come from non-scientists. * No mention about how much of the annual CO2 releases are anthropogenic vs coming from other sources. * Any question, however reasonable, get shouted down with "consensus", "denialist", "troll", "shill" etc etc. It was only when I started reading the actual report that I got a more enlightened (hopefully) look at it. All this shouting and bullying does little good and is basically collecting sheep and preaching for the choir IMO. Now the good part is I think a lot of us aren't evil, trollish shills paid by big oil, we just had a strong false positive on on BS detectors, asked and have been flamed ever since. (Full disclosure: not pushing AGW hard myself but it seems reasonable to assume it is correct and take action to reduce anyway. It also aligns with things I already do because I find them smart anyway like trying to conserve energy by using public transit (oil independence, economic reasons, can work on my way to work), recycle(reduce need for mining, conserve energy, pollute less) etc etc.)
- humanrebar 10y ago
  This is more or less where I'm at as well, except my BS detector is still going off. > it seems reasonable to assume it is correct and take action to reduce anyway I'm not sure there's any reason here. There's no empirical evidence that any palatable recourse will actually stop or reverse global warming. It's good science (as far as I can tell) up until we get the the "What now?" question. Someone having good proof of a problem does not make them qualified to rearrange entire industries, slow down global growth (when we already have widespread stagnation and growing unrest in the West), and spend trillions and trillions of dollars on things that might not even help. The inability to predict climate at a useful granularity certainly doesn't help. It means attempts to address greenhouse gas levels won't objectively succeed or fail. The fact that AGW proponents do not acknowledge these difficulties is what sets off my BS detector.
  - XorNot 10y ago
    People who argue we should do nothing though have a sticky moral quandry: if you can show evidence of something bad happening (and there's a lot, and plenty more to come) then you have to argue that these are all acceptable losses. Which tends to open more sticky questions like refugee policy, or just how many you're willing to let die in famine from drought, and so where should the aid budget of the biggest, highest emitting countries be allocated. EDIT: For example, what should our policy on disappearing pacific island nations be? What should our military posture be if we can expect more divergence from established geopolitical norms by extremized climate conditions? How much should be banked to deal with the increased major climate events per decade, compared to historical norms (aka how frequently is a katrina scale hurricane expected to make landfall going forward?) Turns out, once you start adding up those costs, we don't really want to pay for any of them, but it would also just be morally repugnant to suggest that, really, abandoning the poor of coastal cities is what we want to do. Don't worry, we'll pray really hard and donate far less then <10% of our yearly incomes to help when it happens. But only while it's in the news.
    - humanrebar 10y ago
      Those are all interesting and terrifying scenarios, but there's no science showing cap-and-trade or particular levels of carbon taxes will produce better outcomes. If they're both dead-end approaches, we need to focus even more on less obvious solutions or building up infrastructures and organizations to deal with the consequences. Pouring more good resources after bad in those cases will only make us less likely to be able to help refugees, build better levees, etc.
bcraven 10y ago
May I suggest a third point on your list? * All that coal and oil wasn't going to burn itself!
- mkj 10y ago
  Yes! Calculate 1 trillion barrels of oil divided by Earth's surface area and it's hard to say it won't change something. (1 trillion barrels being rough consumption to date)
  - reitanqild 10y ago
    This is the kind of facts we need more of: * estimates on how many kgs of oil, coal and gas have been used, by year. * estimates on how many kgs of CO2 each one contributes with when used. * How many kgs of CO2 are estimated to be in the atmosphere. * etc Sadly AGW proponents here and on Ars never seems to want to discuss these numbers rather than rather unscientific things like how many scientists signed the latest report. Edit: and let me add before someone else does, sceptics are mostly equally bad at this.
alvah 10y ago
Not really (though your desire to "shut down" dissenting views speaks of something other than science). Most skeptics accept the well-known ability of CO2 to absorb heat. What many are skeptical of is the Mann-made disaster associated with warming, the political skullduggery involved in the hockey-stick graph, the denial of the impact urban heat islands have on the surface temperature record, and the fact that the solutions called for conveniently intersect with the desires of many on the left of the political spectrum (higher taxes, co-ordinated international action etc).
- Nursie 10y ago
  These 'concerns' are all the 'skeptics' are left with after decades of outright nonsense has been overturned. Climate science skepticism is akin to creationism at this point.
  - alvah 10y ago
    Nice hand-wave
    - Nursie 10y ago
      You say you accept the science but are still skeptical due to some vague, ill defined nonsense, and you have the cheek to accuse me of handwaving? Wow.
      - alvah 10y ago
        So pointing out -the deceptive conduct of several prominent scientists, both around the hockey stick graph and the cover-up since it was published -the discrepancies between temperatures recorded by satellites and surface stations -the convenience to one side of politics of an upcoming huge cataclysmic event requiring massive government intervention is cheek / vague, ill-defined nonsense / akin to creationism? Right. It truly is impossible to have a rational debate in public on this subject.
        10y ago
adam-a 10y ago
I would love to read some accessible information on this - how the models can be so trustworthy. I sort of reluctantly accept climate change, and I generally support environmentally positive politics, for a host of reasons. But when I see graphs like this[1] from the IPCC I can't help but think that predicting 100 years in the future from 100 years of data is never going to be very reliable. What kind of validation have these models had? Surely they are not just fitted to the past 100 years? 1: https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-spm-5.html https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-...
- akuchling 10y ago
  A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming is a history of climate models and data, published by MIT Press. https://www.amazon.com/Vast-Machine-Computer-Politics-Infrastructures/dp/0262518635/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471439919&sr=8-1&keywords=a+vast+machine https://www.amazon.com/Vast-Machine-Computer-Politics-Infras...
- JoBrad 10y ago
  This is a great site that has links to outside resources. https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
sevenless 10y ago
There is no point in making any 'case' about climate, because it is not a matter which can be resolved by argument. Some people believe in global warming, others don't. That's all there is to it. It is not a matter of science. Why not? Because it is not accepted as a matter of science, by those who don't think it is a matter of science. It is not a matter of evidence. Why not? Because there is no universally accepted evidence. Attitudes to global warming are irreducible essential beliefs, and therefore not amenable to any form of argument.
- Nursie 10y ago
  This is nonsense, years of scientific evidence and argument have overturned a lot of 'denialist' canards and made acceptance of the science much more widespread, including getting most western governments on board with it to various extents. Those with a religious zeal (in either direction) are a minority.
  - sevenless 10y ago
    Climate change is an ideology. Terms like 'denialist' and 'warmist' indicate the ideological nature of the climate change issue. When people say: "global temperatures are rising" they usually mean they advocate certain state intervention, such as higher taxes on fuels. On the other side, most denialists advocate a free-market economy, less immigration, and a strong traditional national identity. None of these issues are related to the temperature of sea water, or the extent of ice-caps, or any other natural phenomena. If you look at what is in fact done with the climate change issue, you see it primarily used to promote 'green' products. So it is not a 'left-wing' or 'progressive' factor, except in the eyes of right-wing conspiracy theorists. Its most specific use is to promote the nuclear power industry, which is hardly a leftist plot. It is not used to reduce carbon emissions, because no government has a policy to do that. They say they do, at the Copenhagen conference for instance - but then western leaders also regularly say that they will give hundreds of billions to the poor in Africa. Easy, if you never have to pay. Absolute cynicism is the only way to treat the whole climate circus - the scientists, the politicians, the so-called environmental groups who seek nothing but finance for their own existence, the denialists. The right thing to do is to turn your back on all of them.
frobozz 10y ago
That doesn't work. You haven't mentioned anything about how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere and how it got there, and when. Just because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it doesn't mean it is _the_ greenhouse gas, or even the main climate change culprit. Some climate change deniers are specifically anthropogenic climate change deniers. They don't argue against climate change happening, just against the idea that it has anything to do with human activity. Given that CO2 is soluble, the Ocean absorption question remains. One could still also claim that data on the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has been fabricated to fit the temperature data (or the other way around). Historic values can't be independently measured and verified. The closest you can get to that is looking at a variety of independent sources, and checking whether they correspond. That won't convince someone who believes that the so-called independent sources are in cahoots, or innocently republishing one another's results.
gus_massa 10y ago
That easy explanation put you clearly in the skeptic/denialist field :). The problem is that the real increase of the temperature is different because the changes in the CO2 level produce changes in other things (like the water vapor concentration, the size of the polar ice shields, ...) So you have to multiply it by a coefficient that is very difficult to calculate analytically and it's only possible to make models and estimate it using simulations. Something like 3 times the easy model. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity >* As estimated by the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) "there is high confidence that ECS is extremely unlikely less than 1°C and medium confidence that the ECS [equilibrium climate sensitivity] is likely between 1.5°C and 4.5°C and very unlikely greater than 6°C."

by sprash 10y ago

ocschwar 10y ago

Not quite. There's still the matter of the Callendar effect: CO2 increases. -> World warms a litte. -> Baseline level of water vapor in the atmosphere increases. -> water warms a little more. -> Baseline level of water level... That's where computer modeling becomes important.

reitanqild 10y ago

As a former more than sceptic: The first sentence is spot on. Sadly (or not, I'll come back to that) I think the rest is a misunderstanding: These two points are easy. What you are arguing against is people like my former self who accepts measurable physics but find (found) the A of AGW thing fishy for other reasons: * The broad push that seems to come from non-scientists. * No mention about how much of the annual CO2 releases are anthropogenic vs coming from other sources. * Any question, however reasonable, get shouted down with "consensus", "denialist", "troll", "shill" etc etc. It was only when I started reading the actual report that I got a more enlightened (hopefully) look at it. All this shouting and bullying does little good and is basically collecting sheep and preaching for the choir IMO. Now the good part is I think a lot of us aren't evil, trollish shills paid by big oil, we just had a strong false positive on on BS detectors, asked and have been flamed ever since. (Full disclosure: not pushing AGW hard myself but it seems reasonable to assume it is correct and take action to reduce anyway. It also aligns with things I already do because I find them smart anyway like trying to conserve energy by using public transit (oil independence, economic reasons, can work on my way to work), recycle(reduce need for mining, conserve energy, pollute less) etc etc.)

humanrebar 10y ago
This is more or less where I'm at as well, except my BS detector is still going off. > it seems reasonable to assume it is correct and take action to reduce anyway I'm not sure there's any reason here. There's no empirical evidence that any palatable recourse will actually stop or reverse global warming. It's good science (as far as I can tell) up until we get the the "What now?" question. Someone having good proof of a problem does not make them qualified to rearrange entire industries, slow down global growth (when we already have widespread stagnation and growing unrest in the West), and spend trillions and trillions of dollars on things that might not even help. The inability to predict climate at a useful granularity certainly doesn't help. It means attempts to address greenhouse gas levels won't objectively succeed or fail. The fact that AGW proponents do not acknowledge these difficulties is what sets off my BS detector.
- XorNot 10y ago
  People who argue we should do nothing though have a sticky moral quandry: if you can show evidence of something bad happening (and there's a lot, and plenty more to come) then you have to argue that these are all acceptable losses. Which tends to open more sticky questions like refugee policy, or just how many you're willing to let die in famine from drought, and so where should the aid budget of the biggest, highest emitting countries be allocated. EDIT: For example, what should our policy on disappearing pacific island nations be? What should our military posture be if we can expect more divergence from established geopolitical norms by extremized climate conditions? How much should be banked to deal with the increased major climate events per decade, compared to historical norms (aka how frequently is a katrina scale hurricane expected to make landfall going forward?) Turns out, once you start adding up those costs, we don't really want to pay for any of them, but it would also just be morally repugnant to suggest that, really, abandoning the poor of coastal cities is what we want to do. Don't worry, we'll pray really hard and donate far less then <10% of our yearly incomes to help when it happens. But only while it's in the news.
  - humanrebar 10y ago
    Those are all interesting and terrifying scenarios, but there's no science showing cap-and-trade or particular levels of carbon taxes will produce better outcomes. If they're both dead-end approaches, we need to focus even more on less obvious solutions or building up infrastructures and organizations to deal with the consequences. Pouring more good resources after bad in those cases will only make us less likely to be able to help refugees, build better levees, etc.

bcraven 10y ago

May I suggest a third point on your list? * All that coal and oil wasn't going to burn itself!

mkj 10y ago
Yes! Calculate 1 trillion barrels of oil divided by Earth's surface area and it's hard to say it won't change something. (1 trillion barrels being rough consumption to date)
- reitanqild 10y ago
  This is the kind of facts we need more of: * estimates on how many kgs of oil, coal and gas have been used, by year. * estimates on how many kgs of CO2 each one contributes with when used. * How many kgs of CO2 are estimated to be in the atmosphere. * etc Sadly AGW proponents here and on Ars never seems to want to discuss these numbers rather than rather unscientific things like how many scientists signed the latest report. Edit: and let me add before someone else does, sceptics are mostly equally bad at this.

alvah 10y ago

Not really (though your desire to "shut down" dissenting views speaks of something other than science). Most skeptics accept the well-known ability of CO2 to absorb heat. What many are skeptical of is the Mann-made disaster associated with warming, the political skullduggery involved in the hockey-stick graph, the denial of the impact urban heat islands have on the surface temperature record, and the fact that the solutions called for conveniently intersect with the desires of many on the left of the political spectrum (higher taxes, co-ordinated international action etc).

Nursie 10y ago
These 'concerns' are all the 'skeptics' are left with after decades of outright nonsense has been overturned. Climate science skepticism is akin to creationism at this point.
- alvah 10y ago
  Nice hand-wave
  - Nursie 10y ago
    You say you accept the science but are still skeptical due to some vague, ill defined nonsense, and you have the cheek to accuse me of handwaving? Wow.
    - alvah 10y ago
      So pointing out -the deceptive conduct of several prominent scientists, both around the hockey stick graph and the cover-up since it was published -the discrepancies between temperatures recorded by satellites and surface stations -the convenience to one side of politics of an upcoming huge cataclysmic event requiring massive government intervention is cheek / vague, ill-defined nonsense / akin to creationism? Right. It truly is impossible to have a rational debate in public on this subject.
      - 10y ago

adam-a 10y ago

I would love to read some accessible information on this - how the models can be so trustworthy. I sort of reluctantly accept climate change, and I generally support environmentally positive politics, for a host of reasons. But when I see graphs like this[1] from the IPCC I can't help but think that predicting 100 years in the future from 100 years of data is never going to be very reliable. What kind of validation have these models had? Surely they are not just fitted to the past 100 years? 1: https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-spm-5.html https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-...

akuchling 10y ago
A Vast Machine: Computer Models, Climate Data, and the Politics of Global Warming is a history of climate models and data, published by MIT Press. https://www.amazon.com/Vast-Machine-Computer-Politics-Infrastructures/dp/0262518635/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471439919&sr=8-1&keywords=a+vast+machine https://www.amazon.com/Vast-Machine-Computer-Politics-Infras...
JoBrad 10y ago
This is a great site that has links to outside resources. https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php https://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php

sevenless 10y ago

There is no point in making any 'case' about climate, because it is not a matter which can be resolved by argument. Some people believe in global warming, others don't. That's all there is to it. It is not a matter of science. Why not? Because it is not accepted as a matter of science, by those who don't think it is a matter of science. It is not a matter of evidence. Why not? Because there is no universally accepted evidence. Attitudes to global warming are irreducible essential beliefs, and therefore not amenable to any form of argument.

Nursie 10y ago
This is nonsense, years of scientific evidence and argument have overturned a lot of 'denialist' canards and made acceptance of the science much more widespread, including getting most western governments on board with it to various extents. Those with a religious zeal (in either direction) are a minority.
- sevenless 10y ago
  Climate change is an ideology. Terms like 'denialist' and 'warmist' indicate the ideological nature of the climate change issue. When people say: "global temperatures are rising" they usually mean they advocate certain state intervention, such as higher taxes on fuels. On the other side, most denialists advocate a free-market economy, less immigration, and a strong traditional national identity. None of these issues are related to the temperature of sea water, or the extent of ice-caps, or any other natural phenomena. If you look at what is in fact done with the climate change issue, you see it primarily used to promote 'green' products. So it is not a 'left-wing' or 'progressive' factor, except in the eyes of right-wing conspiracy theorists. Its most specific use is to promote the nuclear power industry, which is hardly a leftist plot. It is not used to reduce carbon emissions, because no government has a policy to do that. They say they do, at the Copenhagen conference for instance - but then western leaders also regularly say that they will give hundreds of billions to the poor in Africa. Easy, if you never have to pay. Absolute cynicism is the only way to treat the whole climate circus - the scientists, the politicians, the so-called environmental groups who seek nothing but finance for their own existence, the denialists. The right thing to do is to turn your back on all of them.

frobozz 10y ago

That doesn't work. You haven't mentioned anything about how much CO2 there is in the atmosphere and how it got there, and when. Just because CO2 is a greenhouse gas, it doesn't mean it is _the_ greenhouse gas, or even the main climate change culprit. Some climate change deniers are specifically anthropogenic climate change deniers. They don't argue against climate change happening, just against the idea that it has anything to do with human activity. Given that CO2 is soluble, the Ocean absorption question remains. One could still also claim that data on the atmospheric concentration of CO2 has been fabricated to fit the temperature data (or the other way around). Historic values can't be independently measured and verified. The closest you can get to that is looking at a variety of independent sources, and checking whether they correspond. That won't convince someone who believes that the so-called independent sources are in cahoots, or innocently republishing one another's results.

gus_massa 10y ago

That easy explanation put you clearly in the skeptic/denialist field :). The problem is that the real increase of the temperature is different because the changes in the CO2 level produce changes in other things (like the water vapor concentration, the size of the polar ice shields, ...) So you have to multiply it by a coefficient that is very difficult to calculate analytically and it's only possible to make models and estimate it using simulations. Something like 3 times the easy model. From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_sensitivity >* As estimated by the IPCC Fifth Assessment Report (AR5) "there is high confidence that ECS is extremely unlikely less than 1°C and medium confidence that the ECS [equilibrium climate sensitivity] is likely between 1.5°C and 4.5°C and very unlikely greater than 6°C."