Multiple independent governments, thousands of peer reviewed studies across multiple disciplines, data collected from satellites, billions of dollars across decades of research... but still not enough.
It's stupid and dangerous. To be capable of thinking that it's a hoax requires a severe lack of understanding of the simple scale of humanity.
I find it more believable to think that you've been personally abducted by aliens than any segment of humanity having the ability to pull off a trick of such magnitude.
There isn't even a single point of authority here. The determination is made by climate scientists, biologists, ecologists, etc... across multiple independent governments, allies and enemies alike.
Argument from authority is meant to avoid groupthink, but there are many many disparate groups coming to the same conclusion here while relying on entirely different sets of evidence.
If you can use argument from authority to dispute this, then you can use it to dispute any consensus ever made.
It sounds like no one responding to me actually understands how climate models work. How do they work? What are their assumptions, their dynamical models, their uncertainties? I don't think you or anyone else in this thread can tell me that. You can tell me "the data is there", or vague assertions like "there are papers everywhere" - that's it, no specifics. If you were writing a scientific paper with such vague assertions it would be thrown in the trash.
Only specialists are qualified to even enter the debate. That is the essence of the fallacious appeals to authority that undermine all climate arguments. And the specialists are terrible communicators.
Yes you can get a brief summary of what it is about. But you are not at all in a position to evaluate how sound it is without spending months or years.
Short explanations between laypeople is essentially propaganda, no matter which side of the issue they are on. What I mean is: How believable the explanation is is only correlated to the rhetorical skill of the presenter. It is not related to how true the proposition is.
I think this is a general problem. Climate isn't an exception in any way, it just happens to be the one area that really matters for our future (consequences of people not believing evolution is far far less).
Darwin did just fine in the Origin of Species ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Origin_of_Species ).
> Short explanations between laypeople is essentially propaganda, no matter which side of the issue they are on.
While this is correct, would you like to point out a long explanation that will overcome this? A book, perhaps?
One that doesn't rely on computer models, all of which, in every field, are absolute trash because they can be twisted to say whatever you want them to say as demonstrated in the very article we're discussing.
How is it that Darwin didn't need computer models to make his point, but climate science is empty without them?
The basic thesis of climate change is even simpler than evolution (greenhouse gases causes warming in lab + nature compensates within a window, ocean acidification etc => there is a tolerance level where nature can no longer compensate and you get the effect on earth that you observe in lab).
Yet in the same way as with evolution there are opponents/deniers.
It sounds like you insist that something must be "simple" in order to be "true". That because climate isn't "simple", climate science is wrong. But: You have lots of stuff like General Relativity which is complex yet (normally considered) true. Nature doesn't have to be simple just because you say so.
The article we are discussing is illustrating statistical incompetence and says nothing about computer models at all.
If you want to insist that computer modelling is garbage, say goodbye to most of the science you have previously accepted. My PhD is in astrophysics and we certainly did a lot of computer modelling and equation solving (since the 70s...take computers away and there is nothing left of cosmology as a field, the same holds for many other fields). If you don't trust computer modelling say goodbye to anything you think you know about the age of the universe, etc. etc.
There is good science and bad science with the aid of computers just as there is good and bad science without the aid of computers.
I don't have any book recommendation for you. I just know how to do science (from an astrophysics perspective) and from what I know, the climate "sceptics" seems to be making a lot of rookie mistakes when they crop out, and the climate scientists seem to make sound claims. But that is definitely just looking at the surface and applying my preconceptions. I don't have time to spend a year or two to go in depth; so I see no choice but to trust the climate scientists the way I would trust an oncologist if I got cancer and so on. Reading some "propaganda" about the subject (as defined in my previous post, i.e. popular science) from either camp won't make me much wiser anyway.
You're going to lengths to make a weak argument here.
You're just dicking around for seemingly no reason. It seems as though you're trying to win a debate that no one else is interested in by being exhaustingly pedantic. You didn't even really use the appeal to authority correctly, but I gave you the benefit of the doubt there. Good luck.
I'm guessing that these deniers don't question other complex things like how their hardware and software works, how gravity works or how papers is made.
The greenhouse gas hypothesis is readily explainable to elementary school children. Explaining the actual mechanisms is, obviously, far more complicated.
But the same is true for evolution. Origin of the Species pre-dated the discovery of DNA by nearly 100 years. Even a not particularly bright Biology undergraduate has a better understanding of evolution than a hypothetical re-animated Darwin.
A thorough explanation of our best knowledge about evolution requires a graduate-level course in genetics (and a few other things). A thorough explanation of our best knowledge about climate science requires a graduate-level course in mathematical modeling (and a few other things).
> It sounds like no one responding to me actually understands how climate models work. How do they work?
I've actually implemented toy versions of some of these models so that I could have a better understanding of the relationship between computer models and raw data. I have a graduate-level understanding of ODEs, PDEs, and numerical analysis, but was still in pretty far over my head.
My take-away form that experience: unless you have the time to devote to getting (the equivalent of) a PhD in climate science, you likely don't understand these models well enough to comment on them.
So I actually do think it's just objectively true that:
> Only specialists are qualified to even enter the debate.
Which, as you note, is a serious problem. But the way I see it, each citizen has three options:
1. Get a Ph.D. in climate science.
2. Superficially engage with climate science.
3a. Trust that people who spend a lot of time studying these probably have well-informed opinions (an appeal to an appropriate authority).
3b. Trust some other authority (e.g., the PR experts working for conservative senators and fossil fuel companies, who are admittedly better communicators).
Obviously, option 1 is ideal.
Option 2 isn't necessarily better than Option 3a. How do you know what you don't know? How do you know when you come to a terrible conclusion based upon a misinterpretation of data?
Let's take me as an example. When experimenting with these models, I'd often find surprising results. But then I'd ask a climate science friend only to find that I had made some subtle but in fact ridiculous mistake. And they'd be able to explain to me what that mistake was, because I have lots of experience with ODEs/PDEs and enough experience reading scientific literature that I could read the papers/datasets that used to justify their assertion that I had chosen an unrealistic value for some parameter or another. And enough experience with statistical modeling that I could apply some common "validation" tricks and notice that I could reproduce some of the critiques of my mistakes.
How do you do that if you don't have a Ph.D.-level understanding of dynamical systems, plenty of programming experience, AND a climate science Ph.D. friend? Not to mention no family and plenty of free time...
That leaves Options 3 -- both appeals to authority. However, not all appeals to authority are equally fallacious. Listening to a quack pot cult leader and listening to a trained nurse are both appeals to authority; however, only a fool would believe these are equally inadvisable.
If you don't have the time to seriously engage with modern science, is trusting your own judgment really more advisable than listening to experts? I don't think the answer is quite as clear cut as you make it out to be. When I see arguments like yours, that Emerson quote always comes to mind: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
I.e., just because you avoided a "logical fallacy" doesn't mean that your mode of reasoning is more likely to result in Truth. See also: the millions of "proofs" that Sqrt[2] is rational. On this question, the person who listens to the blind authority of the mathematician has a strictly better route to truth than the person who believes their own mistaken reasoning despite (or, more typically, to spite) expert testimony.
I submit the same is even more likely to be true for more complicated issues, such as climate science or evolution.
It's worth saying that no one really expects you to live life or strictly act like this. Avoiding fallacies is really just about putting forth a concrete logical agument.
Retoric (and life) can be plenty productive without logical rigor and appeals to authority have meaning and value outside of 'logic'. Ethos, logos, pathos anyone?
The data are publicly available and the papers relatively accessible. The dismissal isn’t because climate deniers reject the mainstream. It’s because they reject the mainstream without trying to understand it.
This is not how it works the real world. Saying "research is out there" is absolutely meaningless in convincing people, especially if you don't even post actual links/citations (which most people never do).
They listened to their doctors. Modern life is too complex for everyone to understand everything fully. So we delegate decisions to reliable authorities.
If one wishes to disagree with said authorities, i.e. with the status quo, the burden of proof is on the person bringing the disagreement. The problem with anti-vaxers and climate deniers is their rejection of the status quo without any proper evidence. (Also making decisions that negatively impact other people.)
Exactly. This directly contradicts the notion that "the research out there" is by itself sufficient to convince anyone of anything.
People rely on authorities, and different groups of people have different entities they consider authoritative.
>So we delegate decisions to reliable authorities.
Sure. Like, uh, elected politicians? Who benefit from politicization of science, no matter which side of each issues they end up on?
It it remarkable how oblivious most people are to the social dynamics of these issues.
The Discovery of Global Warming
https://history.aip.org/climate/index.htm
As the questions are political, you need rhetoric. As unfortunately as it may be, it should be obvious by now to everyone following politics that being "polite" is not a winning recipe in the game.
These people act as authorities as well. If the alternative is to appeal to another authority, then it seems like choosing not to change opinions is a reasonable course of action for somebody who is already convinced on the basis of authority. The public case for concern about climate change has been marred with incessant exaggeration (for example, lady liberty was supposed to be semi-submerged by now, and the north pole was supposed to be completely free of ice by 2013). The source of many Americans' (and Canadians') skepticism of climate predictions is a continuous outpouring of exaggeration and fabrication, especially on the part of Al Gore (whose film was shown to a significant proportion of Canadian school children [and I imagine, American school children as well] in the oughts).
Citation needed
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/ice-caps-melt-gore-2014/
I trust Snopes here since they are desperately attempting to cast Gore's statements in a positive light. They choose to address whether Gore "predicted" this event, rather than whether he disseminated the prediction. If the question is whether he confidently disseminated this prediction, the answer is a resounding yes.
The IPCC publish estimates generally between 2035 (on the very low end) and 2100+ (generally "possibly before the end of the 21st century", i.e. possibly later) for the arctic ice cap to melt almost completely.
Where is they citation of Al Gore claiming the arctic will be ice free? Everything in that source is prefaced with terms like "could Be" and "as soon as", which you seem to be interpreting as a complete certainty. If I said I had cancer and could die as early 2018 then I wouldn't be wrong on New Years day 2019.
Where's the citation of the Statue of Liberty being underwater? Even with an ice free arctic this wouldn't happen.
> Where's the citation of the Statue of Liberty being underwater?
The Statue of Liberty thing I actually don't remember the source of. I remember it as a clip in a climate documentary where the statue of liberty is visualized as being about a quarter submerged (note I said "semi-submerged", not "underwater", funny how the broken telephone works even when you can presumably see everything on screen at once).
You can say this same thing about almost any scientific finding.
A less controversial example:
General Relativity is extremely odd and widely accepted.
If someone refuses to believe General Relativity, would you really say the problem is "failure of communication"?
Any kind of meaningful communication on the subject would take years, and also (if you insist in not trusting others) require a lot of expensive experiments to be carried out.
Any "communication" short of that is in a sense propaganda; in that how believable you make it seem to the layperson is not correlated with how true it is.
No, rather than a problem with communication, the problem is arrogance in believing that General Relativity (or Climate..) is something you can have an opinion about without years of physics training.
(There are physics professors that may dispute GR. That is fine; it did not seem that your topic was communication with sceptical academics in the climate sciences)
If I am going to reject my mechanic’s diagnosis I need to have strong evidence and reasoning to support my position. Climate deniers don’t have that, and their pigheadedness puts everyone at danger.
Efforts to summarize the scientific evidence for global warming for laymen are myriad. The arguments and evidence for global warming are extremely accessible.
I don’t see how the blame isn’t on the climate deniers.
Take the car mechanic. His incentives don't completely align with yours. Taking a benign example, his goals are to keep your car in good condition and to make money. Your goals are to keep your car in good condition and to save money. Thus, the car mechanic might err on the side of caution and suggest you replace your car brakes every 30 thousand miles, while you (assuming you knew all the relevant information) would only replace the brakes every 50 thousand miles.
In the absence of "strong evidence and reasoning", you may still reasonably decide that you don't trust the mechanic.
Second, there's support from public relations firms, also clearly funded by fossil fuels industries. It grew out of the "smokers rights" campaign in the early 80s, which was funded by the tobacco industry. And indeed, the "climate-change denial" campaign is basically a clone of that. Involving the same firms, but with much broader funding.
So basically, virtually none of the climate-change deniers have a clue about the underlying science. So "intellectually engaging" with them is pointless. You could maybe help them see how they've been manipulated. But that too is probably pointless, because they're up to their noses in a smothering meme swamp.
It is interesting to note that not only is the campaign a clone, but it is in part headed by the same people [1] who were involved in the tobacco business.
And FWIW, Burson-Marsteller has been the lead ad agency.
"Keep the pressure on."
"The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."
"The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition."
"If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside"
"Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
From Saul Alisky’s Rules for Radicals.
These are precisely the tactics being used against climate skeptics. Rather than actually caring about debating the science, the alarmist side instead uses phrases like “virtually none of the climate-change deniers have a clue about the underlying science.”
The whole debate stopped being about science years ago and it has instead become a battle of economic ideology. It’s impossible to have a rational debate when the leadership of the debate engages in ad hominem attacks as a matter of tactics.
We talk about “science,” yet hold up an Inconvenient Truth as some sort of inflatable prophesy, as if Al Gore were Moses holding the Ten Commandments. Despite all sorts of debunked aspects of that film, to call it into question means we are somehow intellectually inept. One would be intellectually inept to not call it into question! As far as realizing how we have been manipulated — that manipulation cuts both ways: many people actually think the debate is still about the climate. It’s not. It’s about economic systems and the means of production.
I’ve stopped caring about the debate and just quietly vote for candidates with whom I agree. There is an expression about wrestling pigs that comes to mind when I think about the climate debate..
I agree. The scientific consensus is strong, and the models are robust. So the only "debate" left involves dueling PR campaigns. And the side that's funded by the fossil fuels industry has consolidated its political control. They still have no hope of winning the scientific debate, but now they can impose their agenda regardless.
Anyway, I could be upset about our situation. Maybe I would be, if I were a few decades younger, or had children and grandchildren. But I don't. So mainly I'm cynically amused. And I'm becoming more and more confident that I'll get to see some lulzy shit before I die.
I am not sure why you are discussing a film. I would caution you against assuming that most people, particularly in this forum, are deriving their knowledge from a single film, as opposed to peer-reviewed articles, textbooks, or the IPCC reports. Personally, I consider this topic to be fairly important, especially given that I grew up in Alaska: climate change is an undeniable feature of the landscape there. I would agree that a lack of high-quality information on this subject is a problem. This is a resource that I would recommend:
The Discovery of Global Warming
https://history.aip.org/climate/index.htmYet the linked post doesn't employ it.
> "Keep the pressure on."
This is the same as be vigilant, be persistent. Fight for what you believe in. This has nothing to do with skeptics, it's about engaging those who similarly do so. Thus it's an active discussion. The pressure is obvious because of the high stakes nature of the topic.
> "The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself."
The threat of a fucked up Earth for our children seems a lot more terrifying for us than for them. They are born into it, we see the change.
> "The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition."
This simply applies to people who are either science communicators by occupation or paid shills for fossil companies.
> "If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counterside"
That's why climate change denialists continue to deny full force, clinging onto the slightest thing. Fighting straw men.
> "Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it."
That's again why denialists muddy up old things, like the Al Gore movie. Which has nothing to do with the science.
> the alarmist side instead uses phrases like “virtually none of the climate-change deniers have a clue about the underlying science.”
And? It seems to be true. It's not a smear phrase, it's the truth laid bare. Denialists are not sophisticated scientists proposing alternate models that explain the data better. Their level of argumentation is very simple, and very much not in good faith.
> It’s impossible to have a rational debate when the leadership of the debate engages in ad hominem attacks as a matter of tactics.
I don't know who you identify as the "leadership", but there are millions of people who think there's man made global warming and they regularly try to convince other people of this without following any sort of leadership.
Oh please. Inconvenient Truth was released 12 years ago. Of course the science is outdated, and in this year 2018, the only people who bring up Inconvenient Truth are those people who have no interest in what scientists have been doing in the past 12 years and instead try to refute an imagined straw man.
So much for respecting the other side of debate.
Bam. Now you have political control over a group of people, and that control can be exercised outside of the context of the original problem.
It is very unfortunate that ecology was chosen as one of the issues to politicize, because it already was one of the most complex fields of research there is, not to mention that issues in that field have potential to affect most of the people on the planet.
My advice? De-escalate the rhetoric wherever you can. That's the only way forward in the long run, for everybody.
Global warming skepticism has got almost nothing to do with “climate denial PR campaigns” and everything to do with people having functioning BS detectors. To wit:
* lofty claims of certainty based on computer models that can’t be effectively tested with out-of-sample data
* argument relying on “consensus” of the scientific “community”
* unseemly behaviour of said community revealed in “climategate” emails
* second rate academic talent jumping on a career long gravy train
* stipulations by leftist politicians for concentration of vast powers to control the economy to fix the problem
* creeping attribution of all sorts of other problems as second order effects of warming
* rebranding if the language from “global warming” to “climate change”
* the ridiculous idea that “trusting science” is the same thing as trusting scientists. Nobody actually trusts scientists, they trust feedback loops and well-aligned incentives. Take those things away and the trust rightfully evaporates.
LOL. Notice that none of your points address any specific studies. I've never met a self-identified climate change skeptic who reads the journals of the American Geophysical Union[1], like I have since the 1990s. But you people have "functioning BS detectors", "common sense", etc. -- just like all the creationists I've met.
It doesn't matter. The post above gives a fairly good explanation of why there are so many people skeptical either about the climate change, or about its exact rate, or about the causes, or about the policies that should be enacted in its regard.
It is not very scientific in most cases, but from average person's perspective it makes sense. So the notion that every "climate denier" out there is some kind of raving mad lunatic is itself patently absurd. Their position is completely understandable, even if it's scientifically incorrect.
This is especially true when you get to the "policy" side of things.
As a side not, let's not pretend that climate change "believers" (denier, believer - both are horrible labels) are always rational. Most of them are only vaguely inspired by research and driven by more mundane and "social" motives.
For comparison, how much zeal have you seen around colony collapse disorder? It's a serious issues with potentially grave consequences for ecology and agriculture. Almost no one cares. There is no social signalling, no in-group/out-group dynamics, no vitriol. Because it hasn't been politicized. Yet.
Models can be tested against history.
> argument relying on “consensus” of the scientific “community”
I doesn't rely on consensus, this is just a tool to show the extent of the certainty. Not sure why you feel the need to put consensus or community in quotes.
> unseemly behaviour of said community revealed in “climategate” emails
This is the ultimate exercise in cherry picking, there was one slightly nefarious sounding phrase in thousands of emails and you act like this negates a entire field of science.
> rebranding if the language from “global warming” to “climate change”
When exactly do you think this "rebranding" happened?
You couldn't have more aptly proved the OP's point.
To me it seems as if sizable chunk of people believe in nonsense, and the nonsensical beliefs and actions based on such beliefs are detrimental not only to the people holding such beliefs, but every single living entity on this planet, future generations included.
How is that acceptable? With what right do the people holding these beliefs keep acting the way they do?
It is the reaponsibility of the rest of us to stop this madness as soon as possible. It is the responsibility we as species hold to our ancestors and future generations.
If it is all in vain for you. Fine. But please do consider other living organisms as as important as you, for you are one of us. We are in this together.
Do not give equal weight to nonsense beliefs and beliefs supported by decades of science. That's the real toxicity - when you try to attempt to give them equivalency despite different efforts having gone into forming them.
I'm sorry that isn't clear to some people, but that doesn't make nonsense any less excusable or valid or show a need to 'win their hearts'.
The real question is why aren't you more worried? I wonder where your money comes from and where you live.
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Healthday/story?id=4507735&pag...
https://www.dw.com/en/report-extreme-weather-could-kill-over...
http://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/climate-chan...
We just discovered the climate change is happening much faster than our models suggested meaning all those predictions are OPTIMISTIC. I live in a US state that's currently covered in smoke because it's all burning, and a bunch of people die every year in increasingly harder to control fires.
You know what's the most enraging part of this? People like you that go around using logical fallacies to argue a completely discredited side of a very black and white matter simply because you believe it doesn't affect you.
But still, I doubt that the major players will have such great reputations. Consider the Truth Tobacco Industry Documents collection, for example.[0]
I don't see anywhere that I complained that they are the ones being treated unfairly (which implies that I think they are being treated unfairly but the "climate accepters" (not sure of a good term here) are not. Nor do I think that.
I think both sides have people that treat each other that way. It's counterproductive regardless of which side is doing it.
I don't find it relevant so was going to omit this, but since you questioned my personal "good faith," I will say that I generally accept the climate science. I wouldn't consider myself a purist, but I find the evidence compelling. So I'm "on the team." Is that what you needed to know to evaluate my position?
First of all, you shouldn't "aggregate" them. Very few if those who are usually called "climate deniers" actually believe that climate change is not happening. Did you know that?
In general, apart from total deniers, there's people who think climate change might not be as bad, or extreme, or as manmade, or that catastrophic predictions need some check. Labelling them all as "deniers" is just a very handy (and toxic) way to close the conversation.
What is "established" is part of the debate too and obviously it is in some deniers interest to instead label themself sceptic. Apparently there has been a debate about this:
There was a time when denial of this issue was really skepticism, and a time for debate, but it was decades ago. At this point it’s like debating with tobacco companies who wanted to claim that smoking was good for you. It’s not a real debate, it’s dealing with people who are arguing in bad faith for selfish reasons at the cost of human lives. Why should ignorant, dangerous people (at best) and disingenuous people (at worst) be afforded any respect or time? Just because those people pretend (sometimes) to be scientific, skeptical, rational, or sincere doesn’t mean anyone else should be compelled to meet them on their own corrupt terms.
It’s like “debating” Creationists, and it’s a waste of time and it demeans the concept of debate. Don’t let cynical bastards drag you down because they learned how to just barely pretend to be skeptics or scientists.
At least that combination grants them the opportunity to be victims rather that villains
I don't have any better solutions, other than maybe something more specific that tries to understand the position of the person rather than sticking them in a large group identity with which they likely don't conform to entirely.
I generally like to ask people how they identify themselves, and then call them that. If they identify as climate deniers, then the term is completely fine.
We find it terribly rude to label somebody with pronouns like "he" or "she" when they prefer something else. I don't see this as much different.
Now the problem with those groups is that their borders are made intentionally blurred. In the case of climate change: industrial/government lobbyists and shills try to mingle with genuinely skeptical citizens. Grouping all these people in a single group is one of the only ways to fight against that, especially when the raw information dissemination power of the opposing party is so much stronger.
Basically, if we all stop running our air conditioner, it isn’t going to have any significant effect on long term global temperatures. Basically we object to the idea that lowering standards of living is a meaningful cure for rising temperatures. Humans absolutely cause pollution, nobody “denies” that and most of us care deeply about actual pollution. But once CO2 started being considered some kind of pollutant, the environmental movement essentially jumped the shark in my view. CO2 is just as much a pollutant as oxygen but it is being treated by politicians as if it were benzene.
How do you consider oxygen to be causing climate change?
What would you suggest Humans do to reduce their negative impact on climate change if not "turning off the AC"?
I believe there's sufficient evidence to justify action on climate change.
However, it's a complex topic with complex solutions.
I've found even basic questioning results in a kneejerk "climate denier!" reaction from most.
Sadly, it's actually counterproductive for making progress on a very important issue.
2. No, treating people poorly who continually spread misinformation and lies does not make you bad or worse than them, this is a silly misrepresentation that would almost arise to this question fitting classic sealioning.
3. There is no expectation to win over hearts and minds, and this isnt a debate - its simply evidence being denied out of hand because it doesn't fit the person's narrative. It should be dealt with just as much scorn as a flat earther.
There's no good points when someone isn't willing to bring table stakes of "willing to acknowledge evidence"
So, from their perspective, they should be able to treat you poorly. See how behaving badly towards people you disagree with goes both ways?
It's one thing to talk to Bible thumpers, but science-deniers are not Bible thumpers. They use pseudo science to discredit science. They gave an agenda against science. And in the USA, they tend to align well with alt-right.
They deserve all the vitriol they get, and some more.
Climate deniers are either dishonest people spreading lies aimed at sacrificing the future of humanity for short-term personal gain or people following them in the destruction of humanity out of tribal allegiance.
There is literally no conceivable level of verbal vitriol that isn't far better than they deserve; the only reason for any restraint in that dimension is tactical, and even there excessive restraint i can be counterproductive; rational debate few of emotional charge may be a Vulcan ideal, but it is not, empirically, ideal in most broad human contexts. It's m it is important to be able to engage rationally in seeking the truth, but as long as that's not what everyone else does, it's going to remain less than ideal for spreadin the truth and mobilizing action based on it.
This seems a little extreme. Do you really think everyone labelled a denier is dishonest, in that they actually know the "truth" and instead are choosing for personal gain to spread "lies"? Is there really no room for "misguided", or even simply "wrong"?
Here's the autobiographical note for the originator of the graph that's being skewered: https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/who-is-steven-goddard/. He describes himself as a bicycle-riding lifelong-environmentalist who worked to get the clean air act passed. He says he never uses heat or air conditioning, and guesses that he has "the smallest electricity bill in Columbia, Maryland because I am very careful not to waste".
This isn't the self-narrative I'd expect for someone "aimed at sacrificing the future of humanity for short-term personal gain". Instead, he sounds like someone who genuinely believes there are flaws in the current version of climate science, and that a better approach is necessary to save (not sacrifice) humanity. What makes you so convinced he's dishonest, rather than a true believer with different beliefs?
No, which is why the bit of my post you quote says “either dishonest ... or ...”
> This isn't the self-narrative I'd expect for someone "aimed at sacrificing the future of humanity for short-term personal gain".
It's very much a public self-narrative I'd expect from someone trying to sell a dishonest position on the issue; concern trolling is a concept with a name because it works, and propagandists know and leverage the fact that it works.
I don’t personally use this language, but for what I think is a different reason: if removing a noun-forming suffix yields a verb which defines the extent of a category, I just think this results in an extraneous lack of specificity (you could instead just describe the subject as performing the action). I also think it’s collectively beneficial to not go out of our way to categorize each other, but I wouldn’t be so quick to apply that to personal situations.
So, I can’t understand taking “climate denier” to be personally offensive or vulgar. If you don’t like your own view, you’re entirely free to just change your mind.
Great question. I agree with your logic, and that on its face it isn't vitriolic, or even really offensive (or shouldn't be at least). However I've only ever really seen the term used by people that are using it as a pejorative. For that reason I take more of a structuralist view on the meaning, which is subjective.
I've never heard somebody (excluding trolls) describe themselves as a "climate denier" either.
How do they describe themselves?
At the moment the right is taking the blunt of these insults. Whoever disagree with the current feminist campaign is a misogynist bigot, a traditional patriarchy advocate. Whoever disagrees with the black lives matter movement is a racist. Whoever voted for Trump is an ignorant fascist. Whoever posts a comment agreeing with something Trump does is an alt-right, russian troll. Whoever voted for Brexit is an old uneducated racist.
This is why I kind of agree with hn's policy of banning political debate. It very quickly ends up with name calling and we all have better things to do of our time.
Climate change isn’t. It’s a scientific fact. On the same footing as the second law of thermodynamics at this point. There just is no disagreement to be had that isn’t as ludicrous as debating political sides of the flat earth “theory”
The only thing we should be disagreeing on is what to do now that we know these facts. Not on wether they are facts.
The reason I don’t need to is this https://skepticalscience.com/97-percent-consensus-cook-et-al...
Carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas. So is water. There is enough water around that we probably misnamed the planet, and in general we can say that the atmosphere is saturated with it: you may even have noticed some precipitation.
Between CO2 and H2O and a few other things, our planet is kept temperate instead of being a ball of ice. For the most part, water completely swamps the effect of CO2, and for the most part, the atmosphere is completely opaque to outgoing radiation at far lower levels of CO2 than are present naturally. So we can ignore CO2, right? Almost. There is a small window of radiation that water vapor does not block, but more importantly, there is not a lot of water above the troposphere.
IR photos look blurry. The mean free path of an IR photon (which is how most heat leaves Earth, because Planck) at sea level is quite short, in the tens-of-meters, with the distance rising as the photon makes its way out of the atmosphere. The radiative top-of-atmosphere is where the mean free path becomes infinite. The effect of an increased partial pressure of CO2 is to push the CO2-dense layer further out into space. Outgoing radiation must take a longer path to reach space, and therefore we say that this traps heat near the surface. The effect is not large: the commonly accepted figure is 3.7 W/m^2 per doubling of CO2, which is usually held to be equivalent to about 1 degree of global temperature.
If there were no other considerations, we would probably be justified in ignoring CO2-induced warming indefinitely. However, as any resident of the American South will attest, there is a pretty wicked relationship between temperature and humidity. Warmer air can hold exponentially more water vapor, and it's not a gentle exponent. A naive calculation would suggest that the CO2-H2O feedback loop would result in arbitrarily high temperatures. Fortunately this is not observed, but the lower bound for warming is pretty hard, due to thermodynamics, and at least part of the H2O feedback is strongly positive. We are in for some warming, any way you dice it.
But hey, that could be anyone's CO2, right? Well, no, not really. We know how much oil we're burning, and petrocarbon has a very different C13 ratio than what we find in the rest of the carbon cycle, and we're completely dwarfing the volcanic CO2 output. There's a T. Gerlach of USGS who has given humanity's output of CO2 as about one Pinatubo per day, or one or more Yellowstone-sized supervolcano eruptions per year. By volume, this is not the worst outgassing the planet has seen. The Deccan Traps released something like 1000 times the amount of carbon that humanity has managed to liberate. However, that took a few million years, and we are on track to equal that outgassing in about 1000 years at the current rates.
"But," you say, "how do we know there isn't some alternate explanation?" We cannot rule out new physics. However, new physics has to reproduce the results from the old physics. We know that CO2 and H2O are greenhouse gases, and we know we need a very large effect to counteract them, because at least part of the feedback loop is strongly positive. Despite the efforts of Dr. Lindzen, it seems we can rule out clouds as a moderating influence. A large unnoticed way to transfer energy to space is pretty implausible at this point, and it still would leave us with a CO2 problem in the long run; there are limits even to special pleading.
The explanation of global warming is complex, but not as complex as trying to model the future effects. There is a great deal of effort devoted to conflating these two things for political purposes.
There will always be people that disagree with you about something. Some are honest, some are not. Why be an asshole and treat people poorly and disrespectfully? That makes you as bad or worse than them IMHO. Even when they are being assholes (which many are), it is an act of immaturity to lower yourself to that level.
How do you expect to win over hearts and minds when you approach people like that? The worst thing you can do when trying to convince someone of your opinion is offend them by stereotyping, generalizing, and straw-manning their position. How do you feel when people do this to you? Do you find yourself intellectually engaging with them, thinking that they might have some good points?