12 ms·

It's no surprise that the AGW crowd is losing the war of public opinion. Take the last line of the article that details a part of the report: The draft report

by 300bps 13y ago

It's no surprise that the AGW crowd is losing the war of public opinion. Take the last line of the article that details a part of the report: The draft report says the available evidence now suggests that above a certain threshold of warming, the Greenland ice sheet will almost disappear within approximately 1000 years, which will result in 7 metres of global sea-level rise. It estimates that the threshold may lie between 1 °C and 4 °C of warming, but is not confident of this figure. So what they're saying is they are not confident that some degree of warming may occur within a huge band which may do something that sounds really bad (but they don't actually spell out the bad things) in the next 1,000 years. I am a scientifically literate person with a strong conservation and environmental bent. But when I read something like this even I roll my eyes. Because I want people to actually conserve, please take the following advice to the AGW crowd: First, stop using the disaster du jour to say, "See!?! We can expect more of this from now on!" Because when you did this with Katrina and then we had 8 years of relatively quiet hurricane seasons you sound like a "sky is falling" fool. The fact that "An Inconvenient Truth" came out shortly after Katrina with a hurricane on the movie posters and box covers was ridiculous. Second, stop making inaccurate predictions about what is going to happen. For example - for a while everyone was decrying that snow was a thing of the past because of global warming (example: http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-j...) When we then had record snowfalls throughout many areas of the world, the same people changed their tune and said, "Exactly! Global Warming will actually bring more snow!" Enough of this nonsense. Stop using things like carbon credits to live a ridiculously lavish lifestyle while telling everyone else to live simply. Finally, stop trying to profit off of AGW. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/energy-environment/03gore.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/business/energy-environmen... There are many people that you will never convince of the reality of AGW. But there are many more people that you are turning away from believing you because of the things above. Because I think finite resource conservation is the right thing to do, please stop hurting this cause.

leokun 13y ago
You seem to have a severe emotional response to data reports about global warming. The thing to remember is that how that data is reported doesn't actually matter. Reserve your angst for actual errors. The dramatic flashy wrappers people use is to try and reach people who would otherwise be watching ice truck drivers on the "History Channel".
- talmand 13y ago
  If the reporting of that data includes a one-sided interpretation of that data, including denouncing anyone who may question said interpretation, then how it is reported does indeed matter and is a big part of the problem described. Almost everything associated with how climate change research is reported makes it reek of bad science and propaganda.
  - leokun 13y ago
    > Almost everything associated with how climate change research is reported makes it reek of bad science and propaganda. The science says that the Earth is getting warmer, and it's getting warmer because of people. If you think this interpretation is bad science and propaganda, then you are simply mistaken.
    - talmand 13y ago
      You need to read my post again. I was not commenting on the science, I was commenting on how it is being reported.
      - leokun 13y ago
        It's probably being reported as the Earth getting warmer due to people. As that's what's happening.
        talmand 13y ago
        Glad to see that you know the whole truth and can go about your life ignoring anyone that may question your ideology. Sadly, I was educated that perfection is impossible and to always question because sometimes people get it wrong when they thought they were right.
        leokun 13y ago
        Looks like there's no data in the world that's going to convince you away from what you already want to believe, no matter how overwhelming. Good luck to you.
steveplace 13y ago
I think many of them are stuck with how they can get their message out. The media won't give them any coverage unless they throw out some disaster quotes, but the public has become tired of the same disaster scenarios that have been possible since 1995.
anon1385 13y ago
>there are many more people that you are turning away from believing you because of the things above The 'things above' being two insignificant newspaper articles over the last 13 years? Get real. People reject AGW[1] because of a very well funded propaganda campaign that spreads disinformation and because the existence of AGW is incompatible with the conservative, capitalist political philosophies held by most people in the anglosphere. There are studies demonstrating the latter effect: Why does public conflict over societal risks persist in the face of compelling and widely accessible scientific evidence? We conducted an experiment to probe two alternative answers: the “Science Comprehension Thesis” (SCT), which identifies defects in the public’s knowledge and reasoning capacities as the source of such controversies; and the “Identity-protective Cognition Thesis” (ICT) which treats cultural conflict as disabling the faculties that members of the public use to make sense of decision-relevant science. In our experiment, we presented subjects with a difficult problem that turned on their ability to draw valid causal inferences from empirical data. As expected, subjects highest in Numeracy — a measure of the ability and disposition to make use of quantitative information — did substantially better than less numerate ones when the data were presented as results from a study of a new skin-rash treatment. Also as expected, subjects’ responses became politically polarized — and even less accurate — when the same data were presented as results from the study of a gun-control ban. But contrary to the prediction of SCT, such polarization did not abate among subjects highest in Numeracy; instead, it increased. This outcome supported ICT, which predicted that more Numerate subjects would use their quantitative-reasoning capacity selectively to conform their interpretation of the data to the result most consistent with their political outlooks. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2319992 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2319992 A few misguided newpaper articles that over excitedly exaggerated uncertain predictions didn't make any difference to anything. Neither did Al Gore's personal finances. People ranting about Al Gore were never going to be won over by scientific arguments, their position is based on emotion and politics, not logical reasoning. [1] people in the aglosphere that is, it's a much less prevalent phenomenon elsewhere
- guscost 13y ago
  Could it be that your position is influenced by emotion and politics, and you are projecting this attitude onto the other side?
guscost 13y ago
In addition, it would be nice if these people (I'm looking at you, Popular Science) would stop pretending that the opposition is not qualified to challenge their doctrine. This kind of behavior does not help the pursuit of scientific knowledge in any way.
- talmand 13y ago
  But that seems to be how it works. I'm mostly sympathetic to the whole climate change thing but every time one of them talks down to me simply based on their assumptions about me, I get a tad upset about it. It just rubs me the wrong way. Especially when they presume to tell me what my opinion on the matter is before I've even stated it.
scarmig 13y ago
One side effect of anthropogenic global warming is exponential increases in straw and herring.
davidjohnstone 13y ago
Correct me if I'm wrong, but you start out criticising the cautious language of uncertainty, and then criticise others for making specific predictions that turn out to be wrong? I'm perfectly happy with that cautious sentence, as it is as true as it can be stated given today's knowledge (I assume; I haven't looked into it). It's not a very good headline, but reality has a habit of being complicated. "Luckily", we have plenty of people who are more interested in saying simple things that everybody can understand, like "snow is a thing of the past". Unfortunately, exciting scientific headlines have a habit of being wrong…
znowi 13y ago
> Exactly! Global Warming will actually bring more snow! This is why they renamed it to Climate Change, which is a win situation in any outcome :)
jellicle 13y ago
> So what they're saying is they are not confident that some degree of warming may occur within a huge band which may do something that sounds really bad (but they don't actually spell out the bad things) in the next 1,000 years. No, what they are saying is that in addition to all the other effects of global warming, melting of a particular chunk of ice will be absolutely irreversible past a particular cutoff point, but the cutoff point is difficult to determine with precision. We are interested in the cutoff point because it will drown billions (sic) of human beings, but any lack of precision about that doesn't mean that the rest of global warming is somehow a mirage. Most likely we have already passed the cutoff point and melting of the Greenland ice sheet is irreversible. Just because you're too dim to understand the science here doesn't give you an excuse to mock it.
- 300bps 13y ago
  Just because you're too dim to understand the science here doesn't give you an excuse to mock it. You right, me stupid. Does that make you feel better to de-intellectualize someone who gives suggestions? Keep attacking people sympathetic to the cause and see where that gets you.
- idProQuo 13y ago
  This is really off topic, sorry in advance. Why did you use "(sic)"? I always thought it stood for "Spelling InCorrect", but lately I keep seeing people use it in other contexts.
  - jdminhbg 13y ago
    'Sic' is Latin for 'thus,' the meaning in quotations is "no really, what I just wrote." So here it's "actually billions, that's not a mistake"; in a quote with incorrect spelling it's "this is the way it appears in what I'm quoting, it's not my mistake."
  - guard-of-terra 13y ago
    I think it's Latin for "I'm not making this quote up!"
- 13y ago
mcv 13y ago
> So what they're saying is they are not confident that some degree of warming may occur within a huge band which may do something that sounds really bad (but they don't actually spell out the bad things) in the next 1,000 years. What? In the quote you included, they do spell out the bad things: the complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet, resulting in 7 meters of global sea-level rise. What's unclear about that? A bit more subtle is what that 1-4 degrees warming means. That's not how much they think the earth will get warmer, that's what they think the threshold for the complete melting of Greenland's ice sheet is. So if we manage to limit the temperature rise to 2 degrees C, there's a good chance it won't melt completely, but if the threshold turns out to be on the low end of the range, it might still melt. There's also nothing excessively alarmist about this. It's up-front about the 1000 year time scale. Also, don't blame the scientists for what less-informed alarmists are shouting. Though I agree that it would be easier to inform people if there weren't a ton of people shouting nonsense.
- 300bps 13y ago
  What? In the quote you included, they do spell out the bad things: the complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet, resulting in 7 meters of global sea-level rise. What's unclear about that? Well, it sure sounds bad. But to most people it will be an abstract concept - what does that mean? It's like saying, "dihydrogen monoxide is the principal ingredient in acid rain". Makes water sound scary, doesn't it? So what does a 7 meter rise in water over 1,000 years mean? Like I said, it sounds scary but is that: a) We'll lose 3 miles of coastal land scary OR b) We'll be in Kevin Costner Water World scary I don't know the answer to that. They should spell out what the actual impact will be, not make an abstract statement few people have a point of reference about.
  - mseebach 13y ago
    You can't just assume away human capability for adaption. If we have 1000 years to prepare for it, it most likely means that we will gain several miles of coastal land as we discover the best places (which may well be some way out to sea) to build dikes around the (relatively few) places where it's impractical to just move the population. The Netherlands are often mentioned as the first place to go, but that's disingenuous: Nowhere else is better prepared to slap 50cm each century on top of their existing dikes. No, it's not quite that simple, but it's orders of magnitude simpler than constructing building a dike from scratch around, say, New York City.
specialist 13y ago
...stop making inaccurate predictions about what is going to happen. Really? You link to an article specifically about snowfall in Britain and then dismiss it with the counter evidence of record snowfall else where. You need to try harder. ...losing the war of public opinion. FUD. Good job. Please. Continue.
- 300bps 13y ago
  Please. Continue. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/9950516/Worst-March-snow-for-30-years-brings-chaos.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/9950516/Worst-Marc...
  - specialist 13y ago
    I encourage you to read past the headlines. Assuming your personal scientific methodology permits it.
    - 300bps 13y ago
      http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=winter-history;sess= http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=winter-history;ses...
      - specialist 13y ago
        Is that generated text? Mostly unreadable. Let's review. First article states, perhaps poorly, that snow will become less frequent and more extreme. Pretty much in line with all predictions. Second, I learned that it can snow in the UK. Terrific. Third, it actually snowed in the UK. A lot. Everyone's shocked. You cite this as bad PR or bad predictions or something. I'm going to call this one a push. I'll now give you the benefit of the doubt. You blame the scientists for irresponsible reporting done by the corporate entertainment industry. I think that's unfair. But you probably haven't ever tried to get "the media" to cover an important story, correctly, much less at all.
        13y ago
codex 13y ago
Public opinion is ambivalent on AGW largely due to the efforts of a small group of individuals which spreads FUD for the benefit of powerful interests. In the past, these same hired guns attempted to sway public opinion on acid rain, the dangers of smoking and secondhand smoke, the ozone hole, global warming, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the banning of DDT. I recommend the book Merchants of Doubt [1], which documents this in exacting detail. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942 http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obs...
- 300bps 13y ago
  The ironic thing is that the only people spreading fear are AGW-theory proponents. If anything, climate change deniers are reducing fear, making your accusation they are spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt a ridiculously easy claim to falsify.
  - codex 13y ago
    I can't speak as to the agenda of the average climate change denier. However, the fear spread by the anti-AGW lobby is that of a global climate change conspiracy. Uncertainty and doubt are created by casting aspersions on the science. Unfortunately some AGW proponents are guilty of fear-mongering, but I would also draw a distinction between predicting a bad outcome and spreading fear for fear's sake; it's hard to predict a catastrophe without inspiring a little bit of fear in the audience.
    - talmand 13y ago
      Your use of the word "denier" displays your bias. But the only fear mongering I've really seen come from climate change "accepters". "Accepters", see how silly it looks when you use silly names? I've seen people who deny the science, they don't particularly concern me as they are often easy to spot as they refuse to listen to reason. But much the same can be said of the extremes on both sides of a debate. As for uncertainty and doubt, I thought those were important in science.
  - 13y ago
SmokyBorbon 13y ago
Basic logic proves AGW to be false. If the planet is not warming in the first place, then humans cannot be responsible for causing it to warm. Scientists now openly admit that the planet is not warming. It would have been better for everyone if they had admitted it a decade ago instead of trying to "hide the decline". We can all thank frauds like Michael Mann for wasting everyone's time and money. The problem is that, because the argument is easily proven by elementary school level critical thinking skills, the people disproving it don't seem as smart. It's a lot more impressive when people dress up in lab coats, point at charts, and tell you that you're too stupid to understand the details. "But trust us. Everyone knows the boogeyman is real. Now hand over your wallets so we can make him go away."

by 300bps 13y ago

leokun 13y ago

You seem to have a severe emotional response to data reports about global warming. The thing to remember is that how that data is reported doesn't actually matter. Reserve your angst for actual errors. The dramatic flashy wrappers people use is to try and reach people who would otherwise be watching ice truck drivers on the "History Channel".

talmand 13y ago
If the reporting of that data includes a one-sided interpretation of that data, including denouncing anyone who may question said interpretation, then how it is reported does indeed matter and is a big part of the problem described. Almost everything associated with how climate change research is reported makes it reek of bad science and propaganda.
- leokun 13y ago
  > Almost everything associated with how climate change research is reported makes it reek of bad science and propaganda. The science says that the Earth is getting warmer, and it's getting warmer because of people. If you think this interpretation is bad science and propaganda, then you are simply mistaken.
  - talmand 13y ago
    You need to read my post again. I was not commenting on the science, I was commenting on how it is being reported.
    - leokun 13y ago
      It's probably being reported as the Earth getting warmer due to people. As that's what's happening.
      - talmand 13y ago
        Glad to see that you know the whole truth and can go about your life ignoring anyone that may question your ideology. Sadly, I was educated that perfection is impossible and to always question because sometimes people get it wrong when they thought they were right.
        leokun 13y ago
        Looks like there's no data in the world that's going to convince you away from what you already want to believe, no matter how overwhelming. Good luck to you.

steveplace 13y ago

I think many of them are stuck with how they can get their message out. The media won't give them any coverage unless they throw out some disaster quotes, but the public has become tired of the same disaster scenarios that have been possible since 1995.

anon1385 13y ago

>there are many more people that you are turning away from believing you because of the things above The 'things above' being two insignificant newspaper articles over the last 13 years? Get real. People reject AGW[1] because of a very well funded propaganda campaign that spreads disinformation and because the existence of AGW is incompatible with the conservative, capitalist political philosophies held by most people in the anglosphere. There are studies demonstrating the latter effect: Why does public conflict over societal risks persist in the face of compelling and widely accessible scientific evidence? We conducted an experiment to probe two alternative answers: the “Science Comprehension Thesis” (SCT), which identifies defects in the public’s knowledge and reasoning capacities as the source of such controversies; and the “Identity-protective Cognition Thesis” (ICT) which treats cultural conflict as disabling the faculties that members of the public use to make sense of decision-relevant science. In our experiment, we presented subjects with a difficult problem that turned on their ability to draw valid causal inferences from empirical data. As expected, subjects highest in Numeracy — a measure of the ability and disposition to make use of quantitative information — did substantially better than less numerate ones when the data were presented as results from a study of a new skin-rash treatment. Also as expected, subjects’ responses became politically polarized — and even less accurate — when the same data were presented as results from the study of a gun-control ban. But contrary to the prediction of SCT, such polarization did not abate among subjects highest in Numeracy; instead, it increased. This outcome supported ICT, which predicted that more Numerate subjects would use their quantitative-reasoning capacity selectively to conform their interpretation of the data to the result most consistent with their political outlooks. http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2319992 http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2319992 A few misguided newpaper articles that over excitedly exaggerated uncertain predictions didn't make any difference to anything. Neither did Al Gore's personal finances. People ranting about Al Gore were never going to be won over by scientific arguments, their position is based on emotion and politics, not logical reasoning. [1] people in the aglosphere that is, it's a much less prevalent phenomenon elsewhere

guscost 13y ago
Could it be that your position is influenced by emotion and politics, and you are projecting this attitude onto the other side?

guscost 13y ago

In addition, it would be nice if these people (I'm looking at you, Popular Science) would stop pretending that the opposition is not qualified to challenge their doctrine. This kind of behavior does not help the pursuit of scientific knowledge in any way.

talmand 13y ago
But that seems to be how it works. I'm mostly sympathetic to the whole climate change thing but every time one of them talks down to me simply based on their assumptions about me, I get a tad upset about it. It just rubs me the wrong way. Especially when they presume to tell me what my opinion on the matter is before I've even stated it.

scarmig 13y ago

One side effect of anthropogenic global warming is exponential increases in straw and herring.

davidjohnstone 13y ago

Correct me if I'm wrong, but you start out criticising the cautious language of uncertainty, and then criticise others for making specific predictions that turn out to be wrong? I'm perfectly happy with that cautious sentence, as it is as true as it can be stated given today's knowledge (I assume; I haven't looked into it). It's not a very good headline, but reality has a habit of being complicated. "Luckily", we have plenty of people who are more interested in saying simple things that everybody can understand, like "snow is a thing of the past". Unfortunately, exciting scientific headlines have a habit of being wrong…

znowi 13y ago

> Exactly! Global Warming will actually bring more snow! This is why they renamed it to Climate Change, which is a win situation in any outcome :)

jellicle 13y ago

> So what they're saying is they are not confident that some degree of warming may occur within a huge band which may do something that sounds really bad (but they don't actually spell out the bad things) in the next 1,000 years. No, what they are saying is that in addition to all the other effects of global warming, melting of a particular chunk of ice will be absolutely irreversible past a particular cutoff point, but the cutoff point is difficult to determine with precision. We are interested in the cutoff point because it will drown billions (sic) of human beings, but any lack of precision about that doesn't mean that the rest of global warming is somehow a mirage. Most likely we have already passed the cutoff point and melting of the Greenland ice sheet is irreversible. Just because you're too dim to understand the science here doesn't give you an excuse to mock it.

300bps 13y ago
Just because you're too dim to understand the science here doesn't give you an excuse to mock it. You right, me stupid. Does that make you feel better to de-intellectualize someone who gives suggestions? Keep attacking people sympathetic to the cause and see where that gets you.
idProQuo 13y ago
This is really off topic, sorry in advance. Why did you use "(sic)"? I always thought it stood for "Spelling InCorrect", but lately I keep seeing people use it in other contexts.
- jdminhbg 13y ago
  'Sic' is Latin for 'thus,' the meaning in quotations is "no really, what I just wrote." So here it's "actually billions, that's not a mistake"; in a quote with incorrect spelling it's "this is the way it appears in what I'm quoting, it's not my mistake."
- guard-of-terra 13y ago
  I think it's Latin for "I'm not making this quote up!"
13y ago

mcv 13y ago

> So what they're saying is they are not confident that some degree of warming may occur within a huge band which may do something that sounds really bad (but they don't actually spell out the bad things) in the next 1,000 years. What? In the quote you included, they do spell out the bad things: the complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet, resulting in 7 meters of global sea-level rise. What's unclear about that? A bit more subtle is what that 1-4 degrees warming means. That's not how much they think the earth will get warmer, that's what they think the threshold for the complete melting of Greenland's ice sheet is. So if we manage to limit the temperature rise to 2 degrees C, there's a good chance it won't melt completely, but if the threshold turns out to be on the low end of the range, it might still melt. There's also nothing excessively alarmist about this. It's up-front about the 1000 year time scale. Also, don't blame the scientists for what less-informed alarmists are shouting. Though I agree that it would be easier to inform people if there weren't a ton of people shouting nonsense.

300bps 13y ago
What? In the quote you included, they do spell out the bad things: the complete melting of the Greenland ice sheet, resulting in 7 meters of global sea-level rise. What's unclear about that? Well, it sure sounds bad. But to most people it will be an abstract concept - what does that mean? It's like saying, "dihydrogen monoxide is the principal ingredient in acid rain". Makes water sound scary, doesn't it? So what does a 7 meter rise in water over 1,000 years mean? Like I said, it sounds scary but is that: a) We'll lose 3 miles of coastal land scary OR b) We'll be in Kevin Costner Water World scary I don't know the answer to that. They should spell out what the actual impact will be, not make an abstract statement few people have a point of reference about.
- mseebach 13y ago
  You can't just assume away human capability for adaption. If we have 1000 years to prepare for it, it most likely means that we will gain several miles of coastal land as we discover the best places (which may well be some way out to sea) to build dikes around the (relatively few) places where it's impractical to just move the population. The Netherlands are often mentioned as the first place to go, but that's disingenuous: Nowhere else is better prepared to slap 50cm each century on top of their existing dikes. No, it's not quite that simple, but it's orders of magnitude simpler than constructing building a dike from scratch around, say, New York City.

specialist 13y ago

...stop making inaccurate predictions about what is going to happen. Really? You link to an article specifically about snowfall in Britain and then dismiss it with the counter evidence of record snowfall else where. You need to try harder. ...losing the war of public opinion. FUD. Good job. Please. Continue.

300bps 13y ago
Please. Continue. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/9950516/Worst-March-snow-for-30-years-brings-chaos.html http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/9950516/Worst-Marc...
- specialist 13y ago
  I encourage you to read past the headlines. Assuming your personal scientific methodology permits it.
  - 300bps 13y ago
    http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=winter-history;sess= http://www.netweather.tv/index.cgi?action=winter-history;ses...
    - specialist 13y ago
      Is that generated text? Mostly unreadable. Let's review. First article states, perhaps poorly, that snow will become less frequent and more extreme. Pretty much in line with all predictions. Second, I learned that it can snow in the UK. Terrific. Third, it actually snowed in the UK. A lot. Everyone's shocked. You cite this as bad PR or bad predictions or something. I'm going to call this one a push. I'll now give you the benefit of the doubt. You blame the scientists for irresponsible reporting done by the corporate entertainment industry. I think that's unfair. But you probably haven't ever tried to get "the media" to cover an important story, correctly, much less at all.
      - 13y ago

codex 13y ago

Public opinion is ambivalent on AGW largely due to the efforts of a small group of individuals which spreads FUD for the benefit of powerful interests. In the past, these same hired guns attempted to sway public opinion on acid rain, the dangers of smoking and secondhand smoke, the ozone hole, global warming, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the banning of DDT. I recommend the book Merchants of Doubt [1], which documents this in exacting detail. [1] http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obscured/dp/1608193942 http://www.amazon.com/Merchants-Doubt-Handful-Scientists-Obs...

300bps 13y ago
The ironic thing is that the only people spreading fear are AGW-theory proponents. If anything, climate change deniers are reducing fear, making your accusation they are spreading Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt a ridiculously easy claim to falsify.
- codex 13y ago
  I can't speak as to the agenda of the average climate change denier. However, the fear spread by the anti-AGW lobby is that of a global climate change conspiracy. Uncertainty and doubt are created by casting aspersions on the science. Unfortunately some AGW proponents are guilty of fear-mongering, but I would also draw a distinction between predicting a bad outcome and spreading fear for fear's sake; it's hard to predict a catastrophe without inspiring a little bit of fear in the audience.
  - talmand 13y ago
    Your use of the word "denier" displays your bias. But the only fear mongering I've really seen come from climate change "accepters". "Accepters", see how silly it looks when you use silly names? I've seen people who deny the science, they don't particularly concern me as they are often easy to spot as they refuse to listen to reason. But much the same can be said of the extremes on both sides of a debate. As for uncertainty and doubt, I thought those were important in science.
- 13y ago

SmokyBorbon 13y ago

Basic logic proves AGW to be false. If the planet is not warming in the first place, then humans cannot be responsible for causing it to warm. Scientists now openly admit that the planet is not warming. It would have been better for everyone if they had admitted it a decade ago instead of trying to "hide the decline". We can all thank frauds like Michael Mann for wasting everyone's time and money. The problem is that, because the argument is easily proven by elementary school level critical thinking skills, the people disproving it don't seem as smart. It's a lot more impressive when people dress up in lab coats, point at charts, and tell you that you're too stupid to understand the details. "But trust us. Everyone knows the boogeyman is real. Now hand over your wallets so we can make him go away."