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5C above the previous record in some places. But I still have friends who don't believe it, or don't believe it's got anything to do with humans. It's an inte

5C above the previous record in some places. But I still have friends who don't believe it, or don't believe it's got anything to do with humans. It's an interesting study in epistemology. How do you as a layman know what sources to believe? All sources are full of words you won't have heard of, like when you go to a French restaurant. You can't appeal to authority, because that's not evidence. If you start arguing with people who say the evidence is doctored you're both playing detective, not scientist, and the conversation descends into incentive studies (big oil vs big academia). Talking to deniers who believe in the null hypothesis of natural variation takes you down a statistical rabbit hole. I can't actually summarise a statistics class in a few sentences, regardless of what they think about AGW. Either side will just hand wave and tell me the stats say what they want.

mytailorisrich 4y ago
An instance of heat/cold record does not prove anything. Climate warming/cooling happens without human intervention. Up to that point it is reasonable to be skeptical. So you need to show data correlating with human activity. Still some people will be unconvinced for whatever reason but that is always the case for anything. Frankly, this is not really helped by the approach of governments/local authorities/politicians who either stroke the conspiracy theory aspects or behave like they are indeed part of a conspiracy by pushing drastic and ill-thought policies, all for political gains, of course.
- Fricken 4y ago
  >An instance of heat/cold record does not prove anything Nobody made such a claim. Who are you arguing with?
  - quickthrower2 4y ago
    > 5C above the previous record in some places. "An instance of heat/cold record" > But I still have friends who don't believe it, or don't believe it's got anything to do with humans. "does not prove anything"
    - lordnacho 4y ago
      The least generous interpretation of that is that this one event ought to convince all my friends of AGW. Now somehow the climate change topic is an ongoing conversation with a heck of a lot of things said about it. You can't summarize it all in a comment, and in any case this is an introductory statement meant to take the reader to the main issue, which is how evidence is supposed to work. I would suggest a more generous interpretation is "evidence such as this has been piling up for quite some time and yet does not change minds".
    - Fricken 4y ago
      The keyword in your quote is "still". Because the writer's friends still don't believe it, it implies that this instance of heat is not a singular event, but the continuation of a trend. A trend that the writer's friends still do not believe merits concern.
- taylodl 4y ago
  An instance? We now have decades worth of these "instances" along with the fact most of the successive years in the twenty-teens were "the hottest year on record." Yet I still hear people claiming "See? None of their predictions came true! Can't trust the experts." What really gets me is the fact billions of people are perfectly willing to believe in gods that they can't see and for which there's never been a shred of evidence, and yet many people, often the same people, don't believe in something they can actually see with their own two eyes! Can anybody with a background in psychology explain this phenomenon?

mytailorisrich 4y ago

An instance of heat/cold record does not prove anything. Climate warming/cooling happens without human intervention. Up to that point it is reasonable to be skeptical. So you need to show data correlating with human activity. Still some people will be unconvinced for whatever reason but that is always the case for anything. Frankly, this is not really helped by the approach of governments/local authorities/politicians who either stroke the conspiracy theory aspects or behave like they are indeed part of a conspiracy by pushing drastic and ill-thought policies, all for political gains, of course.

Fricken 4y ago
>An instance of heat/cold record does not prove anything Nobody made such a claim. Who are you arguing with?
- quickthrower2 4y ago
  > 5C above the previous record in some places. "An instance of heat/cold record" > But I still have friends who don't believe it, or don't believe it's got anything to do with humans. "does not prove anything"
  - lordnacho 4y ago
    The least generous interpretation of that is that this one event ought to convince all my friends of AGW. Now somehow the climate change topic is an ongoing conversation with a heck of a lot of things said about it. You can't summarize it all in a comment, and in any case this is an introductory statement meant to take the reader to the main issue, which is how evidence is supposed to work. I would suggest a more generous interpretation is "evidence such as this has been piling up for quite some time and yet does not change minds".
  - Fricken 4y ago
    The keyword in your quote is "still". Because the writer's friends still don't believe it, it implies that this instance of heat is not a singular event, but the continuation of a trend. A trend that the writer's friends still do not believe merits concern.
taylodl 4y ago
An instance? We now have decades worth of these "instances" along with the fact most of the successive years in the twenty-teens were "the hottest year on record." Yet I still hear people claiming "See? None of their predictions came true! Can't trust the experts." What really gets me is the fact billions of people are perfectly willing to believe in gods that they can't see and for which there's never been a shred of evidence, and yet many people, often the same people, don't believe in something they can actually see with their own two eyes! Can anybody with a background in psychology explain this phenomenon?