Slashdot Mirror
Dialing Back the Alarm On Climate Change
An anonymous reader writes "A leaked copy of a report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has made the rounds and the good news is that the predicted temperature rise expected as a result of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide is lower than predicted in 2007. From the article: 'Admittedly, the change is small, and because of changing definitions, it is not easy to compare the two reports, but retreat it is. It is significant because it points to the very real possibility that, over the next several generations, the overall effect of climate change will be positive for humankind and the planet. Specifically, the draft report says that "equilibrium climate sensitivity" (ECS)—eventual warming induced by a doubling of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, which takes hundreds of years to occur—is "extremely likely" to be above 1 degree Celsius (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit), "likely" to be above 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit) and "very likely" to be below 6 degrees Celsius (10.8 Fahrenheit). In 2007, the IPPC said it was "likely" to be above 2 degrees Celsius and "very likely" to be above 1.5 degrees, with no upper limit. Since "extremely" and "very" have specific and different statistical meanings here, comparison is difficult.'"
CLIMATEDERP!
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
I look forward to the calm, rational, and coherent discussion!
For once, there may be a thread on this site that avoids tangenting off into politics. It will be refreshing to witness a debate that does not invoke Nazis, gun control, or the results of previous US elections, because those are totally offtopic and everyone will realize that.
I remember in second grade ca 1974 my teacher explaining that the Earth were slowly heading into a new ice age.
If I ever meet him again I'll buy him a beer!
Two mistakes pop up immediately int the article - IPPC (eh? OK, typo) and "The Journal of the American Meteorological Society". It's IPCC and the Bulletin of the AMS (BAMS). Maybe this guy creamed himself while typing, it is the WSJ after all.
A squid eating dough in a polyethylene bag is fast and bulbous, got me?
Given the inertia of our industrial and economic processes, it only means that the unstoppable iceberg will simply crawl slower. But at least we have more time. I also don't think that this means a time-out for ocean acidification.
Ezekiel 23:20
It's no wonder an article like this showed up in the Wall Street Journal. They have one of the preeminent Anti Global Warming editorial boards on the planet. They specialize in global warming skepticism almost as much as finance. And why? The industries that sponsor them rely on oil and coal. So really this article is absolute rubbish. You don't even have to read it to know. Posting AC because that is the only honorable way to start off a thread like this.
The world's climate is such a huge, complex and fluid system that the best supercomputer in existence will only be able to model its future behavior "very approximately". It should thus not come as a big shock when what the computer models predicted in 2007 doesn't happen exactly in 2013, or indeed further down the timeline. It is only when more complex & accurate simulations can be run on supercomputers that we can have any reasonable expectancy of modeling the future behavior of the earth's climate with any accuracy.----- And suppose for a moment that we happen to realize further down the line that "Climate Change" worries were a bit overblown? Well, no harm done! Without the Climate Change alarmism of the last 2 decades, nobody would have put much money into developing renewables like wind and solar or tidal energy. We also might not have Toyota Priuses or Tesla electric cars on the market today. Not to mention computers and other household devices that save a lot of energy compared to past cousins. ------ So whether Global Warming is real or not, fear of it has influenced everything from automobile to refrigerator designs to become more "earth friendly". That's a good thing in my book....
Why did the chicken cross the road? Because Elon Musk put an AI chip in its head.
(Sound of pooch being screwed.) This is how real science works, particularly with highly complex issues like the earth's climate. We learn new things as we go along, and when new knowledge means we need to adjust our undestanding, that's what is done. The next update by the IPCC (if it gets funded, that is) may well show that what we learn in the interim indicates that the current estimates of climate change were too small. Unfortunately, the polarization of politics will take this latest IPCC report (if it indeed says what the article states) as an indication that these science types have been lying to us all along and they should now be ignored and driven from the temple. Efforts to deal with the effects of the upcoming changes will be killed off and nothing will be done until it's too late to do much of anything other than hope to cope.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm finding it hard to see what the change is here.
The old number was that the doubling sensitivity was most likely to be in the range 2 C-to-4.5 C. Specifically:
"we conclude that the global mean equilibrium warming for doubling CO2, or ‘equilibrium climate sensitivity’, is likely to lie in the range 2C to 4.5C, with a most likely value of about 3C."
(reference: http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-5.html#box-10-2 )
This report-- if the leaked version is accurate-- is that it's "'likely' to be above 1.5 degrees C, 'very likely' to be below 6 degrees C".
That's not a "reduction" or a "retreat"-- it is, at best, a slightly higher range. But since, as the summary says, "Since "extremely" and "very" have specific and different statistical meanings here, comparison is difficult.," I don't see that there's any clear change at all-- just different wording.
This is spin-- there isn't be anything new here.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Just a few days ago, there was a story how the ice in the arctic "rebounded" 60%.
The real story is in this graph:
http://postimg.org/image/hcadakghv/
We've been measuring arctic ice the late 70s. It's at it's maximum in March, melts during the summer, and sees it's minimum in September. 2012 was the record year we had so far for the LEAST amount of artic ice. 2007 has second place and 2011 has 3rd. This year we have more than 2012. This was expected among scientists because of something called regression towards the mean. That concept basically says when an extreme outlier event occurs, we expect the next event to be closer to the average. Basically, the entire hoopla is about playing math games to appear more impressive than it is.
When the story came out, it was premature the typical September lowpoint, so don't expect the 60% figure to quite hold that high, but it is higher than last year none the less. However, you can see it's still well below 00s average and that every decade has since the measurements started have less and less ice.
So there you have it? Maybe the heat is going into the oceans? Then melting the poles as the currents do a good job of distributing the equator heat around via currents. The ice melts, breaks off whatever, and like icecubes in a warm drink, cool it down.... until there is no ice left?
Come on, what is with the propraganda here? Last year was an obsolute low point in Arctic Ice extent.... and we get stories of so called "rebounds"? Just look at the graph and tell me that it trend isn't clear.
http://climate.nasa.gov/key_indicators
The CO2 graph (direct measurement) is clearly climbing at a never-before-seen rate. How does this compare to the conclusions in the report?
what the evaluation on the CO flood will say - damage, cost, cause.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/09/15/colorado-floods-weather/2816051/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/09/14/colorado-flooding-climate-change_n_3926284.html
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX3w90YecnA
How much denials there will be and if it's all blamed on the FSM (or equiv.).
Enjoy the coming show!
The author of this article, Matt Ridley, is a known climate change denialist and of course the Wall Street Journal is owned by Rupert Murdoch and therefore operates under the same umbrella as Fox News.
Supposed leaks from the IPCC document have already been mischaracterized in the right-wing media. See, for example, Phil Plait's demolition of them here:
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/09/10/climate_change_sea_ice_global_cooling_and_other_nonsense.html
Or if you prefer your demolition in video format:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lH5D9P6KYfY
I have no reason to trust the right-wing's interpretation of the IPCC document before it is officially announced and I can check it for myself. Why don't you try WAITING for it to be released before you start spreading this very likely BS.
1.5 degrees Celsius (2.4 degrees Fahrenheit)
1.5 degrees Celsius is 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature#Conversion
from fracking, warming permafrost, and warming oceans. i wonder if they considered it. it could cause runaway warming.
I really wish that both "sides" in the climate change "debate" could put away the hyperbole and come to grips with the fact that we need to live in some way approaching equilibrium with the various processes happening here on planet Earth. That's not just about co2 production. Even though there is unquestionably consensus among climate scientists that the rising co2 level IS significant, there are *many* other factors at play. It won't matter if we get the co2 situation under control, but still have high-levels of fresh water pollution and half-dead oceans.
We need to pollute less, period.
We need to dramatically increase our total energy efficiency, which can largely be achieved by picking the "low-hanging fruit" of building insulation, indoor daytime lighting and industrial energy usage. All three of these can be addressed (easily!) with incentives like rebates and tax credits -- granted that takes political will, which seems in short supply, but it's all there already, just waiting to happen: just (gradually) shift the subsidies currently granted to fossil fuel companies over to businesses and homeowners that are willing to make investments in long-term energy efficiency and savings, it just makes sense: since energy saving == money saving.
The reality is that our total energy usage is increasing, so the more we stretch it, the more comfortable humanity can be in the long term. We need to be building as many solar, wind, wave, thermal gradient and salinity gradient systems as we can, all the while earnestly studying the effects and operation of these systems, and discovering our mistakes and correcting them as we go. We need better fission reactor designs: meaning serious R&D and testing. We need better (and more!) energy storage systems. And probably most importantly we need to come up with new ideas for generating and storing energy. Life is not static, we can't just say "hey, this is good enough" -- we have to make it better! Life forms don't stop evolving just because they find a successful niche. They keep going, because there's always more pressure around the corner. As humans, we've insulated ourselves from a lot of pressures, but that's really an illusion, since all we can ever really do is make buffers. Everything remains interconnected and interdependent.
As Bunker Roy says: Decentralize, demystify! People should know that they CAN provide for themselves, but they have to understand how it all works.
We are squandering our resources: geological, biological, financial and (most importantly) human. We need to refine our entire way of doing things.
The oil and coal WILL run out someday. It might be 100 years or 1000 -- but we need to be thinking truly long term here. It would be nice to still have plenty of oil and coal left for other stuff when we finally stop having to burn it for fuel just to keep the lights on. It's amazingly useful, and we have a finite supply.
The oceans weigh 280 times as much as the atmosphere, so it's nice to see it start to be included in the climate models. Maybe next year they will start to consider geothermal inputs as well. Maybe do some energy flow models rather than trying to recreate the world with statistics.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Just for minute let's ignore the seemingly pointless harangues about whether or not "climate change" really exists.
Instead let's examine the issue in the terms that we used back in the 1970's:
1) Burning stuff releases pollutants.
2) Putting less pollutants into the air, water, and ground is a good thing.
Three Squirrels
All I know is that this report doesn't dissuade me from offering beachfront property for sale here in Missouri!!!
My karma is bad. Don't get too close!!!
Abstract computer simulations are not a substitute for experimentation.
You cannot independently validate empirical claims without access to the claimant's data, setup and methodology.
Peer review is not a substitute for independent experimentation.
Scrubbing data of inconvenient outliers is ignoring evidence that a claim is not repeatable and therefore invalid.
The pseudo science behind AGW suffered from all four. So how were bad peer reviews of bad science an example of 'actually useful stuff', again?
TFS got its "4" right, you've got the "7" right, but there has to be a "3" in front of all:
1.5 degrees Celsius is 34,7 degrees Fahrenheit.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Temperature#Conversion
It's context that makes the difference. ;)
Abstract computer simulations are not a substitute for experimentation.
Which is why the US military is in no terms relying on supercomputer simulations to maintain the enduring stockpile of nuclear weapons.
You cannot independently validate empirical claims without access to the claimant's data, setup and methodology.
Well, that's the whole idea behind the reproducible research method movement, isn't it?
Ezekiel 23:20
Some of those pollutants have strong cooling effects so they slow down the warming from increased GHGs.
So cleaning up the air will proably speed up warming unless we do a hell of a lot of CCS or get a more volcanic eruptions.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Just a note to point out that IPCC has an agenda, as opposed to the climate scientists, who, while perhaps suffering from confirmation biases, have a much more neutral stake on the whole thing either way.
Ignore the pause, ignore the missing heat, ignore the solar cycles, ignore the lack of sea level rise, ignore an arctic that is not ice free, ignore ENSO effects, ignore weather stations next to tarmacs, ignore urban heating, because they don't match the models.
Ignore the money being made, ignore the cost to society, ignore the lack of true peer review, ignore the missing data, ignore academic misconduct, ignore the denied FOI requests, ignore the emails, because that is just human nature.
When you are blind, everything is 'Nothing to see here, move along'...
2) Putting less pollutants into the air, water, and ground is a good thing.
Not if you make lots of money from selling the polluting stuff.
thegodmovie.com - watch it
There's a big omission in Spencer's graph - datasets of ground-based temp measurements.
The satellite readings have always been cooler and have needed numerous adjustments one way or the other.
If he were thinking like a scientist and not a regulator, he'd incorporate other observation-based data instead of taking the satellite measurements as, well, gospel.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Slashdot? Anonymous Coward?
Incredibly naive.
True, using such terms is science communication. The terms have clearly defined statistical meanings in the content of the IPCC report, but people not trained in statistics are typically poor at understanding numerical statistics. There are a range of cognitive biases associated with statistics. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky did quite a bit of work on cognitive biases. Some interesting work on how people incorrectly interpret statistics has also been done by Pav Kalinowski and Geoff Cumming.
Using terms which intuitively match the statistical numbers provides a means for a broader audience to get a rough handle on the predicted likelihood of certain occurrences. It lacks some precision, but the precision is there under the covers.
The economy was still OK. The slowdown should account for much of the difference.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Except sometimes all science can do is narrow a cause to a subset of the possible causes.
The clearance system sounds logical. It is not. It is completely arbitrary. -- John Bolton
Why wouldn't you think a widening of the range of uncertainty to be a retreat?
First, because that's not what the article claimed.
Second, because you are comparing the word explanations of the statistical analysis. (Actually not even that-- you are comparing a "leaked" paraphrasing of the word explanation of the statistical analysis). As the summary says:
"Since "extremely" and "very" have specific and different statistical meanings here, comparison is difficult.'"
Comparison is more than merely "difficult"-- it is impossible. Unless you know precisely what was actually in the report, and what the actual actual statistics are, you can't compare them.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Which is why the US military is in no terms relying on supercomputer simulations to maintain the enduring stockpile of nuclear weapons.
And we'll never know until we light try to one off now will we?
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
When Obama flies around nilly-willy on Air Force One he dumps tons of greenhouse gases into our atmosphere. Are you saying there's no climate change when he does that?
Have you ever heard of a form of ignorance called innumeracy? No? You should, because you have it.
If, in fact, flying Air Force One (which all presidents fly in, not just Obama, of course) dumps merely tons of greenhouse gas into the atmosphere, yes, that would be irrelevant to climate change. If it dumped thousand of tons, that would be irrelevant. If it dumped millions of tons, that would be irrelevant.
Do you have the slightest idea how many tons of carbon dioxide are put in the atmosphere by humans every year?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Back in the 1970s, CO2 wasn't considered a pollutant. So if you could burn things (specifically hydrocarbons) completely and produce nothing but CO2 + H2O, no problem. Now, CO2 is considered a pollutant. The only way to reduce CO2 is to not burn hydrocarbons -- burning them better is no longer an option. That's a massive difference.
Civilization runs on energy. Burning less hydrocarbons = less energy = less civilization. Alternatives can't even come close, not even if you bring hydro (kills fish, destroys habitats, etc, etc) or nuclear (ewww...) back into the picture.
It warms...
That's because they haven't figured out how to put a satellite next to the exhaust from an HVAC system.
I'm sure even Spencer could figure that out.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
So clearly a very trusted source, with extensive expertise in science. Hah! The WSJ is full of right-wingers repeating what other right wingers want to hear. Useless to even bother looking at it or at anyone that would rely on it to learn anything factual.
anticlimactic?
One of the effects of pollution has been to cause acid rain, and one of the knock-on effects of acid rain is that it's dissolving Limestone into streams and rivers. Generally speaking, plants like a soil level of 7-7.5 pH. Obviously there are endemic differences, but this is to say, if we do manage to clean up our pollution fairly soon, those Limestone creeks may end up proving to be benificial to their surroundings. The current thinking was that the alkaline levels were causing too much algae to grow, there-by using up the available Oxegen in the streams. In any case, at least we have enough money to pay qualified people to watch these things as they develop. Spend more on Science and less (or better still, none) on War. That's what I say. /Stolzy
Science updates its data, i.e. total non-story, it's like writing the sky is still blue and there are clouds moving - omg, moving! across it.
But of course, most people are really, really conservative at heart. Not in the political sense, necessarily. As a species, we hate change. Things that naturally change unsettle us. That's why for 99% of human history, things simply were. Fixed and eternal. You know, gods and their laws. Morality. Even today, just the idea that morals and ethics is something that changes and evolves is revolting. That fucking underage kids was perfectly fine in some ancient societies is not a topic for a polite dinner conversation, and the first instinct I bet almost everyone who just read that had was something along the lines of "what was wrong with them?".
And that is why you can make a headline out of the fact that something that everyone with three grams of working brain matter knows and expects to continuously be updated has, in fact, been updated.
Some days, I wonder how our species managed to survive at all. omfg, I think I just realized that everything else on this stupid planet must be even worse.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
The point behind climate change was that it justified wealth transfer through carbon caps.
It advanced a political agenda, not a scientific one.
As a result, it had huge support from people invested in that political agenda, and they created a media blitz.
As the hype fades, reality returns slowly.
Futurist Traditionalism
It is significant because it points to the very real possibility that, over the next several generations, the overall effect of climate change will be positive for humankind and the planet.
Is this "leaked report" real or some kind of fabrication? Because the idea of "net positive change" AGW flies directly in the face of all previous knowledge and recently observed phenomena.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
More numbers presented as spat out by models but NO mention of the error. Yes, the number spat out by the model is precise but is it accurate? That depends on the assumptions made for the model. Therefore there must be a possible error. So what is it? Why is it never mentioned?
Bottom line: if the margin of error is of the same or greater magnitude as the value, then any predictions you make must be complete eg. " the temp may rise by as much as x OR decline by as much as y. Anything else is less than honest and in the hands of politicians and an unquestioning public, dangerous.
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
My stance on this issue has been vindicated - for today and until some other poor research indicates something different. May be a month, perhaps a year, but they will eventually change their mind again. That's the one thing for certain in "climate science".
Burning less hydrocarbons = less energy = less civilization
That is nonsense.
Or do you consider France, Germany, Australia, Austria, Sweden, Finland, the UK etc. pep less civilized than the USA?
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Simple. "Doing something about climate change", phasing out burning of coal in favor of the only power source capable of replacing it, quad for quad, has been obstructed at every turn for the past 40 years by the omni-obstructionists. They still won't permit any nuclear power plants to be built.
One might easily come to the conclusion that they do not care about CO2 warming at all; that their actual agenda is something else entirely.
Sweet! Then there's no point in me worrying about my carbon footprint.
Correct. No individual human has a large enough carbon footprint to make a detectable difference in climate.
.... I guess then it's safe for everyone else to do the same, because small amounts of things don't add up to large amounts of things.
I don't understand what you are trying to say. I assume you are attempting sarcasm, but since you don't seem to be very good at it, it looks like you're just saying something stupid.
Global warming is a collective effect: the carbon emissions of a large number of humans, added together, have a significant impact. The carbon emission of a single human doesn't.
This is, in fact, exactly why the problem is so difficult: it's a problem that can't be solved by an individual, or even a moderate number of individuals, deciding on their own to scale back their carbon use.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Educate yourself: http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2013/09/16/climate_change_more_nonsense_by_the_mail_on_sunday.html
While a increase in the error of the estimated ECS is possible, the denialist industry is really pumping their papers in order to swamp the impact of the IPCC reports.
These claims of what is in them are reasonably speculative. I'm going to wait for the report before deciding the consequences of what's in it.
Here's a refutation of this particular one.
I consider the IPCC as having an adversarial relationship with the truth, like a lawyer in court. What is significant is what they're forced to admit. Currently, they're admitting that temperature sensitivity could be as low as 2 C per doubling. If they then go to the new range, that means the temperature sensitivity could be as low as 1.5 C per doubling. My view is that implies that temperature sensitivity estimates have dropped significantly and the IPCC is being forced to account for that.
They have to insure that their estimates include the current best guess range in order to maintain credibility down the road. That's the limit to how much they can bias their estimates of relevant physical observables in favor of the AGW theory. To be forced to lower the bottom threshold is a significant event. We'll see if it survives the political process of the IPCC.
Finally, if anyone didn't want "leaked" paraphrasing to dominate the discussion of upcoming IPCC reports, then perhaps a more open and public process is in order? In my view, a more overt politicization of the IPCC would result, but at least the results would be more credible than they currently are.
I consider the IPCC as having an adversarial relationship with the truth, like a lawyer in court.
You think the IPCC has an "aversarial relationship with truth," so you get your information from editorials in the Wall Street Journal ????
The mind boggles.
(And, of course, I can safely bet you don't actually read the IPCC reports. The denier never do.)
My view is that implies that temperature sensitivity estimates have dropped significantly and the IPCC is being forced to account for that.
It hasn't. The IPCC is summarizing reports in the peer-reviewed literature. The estimates haven't dropped. The information the Wally is using is contradicted by the scientists who they misquote [ref]
....Finally, if anyone didn't want "leaked" paraphrasing to dominate the discussion of upcoming IPCC reports, then perhaps a more open and public process is in order?
The report is to be released in ten days. The Wally wanted to put their spin in before the open and public process started, so they could spin the argument before everybody had the facts.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
It was the consensus among a certain slice of scientists who specialized in climate... Remember that before the recent wave of government grants funding "climate studies" and "global warming" and before universities had large structures in place dedicated to milking the current political demand, there were VERY FEW "climate scientists" and even a small number agreeing on something was a significant percentage...
To the contrary. Until the politically-motivated attack machine started to be funded, there was no scientific question about the greenhouse effect-- it was considered well-understood science. Grab any astronomy textbook from the '70s or '80s and check "greenhouse effect" in the index. It was completely non-controversial.
And it still isn't controversial, in a scientific sense. The denial machine is cranked up to continue to generate the illusion of uncertainty, but so far every challenge to the science has been answered. There aren't any alternate hypotheses that haven't been disproved with data.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
The report is to be released in ten days. The Wally wanted to put their spin in before the open and public process started, so they could spin the argument before everybody had the facts.
As I see, the open and public process is not in the creation of the report. As to the IPCC "summarizing" the "peer-reviewed literature", it's worth noting that the IPCC is first and foremost a political tool for justifying a variety of public spending themed around renewable energy and carbon dioxide reduction, such as renewable energy subsidies, carbon credit markets, wealth transfers from developed world to Third World, and public transportation. So any "summarizing" the IPCC will do will be oriented towards supporting such public spending. That is the nature of propaganda. Keep in mind that a large part of the "peer-reviewed literature" is also propaganda.
But as I implied, there are constraints to what the IPCC can claim. One of those constraints is that they can't claim something that will be obviously wrong with a little hindsight. That's why I pay attention to the bottom number for temperature sensitivity to a doubling of CO2. That can't be too high or the IPCC risks being discredited at a future time.
2) Putting less pollutants into the air, water, and ground is a good thing.
Not if you make lots of money from selling the polluting stuff.
Or if those pollutants taste really good, like barbecue ;)
Let's ask some simple questions here. Who decides the scope of the IPCC reports, the people who become authors and reviews for the reports, and who decides what writings to include - particular of the non-peer reviewed sort? These processes aren't transparent and they were done long before the Wall Street Journal blog article of which you appear to be so critical.
Why are "government representatives" involved? What do they bring that wouldn't be better achieved in their absence?
Who decides what what the high profile "executive summary" says and why isn't that process more transparent?
As a legitimate review of current climatology scientific literature, there's a lot that would be mysterious about how the IPCC report is constructed, even what it decides is part of its mandate.
But as a work of propaganda, these things are readily explained. In order to control the message, there must be filters to exclude or downplay undesired viewpoints or messages. And these filters have to be hidden from view so that the whole work retains an air of legitimacy. Hence, the need for a lack of transparency.
I am constantly amazed at the lengths of rationalization that deniers go through to avoid actually reading any of the science.
Yes, if you work hard, you can come up with reasons to avoid ever reading anything that will explain any of the science.
Who decides the scope of Wall Street Journal editorials, and who decides what writings to include-- particularly of the non peer-reviewed sort? These processes aren't transparent. Who decides what what the high profile "editorials" say and why isn't that process more transparent? There's a lot that's mysterious about how the Wall Street Journal editorials are constructed, even what it decides is part of its mandate. But as works of propaganda, these things are readily explained. In order to control the message, there must be filters to exclude or downplay undesired viewpoints or messages. And these filters have to be hidden from view so that the Wall Street Journal retains an air of legitimacy. Hence, the need for a lack of transparency.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I am constantly amazed at the lengths of rationalization that deniers go through to avoid actually reading any of the science.
BTW, I do read some research. But I don't see why that's relevant to the problem at hand.
Who decides the scope of Wall Street Journal editorials, and who decides what writings to include
That's pretty much decided by the owners of the WSJ, who have been mentioned several times. The difference between the WSJ and the IPCC reports is that the former isn't presented as a rigorous summary of all research in an important area of climatology and then proceeds to subvert that pretense for propaganda purposes.
BTW, I do read some research.
I see no reason to believe that; particularly since you already clearly stated that you won't read something if you think that it doesn't agree with what you've already decided.
You say you want to see evidence-- but you refuse to read it, because you won't look at it if you think it won't confirm what you already know. Good rationalizations.
The difference between the WSJ and the IPCC reports is that the former isn't presented as a rigorous summary of all research in an important area of climatology
Correct. They're not. Which is why you shouldn't use editorials in the Wall Street Journal as the source of your science information.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com