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How Weather Influences Global Warming Opinions
An anonymous reader writes in with this story about how people's belief in climate change shifts with the temperature. "Last week's polar vortex weather event wasn't only hard on fingers, toes and heating bills. It also overpowered the ability of most people to make sound judgments about climate change, in the same way that heat waves do, according to a new study published in the Jan. 11 issue of the journal Nature Climate Change. Researchers have known for some time that the acceptance of climate change depends on the day most people are asked. During unusually hot weather, people tend to accept global warming, and they swing against it during cold events."
The very same logic is used to fashion correlation from coincidence the World over.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Global warming is exactly that- a global trend, not a local one. Locally, the effects have been most pronounced near the north pole, which is not exactly a place where many people live.
Global climate change seems to have resulted recently in a "warming" trend, but as we know from Al Gore's movie, if the North Atlantic current gets shut off we are in for a polar vortex on a much longer time scale.
I am not sure who coined the phrase "global warming"; is it a PR failure by the scientists involved or a reporting failure by the news media? To quote a well known meme: "why not both?"
so just as N.America has its lowest temperatures for decades
Australia is doing some of its hottest with a rounded 50C for the first time last week
Monday -> 27C and the rest of the week's forecast is
Tuesday -> 43C
Wednesday -> 39C
Thursday -> 41C
Friday -> 40C
its all about extra energy making things more variable, but no single weather event can be attributed to anthropogenic climate change
During unusually hot weather, people tend to accept global warming, and they swing against it during cold events."
Of course they do because many people (most maybe) do not understand the difference between climate and weather. They have either a poor understanding or perhaps no concept at all that short term temperature fluctuations are merely data points in a longer term trend. It is just like how people overreact to a few worse than usual days in the stock market even though the long term trend for the overall market for the last 100 years has been upwards.
Weather = what is happening today
Climate = average weather over time
1) There is Islamic terrorism, and U.S. militia terrorism, and atheist terrorism, and Christian terrorism, and others. I know of no one worth listening to who seriously disputes any of these.
2) If you're really sitting around worried about Islamic terrorists hitting your town, you need to get a hobby.
Kythe
This guy has the most informative debunking of BS on both sides of of the issue. His series of YouTube videos should be required viewing for policy makers and "armchair experts" alike.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
"I don't live in a totalitarian police state because I've never been detained without charge or sentenced without trial or deprived of property without warrant."
"I'm not sexist because I'm female."
It would probably help if every time there's a hurricane like Sandy, Katrina, et. al. there wasn't some global warming advocate on TV arguing that this was evidence of global warming. You can't taut every weather event that supports warming as evidence and then turn around and dismiss every weather event that doesn't jibe with the narrative.
Nor do I find the argument that EVERY weather event (extreme, mild, or otherwise) somehow supports warming. You can't just set up a hypothesis and then say that there is no evidence that can ever possibly contradict it. That's religion, not science.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
I find this ironic since the political AWG alarmism lobby deserves a lot of the blame for this. Remember the use of Hurricane Katrina splashed on Al Gore's "Inconvenient Truth" movie cover. And pretty much whenever there's a natural disaster you have AGW alarmists (not just trolling internet comments, but also occupying high places in government) stirring the pot some more.
Researchers have known for some time that the acceptance of climate change depends on the day most people are asked.
I don't doubt that this is true. I also don't doubt that the enthusiasm of researchers to jump on bandwagons follows the "weather patterns" of public funding availability. That's how Richard Lindzen of MIT describes it, and it seems to fit.
"There's no God because I haven't seen him"
"There are no unicorns because I haven't ridden one."
"The Loch Ness Monster doesn't exist because no one has ever videotaped it."
It's NOT "all the same." Sometimes the skeptics are right.
And yet we are to believe things like Katrina and Sandy are evidence FOR Global Warming? Aren't those things just as much "weather" as the national cold streak (which, btw, I've heard Global Warming advocates cite as evidence FOR Global Warming)?
It seems that every "weather" event is trotted out as evidence FOR Global Warming by someone. According to the advocates, there appears to be no piece of evidence that can possibly be used against Global Warming, but it can all be used as evidence it is happening. Actions like this make the whole AGW movement seem more like a religion than science.
"There's global warming because it's hot."
"I'm poor because someone else is richer than me."
"I can't be racist because I'm black."
. I'd say an atheist group out of Wisconsin that regularly tries to use the power of liberal courts by filing what could be financially crippling lawsuits against small communities in the South that they don't agree with could be considered as being a form of terrorism.
Nope. Harassment and malicious litigation aren't terrorism. Nobody's afraid that these people in Wisconsin are going to kill them.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Since you seem to think that these weather extremes are evidence for global warming, is mild weather contradictory evidence (if we have a mild winter or summer, for example)? And if not, then can *any* weather evidence *possibly* ever exist to contradict your argument? If the answer is "No," then that's not science. It's religion.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
If you think Stalin or Mao were motivated by atheism, then perhaps you also think that Hitler invaded Poland because he was a vegetarian? Or because he wasn't a buddhist?
Yes. And that "only" puts the existing theories — than man's CO2 emissions are responsible for the warming — on their heads.
So, maybe, there is no need to tax/ban certain fuels and activities, after all? And thus no need for further expansion of governments (to enforce the bans) and merging of sovereign governments into an unelected "world-government" body?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I hate to point it out, because the initial commentor was being a heavy handed idiot, but I think the initial comment meant people don't go around killing others because they're Atheists or in the name of Atheism. If someone just happens to be Atheist while doing something terrible we might as well say they're doing it because the like the color blue. It's not being used as a reason to kill people like Romans feeding Christians to the lions or Christians killing Muslims (crusades) or Muslims blowing up buildings, which I'm not really religion was the reason for that. I think it was more political or ideological.
Stalin was no more guilty of "atheism terrorism" than he was of mustache terrorism.
I would say Stalin and Mao were dictators who sometimes used terrorism as a tool. Call it state terrorism.
Obviously the GP is a bit foolish to suggest there are no atheist terrorists. Politics is just as capable of producing terrorists as religion is. But by the same token, there's no more truth to the old chestnut that says atheists are "morally rudderless" and thus more liable to commit atrocities.
Both Stalin and Mao may have been atheists, but they both drew on a vast tradition of superstition among their respective populations. Hitler's armies famously used the slogan "Gott mit uns" ("God with us") on their uniforms, and had a cozy relationship with the Vatican.
OTOH, perhaps the GP was referring to "atheist terrorists" who use terrorist tactics to advance the "cause" of atheism. In that case, I would have to agree with him, at least provisionally. If you can show me evidence of "militant atheists" blowing up buses and planes in the name of atheism, I'll take a look.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
Climate scientists do NOT make those claims and have been explicitly stating that no single weather event can conclusively be linked to AGW.
Also, the "G" in AGW stands for GLOBAL, which seems to be a difficult concept for some North Americans to grasp.
While the polar vortex was wreaking havoc in America, much of Scandinavia was having an unusually warm winter, with flowering plants & bears coming out of hibernation.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/jan/10/polar-vortex-us-mild-weather-scandinavia
So whose narrative does that jibe with?
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
Stalin and Mao did try very hard to eliminate religion in their states.
Yes, but not "for the cause of atheism"... they did so because they couldn't tolerate any "authority" that might oppose their power, whether institutional or individual. In the meantime, they were quite happy to co-opt the superstitious tendencies of their populations to encourage a "cult of personality" -- especially in Mao's case.
Seems like we mostly agree that tyranny is different from terrorism, though they may often use similar methods. I'm sure there are plenty of atheists (or at least "doubters") among the terrorists, and doubtless many religious believers among the tyrants. But the the guys who actually strap on the explosive vests...? I doubt there are many atheists among that lot.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve your problem, you're not using enough of it. --AC
If it was accurate then there would have been a consensus predicting these events.
I find in continually frustrating that proponents (and opponents) of addressing the risks of climate change bring up scientific consensus as an argument. I think Einstein said it best when reportedly responding to the book "Hundert Autoren gegen Einstein (A Hundred Authors Against Einstein)", by saying (roughly) "if I were wrong, one would be enough". If a model is correct and has predictive value then it is useful regardless of what the consensus might say. If it has no predictive value then it is wrong regardless of any consensus.
It is also possible that the phenomena is real and we simply have not developed a descriptive model yet. Relativity was real even before Einstein developed his model. So you have to ask yourself, how should we behave if there is a reasonable chance that this phenomena is real? Our ability or lack thereof to model the climate change is a separate issue from our ability to measure it. We KNOW that temperatures are rising globally because we are able to measure that even if we don't know for absolute certain why they are rising. So if they are rising what are the potential consequences and what should we do based on those potential consequences?
However, the fact that there is no consensus means that there isn't accuracy in the field of Climate Change
As meaningless as consensus might be, there does appear to be one regarding the existence of climate change. The only real debate at this point is regarding severity.
I am willing to accept carbon based climate change and accept the changes required for preventing future damage, but only if it is scientifically proven.
Well the data we have certainly seems to indicate that climate change is real so I'm not entirely sure what level of proof you are looking for. It's not the sort of phenomena you want to wait until after it occurs to say "yep, we proved it - look at all this damage". However, let's presume for the sake of argument that the data is inconclusive at present. Then the question becomes one of risk. Let's say there is 50% chance that climate change is real and that if it is real the consequences of it are that the planet no longer becomes compatible with human life. Is that a risk you are willing to take or do you think we should act on the risk knowing we might be wrong but playing it safe? Basically you are doing an expected value analysis.
Ah, the old "whites can't suffer racism" canard.
Where, exactly, did GP said that?
Of course there's racism targeted against whites. However, if you are a white in a society dominated by whites, your chances of running into it are much lower than they are for one of the minorities. And there are, indeed, people who claim that there's no racism because they have personally not experienced any.