An inadvertent companion piece to Suzoz’ earlier find from New Scientist, A guide to the Perplexed on Climate Change, from Gristmill comes How to Talk to a Global Warming Skeptic.
a complete listing of the articles in “How to Talk to a Climate Skeptic,” a series by Coby Beck containing responses to the most common skeptical arguments on global warming. There are four separate taxonomies; arguments are divided by:
* Stages of Denial,
* Scientific Topics,
* Types of Argument, and
* Levels of Sophistication.
Sweet.
Via Ezra Klein. Amanda Marcotte feels the term “skeptic” is misused when talking about a cult of denialism.
Amanda Marcotte feels the term “skeptic� is misused when talking about a cult of denialism.
Suggest you google ‘denier’. Or is that the effect trying to be achieved here?
My favourite argument: it’s cold today in Wagga Wagga.
But it’s warm today in Willygobung.
Can’t we just talk real slow to them? Better yet, write the answers down for them in crayon.
Better just to give ‘em a stern look.
If someone is a denialist in this day and age, they’re not going to listen to you, no matter how evidence-based your argument is.
Yeah, Phil, wif pitchers.
How to talk to a g.w. sceptic (can’t do it with a k) is now in favourites. Link-of-the-month, tigtog.
As far as the terminology goes Barry Pittock has suggested that the term climate contrarian be used. I know it wont catch on this late in the game but I like it none the less, since it describes what motivates so many sceptics/deniers/contrarians.
I think that the best way to talk to such people is to simply repeat either 93% or 7% over and over again.
I thought the best way to deal with them was put climate change skeptics last on the ballot paper and let them have a decade to consider their position. They are slow learners by definition.
This May was the warmest on record in Victoria and the SMH led today with pictures of Mt Everest with thinning snow cover.
I think the majority of people are taking heed of stories like that (and can sense the evidence around them) and it makes denialists and even “pragmatists” like Howard look out of touch.
It’s fortunate that you AGW believers are so hateful, contemptuous, and arrogant. I should think that if you wanted to avoid an Apocalypse you would want to convince all of your fellow citizens of your position. You couldn’t pass a penny a gallon tax with your attitude. I think you would all rather wallow in your self righteousness than accomplish anything.
Mike M, we’re past the point of convincing anyone, it’s just plain dumb that they can’t figure it out based on the consensus so far, in fact it’s just plain dumb that they so wilfully refuse to. And it’s just too bad that these village idiots have the platform in some major dailies to show off their stupidity.
And if anything, it’s the denialists, deadenders and flat earthers who wallow in their righteousness and it’s them that are trying to prevent anything being done. Believe me when I say that my ridicule is done more with a rueful smile than any malice.
This is a different take.
If a leftist believed that we face an impending catastrophe unless we shift rapidly from the use of carbon based fuels for electricity and transportation then they would, like anybody else serious about science and politics propose that there should be a massive diversion of resources to deal with the problem so that we can continue economic growth and development.
A natural “leftist” approach would be to advocate huge budgets for accelerated R&D to introduce replacement fuels more rapidly than would otherwise be necessary or to develop new technology for removing carbon based emissions or their consequences.
This would be very different from pseudo-leftists advocating that we should restrict economic growth and development so as to adapt to what the planet can afford. Rightists might be more inclined towards diverting resources into mitigation or adaptation.
Incidentally there is nothing specifically “leftist” about that either. Both leftists and rightists would advocate spending whatever it takes to avoid catastrophe rather than taking the opportunity to advocate restraining economic development.
A dead give away about the “scientific evidence” is that instead of advocating such measures (whether R&D on fuel replacement, or dealing with the consequences of continuing to use carbon based fuel or mitigation) they advocate measures that are designed to slow economic growth and make people feel guilty about wanting a higher material standard of living. This is characteristic of people who are opposed to economic development as such, rather than having a belief that there is some concrete problem that really needs to be dealt with.
… I am not aware of anyone who actually supports the traditional leftist position of being enthusiastic about developing the productive forces and regarding capitalism as a fetter obstructing that, who does take the “scientific evidence” for catastrophe seriously. It seems to be completely wrapped together with the traditional reactionary world outlook that capitalism should be opposed because it is developing too fast and “where will it all end”.
PS Please note that accepting the scientific evidence for the existence of human induced climate change relating to carbon emissions and accepting the claims about impending catastrophe or the measures proposed to deal with that are two very different matters.
oops ought to have been a quote.
We should reserve the word sKeptic for the small world of the AGW denialists, since its american in origin, and the word sCeptic for the real world, where rational people live.
Shorter patrickm:
As the only true leftist here, I disagree with the existing proposals for dealing with anthropogenic global warming. If global warming were a real problem, you’d come up with proposals I could agree with. Therefore global warming isn’t a real problem.
Different to what? Sounds exactly like the guff you always spout to me.
Oh yay, another breath of
fresh airputrid fart gas fromThe Last SuperpowerMaoists for Mammon.I’m a leftist, and that’s exactly what I advocate, at least the first clause. Your point?
Oh, yes, because us “pseudo-leftists” or greens want people to be shivering in caves.
“Straw-leftist” is what you really mean, I think.
But it’s instructive that the prospect of winding back consumption a little is so frightening to those on the right, and “decent leftists” who are really on the right but are in denial about it; Look at WWII and the string savers, how they took huge cuts in consumption and behavioural changes for the greater good. I would have thought that that kind of moral and social fibre would be something the rightists would look back on with awe and admiration. Not so, apparently; it’s “you’ll take my Plasma TV remote from my cold, dead hands!”
Note that the mitigation of energy consumption recommended by Stern, etc. are not anything like the magnitude of the Blackout-bread-and-dripping of WWII. Surely many intelligent righties can see that we don’t need the avalanche of cheap crap and overconsumption that is the hallmark of western civilisation at the moment.
My, how like a cult to shun unbelievers.
What I don’t get is why the average Rightard on RWDBlogs is so keen to deny Global Warming? I mean, what do they get out of it? If they aren’t the owners (or at least have considerable share portfolio’s in) of carbon-emitting industries, then why are they so upset about something being done to combat Climate Change? I mean, even if the problem isn’t as grave as presented what do they have to lose if something is done about it? I think it just shows their opposition is largely without a material foundation and purely ideological. Which is amusing when you consider how often they consider the Left of being ‘ideologues’.
They are in denial…
In any case - what exactly have we got to lose by not reducing emissions?
Seems it’s a win win….
We restructure our economy….
We have cleaner air….
Everyone would think Australia rocks….
More people would visit….
My chances with European backpackers improves by factor X…
We can’t lose!
Possibly because they see it as a quixotic tilt at a windmill coming at the expense of their job, superannuation, business and bills - which it most certainly would be. Of course if you have none of these, then your perspective might be different.
Now come up with a non-solution that’s at least free, like how Al Gore buys carbon credits from himself, and we’d all be happy.
Which brings me to the announcement of my new enterprise: “Créditos Del Carbón Para Los Lechones” based in Lagos Nigeria. Please send your bank details so we can deposit your carbon credits as soon as possible.
Doing nothing won’t be without cost. Business won’t be ‘as usual’.
Brian; when people are actually dying from Malaria because of the ban on DDT which the greens still support, due to the errors of Rachael Carson from 1962, and because we are still having arguments about the non-issue of the Population Bomb 1968, why ought anyone take the latest scare seriously? Why don’t you get your priorities in order. Let’s get the rest of the world up to our standard of living pronto, before we have anymore doom and gloom from the ruling class.
Nobody on the coast is loosing on their real estate.
People like the money grubber Flannery, who has not even made his dopey book freely available on the net wants working people to have a lower standard of living! He wants to make money and attack working peoples’ standard of living. He is revolting! After getting it so wrong so often why don’t you doubt yourself a bit more?
Defend the working class! Let the DDT blow free!
Or it will, depending on which dogmas have been buried ten years hence (actually, aren’t we all doomed by 2012 anyway?). Forgive me if I don’t repent now and consider the end is nigh.
This is just rudeness for rudeness sake.
The similarities between the AGW fear-mongering and the Iraq war fear-mongering continue to stack up. One group shouts “denier” and the other group shoulds “appeaser”. Both smugly walk away thinking they’ve made a point.
Meanwhile, all they have succeeded in doing is to create a climate of irrational fear which is a perfect background for bad public policy.
Skepticism isn’t bad. The opposite of skepticism of government action is faith in government. Good luck with that.
Now that you have demonstrated just how ignorant you are perhaps you could tell us all what name you usually post under
Pseudo patrickm; Now that you have demonstrated just how ignorant you are perhaps you could tell us all what name you usually post under
link
Before everyone runs back to the climate change scare mongering just spend a few seconds contemplating what 3,000 children dieing every single day means. They no longer die in Singapore though the climate has not become less tropical. They are deaths due to a lack of industrialisation and the left has always sort to promote rapid industrial development.
John, if your point is that the clowns that were completely wrong about WMD in Iraq are the same bunch that have been completely wrong about AGW, then it’s a well made one.
Science like our government system, being products of the enlightenment have skepticism built into their processes - things tend to have worked out very well within these parameters. What system were thinking of?
‘Sceptic’ is one of those corrupted words - often originally verbs or proper nouns - commonly used as a flattering, generic noun whose meaning everyone assumes they know but which really has none without singular context, either that provided by their original proper sense or when turned back into a verb and attached to a direct object. A capital S Sceptic is an adherent to a specific philosophical mode of espistemology, intellectual ancestor not so much to rational empiricism as to its supposed contemporary nemesis: ‘postmodernism’, or, if you prefer, ‘relativism’. Modern so-called ’sceptics’ tend to conveniently forget that the first Sceptics embraced a passive epistemological surrender that’s almost antithetical to the aspiration to truth with which most of them align. In fact, true small-s scepticism is not concerned with ‘endpoints’ at all, since it’s just a process or a tool. Which is why we ought to resist anyone who dumbs the word form down from a vigorously applied verb to a sit-back-and-bludge noun. Put another way, show don’t tell if you aspire to being a sceptic (about anything). In fact the pompous label ‘Global Warming Sceptic’ meta-advertises mostly its own illegitimacy. Especially capitalised like that the noun form implies a permanent intellectual state - anything but sceptical. To be sceptical about something is very different to proclaiming yourself a sceptic about something. Used as a verb the word is dynamic and singular, which happens to be the only way it can breath properly: in the doing, requiring a precise object upon which to act. In the context of GW, the verb form renders useful debate about specific evidence unavoidable, even to the weasliest rhetorician, because short of one-way, ears-blocked ranting a la (la-la-la-I’m-not-listening) Bolty et al, you simply can’t avoid adding the transitive ‘about…’ after the ‘I am sceptical…’. And then ’scepticism’ becomes what it should be and all it ever can be: fuel in your intellectual gas-tank on a trip from one view to another view (or the same one), by way of highly-specific evidentiary sight-seeing.
What gives the GW ’sceptic’ game away more than anything is that even if you claim you are one that’s not a ‘position’ on GW in and of itself, it’s merely a description of the way you intend to handle GW information while deciding what your overall position on GW will be. Being ’sceptical’ of information is no more a substantial marker of your view of it than being ‘fit’ is an indicator of your current and/or eventual place in a footrace. You can believe GW is real. You can believe it’s not real. You can be undecided. But being ’sceptical’ about it doesn’t tell the rest of us anything about your views on GW other than suggesting that perhaps you ought to get off your bum and apply your dazzling knack for ‘being sceptical’ to the surfeit of hard information (of all kinds) now at your disposal, in order to decide at last, or at least for the moment, where you do stand. That is what ‘modern scepticism’ is properly for - helping form your views, not impersonating them.
ie Get a move on, slow pokes.
Why does patrickm hate science?
Leinad says ‘Why does patrickm hate science?’ In reply to a post where I pointed out that the DDT scare was based on anything but good science. Why not address the point? Is Leinad on the side of Dr Anarfi Asamoa-Baah, World Health Organization (WHO) Assistant Director-General for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria or on the side of the Greens that descend from Carson’s Silent Spring. One side has the science to back it up. The other side hides from the deaths that it’s pseudo science has inflicted on the worlds poor with ignorant nasty little one liners like ‘Defend the working class! Let the DDT blow free!’ cowardly dropped into a thread as an anonymous contribution.
Patrickm, you do yourself no favours by spreading misinformation about Rachel Carson and imaginary ddt bans that killed millions. Here’s some information for you.
Try reading sources other than those produced by right-wing ‘think’ tanks and you might avoid further embarrassment.
Alex: Do you support the science backed by the World Health Organization (WHO) Assistant Director-General for HIV/AIDS, TB and Malaria or the anti DDT science?
No anthony, I was talking about the inevitable mistakes made by government when they (generally with good intentions) introduce silly policies to try to cater to people’s fears.
The virtue of scientists isn’t the issue… they have absolutely no claim to an expertise on good public policy. Indeed, there is a tendency in public policy for people close to an issue to generally make the public policy mistake of over-emphasising the issue they deal with.
For example, doctors and nurses think that health spending is the most important thing in the world, teachers think education is the most important, researchers think research is the most important, people dealing with children think children are the most important issue, military types think the military is the most important, police for police etc etc.
That is why skepticism of special pleading is absolutely necessary.
Just for future reference, John, could you tell us what your profession is, so that we can apply the apprpriate skepticism to any possibility of special pleading?
I believe John’s training is as an economist (correct me if I am wrong). That profession generalises “skepticism about special pleading”, even on its own behalf. Most economists I know are mightily skeptical about the effect of their theories since interests are always more powerful than ideas.
anthony on 2 June 2007 at 10:30 am
“John, if your point is that the clowns that were completely wrong about WMD in Iraq are the same bunch that have been completely wrong about AGW, then it’s a well made one.”
Interesting that you should make that connection. Virtually everyone - the US, the French, the Germans, the British and the Australians (including Andrew Wilkie) believed that Saddam had WMD. Saddam deliberately encouraged that belief for his own obscure reasons. There was even dire warnings that to attack him would provoke the use of said WMD. It seems that only ones who actually knew there were only the remnants of a WMD program were a close group of of Saddam’s chums.
There were of course those in the west who believed that the WMDs didn’t exist - but they were in a tiny minority. Sort of WMD deniers if you get my point - which is that if the AGW science is so compelling then no purpose is served by abuse of the sceptics. And abuse is what it is, the term “denier” likens the skeptics to holocaust deniers, and is highly offensive.
There is nothing wrong with being an AGW or WMD sceptic.
Including Andrew Wilkie? Wasn’t the whole point of the smear campaign against Wilkie that he (quite correctly) cast doubt on the belief that Saddam had WMDs?
In any event, the two cases are as alike as apples and oranges. Speaking as WMD skeptic (vindicated) my doubts were based on the lack of evidence for WMDs and the bum’s rush to shut up and discredit anyone who cast doubt on their existence.
Speaking as someone who’s been watching climate issues - the CFC debate, acid rain and anthropogenic global warming - for at least 25 years through the pages of the New Scientist my impression is that there’s a hell of a lot more evidence that human activity affects climate than there ever was for Iraqi WMDs and the recent wake-up on AGW is long overdue. I’m vaguely optimistic - with luck, now that most of us have got over pretending there isn’t a problem we might get over pretending that there’s nothing we can, or should, do about it.
How do you talk to a global warming skeptic? After reading Andrew Bolt on the subject over the last week, my conclusion is that you don’t. You speak past them, to the people in that residual 7% who might be open to persuasion, and the 93% you’ve already got on-side. All the noise that’s coming from the denialist quarter is just very loud bitching about the fact that they’ve (finally) lost the argument.
John H you seem to be excessively negative about governments and about people with specialised expertise. Specialists are paid to advocate for their specialty. It’s what you expect of them. And you don’t expect the nurses to be advocating for the military people.
When I was in government our chief financial officer told me that need was infinite and I couldn’t expect to get everything I said I needed. But he didn’t tell me the criteria he used to limit my demands. I doubt they had much validity but that didn’t make his decisions silly.
Patrickm, Johan Galtung says that 100,000 people die every day, that’s 36.5 million each year, through reversible decisions and policies made by the rich countries. He calls it structural violence. It does have some relationship to global warming, but it’s a bit too complicated to go into here.
You might be interested to know that Singapore is getting in touch with the Dutch because they take the risks of global warming seriously and don’t want to be caught short.
But being a government, I’m sure they are just being silly and catering to people’s fears.
There’s a basic epistemological difference between scepticism about empirical facts where there is much counter-evidence (Saddam’s WMD) and denial of scientific analysis of complex phenomena. That’s why, as a number of people have said, “scepticism” really is the wrong term to use in this debate.
To be more precise.
The question with regard to WMD in principle admitted of a true/false response. Either Saddam did have or did not have WMDs.
The thing was to interpret the available evidence in the absence of conclusive proof.
There was actually a way in principle in which the proposition could have been falsified.
So we are talking about a simple matter of fact about the existence of material objects in the world.
With climate change, we are talking about the validity of models and theories which interpret complex phenomena. The criteria for assessing scientific research are quite different from those we would use to assess the truth or falsity of statements such as “the cat sat on the mat” which has the same logical form as “Saddam has WMDs”. In the case of scientific research such as this, we should look to best fit between proposition and observation.
I think that’s right, Kim. A sceptical turn of mind is a necessary part of enquiry, scientific or otherwise, but the term has become somewhat corrupted in this context.
Robert Merkel did a post that showed that denialists, when their views are rigorously tested, end up just quibbling over details.
I just wish I could remember more undergrad analytical philosophy, Brian, so I could explain the epistemological point better!
patrickm, hello? If anything puts the A in AGW it’s the popbomb.
Kim, I think you do brilliantly at explaining everything.
wbb, glad you’re back, and good point. Ronald Wright in the Massey Lectures said that we crossed over to taking more from the planetary system than it could sustain some time in the 1970s (quoting some-one else, of course).
Thanks, Brian!
And we all owe you and Robert a great debt for informing and educating us on these issues.
With a thousand theories rolling around about global warning, I noticed something that science had long ago revealed but never noticed, and it is so bone cracking cold it will drastically change our understanding of Global Warming:
Science has known for many years that the oxygen in our air gets there through plants photosynthesizing water with solar energy. They do this to separate the hydrogen from the water to cook with carbon to make carbo-hydrates, (plant food).
They also know that plants get their carbon from CO2 in our air, that is a waste product of our bodies and everything else that also burns organic fuels.
They also know that all plants need very little of the oxygen left over from the H20, without the H, so they just release it into our atmosphere.
Engineers know that nature’s only one step rapid cooling method is ‘Expansion’.
I have not seen any scientific explanation of global warming that ALSO accounts for the fact that every single atom of oxygen released by photosynthesis also expands about 800 times, which is roughly the difference in weight between water and air at sea level.
That canned gas we use to clean our keyboards and electronics with, can frostbite after only expanding several hundred times. So there is no doubt that this massive expansion occurs because the oxygen was part of tightly compressed water molecules, so it always massively expands when Photosynthesis reverts it back into a gas.
Most scientists seem to be blaming today’s very high levels of C02 for holding far more heat in the atmosphere, so it seems logical that fossil fuels must be the cause.
But over the last hundred and fifty or so years, according to NASA web sites, humans have mowed down around 80% of earth’s heaviest atmospheric vegetation, so it is no longer around to eat nearly as much C02, as it used too, so naturally the levels it will greatly increase.
The natural method that earth uses to inhale that pollutant (C02) has been massively reduced.
Now add my bone cracking cold observation about what Photosynthesis exhales, to what it inhales and it is obvious (to common sense) that earth is warming up like an iced tea sitting on a table in the hot sun, because we cut down earth’s air cooling and cleaning systems.
No theories needed.
Some scientists will say “Its more complicated then thatâ€?, since that saves them from explaining how they could have missed the fact that every atom of oxygen naturally released into our world’s atmosphere is bone cracking cold.
It is standard procedure for science to deny the super obvious things they miss.
For 50 after some Europeans discovered that infections were caused by contamination, the American Medical Society refused to believe that American surgeons also needed to wash their hands before surgery, (afterward was good). They would have looked stupid for not realizing something so basic first, had they agreed. So with their standard denial they became super stupid.
Science is debating if a space shade umbrella is possible in the next thirty or so years, when all we need to do is to irrigate earth’s hottest deserts with the fresh water our large rivers just dump into our salty oceans, use desalinization, and trap the fresh water just melting from huge ice bergs into the salty seas.
If mankind can pipe huge amounts of oil thousands of miles across frozen mountains and tundra, irrigating hot deserts that are already under seal level should be a peace of cake. We could even use long hoses and the siphon effect.
Turning even some of earth’s hottest spots into cooler paradises would not only be much faster and cheaper then a space umbrella, it would provide the world with an economic bonanza, millions of tons of food, new inhabitable lands for exploding populations and much more.
Planting forests is using 40,000 year old technology, we don’t even know if the space umbrella can stand up to the solar winds.
I won’t even start on how great reclaiming earth’s wastelands would be for endangered species or how it would help to lower our ocean’s raising tides.
Steven Craig
Earthfitness.blogspot.com
Kim it keeps me off the streets, not sure about Robert.
The June edition of the Australian Financial Review Magazine has an article about the greening of business. John Schubert, chairman of the Commonwealth Bank, former MD of Esso and long-time greenie (chair of the Great Barrier Reef Foundation since 2004) believes it happened over about 6 weeks last September. He believes:
He says:
“It was particularly evident between our Chairman’s Panels in ‘05 and ‘06 how the issue had moved. In ‘05 we did a lot more explaining; in ‘06 it was just assumed that change was happening.”
The “panel” is a panel of senior executives he set up to experience the Reef directly.
Michel Hawker, CEO of insurer IAG (and former Rugby Union player) says:
According to the March 8-14 issue of BRW the insurance industry was the canary in the coal mine for business. Elaine Prior an analyst for Citigroup did a report outlining the implications of climate change for Australia’s top 100 companies, separating them into climate ‘winners’ and ‘losers’.
So business is waking up. My impression is that economists are over-represented in the recalcitrants, but that may be subjective.
One of the most pernicious aspects, I think, is that realists are labelled alarmists and the impression is given that we can go along at a canter, do what we can that doesn’t put us out too much and she’ll be right. If we go that way, the way of Howard and Bush, we’ll very likely (choosing my words carefully) wake up in fright and find that the planetary system is out of control.
But I’m just an alarmist, aren’t I?
Sorry Steven, but there’s nothing new to science in what you’ve said, just in the way you’ve put it together.
For example, oxygen bound in water (as the O in H2O) isn’t “compressed” - it’s chemically combined with hydrogen to form a molecule that has different chemical properties to elemental oxygen - one of them being a much higher boiling point.
No, every individual atom of oxygen in the atmosphere is not bone cracking cold - it doesn’t have a temperature at all. But maybe that’s just me, an out-of-trade scientist, following the standard procedure of denying the super obvious.
Trouble is, your super obvious sounds more like nonsense to me.
Steven I suggest if you actually beleive a word of what you wrote you go find a book on thermodynamics. However, even if your observation about ‘cold oxygen molecules’ were correct (and it isn’t), the photosynthesis reaction takes in an equal number of CO2 molecules, so shouldn’t your expansion of O2 be offset by the compression of CO2?
PatrickM. It beggars belief that a self proclaimed ‘leftist’ like yourself would believe the propaganda of the tobacco industry and shills like the CEI.
Here’s some more reading for you. There was good reason Dr Kochi of the WHO restated the WHO’s position on the indoor Residual spraying of DDT.
Rachel Carson never called for the banning of DDT. She made it clear in her book that indiscriminant spraying would lead to resistance, and this is precisely what happened.
why do I automatically go into moderation these days?
You don’t. You used the word “patrickm”.
Sorry Kim. I can see why paddym goes there. Is he one of these LaRouche types?
Lyndon LaRouche was right!
Brian: “John H you seem to be excessively negative about governments”
I agree with the “negative” part. Whether it is excessive depends on how much you trust government to get things right.Theory and history indicate we should have low expectations.
Brian: “…and about people with specialised expertise.”
Oh no… I’m not negative about people with specialised expertise. I am just aware that you shouldn’t assume a doctor is health public policy expert… or a climatologist is a climate public policy expert. Science and public policy aren’t the same.
I agree that we wouldn’t expect nurses to be advocating for military people. Each advocates for their own group. If the decisions-makers took them all seriously the our government would spend much more than our entire GDP. That is why it is necessary to sometimes discount the inevitable and consistent predictions of (health/ education/ defence/ industry/ environmental/ research) doom and do careful policy analysis before jumping on any new policy fad.
And when doing careful policy analysis it is always wise to remain skeptical of the supposed joys that the policy advocate is spruiking.
Now that’s funny! Made my day actually.
JH it’s the automatic discounting of specialist expertise that gets me. I experienced that myself after a quarter of a century, although I wasn’t in the business of making ambit claims.
I tend to be a bit more optimistic than some about the possibility of governments getting it right and providing worthwhile services. Again this comes from experience, where we ran some world class programs.
I think the performance of governments has detriorated in the past couple of decades, but that’s another story. Perhaps we get the government services we pay for.
(I’ve just corrected that from HC to JH in case anyone saw it!)
Evidently I still have much to learn about talking to global warming “skeptics”. More practice needed obviously.
Gummo, that one took me by surprise also.
if you haven’t seen it yet Quiggin has posted his AFR review on Clive Hamilton’s Scorcher.
Very much worth a look.
Actually it reminded me that he now uses the term ‘delusionist’. I’m not sure it fits every case.
Gummo
No time to look for better links now, but check this for Andrew Wilkie.
Money quote “Wilkie, in fact, believed incorrectly that Saddam did have WMD, although not in any substantial quantities”
Regards
One last word on the WMD thing - a friend of mine came up with the plausible theory that Saddam Hussein sincerely believed that he did have weapons of mass destruction. Because no-one dared tell him that he didn’t. Particularly the scientists whose lives, not just their livelihoods, depended on keeping him deluded.
On the subject of climate change, we’ve had the reverse situation for years - government, industry and propagandists going after anyone who dares suggest that it is real and caused by human activity. And Andrew Bolt smearing and sliming anyone who disagrees with his preferred view, while sanctimoniously maintaining that the smears are all coming from the people he’s smearing.
Just thought the contrast should be made explicit. Even so, I’ll bet I’ll get at least one response arguing that anthropogenic global warming is WMD for lefties.
I all ways find it amusing when reading about how AGW has been proven and if we do not change, then disaster is sure to follow. Personally I find that if a group will not release the raw data, processes, and procedures they used to reach their results, then it is pretty hard to respect the results. For example:
There is a great deal of unarchived data pertaining to multiproxy studies e.g. a list of the 387 sites in Briffa et al [2001] (which may or may not be archived); measurement data for many sites used in Esper et al [2002]; data versions used in Mann and Jones [2003]; methods of Mann and Jones [2003]; data as used in Crowley and Lowery [2000] or data citations for the versions used; measurement data for many Jacoby sites studied in the last 10 years except Mongolia; sample data for Thompson’s ice cores, etc. etc.
Now this makes me wonder why they don’t want their results validated by independent repetition and analysis. Well, well take Mann 98, the so called hockey stick. Wegman, a statistician, performed an evaluation of Mann’s team’s use of statistic and found that statically, there was no evidence to back up Mann’s claims of the modern warming period being exceptional or more than past warming periods.
Another example is the off-set to surface sea temperature measurements. The AGW crowd holds that in late 1940’s all reading were done at the water input to the engines and off-set the measurements to be in line with the older bucket method. However, the US Navy and Coast Guard, one of the principle sources for these measurements was still using the bucket method into the 1970s.
Jones’s off-set for urban heat islands, used extensively by the AGW proponents to adjust modern direct temperature measurements and in climate models, has never revealed how he comes up with the off-set or what the data sources are.
So, does AGW exist, I am sure it does, but it appears to be more likely that it is though land use than CO2. Humans only contribute 3.2 percent of the CO2. The total CO2 is measure in parts per million or to put it into scale, 39 atoms of CO2 for every 100,000 atoms in the atmosphere. Man is only responsible for 1.2 atoms of the 39.
Personally, the fact that there is measurable warming though out the solar system and the fact that the sun has been the most active now out of the last thousand years added to the fact that CO2 is a trailing indicator of warming and cooling while solar activity correlates quite well with temperature across all time scales leads me to believe that the current solar activity has more to do with current warming than anything man has done.
Vernon, do you mind filling us in on your background and experience? Also what response do you get when you put these arguments over at RealClimate?
On what basis do you assert that “humans only contribute 3.2 percent of the CO2″?
Just curious.
Gummo and KoopaTroopa,
Steven Craig posted the same crap at Smirking Chimp, an American site, yesterday, and now he has come here, an Australian site, to do the same. Talk about global pollution!
At Smirking Chimp he was totally debunked, but he just brushed off the criticism, proving he is an ego-driven nitwit. So don’t bother with this retard any more.
Vernon wrote:
There isn’t. Not on Jupiter or Venus. The fact that Mars is warming may be due to its Milankovich cycle. Did you think of that?
The sun is at the cool part of its 11-year cycle at the moment, so this alone disproves your solar warming hypothesis.
You are spouting the Exxon-sponsored unscientific drivel. Run away, you corporate
shitshill.Brian,
Well, I have a back ground in computer science. I am not a climate scientist, but when the issues started to impact my lifestyle, I started doing a lot of reading. What I found was that the proponents of CO2 based AGW seem to have several issues which they have not over come enough to convince me but the main one is the lack of transparency. But, first the 3.2 percent that man adds?
Of the 186 billion tons of CO2 that enter earth’s atmosphere each year from all sources, only 6 billion tons are from human activity. Approximately 90 billion tons come from biologic activity in earth’s oceans and another 90 billion tons from such sources as volcanoes and decaying land plants. That’s 3.2% contributed by man.
With that answered, I find the lack of transparency the biggest reason to not believe in the CO2 theory. I do believe that man does affect the climate and even some is by CO2, but not with the impact that the pro-CO2 AGW crowd would have.
There are three main issues that that the pro-CO2 AGW crowd cannot address and take on faith.
First, the divergence problem! The fact that where researchers have gone to check the temperature proxy (mostly tree rings) since the 1980’s to compare with the direct temperature measurements, they diverge. This means that either the instrumented readings are wrong or the proxies are wrong. If the proxies are wrong then the whole history of warming as presented is not correct.
Second, CO2 measurements! There are two issues that I have not seen addressed in a scientific manner about CO2 measurements. The first is that all most all actually measurements taken since the early 1800’s have been though out by the pro-CO2 AGW camp as not valid, even though they are known to be with 3 percent accuracy. Most of ninety thousand measurements are rejected for the use of Ice Core proxies. This leads to the second issue Ice Core proxies. The only way the Ice Core proxies work is to assume that the air trapped in 83 years younger than the ice that trapped it. Use of ice core proxies has been shown by chemists, not climatologists, to not be valid due to the chemistry of gases under pressure. If you look at the actually measurements from the 1800’s the CO2 levels were in constant flux and the over all level is much higher than the flat 280 the CO2 proponents say covers the last thousands of years.
Third, solar interaction! Every study shows that solar activity correlates with global temperature. It has though out the measurable history of the planet. Do we know why? No. However, new research is showing that the solar magnetic activity directly impacts the planets. This was just discovered in the last year. The possible relationship between high energy cosmic rays and low level cloud formation is currently being studied. There is more we do not know, but the fact that there is high correlation between solar activity and global climate is met with, “Well, that was true in the past, but no now.� By the pro-CO2 AGW crowd does not make it so.
If they their work could with stand scrutiny, then it would be open for vigorous scientific debate. By saying believe my results, take on faith that I am telling you the truth with out evidence, well; belief without evidence seems more like religion than science.
I have posted to RC but since they are an advocacy site, I have never been posted. The last time I saw something actually get posted there was when Nir beat them about the head and shoulders on cosmic rays. He completely debunked the RC argument that the Colorado cosmic ray measuring station which measures low energy cosmic rays in anyway could detect the high energy cosmic rays. It was funny to watch him do it on RC’s own site but I guess that is what happens when you take an astrophysicist and a climatologist to a discussion on cosmic rays.
Quiggin reviewing Clive Hamilton poses this question”:
He then goes to characterise the cabal of mandarins and mining company moguls whose opposition is not so much from a sceptical or scientific position but an ideological base and from vociferous personal hatred of greenies and their politics.
This is thought provoking. What we have here is a kind of neo-Lysenkoism, where a politico-ideological stance (a priori) determines the science.
How is this different from “scientists” defending the intelligent design notion?
In any case, I think that while the ad hominem element is there, I can’t help but ask “who profits?” in any such exercise.
Much of the so-called anthropological research to counter Aboriginal land claims was marshalled by the Institute of Public Affairs, the backers of which were corporations who were in the business of oil leases and mineral exploration.
Tobacco skeptics were urged and their research paid for by… tobacco companies. What an incredible surprise.
We shouldn’t then be amazed to learn that big coal has taken a big interest in the debate.
Even in the short term, delaying tactics are worth billions in competitive advantage.
So what if the result is that we go to hell in a handbasket. The corporation has no feelings, no thought of consequences except profit. It is psychopath, as Mark Achbar’s polemical film makes quite clear, see link
And if that wasn’t convincing, how about the story about the electricity utility company in NZ (duly privatised, of course) that switched off the power to a woman on an oxygen pump because she hadn’t paid her bill. Her kids then watched her die.
We watched Robocop - it was a distopian fantasy. Science fiction, right?
Vernon, you’ve produce a very impressive set of arguments - no doubt you drew on a wide range of sources when you were putting together your previous comments. Some specific points you’ve raised are:
In that spirit, please answer my questions above, so that we can assess, for ourselves, whether your own conclusions on global warming are supported by adequate evidence.
The reason this topic generates such intense emotional debate is that lurking just beneath the surface of the AGW issue is the very idealogical consumerism v’s socialism debate.
While most people quite sensibly listen to the mainstream scientific view on AGW and agree that we need to start reducing CO2 emissions - the debate bogs down because a minority on the far left see this as a fabulous opportunity to push an anti-consumerism agenda and demand that everyone starts consuming less, driving smaller cars etc (e.g. Bob Brown). There are those on the far right who then predictably react negatively to the whole AGW issue as a front for socialism and become AGW skeptics (e.g. Andrew Bolt)
The two issues need to be separated. It is possible to reduce CO2 emissions without significantly affecting our lifestyle. There is no reason climate change needs to be linked to a political debate about whether society has become too ‘consumerist’.
The first thing that needs to happen is that we need to properly price carbon - pumping CO2 into the atmosphere shouldn’t be free. We should apply a carbon tax at the source (coal fired power stations, at the petrol pump etc) - and the revenue raised should be used to offset corporate & income tax so government is revenue neutral and the individual is largely financially unaffected. We’ll pay more for electricity and petrol, but we’ll have more post-tax income to spend on it. The effect will be to encourage the development of CO2 light energy sources - whether they be solar, wind, geothermal or nuclear.
Vernon, there’s a book in it, isn’t there? I’m sure someone would publish it. You could go down as the one who turned the paradigm on it’s head!
I’m especially interested in your sources for saying that 186 billion tonnes of CO2 going into the atmosphere each year and only 6 billion from humans. And why the figures quoted by Stern, Monbiot etc, who do give their sources, are wrong.
Gummo Trotsky,
All the information is from the web. All you need to do is google “climate change”, “Global warming”, etc. While I have never received any money from the oil or coal industries, I have done a lot of reading.
You could try reading the Wegman report to the US Congress which pretty much debunks Mann98’s hockey stick.
There are a lot of sites with alot of information. I would suggest you read all of them if possible and then compare the information.