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Today we have politicians coming out and declaring every single major natural disaster was because of man-made climate change. Does anyone feel that this helps

by TenOhms 10y ago

Today we have politicians coming out and declaring every single major natural disaster was because of man-made climate change. Does anyone feel that this helps convince skeptics?

BigJono 10y ago
Of course. People need to spend more time shooting down stupid ideas on their own side of the political spectrum. Otherwise you just generate more low hanging fruit for your opposition to pick, and allow them to ignore actual good arguments. That's how you end up with people like Trump in charge. Did Trump ever have to debate the effect of automation on the economy and how he was going to handle an economy with more supply of unskilled workers than demand? Hell no, it just turned into a pissing match over a misogynistic comment and no information of value was disseminated into the public sphere for three quarters of the election campaign. People are far more interested in lauding their moral superiority over people they (often wrongly) perceive to be less intelligent than themselves, than they are in learning new information. A well researched counter-argument to the latest scientific publication on climate change will get about 10 clicks and convince nobody, an article one step up from "durrrr this idiot politician thinks climate change causes every natural disaster" will get millions and sway an election. That's why it's the job of everyone in politics to provide the best, and only the best, possible argument for whatever position they take. You need to give your opponent only one thing to talk about if you expect a response to it.
Bluestrike2 10y ago
You don't really see scientists coming out and saying that particular storms or natural disasters are a direct consequence of climate change. There's really no way to definitively identify a causal relationship (or lack thereof) between particular events and climate change trends. What you can say is that, overall, consequences of climate change (rising sea levels, increased atmospheric water vapor, changes in relative temperature differences between land and sea, etc.) will likely lead to more intensive storms based on empirical observation and models. That gets dumbed down to "climate change caused storm X." Skeptics hear that, and say "that's a bit silly! Storms happen every year. How can you say this one wouldn't have happened otherwise?" And that's a damned difficult question to answer easily. In the United States in particular, climate change skepticism isn't about evidence or science. It's tied up with political ideology, personal identity, social identification, and a host of other very non-scientific factors. For instance, that some of the proposed solutions for fighting climate change wound up aligning pretty close with other liberal policy ideas (carbon taxes and cap and trade, for instance, were easy to malign as "increasing taxes"), which helped prime the pump for denying climate change altogether by seeming suspicious to other groups. Getting around these issues, especially now that denial/skepticism has become deeply entrenched along party lines, is one hell of a difficult problem to figure out.
- norikki 10y ago
  The problem with talking about the science of global warming is that there is no scientific proof for global warming. For general and special relativity you can explain time dilation, gravity waves, or gravitational lensing to a layman and so long as they trust the experiments carried out to verify those findings it conclusively proves the theory to them. There are no such proven predictions made by modern politically funded climate science. All they have are computer models which are constantly being disputed for being fudged to produce any result you want, and cannot even begin to predict past climate phenomena, let alone future ones. So to attack people you see as misinformed as 'not discussing the science' doesn't make a lot of sense. Global warming stops being a scientific issue when you start demanding forced government action. Especially action that would cripple the world economy and send humanity back to the stone age if it were taken enthusiastically.
  - protomikron 10y ago
    Probably faked by the same people that faked the moon landing, I suppose?
  - Oletros 10y ago
    > is that there is no scientific proof for global warming. > There are no such proven predictions made by modern politically funded climate science. > All they have are computer models which are constantly being disputed for being fudged to produce any result you want, > and cannot even begin to predict past climate phenomena > So to attack people you see as misinformed as 'not discussing the science' doesn't make a lot of sense. It is very clear that you are not discussing the science, you're only discussing your political view because all of your "scientist" claims are just wrong
  - yongjik 10y ago
    So, you're saying that a layman will trust scientists saying "When you run really fast, your watch runs slow," however, the same person will not trust scientists saying "When you have an extra blanket over you, you feel warmer." May I assume you are that layman? What a remarkable mind you possess.

by TenOhms 10y ago

Today we have politicians coming out and declaring every single major natural disaster was because of man-made climate change. Does anyone feel that this helps convince skeptics?

BigJono 10y ago

Of course. People need to spend more time shooting down stupid ideas on their own side of the political spectrum. Otherwise you just generate more low hanging fruit for your opposition to pick, and allow them to ignore actual good arguments. That's how you end up with people like Trump in charge. Did Trump ever have to debate the effect of automation on the economy and how he was going to handle an economy with more supply of unskilled workers than demand? Hell no, it just turned into a pissing match over a misogynistic comment and no information of value was disseminated into the public sphere for three quarters of the election campaign. People are far more interested in lauding their moral superiority over people they (often wrongly) perceive to be less intelligent than themselves, than they are in learning new information. A well researched counter-argument to the latest scientific publication on climate change will get about 10 clicks and convince nobody, an article one step up from "durrrr this idiot politician thinks climate change causes every natural disaster" will get millions and sway an election. That's why it's the job of everyone in politics to provide the best, and only the best, possible argument for whatever position they take. You need to give your opponent only one thing to talk about if you expect a response to it.

Bluestrike2 10y ago

You don't really see scientists coming out and saying that particular storms or natural disasters are a direct consequence of climate change. There's really no way to definitively identify a causal relationship (or lack thereof) between particular events and climate change trends. What you can say is that, overall, consequences of climate change (rising sea levels, increased atmospheric water vapor, changes in relative temperature differences between land and sea, etc.) will likely lead to more intensive storms based on empirical observation and models. That gets dumbed down to "climate change caused storm X." Skeptics hear that, and say "that's a bit silly! Storms happen every year. How can you say this one wouldn't have happened otherwise?" And that's a damned difficult question to answer easily. In the United States in particular, climate change skepticism isn't about evidence or science. It's tied up with political ideology, personal identity, social identification, and a host of other very non-scientific factors. For instance, that some of the proposed solutions for fighting climate change wound up aligning pretty close with other liberal policy ideas (carbon taxes and cap and trade, for instance, were easy to malign as "increasing taxes"), which helped prime the pump for denying climate change altogether by seeming suspicious to other groups. Getting around these issues, especially now that denial/skepticism has become deeply entrenched along party lines, is one hell of a difficult problem to figure out.

norikki 10y ago
The problem with talking about the science of global warming is that there is no scientific proof for global warming. For general and special relativity you can explain time dilation, gravity waves, or gravitational lensing to a layman and so long as they trust the experiments carried out to verify those findings it conclusively proves the theory to them. There are no such proven predictions made by modern politically funded climate science. All they have are computer models which are constantly being disputed for being fudged to produce any result you want, and cannot even begin to predict past climate phenomena, let alone future ones. So to attack people you see as misinformed as 'not discussing the science' doesn't make a lot of sense. Global warming stops being a scientific issue when you start demanding forced government action. Especially action that would cripple the world economy and send humanity back to the stone age if it were taken enthusiastically.
- protomikron 10y ago
  Probably faked by the same people that faked the moon landing, I suppose?
- Oletros 10y ago
  > is that there is no scientific proof for global warming. > There are no such proven predictions made by modern politically funded climate science. > All they have are computer models which are constantly being disputed for being fudged to produce any result you want, > and cannot even begin to predict past climate phenomena > So to attack people you see as misinformed as 'not discussing the science' doesn't make a lot of sense. It is very clear that you are not discussing the science, you're only discussing your political view because all of your "scientist" claims are just wrong
- yongjik 10y ago
  So, you're saying that a layman will trust scientists saying "When you run really fast, your watch runs slow," however, the same person will not trust scientists saying "When you have an extra blanket over you, you feel warmer." May I assume you are that layman? What a remarkable mind you possess.