8 ms·

I don't mind the skeptics; what drives me crazy is how many people see global warming as some sort liberal/one-world-government conspiracy. While government fun

by lukifer 13y ago

I don't mind the skeptics; what drives me crazy is how many people see global warming as some sort liberal/one-world-government conspiracy. While government funding could be distorting the research, oil and coal companies have plenty of reason to incentivize findings as well, so I'd call that a wash. And while scientific opinion is sometimes proven wrong, to say that climate skepticism is dimissed fails to understand the culture of science and the way professional scientists think. Maybe we'll get lucky, and climate change will be a mere inconvenience. I'd rather not take that chance, especially when there are so many other reasons to diversify from finite carbon energy sources. Meanwhile, I trust the scientific community to do what they do best, and keep digging deeper, whatever the answer may be.

iterationx 13y ago
This attitude is why Michael Crichton wrote the essay "Aliens Cause Global Warming" http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/09/aliens-cause-global-warming-a-caltech-lecture-by-michael-crichton/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/09/aliens-cause-global-wa...
- stirbot 13y ago
  Don't link to WUWT if you want to be taken seriously.
  - newnewnew 13y ago
    Force skeptics to outer circles, and then ridicule anything that doesn't come from the inner circle. It's an incredibly effective way at insulating the brain from inconvenient argument.
    - stirbot 13y ago
      If they have legitimate science to contribute there are plenty of channels for that. I've spent way too much time on WUWT. There is very little discussion of science or statistics. It mainly focuses on politics, individuals (Mann, Gore, etc.) and nitpicking over insignificant errors. Within a few hours topics will range from: climate change isn't happening to it is happening but it's not caused by humans to it's us but it will be beneficial and back again. Users are banned and occasionally dox'd for contrarian comments on that site, so if you're concerned about 'insulating the brain from inconvenient argument', you shouldn't support WUWT.
      - newnewnew 13y ago
        You should try climate audit. It attracts less of a crowd because of its technicality, but the intellectual environment is correspondingly healthy.
- lolcraft 13y ago
  Which is annoying and self-righteous, and laughably wrong, and charmingly unaware that it has exactly zero arguments to support its position -- apart from tone trolling, of course. I facepalmed on just about every paragraph, and I'm not even a graduate student. Just a taste: > Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way. ... because there's no significant "skeptic" communities for relativity or geocentrism. Nobody has any vested interest in claiming those theories are false. Theoretical physicists and astronomers aren't constantly asked to defend their positions against fallacious argument after argument, nor have they to fight against a minor but very influential political minority which is on faith completely against them. No Secretary of Interior ever said: "If the troubles from theoretical physicists and geocentrists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used." If you can't see even that, there's no point in arguing. And then the completely bullshit tangent about how the Nuclear Winter equation is just as goofy as the Drake equation, which just is... just... facepalm. Quick, Crichton, tell me the probability that life on a planet evolves to intelligence. Since, you know, you just argued that it's as well understood and measurable as the reflectivity of dust. In regards to its line, that scientific knowledge is being perverted by politics... you know that psychological projection thing, when someone sees in others what they can't bear to see in themselves? I'm not usually someone that whips The Freud out that quickly but, damn, Crichton is really in contest for some psychoanalyzing. I mean, he's just argued that climate scientists are wrong, on purely political terms. Literally, he doesn't like the politics they do. Mind numbing.
  - nsxwolf 13y ago
    Scientists have no need to "defend" global warming. They just need to keep doing the science. Oh, but they want to be making policy, not science. As an aside: I get the feeling from your comment that you might not be aware that Michael Crichton is dead.
    - danielharan 13y ago
      Imagine being a scientist, and your models show a billion people could die soon. How would you take it if people told you: "You're such an alarmist. Shut up, and keep working on your models" And if scientists shouldn't speak up, who is left in public discourse?
gadders 13y ago
I don't think it's a conspiracy in the sense that liberals have a secret convention where they decided to make up Global Warming. I do believe though that global warming feeds into their belief that industry, growth and capitalism are somehow evil and confirms their pre-existing prejudices.
- lukifer 13y ago
  I don't self-identify as liberal, but I'd say that corporations and oil are the villains to mainstream liberals; you have to go pretty far left (as in, farther than Chomsky) to find those against all forms of capitalism. That said, you're right about confirming pre-existing prejudices; in that sense, every ideology or belief is a conspiracy. Climate scientists are not immune to this phenomenon, but the act of science is to proactively try to correct for these kinds of biases, with the added constraint of having to "show your work". While mainstream science can get it wrong, 95+% consensus is very hard to achieve due to either ideology or external influence, especially worldwide. Those scientists might be wrong, but they're not all duping us as part of some plot.
  - gadders 13y ago
    You don't have to go very far to find people against "growth" in western societies. Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Oxfam etc all seem to think that growth is an evil that should be opposed. I don't think they are duping us, but a mixture of pre-existing biases combined with enormous funding certainly helps to create the idea of a consensus.
    - lukifer 13y ago
      Those groups exist, and do contain some anti-industrial proponents, but they have very little influence on policy. They get the same token gestures from the Democrats as the Republicans give the pro-lifers, only far, far less. If there's a corruptive element to climate change policy, it's a cash grab from green energy companies. After 2000, the Democrats know that the green voters won't dare vote third party again (sadly), so don't care about appeasing them beyond gestures.
rjsw 13y ago
I see climate change denial as an example of a cargo cult, the leaders want to regain their hold over their followers by copying the same rituals that they see the scientists performing. Maybe it is just a hard-wired human response to disruption of a society by outside influences.
newnewnew 13y ago
It's not a conspiracy, it's far more democratic than that. I would describe it as a "witch hunt" - where each person tries to show that he is more righteous and dedicated to the cause than the last person, and you gain social capital by being the most loudly enthusiastic. Oil company funding barely exists (it is four orders of magnitude less than government funding), and the best skeptics aren't taking their money anyway. I suggest you read people like Steve McIntyre if you haven't[1][2]. My biggest criticism of McIntyre's blog is that it is too dry and technical, but that is exactly what you want if you are looking for truth. I don't trust the climate science community. I trusted them a lot more before Climate Gate. That's when I realized that climate science has become deeply, deeply politicized. One email from Phil Jones to McIntyre reads "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?". Why indeed Mr. Jones, would you want to share data with a skeptic? This is science after all, and science is nothing less than a method for supporting correct conclusions, and the "correct" conclusion is global warming. Recent deviations of world temperature trends from climate models are only increasing my skepticism of the whole enterprise[4]. But I am alarmed to be going down such a path. If Global Warming were found out to be wrong, we would have to completely reevaluate how we come up with truth in society. That would be evidence of a massive misstep in our civilization. [1] http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/06/yamal-foi-sheds-new-light-on-flawed-data/ http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/06/yamal-foi-sheds-new-light... [2] http://climateaudit.org/2013/04/23/steigs-bladeless-hockey-stick/#more-17848 http://climateaudit.org/2013/04/23/steigs-bladeless-hockey-s... [3] http://www.therightplanet.com/2011/11/phil-jones-for-your-eyes-only-email-to-michael-mann/ http://www.therightplanet.com/2011/11/phil-jones-for-your-ey... [4] http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2157446...
tomjen3 13y ago
If that drives you crazy then maybe you should try to look at the evidence they see: Climate research is used as a reason to create tons of new government bodies, including international rules about what countries can do (Kyoto), intergovernment tax-schemes that are insanely corrupt (see European Co-limit trading, which had to be shot down due to fraud), taxes on gasoline and limits on what kinds of light bulbs I can use (which makes sense from a corporation standpoint, but if you really wanted to do something about the carbon emmisions you would care about my total emissions and not treat light separately). You have small solutions like wind-mills and solar panels and greener cars that are supposed to prevent a cataclysmic disaster. And you may claim that you trust the scientific community, but frankly if you also claim that oil money corrupts the scientists then so should government money - and indeed it appears that it does as each time something like this is leaked (and really if we are doing science what should there be to leak? it is supposed to be open to all) a lot of scientists gets really angry. It almost sounds like they are trying to cover up something. Then you have the East Angelia leak (again that word leak, there shouldn't be anything to leak in science) in which the scientists talked about abusing the publishing process to prevent a paper they didn't want to be published from being published. That is the one that did me in, as I am not a climate scientist so I can only evaluate the truth based on what I see the scientists do, but even I know that if you don't like a paper and can simply point out where it is wrong then you do that. It is only when you can't point out an issue that you have to do back handed deals (and you are playing politics, not doing science). And lets not get into the way those of us who are skeptical of climate change gets shot down when we voice our points they are almost never refuted we are simply told that we are various stodges for the oil companies, misinformed, etc.
- kaybe 13y ago
  May I hear your arguments for being skeptical of the theory?

by lukifer 13y ago

iterationx 13y ago

This attitude is why Michael Crichton wrote the essay "Aliens Cause Global Warming" http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/09/aliens-cause-global-warming-a-caltech-lecture-by-michael-crichton/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/07/09/aliens-cause-global-wa...

stirbot 13y ago
Don't link to WUWT if you want to be taken seriously.
- newnewnew 13y ago
  Force skeptics to outer circles, and then ridicule anything that doesn't come from the inner circle. It's an incredibly effective way at insulating the brain from inconvenient argument.
  - stirbot 13y ago
    If they have legitimate science to contribute there are plenty of channels for that. I've spent way too much time on WUWT. There is very little discussion of science or statistics. It mainly focuses on politics, individuals (Mann, Gore, etc.) and nitpicking over insignificant errors. Within a few hours topics will range from: climate change isn't happening to it is happening but it's not caused by humans to it's us but it will be beneficial and back again. Users are banned and occasionally dox'd for contrarian comments on that site, so if you're concerned about 'insulating the brain from inconvenient argument', you shouldn't support WUWT.
    - newnewnew 13y ago
      You should try climate audit. It attracts less of a crowd because of its technicality, but the intellectual environment is correspondingly healthy.
lolcraft 13y ago
Which is annoying and self-righteous, and laughably wrong, and charmingly unaware that it has exactly zero arguments to support its position -- apart from tone trolling, of course. I facepalmed on just about every paragraph, and I'm not even a graduate student. Just a taste: > Nobody says the consensus of scientists agrees that E=mc2. Nobody says the consensus is that the sun is 93 million miles away. It would never occur to anyone to speak that way. ... because there's no significant "skeptic" communities for relativity or geocentrism. Nobody has any vested interest in claiming those theories are false. Theoretical physicists and astronomers aren't constantly asked to defend their positions against fallacious argument after argument, nor have they to fight against a minor but very influential political minority which is on faith completely against them. No Secretary of Interior ever said: "If the troubles from theoretical physicists and geocentrists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used." If you can't see even that, there's no point in arguing. And then the completely bullshit tangent about how the Nuclear Winter equation is just as goofy as the Drake equation, which just is... just... facepalm. Quick, Crichton, tell me the probability that life on a planet evolves to intelligence. Since, you know, you just argued that it's as well understood and measurable as the reflectivity of dust. In regards to its line, that scientific knowledge is being perverted by politics... you know that psychological projection thing, when someone sees in others what they can't bear to see in themselves? I'm not usually someone that whips The Freud out that quickly but, damn, Crichton is really in contest for some psychoanalyzing. I mean, he's just argued that climate scientists are wrong, on purely political terms. Literally, he doesn't like the politics they do. Mind numbing.
- nsxwolf 13y ago
  Scientists have no need to "defend" global warming. They just need to keep doing the science. Oh, but they want to be making policy, not science. As an aside: I get the feeling from your comment that you might not be aware that Michael Crichton is dead.
  - danielharan 13y ago
    Imagine being a scientist, and your models show a billion people could die soon. How would you take it if people told you: "You're such an alarmist. Shut up, and keep working on your models" And if scientists shouldn't speak up, who is left in public discourse?

gadders 13y ago

I don't think it's a conspiracy in the sense that liberals have a secret convention where they decided to make up Global Warming. I do believe though that global warming feeds into their belief that industry, growth and capitalism are somehow evil and confirms their pre-existing prejudices.

lukifer 13y ago
I don't self-identify as liberal, but I'd say that corporations and oil are the villains to mainstream liberals; you have to go pretty far left (as in, farther than Chomsky) to find those against all forms of capitalism. That said, you're right about confirming pre-existing prejudices; in that sense, every ideology or belief is a conspiracy. Climate scientists are not immune to this phenomenon, but the act of science is to proactively try to correct for these kinds of biases, with the added constraint of having to "show your work". While mainstream science can get it wrong, 95+% consensus is very hard to achieve due to either ideology or external influence, especially worldwide. Those scientists might be wrong, but they're not all duping us as part of some plot.
- gadders 13y ago
  You don't have to go very far to find people against "growth" in western societies. Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, Oxfam etc all seem to think that growth is an evil that should be opposed. I don't think they are duping us, but a mixture of pre-existing biases combined with enormous funding certainly helps to create the idea of a consensus.
  - lukifer 13y ago
    Those groups exist, and do contain some anti-industrial proponents, but they have very little influence on policy. They get the same token gestures from the Democrats as the Republicans give the pro-lifers, only far, far less. If there's a corruptive element to climate change policy, it's a cash grab from green energy companies. After 2000, the Democrats know that the green voters won't dare vote third party again (sadly), so don't care about appeasing them beyond gestures.

rjsw 13y ago

I see climate change denial as an example of a cargo cult, the leaders want to regain their hold over their followers by copying the same rituals that they see the scientists performing. Maybe it is just a hard-wired human response to disruption of a society by outside influences.

newnewnew 13y ago

It's not a conspiracy, it's far more democratic than that. I would describe it as a "witch hunt" - where each person tries to show that he is more righteous and dedicated to the cause than the last person, and you gain social capital by being the most loudly enthusiastic. Oil company funding barely exists (it is four orders of magnitude less than government funding), and the best skeptics aren't taking their money anyway. I suggest you read people like Steve McIntyre if you haven't[1][2]. My biggest criticism of McIntyre's blog is that it is too dry and technical, but that is exactly what you want if you are looking for truth. I don't trust the climate science community. I trusted them a lot more before Climate Gate. That's when I realized that climate science has become deeply, deeply politicized. One email from Phil Jones to McIntyre reads "Why should I make the data available to you, when your aim is to try and find something wrong with it?". Why indeed Mr. Jones, would you want to share data with a skeptic? This is science after all, and science is nothing less than a method for supporting correct conclusions, and the "correct" conclusion is global warming. Recent deviations of world temperature trends from climate models are only increasing my skepticism of the whole enterprise[4]. But I am alarmed to be going down such a path. If Global Warming were found out to be wrong, we would have to completely reevaluate how we come up with truth in society. That would be evidence of a massive misstep in our civilization. [1] http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/06/yamal-foi-sheds-new-light-on-flawed-data/ http://climateaudit.org/2012/05/06/yamal-foi-sheds-new-light... [2] http://climateaudit.org/2013/04/23/steigs-bladeless-hockey-stick/#more-17848 http://climateaudit.org/2013/04/23/steigs-bladeless-hockey-s... [3] http://www.therightplanet.com/2011/11/phil-jones-for-your-eyes-only-email-to-michael-mann/ http://www.therightplanet.com/2011/11/phil-jones-for-your-ey... [4] http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/21574461-climate-may-be-heating-up-less-response-greenhouse-gas-emissions http://www.economist.com/news/science-and-technology/2157446...

tomjen3 13y ago

If that drives you crazy then maybe you should try to look at the evidence they see: Climate research is used as a reason to create tons of new government bodies, including international rules about what countries can do (Kyoto), intergovernment tax-schemes that are insanely corrupt (see European Co-limit trading, which had to be shot down due to fraud), taxes on gasoline and limits on what kinds of light bulbs I can use (which makes sense from a corporation standpoint, but if you really wanted to do something about the carbon emmisions you would care about my total emissions and not treat light separately). You have small solutions like wind-mills and solar panels and greener cars that are supposed to prevent a cataclysmic disaster. And you may claim that you trust the scientific community, but frankly if you also claim that oil money corrupts the scientists then so should government money - and indeed it appears that it does as each time something like this is leaked (and really if we are doing science what should there be to leak? it is supposed to be open to all) a lot of scientists gets really angry. It almost sounds like they are trying to cover up something. Then you have the East Angelia leak (again that word leak, there shouldn't be anything to leak in science) in which the scientists talked about abusing the publishing process to prevent a paper they didn't want to be published from being published. That is the one that did me in, as I am not a climate scientist so I can only evaluate the truth based on what I see the scientists do, but even I know that if you don't like a paper and can simply point out where it is wrong then you do that. It is only when you can't point out an issue that you have to do back handed deals (and you are playing politics, not doing science). And lets not get into the way those of us who are skeptical of climate change gets shot down when we voice our points they are almost never refuted we are simply told that we are various stodges for the oil companies, misinformed, etc.

kaybe 13y ago
May I hear your arguments for being skeptical of the theory?