Slashdot Mirror
Last Bastion For Climate Dissenters Crumbling
Layzej writes "The New York Times reports: 'For decades, a small group of scientific dissenters has been trying to shoot holes in the prevailing science of climate change, offering one reason after another why the outlook simply must be wrong.' Initially they claimed that weather stations exaggerated the warming trend. This was disproven by satellite data which shows a similar warming trend. Next, solar activity was blamed for much of the warming. This looked like a promising theory until the '80s, when solar output started to diverge from global temperatures. Now, climate contrarians are convinced that changes in cloud cover will largely mitigate the warming caused by increased CO2. The New York Times examines how even this last bastion for dissenters is crumbling. Over the past few years, Several papers have shown that rather than being a mitigating factor, changes in cloud cover due to warming may actually enhance further warming."
What is the basis for the assumption that this is the "last" bastion? I am pretty sure, they will find another reason to hold out within days.... This is an issue of belief (at least for them), so arguments ain't gonna change a thing.
Over time, nearly every one of their arguments has been knocked down by accumulating evidence, and polls say 97 percent of working climate scientists now see global warming as a serious risk.
Despite this large consensus in the peer reviewed scientific community, it doesn't take much searching to find comments like this one modded up as high as it can go that say crap like:
Global Warming/Climate Change may or may not be happening.
Frankly, I avoid these discussions now. There is no reason to try to inform people of what you read like this NY Times article. Ignorance backed by corporations has won. It has won in the mind of the general public, it has even won on the "elite tech site" of Slashdot, even in the minds of those here who hold the moderator points.
My work here is dung.
1) There's no such thing as global warming.
2) There's global warming, but the scientists are exaggerating. It's not significant.
3) There's significant global warming, but man doesn't cause it.
4) Man does cause it, but it's not a net negative.
5) It is a net negative, but it's not economically possible to tackle it.
6) We need to tackle global warming, so make the poor pay for it.
7) Global warming is bad for business. Why did the Democrats not tackle it earlier?
8) ????
9) Profit.
Not because of anyone's ideology. Because good science demands people check other people's work, look for errors, ask hard questions, and the like. If we all agree, pat ourselves on our collective back, and stare away people who would dare question what we've decided must be the truth, we've transitioned from science to religion, and are doing everyone a disservice.
Trust mainstream media to not understand this. *sigh*
Do remember the NYT is a very left-wing paper and that climate change supporters are majority left-wing. Bias is everywhere.
Hmm, so you've observed a correlation between rationality in the face of evidence, and having left wing views.
Useful. I'll take it.
"If you wanna believe the earth revolves around the sun that's cool, but I'm gonna keep planting my crops based on my assumption that the bible is right."
Sure, that discovery didn't affect that guy either. But it didn't make him any less wrong.
I've learned that they're worthless, so I don't read AC comments anymore.
First I will not say which "side" I am on as that is unimportant as my total climate knowledge is based on grumbling about weather. But this whole discussion has gone off the rails in that regardless of what scientists think or know the public is turning against man made climate change. Want to lose an election in North America then propose a carbon tax or something similar. Al Gore got people cheering one side of this issue but being Al Gore managed to alienate and effectively create an opposing side. While healthy discussion in science is what science is all about people on both sides have begun to turn this into a religion with people calling for firing of scientists who they disagree with and another person calling for burning others houses down.
A much better example of good science was the recent discovery that neutrinos were going faster than light. Turned out to be wrong but most people were sort of excited as this would potentially be a huge change in physics. Another good example of the separation of science and policy would be nuclear weapons. Nuclear reactions are cool; nuclear weapons are not. But very few people criticized the work Niels Bohr for bringing the world to the brink of total destruction. It would have been a crap argument to say his work was the beginning of a science killed a whole lot of Japanese and thus was invalid. His models of how atoms and whatnot worked have changed significantly enough that they could almost be just called all wrong. But as will all good science people expanded and improved his work.
Where I am going with this is that the hysteria of dragging the scientists out for trials in the court of public opinion not only doesn't help the climate people get on with their research but it opens up other areas to the concept that somehow public opinion can shape science. Opinion does not change a fact. Opinion is to be used to decide what to do about those facts. Both sides on this issue are getting into the realm of those fools who try legislating that =3.
Get yourself over to www.dictionary.com and learn.
They have a 100% accuracy record for distinguishing between "weather" and "climate."
Work like no one is watching. Dance like you've never been hurt. Make love like you don't need the money.
What nonsense.
We have plenty of trustworthy science, but a huge and well funded propaganda machine telling people that those scientists are untrustworthy and "politically motivated". You've bought into the propaganda machine hook, line and sinker.
Now, there will certainly be cases of scientists and professionals that are crooked and politically/financially motivated (see, for example, Andrew Wakefield and vaccines - a whole, damaging scare because he wanted to make money off his competing vaccine for MMR), or the "cold fusion" science researchers, but they are very swiftly exposed by peer review.
That intelligent people can still be claiming that "nothing a climate scientist puts out" is trustworthy at all is just a demonstration of how powerful people like like Koch brothers are and how effective extremely large dumptrucks full of money are at running propaganda campaigns.
It doesn't help that very few people are able to interpret the data for themselves and must rely on an actual scientist, and somehow when this is related to climate science that's seen as a bad thing? Ask yourself why that is; why it has become ingrained to look at only climate science and say "I don't understand this data so it's clearly a trick!". This doesn't happen in other fields with equally difficult and impenetrable data, like cancer research or quantum mechanics - there's been no pervasive, relentless smear campaign that results in anything those scientists say being dismissed out of hand because they're "politically motivated and untrustworthy".
The "Other Planets are Heating up too" hypothesis has been debunked:
http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2007/04/29/is-global-warming-solar-induced/
But, until the engineers get involved on a real fix I wouldn't bother changing your lifestyle, other than maybe switching to LED lights and turning down the thermostat. Politicians never fix anything.
"Well, good luck finding a judge that doesn't run a bestiality site."
People should dissent, people should disagree.
That is how science works: people testing other people's ideas and results. I don't know about your use of the word ''dissent'', since that implies ideological views, these are the very antithesis of the scientific method.
Climate change isn't understood well enough for there to be a unanimous consensus.
''Unanimous'' is a very high bar, one lone odd ball stops uninamity. What we should be looking for is what proportion experts in the field agree on the main points. We now have many more climate scientists who agree that there is a climate warming problem than the number of experts who agreed that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. However: great political action and spending was put to bashing Iraq, much more than has been put to addressing climate change -- which is something of far greater danger than Iraq ever was. But that is politics for you.
Truck. The vehicle of a redneck. It all fits.
Prius. The vehicle of mass ignorance. It all fits.
Nothing fits in a Prius.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
Perhaps. But raising objections in the form of plausible counter theories is valid science. Even if those counter theories are later disproved, that's all part of the scientific process. You can't just ignore an argument that may have merit simply because you don't trust the motives of the people making the argument. If someone has a reasonable alternate interpretation of the evidence, that needs to be considered (and I suspect a lot of things have been learned in the process of refuting alternate ideas). You can't just claim that your right because everyone agrees with you and they are wrong because the are stupid. ... Well you can, but that's not science.
Very few people disagree with the premise that the climate is warming.
Untrue -- that's a VERY recent (in the last year or two) change because the made up science people were using against warming was becoming unsupportable *even to the political base they were trying to influence*. To the tactics were changed from "its not warming" to "its not us doing it".
Where the disagreement is, is if that warming is a natural part of earths long term weather patterns and how much effect CO2 is having on speeding up the process.
No, among working climatologists, there's no disagreement. In fact, among anyone who has even a cursory understanding of thermodynamics, there's no disagreement. The tiny percentage of "climatologists" you see who publish papers suggesting otherwise are doing it because controversy will get you published, and its a publish-or-perish industry. And there's a LOT of money being paid to people who aren't otherwise being successful in the field to continue publishing bad science.
Also, they question the results of the warming... predicted increased hurricane strength and frequency have not come about as we'd expected.
Don't use the word "we" if you're not someone who holds a degree in climatology.
The only optimism I have is in that the one thing scientists have a proven track record of if being absolutely lousy at predicting the weather.
So, no degree in climatology. Climatologists don't have anything to do with predicting the weather -- those are meteorologists. People in either field know that. (And people in either field also know the current global climate models predict an increase in energy in the weather systems which produces strong, not greater numbers, of storms -- on average. Someone trained in climatology knows what "on average" means relative to the work a meteorologist does, too.)
1) There's no such thing as global warming.
This has been proven true. We have enough temperature data to confidently say that temperatures have been steadily increasing since about 1850.
2) There's global warming, but the scientists are exaggerating. It's not significant.
This has been proven false. The 6 degree increase we should be experiencing now according to alarmists simply doesn't exist.
3) There's significant global warming, but man doesn't cause it.
This may be true, we have proof that there were much bigger climate changes even before man.
4) Man does cause it, but it's not a net negative.
This is a tricky one, I would say that too rapid change is never good for the environment, at least not in the short term. But if you only care about the effets on agriculture, it may very well be possible to breed/engineer crops that thrive in the new climate.
5) It is a net negative, but it's not economically possible to tackle it.
That's most certainly false, but the real question is whether its negative effects cost more than to stop it.
There is still much more research needed on the topic, and bringing politics into the debate is exactly what's halting progress.
It wasn't all that long ago that we had a "bastion" of people in Waco who rejected the idea that the Moon is not a source of light, but reflects light from the Sun... So I have trouble believing the Global Warming debate will end with this NYT announcement. http://tinyurl.com/billnyemoon
Gently reply
For the scientific process to function as desired, informed and educated opposing viewpoints are required. Politicizing those viewpoints is counterproductive to the process.
It's hard to say - some planets we've known about and observed for less than one of their years, so we essentially have no data.
What we -do- know with fair certanity is that *if* they are warming over the last 40 years, it's not due to increased solar influx, because the solar influx has on the average fallen somewhat over that period.
Perhaps. But raising objections in the form of plausible counter theories is valid science.
This is exactly right. However the scientific method says that when the theory isn't backed up by measurements and the evidence that it is to be abandoned. The revolutions like Newton, Kepler, and Einstein all involved the discarding of other systems because they didn't fit the facts. When you're ideas are shown to be incorrect the proper scientific reaction is not to simply scream your ideas louder, and the same thing goes with facts. That's why there are so many of us that are upset right now... it seems that screaming incorrect "facts" louder is what automatically happens in every sphere of life right now. That's why some of us believe we are living in an irrational age.
I love the hubris of the original poster in declaring this the "last" possible avenue of dissent, as if all of climatology were a known, predictable science... I believe it to be an evolving science - otherwise, why do they keep changing their models and simulations?
Ken
The point is that whether other planets are heating up or not has nothing to do with whether we should be concerned about climate change.
I don't even think it matters whether climate change is anthropogenic (for whether we should be concerned - it obviously does matter in terms of studying the area and finding potential solutions)
If you are in a room that is getting too hot, it is a good idea to switch the heating off, open a window or turn the air con on. Who or what is to blame for the excess heat doesn't matter as much as stopping the room getting so hot it causes problems for the people in it.
For me the most important questions we should be asking are:
* Is the climate changing?
* What effects will that cause (good and bad)?
* What can we do to affect the rate of change?
* What can we do to mitigate the bad effects?
* What can we do to benefit from the good effects?
The reasons why the climate is changing are important as they can suggest what we can do to affect things but even if we determine that the climate change is not down to human activity, we should still be looking for ways to affect it in our favour.
Am I the only one who fails to see the massive logic fail in that statement? If methane only lasts for 9-15 years, how is more effective at trapping heat over a 100 year period?
Yes, you are the only one who sees a massive logic fail because you are taking the statement at face value instead of trying to educate yourself about what they are talking about. I hope you were being facetious, but just in case: Atmospheric methane is oxidized in the atmosphere to produce carbon dioxide and water. FTA: "The 100-year global warming potential of methane is 25, i.e. over a 100-year period, it traps 25 times more heat per mass unit than carbon dioxide."
I realize that it was Einstein being discussed. But I think the same point about Einstein can be made about Galileo.
Galileo's observations, even the ones with the telescope, were arguments against his own heliocentric theory just as much as they were evidence against some forms of geocentrism (keep in mind that Tycho Brahe created a form of geocentrism that worked quite nicely). It wasn't until Kepler that a form of heliocentrism fit the observed facts any better than geocentrism. Despite the observed facts telling him his theory could not be correct, Galileo continued to pursue his theory. He did so by means of a propaganda campaign that sought to promulgate his (quite wrong) theory of optics, its accompanying technology (his telescopes), and his metaphysics. Eventually, he got other scientists to look at the world from a different point of view and, once he did that, new facts could come to light and enable such men as Kepler to develop theories to account for those facts.
In the end, I'm not certain that distinguishing between `honest' and `dishonest' dissent is very fruitful. Whether honest or not, dissent is important to prevent falling into a morbid state of what Feyerabend calls ``conceptual conservatism.''
This does not mean that one can't make the argument that most climate change deniers aren't kooks. It just means that when making policy decisions, it can be profitable to look at their analysis and examine what has to hold for it to be an accurate analysis and what would be the end result if it is accurate. This can be compared to the consensus view and a reasonable decision arrived at. And it will be a stronger, more reasoned decision than if the kooks were just ignored.
Without any data to hand, it is difficult to say one way or the other - I certainly can't say for sure (unlike the OP who does assert one specific position with no evidence).
My position is that as a member of the scientific community, I tend to agree with most of the peer-reviewed science on AGW - more specifically the chemistry aspects (as a chemist, it's the easiest stuff for me to digest beyond the abstracts).
My point would be to look at the models used and data collected from a wide variety of different scientists and institutions. If you approach it from the standpoint that there's possibly "some sort of global scarcity" tactic where every single scientist is somehow involved in a secret cabal, then I'm not sure any evidence one way or the other is going to swing it. I mean, in that situation any evidence that supports you is "proof of the conspiracy!!!" and any that doesn't is "part of the conspiracy of lies".
Standing back and looking at the whole system objectively really doesn't suggest such a thing.
I am a dissenter. I am however not paid by any coproration, and I would say I am "more educated and scientific than most" when it comes to the global warming debate.
As far as I am concerned, the NYT article is constructing a straw man to tear it apart. As a dissenter, I *know* that water vapor is a green house gas and is a positive feedback on the system. In fact one of the reasons why I am a dissenter is because water vapor is so much more absorbing of the infre red spectrum than CO2. Yet we don't call on our industry to condense steam back into water rather than directly vent it to the atmosphere.
Also the article describes this as the last bastion. The title is wholly undeserved because there are plenty of bastions still going on. The solar debate is still on, and stronger than ever since we're in a weak cycle and we have had no warming since 1998. In fact, Antarctica is still adding ice, and the Arctic has recovered to the 1979-2000 average and is currently within 1 standard deviation, which is impressive because just 3 years ago it hit it lowest point since being recorded.
I could go on, but that's enough to refute the article.
Slashdot's rate-of-post filter: Preventing you from posting too many great ideas at once.
I've seen troll posts, but this is perhaps the first time I've seen an entire article that's a troll.
Oh, I know I'm going to be castigated as a "dissenter" (Yikes, just that name reeks of quasi-religious orthodoxy. How dare he disagree!) but sure, I'll bite:
'For decades, a small group of scientific dissenters has been trying to shoot holes in the prevailing science of climate change, offering one reason after another why the outlook simply must be wrong.' ...and that sort of bombastic pessimism HAS been going on for decades (real decades, not inflated decades).
I'm not sure "decades" applies, as it's only been about a decade and a half since the alarmists started warning us that the sky was falling. When initially presented by a blowhard self-promoting politician, it's hard to take the 'science' seriously. If Rush Limbaugh produced a propaganda film insisting that 2+2=4, I'd likewise start to doubt whatever it was he was promoting. Let's also remember that there's a bit of a 'cry wolf' case here; the people claiming that armageddon was now approaching, had previously told us that:
- we were going to all starve to death
- we were going to run out of oil
- we were going to run out of fresh water
- we were covering our country in landfills
- DDT was going to kill us all
- nuclear power was going to kill us all
(etc. ad infinitum)
Initially they claimed that weather stations exaggerated the warming trend. This was disproven by satellite data which shows a similar warming trend.
I'm not sure that's true. Well, probably SOMEONE somewhere said that. My concern was that weather station data was sparse, extremely questionably interpolated in a way that seemed to encourage bias (upward), anecdotal evidence that many of the long-standing weather stations in the US had been subject to encroaching urbanization without (as far as I could see in the data) any correction for that, etc. Further, while the "hockey stick" (that started this) shocked me as fully as it did Mr Gore, I was suspicious of the statistical methods that had been broadly explained in its initial presentation. Further, I'd (anecdotally) remembered stories about oranges growing in England that didn't seem to be reflected in the data. As more discussion followed, people who were far more savvy than me presented a more-convincing case that the statistics used were deeply flawed. This of course made me wonder why someone would do this - by accident or on purpose. To be frank, I immediately categorized Messrs. Mann (et al) as eco-alarmists, the broad group of discredited wierdoes I'd been ignoring since the 1970s. Frankly, that's the hole that "global warming" alarmists have had to try to climb out of since then. I'll be very clear: In my mind, this definitely weighed against subsequent AGW claims.
Further, and regardless of his conclusions (many of which I believe to have been either overstated or otherwise flawed; I *do* feel strongly that his whole point about opportunity costs of chasing CO2 vs other beneficial ecological investments is the baby that's gone out with the bathwater) the vitriol and fury directed against Bjorn Lomborg for daring to doubt the data was even more confirmation for me that this was no longer a scientific issue - this took on the tenor of a secular Inquisition.
Next, solar activity was blamed for much of the warming. This looked like a promising theory until the '80s, when solar output started to diverge from global temperatures.
Really? http://www.tmgnow.com/repository/solar/lassen1.html seems to present fairly soberly.
-Styopa
Officer, I can't have been doing 60 miles per hour, I only left home 15 minutes ago
blog.sam.liddicott.com
"The overwhelming consensus of the scientific community." This is my problem with climate change. While I believe that the Earth is warming. I believe it is prudent to work toward limiting our impact in the event we are causing drastic change. But most people I talk to about climate change have based their entire belief on a logical fallacy ( in this case Appeal to Authority). True or not this isn't science, it is religion.
An appeal to authority is not a fallacy when the authorities you are citing are in fact knowledgeable on the subject.
Perhaps if the denial crowd didn't use methods exactly like those of the evolution deniers and the tobacco firms who lied about tobacco being harmless, we'd stop making such comparisons.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
False. Consensus is part of science. That's because Consensus is achieved through science, and consensus can change with the appropriated evidence.
As Tim Minchin so eloquently and accurately said:
"Science adjusts it's beliefs based on what's observed
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhGuXCuDb1U
You are the one using religion for your opinion.
Also, Look up Appeal to authority. hint: it doesn't apply
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_authority
Forms:
The strength of this argument depends upon two factors:
The authority is a legitimate expert on the subject.
A consensus exists among legitimate experts on the matter under discussion.
These conditions may also simply be incorporated into the structure of the argument itself, in which case the form may look like this:
X holds that A is true
X is a legitimate expert on the subject.
The consensus of experts agrees with X.
Therefore, there's a presumption that A is true.
I highly recommend reading 'Introduction to Critical Reasoning' and 'Introduction to Logic' before churning out logical fallacy accusation. You look like a fool.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on