5 ms·

Here's my beef: I feel it's almost impossible to find (fairly) objective information about climate change and then make my own, informed, decision. Part of thi

Here's my beef: I feel it's almost impossible to find (fairly) objective information about climate change and then make my own, informed, decision. Part of this problem stems from the fact I'm a christian and conservative in ways ... yet, at the same time, the environment and stewardship are important to me. Regardless, I'm not going to take a stand on climate change/global warming simply because someone on the left or right says I need to. How does one find information on climate change that isn't politically motivated?

jswinghammer 17y ago
Part of the problem is that everyone is so certain particularly on the side that man-made global warming is real and a serious threat. This probably the biggest cause I have for doubting it. The philosophy of science is very interesting to me and one thing that's a recurring theme is the discussion of the limits of empiricism. Another thing to consider is the awful track record of prediction from virtually everyone who is deemed to be an expert. I find it difficult to take seriously people who don't make serious room for their margins of error and who rely on computer models of the future to predict. All that being said the people who promote global warming as a serious issue that we need to do something about could be right of course. It could also be that they're missing some key piece of information that they don't even know exists. The unknown unknowns here seem impossible to get your head around for something as difficult to understand as climate change. I'm not sure where you find information that isn't biased one way or another on this topic. I've pretty much given up.
- callmeed 17y ago
  "I've pretty much given up" Well, at least I wont be alone if I give up too ...which is very possible :)
antidaily 17y ago
I don't know. Is an organization like The Climatic Research Unit (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/ http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/) politically motivated?
- bokonist 17y ago
  They appear to be a government funded research institute. The bigger the fear over global warming, the more funding goes to such institutes. That does not mean they do bad science. But it does not mean that you should not take their reports as the unbiased truth. Institutional selection effects ensure that people who have views harmful to a given institution will not rise to the top of that institution.
curtis 17y ago
I think most of the actual science is pretty good. It's when people start talking about what should be done about global warming that things get dicey.
- bwhite 17y ago
  Mod parent up. This is why Bjorn Lomborg is reviled: not because he doubts that anthropogenic global warming is for real, but because he has the temerity to suggest that the cure (spending a kajillion dollars to achieve relatively small changes in climate) may be worse than the disease. See http://www.ted.com/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_priorities.html http://www.ted.com/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_prioritie.... And dancing about, declaring that the science is settled, and claiming to know the One True Solution to something as inherently complex as climate is indicative of failure to understand the science, which leads to politically motivated footballs like this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/25/source-inside-epa-confirms-claims-of-science-being-ignored-by-top-epa-management/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/25/source-inside-epa-conf...
  - Tichy 17y ago
    I personally disklike him because in his speeches (like the TED one) he seemed to make a lot of strawman arguments - like dwelling on "heat deaths being a non-issue" when really I don't think it ever was an issue.
    - Bjoern 17y ago
      In 2003 in Europe roughly 35.000 people died from heat. That is not an issue?
      - Tichy 17y ago
        Sure, but I don't think fear of an increase of heat deaths was an major concern in the climate debate. At least I never heard about it before the Lomborg talk. And I think he made it clear (if he is to believed), that heat deaths indeed are not a thing to worry about with climate change.
msie 17y ago
One thing to do is to NOT read the WSJ opinion page. Don't be seduced by this article's cheerleading for the skeptics.
- cwan 17y ago
  That seems to be a rather ostrich like approach to what's supposed to be a rather big important issue - particularly one that could result in a rather large "climate change tax" scheme that's being voted on today. If they're wrong on the merits, then have it out, but the article only points out the growing skepticism within the scientific community for anthropogenic warming. So the question becomes more about what should/can we do about it since if it's going to cost the world that much in money surely we should have an expectation that these efforts will have an impact?
  - msie 17y ago
    I'm not being an ostrich. I've just had enough of investigating many of these skeptics' claims only to find out that they hold little merit. As for this opinion piece, another commentator has pointed out that the senator in question, Steve Fielding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fielding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fielding) is a known skeptic (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=676593 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=676593) but the article makes no mention of this. Instead it portrays him as a fence-sitting politician who has been let down by the Obama administration so he has "decided" to vote against his country's climate-change legislation. His decision was made well before his stunt of asking the Obama administration for advice.
- ryanvm 17y ago
  Or NYT opinion page, or HuffPost, etc.
Alex3917 17y ago
"How does one find information on climate change that isn't politically motivated?" As for as the facts are concerned, the idea that all information on climate change is poltitically motivated is itself a lie spread by certain forces within society. As far as policy is concerned, the role of environmental groups is to create recommendations on how to manage limited resources among multiple stakeholders who want to use them. Some of the more leftwing environmental groups believe that their job is just to protect the earth, whatever that means, but the more mainstream ones are in the business of solving tragedy-of-the-commons problems like climate change. They are probably you're best bet for sound policy advice, albeit they often on specific tactics. edit: @EnvDefenseFund has some good tweets about what is going on today.
- CWuestefeld 17y ago
  And unfortunately, many of those "more leftwing groups" are those that take center stage. Take Al Gore (please): [Question:] There's a lot of debate right now over the best way to communicate about global warming and get people motivated. Do you scare people or give them hope? What's the right mix? [Gore's Answer:] ... I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis. http://www.grist.org/article/roberts2/ http://www.grist.org/article/roberts2/
  - Alex3917 17y ago
    That quote doesn't even parse grammatically.
Elfan 17y ago
All of the IPCC reports are available online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report#External_links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report#E...
jerf 17y ago
How do you judge science as an outsider? You judge the correctness of the predictions made. How has global warming fared on the accuracy front? Terribly. We were promised monotonically rising global temperatures for the next hundred years, and instead, they plateaued, then dropped, only ten years into the predictions. As an outsider, the rest hardly matters. Why the predictions were wrong is something for the scientists to go work out. Explaining away the wrongness with "whys" doesn't change the wrongness, it only explains it. If you think I'm wrong, show me the prediction from 2000 or so that actually matches what happened to the real climate. Show me the error bars that the global temperature is still within. (Most global warming graphs don't even have error bars, which itself is pretty telling.) As far as I know, you can't. Explaining that failure doesn't change the fact of failure. If the last ten years is "mere weather", then the error bars should have reflected that. That is how you judge science as an outsider. You may not understand materials science, but the bridges the materials scientists help build behave as they predict (mostly). You may not understand organic chemistry, but plastics behave as such people predict. You may not understand political science, but the real world only sort of acts as they predict, so their science is less reliable. You may not understand climate science, but their predictions completely fail to come to pass. Fairly routinely, too. Make your conclusions about the validity of their science based on that. You don't have to be a climate scientist to do that. (As it happens, it is the same standard they should be using themselves, and the field's apparent refusal to do so is also very telling.) (Where no predictions can be made, there is no science. Sometimes that's just the way it is; economics isn't going to be a very real science anytime soon. There's nothing wrong with that, there's only something wrong with according it the belief levels in the predictions made by the field that should be reserved for real science.)
- Bjoern 17y ago
  http://dewy.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/CCC/25C3/video_h264_720x576/25c3-2863-en-climate_change_-_state_of_the_science.mp4 http://dewy.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/CCC/25C3/video_h264_720x576/25... Global warming is influenced by a multitude of contributing gases etc. Some of them can also cause cooling. Weather, being unpredictable of course screws up predictions. Also the oceans are taking a substancial amount of CO2 gases for instances which causes warming delays. I agree with the error bars but climatology is not exactly a easy science if you have so many variables. Its not that we fully understand "just weather" yet. Interesting question though, temperatures were constant for more or less 1 Mio. years (thanks ice-core probes for that information). Why suddenly in the last 100 years or so do we see a difference if you look in the timeframe of 1900 to now? Even if I play your logic and go for a moment on your side and say ok who knows maybe the predictions are wrong. Does it makes sense to drive the Coal/Oil/Gas burning train? There is more waste coming from burning these than just CO2 you know.

jswinghammer 17y ago

Part of the problem is that everyone is so certain particularly on the side that man-made global warming is real and a serious threat. This probably the biggest cause I have for doubting it. The philosophy of science is very interesting to me and one thing that's a recurring theme is the discussion of the limits of empiricism. Another thing to consider is the awful track record of prediction from virtually everyone who is deemed to be an expert. I find it difficult to take seriously people who don't make serious room for their margins of error and who rely on computer models of the future to predict. All that being said the people who promote global warming as a serious issue that we need to do something about could be right of course. It could also be that they're missing some key piece of information that they don't even know exists. The unknown unknowns here seem impossible to get your head around for something as difficult to understand as climate change. I'm not sure where you find information that isn't biased one way or another on this topic. I've pretty much given up.

callmeed 17y ago
"I've pretty much given up" Well, at least I wont be alone if I give up too ...which is very possible :)

antidaily 17y ago

I don't know. Is an organization like The Climatic Research Unit (http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/ http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/) politically motivated?

bokonist 17y ago
They appear to be a government funded research institute. The bigger the fear over global warming, the more funding goes to such institutes. That does not mean they do bad science. But it does not mean that you should not take their reports as the unbiased truth. Institutional selection effects ensure that people who have views harmful to a given institution will not rise to the top of that institution.

curtis 17y ago

I think most of the actual science is pretty good. It's when people start talking about what should be done about global warming that things get dicey.

bwhite 17y ago
Mod parent up. This is why Bjorn Lomborg is reviled: not because he doubts that anthropogenic global warming is for real, but because he has the temerity to suggest that the cure (spending a kajillion dollars to achieve relatively small changes in climate) may be worse than the disease. See http://www.ted.com/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_priorities.html http://www.ted.com/talks/bjorn_lomborg_sets_global_prioritie.... And dancing about, declaring that the science is settled, and claiming to know the One True Solution to something as inherently complex as climate is indicative of failure to understand the science, which leads to politically motivated footballs like this: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/25/source-inside-epa-confirms-claims-of-science-being-ignored-by-top-epa-management/ http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/06/25/source-inside-epa-conf...
- Tichy 17y ago
  I personally disklike him because in his speeches (like the TED one) he seemed to make a lot of strawman arguments - like dwelling on "heat deaths being a non-issue" when really I don't think it ever was an issue.
  - Bjoern 17y ago
    In 2003 in Europe roughly 35.000 people died from heat. That is not an issue?
    - Tichy 17y ago
      Sure, but I don't think fear of an increase of heat deaths was an major concern in the climate debate. At least I never heard about it before the Lomborg talk. And I think he made it clear (if he is to believed), that heat deaths indeed are not a thing to worry about with climate change.

msie 17y ago

One thing to do is to NOT read the WSJ opinion page. Don't be seduced by this article's cheerleading for the skeptics.

cwan 17y ago
That seems to be a rather ostrich like approach to what's supposed to be a rather big important issue - particularly one that could result in a rather large "climate change tax" scheme that's being voted on today. If they're wrong on the merits, then have it out, but the article only points out the growing skepticism within the scientific community for anthropogenic warming. So the question becomes more about what should/can we do about it since if it's going to cost the world that much in money surely we should have an expectation that these efforts will have an impact?
- msie 17y ago
  I'm not being an ostrich. I've just had enough of investigating many of these skeptics' claims only to find out that they hold little merit. As for this opinion piece, another commentator has pointed out that the senator in question, Steve Fielding (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fielding http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Fielding) is a known skeptic (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=676593 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=676593) but the article makes no mention of this. Instead it portrays him as a fence-sitting politician who has been let down by the Obama administration so he has "decided" to vote against his country's climate-change legislation. His decision was made well before his stunt of asking the Obama administration for advice.
ryanvm 17y ago
Or NYT opinion page, or HuffPost, etc.

Alex3917 17y ago

"How does one find information on climate change that isn't politically motivated?" As for as the facts are concerned, the idea that all information on climate change is poltitically motivated is itself a lie spread by certain forces within society. As far as policy is concerned, the role of environmental groups is to create recommendations on how to manage limited resources among multiple stakeholders who want to use them. Some of the more leftwing environmental groups believe that their job is just to protect the earth, whatever that means, but the more mainstream ones are in the business of solving tragedy-of-the-commons problems like climate change. They are probably you're best bet for sound policy advice, albeit they often on specific tactics. edit: @EnvDefenseFund has some good tweets about what is going on today.

CWuestefeld 17y ago
And unfortunately, many of those "more leftwing groups" are those that take center stage. Take Al Gore (please): [Question:] There's a lot of debate right now over the best way to communicate about global warming and get people motivated. Do you scare people or give them hope? What's the right mix? [Gore's Answer:] ... I believe it is appropriate to have an over-representation of factual presentations on how dangerous it is, as a predicate for opening up the audience to listen to what the solutions are, and how hopeful it is that we are going to solve this crisis. http://www.grist.org/article/roberts2/ http://www.grist.org/article/roberts2/
- Alex3917 17y ago
  That quote doesn't even parse grammatically.

Elfan 17y ago

All of the IPCC reports are available online: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report#External_links http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPCC_Fourth_Assessment_Report#E...

jerf 17y ago

How do you judge science as an outsider? You judge the correctness of the predictions made. How has global warming fared on the accuracy front? Terribly. We were promised monotonically rising global temperatures for the next hundred years, and instead, they plateaued, then dropped, only ten years into the predictions. As an outsider, the rest hardly matters. Why the predictions were wrong is something for the scientists to go work out. Explaining away the wrongness with "whys" doesn't change the wrongness, it only explains it. If you think I'm wrong, show me the prediction from 2000 or so that actually matches what happened to the real climate. Show me the error bars that the global temperature is still within. (Most global warming graphs don't even have error bars, which itself is pretty telling.) As far as I know, you can't. Explaining that failure doesn't change the fact of failure. If the last ten years is "mere weather", then the error bars should have reflected that. That is how you judge science as an outsider. You may not understand materials science, but the bridges the materials scientists help build behave as they predict (mostly). You may not understand organic chemistry, but plastics behave as such people predict. You may not understand political science, but the real world only sort of acts as they predict, so their science is less reliable. You may not understand climate science, but their predictions completely fail to come to pass. Fairly routinely, too. Make your conclusions about the validity of their science based on that. You don't have to be a climate scientist to do that. (As it happens, it is the same standard they should be using themselves, and the field's apparent refusal to do so is also very telling.) (Where no predictions can be made, there is no science. Sometimes that's just the way it is; economics isn't going to be a very real science anytime soon. There's nothing wrong with that, there's only something wrong with according it the belief levels in the predictions made by the field that should be reserved for real science.)

Bjoern 17y ago
http://dewy.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/CCC/25C3/video_h264_720x576/25c3-2863-en-climate_change_-_state_of_the_science.mp4 http://dewy.fem.tu-ilmenau.de/CCC/25C3/video_h264_720x576/25... Global warming is influenced by a multitude of contributing gases etc. Some of them can also cause cooling. Weather, being unpredictable of course screws up predictions. Also the oceans are taking a substancial amount of CO2 gases for instances which causes warming delays. I agree with the error bars but climatology is not exactly a easy science if you have so many variables. Its not that we fully understand "just weather" yet. Interesting question though, temperatures were constant for more or less 1 Mio. years (thanks ice-core probes for that information). Why suddenly in the last 100 years or so do we see a difference if you look in the timeframe of 1900 to now? Even if I play your logic and go for a moment on your side and say ok who knows maybe the predictions are wrong. Does it makes sense to drive the Coal/Oil/Gas burning train? There is more waste coming from burning these than just CO2 you know.