Global-Warming Skepticism Hits 6-Year High

Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Chris Mooney writes at Mother Jones that a new study, from the Yale and George Mason University research teams on climate change communication, shows a 7-percentage-point increase in the proportion of Americans who say they do not believe that global warming is happening. And that's just since the spring of 2013. The number of deniers is now 23 percent; back at the start of last year, it was 16 percent (PDF). The obvious question is, what happened over the last year to produce more climate denial? The answer may lie in the so-called global warming "pause"—the misleading idea that global warming has slowed down or stopped over the the past 15 years or so. This claim was used by climate skeptics, to great effect, in their quest to undermine the release of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's Fifth Assessment Report in September 2013—precisely during the time period that is in question in the latest study. "The notion of a global warming "pause" is, at best, the result of statistical cherry-picking," writes Mooney. " It relies on starting with a very hot year (1998) and then examining a relatively short time period (say, 15 years), to suggest that global warming has slowed down or stopped during this particular stretch of time." Put these numbers back into a broader context and the overall warming trend remains clear. "If you shift just 2 years earlier, so use 1996-2010 instead of 1998-2012, the trend is 0.14 C per decade, so slightly greater than the long-term trend," explains Drew Shindell, a climate scientist at NASA who was heavily involved in producing the IPCC report. This is why climate scientists generally don't seize on 15 year periods and make a big thing about them. "Journalists take heed: Your coverage has consequences. All those media outlets who trumpeted the global warming "pause" may now be partly responsible for a documented decrease in Americans' scientific understanding.""

Comments

Show me a climate model for the past 16 years

[Anonymous Coward]

If the climate scientists have a model that accurately predicted the past 16 years then we can talk about the future.

Until then the predictions of gloom and doom are about as believable as the heavens-gate cult.

Re:Show me a climate model for the past 16 years

[angel'o'sphere]

Unfortunately what you link is not a model, but 4 diagrams and a bit of text.
To bad, hoped someone had a nice climate model in a general purpose programming language and some data files to run your own prognosises.

Re:Show me a climate model for the past 16 years

[Sockatume]

Unfortunately scientists have to use models based on physics, and not curve-fitting.

Re:Show me a climate model for the past 16 years

[Anonymous Coward]

And until someone can show me a model that can predict 15 coin tosses in a row, I'm not going to believe that a tossed coin will come up heads 50% of the time!

Re:Show me a climate model for the past 16 years

[Tom]

The model is so obviously bullshit that it doesn't even justify a full-length response. So I'll just bite on the very first item: +0.4 ÂC per century projected forward gives nice data (ignoring that he's only projecting forward for a bit over one century...).

Now project it backwards. Means in 1000 it would've had to be 4 ÂC colder than today. And the romans must've worn fur all year round, because - 8 ÂC is quite a lot. Now let's talk about the dinosaurs... "cold-blooded" gets a whole new meaning when it's... uh... a million degrees minus... that isn't even physically possible.

So unless he explains where his "trend" comes from, and why it started only very recently, it's all total hogwash.

No, wait, it's worse than that. It's misapplied math. I can easily model an approximation function for any stock market, temperature, and probably the mean boob size of female college students. But as any first semester statistics student learns: Correlation does not equal causation. Just because you have a mathematical approximation of something doesn't mean you've explained anything at all. All it means is that you passed numerical math 101, where you learn approximation functions.

(and if you did, you also know why short-term, they are pretty good at predicting, too, and that still doesn't mean shit)

Re:Show me a climate model for the past 16 years

[E 99]

If the best models are worthless and have not made any good predictions, should we really "go with them" just because they are the best?

Re:Show me a climate model for the past 16 years

[Jane Q. Public]

"Probably a lot less than that of all the climate change "sceptics" combined, so if you were going to propose getting rid of them for ecological reasons, I do have a counter-proposal..."

It's actually possible that if you added the serious skeptics together, they would not have as much "carbon footprint" as Al Gore, with his mansion and plane trips and limos.

Re:Show me a climate model for the past 16 years

[angel'o'sphere]

If you had read that guys model, you had realized: there is no model.
Regarding prediction: as far as I can tell current models predict the actual situation very well. If you can do better join the scientists and show them.

Re:Show me a climate model for the past 16 years

[Jane Q. Public]

"If you had read that guys model, you had realized: there is no model."

I did read, and yes there is. He does not postulate a cause for the warming, but he does indeed have a predictive model. How well it predicts in the future remains to be seen.

"Regarding prediction: as far as I can tell current models predict the actual situation very well. If you can do better join the scientists and show them."

Really? That's interesting. Every successive IPCC report has decreased its projections of warming. When hundreds of AGW models were compared last year, the MEAN difference between their projections of warming and actual warming has been over 100%. (I don't want to bother to go find my reference right now. I have work to do. But I might post it later today.)

Now, I have been accused of "ignoring" the error bars in those statistics, but I have not ignored them at all. The fact is that the error bars are huge, allowing for damn near any possible result... which makes the projections nearly meaningless. When your error bars are large enough, you can take just about anything and say "See! It was predicted!"

By just about anybody's standard of measure, 100% average error is very high indeed. Saying "it's within the margins of error" simply means your error bars are so broad that any "projection" has very little meaning. In most areas of science, that much breadth in your error margins would be called very weak science at best.

Which shows that people don't understand

[rossdee]

Which shows that people (in the US) don't understand climate, or weather, and the fact that climate change means an increase in theextremes of weather.
Theres a drought and state of emergency in California, here in the midwest we have had our coldest December for a long time, and plenty of record lows, a week or two ago it was colder here than at the south pole (Or on Mars)
And USians still don't believe in climate change...

Re:Which shows that people don't understand

[ivano]

Remember you're talking to people who think that they can dismiss what you say because they (the deniers) think that everyone who uses the term climate change doesn't understand that the Earth's climate has changed before. But they're too stupid to understand that when we say climate change we mean anthropogenic climate change.

Re:Which shows that people don't understand

[zoffdino]

One third of us still deny evolution as a fact. A smaller percentage want "Creation Science" to be taught in school (well, there's no creation, nor the subject scientific to begin with). When people can deny 4 billion years worth of evidence for a natural process, what do you think make them better at understanding something with only 100 years of evidence. God bless the stupidity of Americans.

Re:Which shows that people don't understand

[Runaway1956]

So, let me ask - historically speaking, what has California's rainfall averaged, since the white man first came on the scene?

The funny thing is, I do a Google search to check that out. I click several links, and none show the information I am looking for. In 1849, what was the rainfall? Nothing. 1850? Nothing. 1851? Still more nothing. Where do I find the historical data?

Now, is there REALLY this remarkable drought, or have we simply been over using the available water for several decades already? There are a number of places where we have millions of people, but the land historically only supported hundreds or thousands. Even with tens of thousands, the weather and the land supplied plenty of water for survival, and some thrown in for waste and recreation. But, MILLIONS? Oh-oh - not enough water to go around.

We have been pumping lakes, rivers, and aquifers dry for decades now. We pump water from wherever we can find it, not caring about where it came from, or whether it will ever be replaced, or how it might be replaced.

Do we really have exceptional droughts today, or are we simply running out of water to waste?

Show me the historical data, please. Does it actually support this climate change theory?

Re:Which shows that people don't understand

[Loki_1929]

And USians still don't believe in climate change...

The rest of your comment aside, this is simply absurd. Aside from some blindly religious zealot goofballs who think the planet is 6,000 years old and that Jesus rode to school on a Velociraptor, I doubt very much that you'll find anyone in the US who believes the climate doesn't change; that it remains static for all time.

Of course, I'm sure that isn't what you were really saying. You very likely were meaning that some people from the US don't accept that human activities are, in any large way, directly responsible for atypical changes in the global climate. However, your language is quite interesting. First, the use of the word "believe" implies that they lack faith in a belief, rather than acceptance of truth. I would agree with that implication, based on how many "believers" in AGW come off as zealots. Secondly, your language attempted to marginalize the non-believers by equating their lack of faith with belief in a static climate; regardless of the fact that virtually none of them would actually agree with that concept.

Combined with the first part of your opening statement, I'd say this giant hunk of condescending and logical fallacy filled crap post is about par for the course for the True Believers(tm) of the AGW crowd. Based on the crowd noise, there seem to be a small number of rational people with a reasoned (if flawed, in my opinion) view of the available evidence among a sea of zealots basking in the glow of the holy texts handed down by the gods of the IPCC. I'm sure it's more about who's vocal rather than who's in which camp, but it sure doesn't seem that way sometimes.

Re:Which shows that people don't understand

[Anonymous Coward]

This kind of messages does not help your cause.

1) Stop insulting people. Maybe it is that the arguments where not convincing enough, or simply wrong.

2) The doomsday predictions that do not happen demolishes credibility

3) Revolutionary speech ("deniers"? "denial"? what scientific language is that?) does much more harm that help

4) Changing definitions and arguments do not help also: change means increase in extremes, but the original argument and studies used median temperatures? now in winter is climate change but then in summer it will be global warming again? the polar bears will go extinct in 2010, no, wait, in 2012, no, wait, in 2013, no, wait, in 2014... in the mean time, the climate scientists studying the phenomena got trapped in ice? The arctic disappears but the antarctic grows and the explanation is *global* warming?

5) Instead of name-calling and political agendas, the scientific argument must be addressed: How something with a (comparative) small influence of less than 0.01% of CO2 in atmosphere has such importance in models when something much more important (H2O as gas cause hothouse effect but as clouds increase albedo!) that is so complex that a really small variation in the model can cause huge changes in results gets no attention? why the uncertainty of the most important factor in climate (the amount of radiation in the sun) is not shown in uncertainty in the results? Those 2 really basic problems with the underlying theory never seem to be explained, lets not talk about more complex and subtle ones... instead, the results are presented as dogmatic-religion certain and whomever is not convinced is so a "denier" (I suppose the term "heretic" was considered too reveling). That the predictions does not concur with the observed results apparently is not important: "is a sort-term fluke", but whatever short-term observation that DOES concur with the predictions is considered a very important factor.

5) Attacking arguments not to the arguments themselves but only saying that they come from big-oil-lobby makes people suspect you come from the green-tech-lobby, the nuclear-lobby or the whatever-lobby, and in the end does not accomplish anything useful

Re:Which shows that people don't understand

[Runaway1956]

Of course water disappears after use. It swirls down the drain, flows down a pipe, into a sewer, pumped into a sewerage station, treated, then dumped back into a river, where it flows downstream, into the sea. It just disappears there, until it just happens to be in the right spot on the surface one day, to be evaporated into the atmosphere, where it can become rain again.

The problem is, we've been using water faster than water can evaporate and fall as rainfall. We've been drying out the land for decades. Give us time, and we'll figure out how to dry the ocean as well.

Re:Which shows that people don't understand

[Tom]

Show me the historical data, please. Does it actually support this climate change theory?

Now this is a really tough one. Who do I trust? Some random bloke on the Internet, or virtually every actual scientist on the subject in question? Decisions, decisions...

Yes, the data does support the theory. There are even meta-studies being done. One of the recent ones checked all studies published on climate in 2013. That was 2200 or 2400, something, I forgot the exact number. I do remember the exact number of the studies who disagree with climate change. It was easy to remember: One.

That's 0.05%. In a graphical diagram, it would be too small to print.

Now if you have a better theory - scientists are always willing to listen to better theories. However, given that tens of thousands of eyes have looked at the available data and agree that the current theory is the best one around, it's not you who gets to demand proof, it is you who must bring the supporting evidence for your pet theory.

Your water theory may even be in there somewhere, as a contributing factor. But it doesn't explain the ice caps melting, for example.

Re:Which shows that people don't understand

[bunratty]

That's fine to believe it. I fully respect your beliefs. But if you want to convince many others, I would suggest you provide some solid evidence that would lead others to believe the same thing. Now if you present an argument and it contains an obvious error in it, I will point it out. I don't respect poor reasoning. But if you just want to believe in whatever you want, go ahead...

Re:Which shows that people don't understand

[operagost]

If you had your mind made up in the 1980s, then you're part of the problem.

Science is a perpetual process.

Re:Which shows that people don't understand

[Tom]

A - there is not enough data or data has been cherry picked to push an agenda

There are over 10,000 published studies on the subject, and dozens of meta-studies checking on them. To be true, your claim A would require that 99.9% of the scientists in this subject are either corrupt and/or total idiots.

That is the kind of grandiose claim that can be dismissed without argument unless you have supporting evidence. You are probably familiar with the saying about extraordinary claims.

B - there is change and it is natural, who do we think we are to believe we have as much power to actually change the climate or

Again, a world-wide community of scientists, from every cultural and political background have been studying this subject for decades. They not only believe it, but have the data and the models and the studies to back up their claims. Where is your supporting evidence?

C - The costs to "stop" if thats even possible climate change is far greater than we are willing to spend.

That is the only valid argument, because it is political and not scientific.

Yes, we could absolutely argue that heck, to hell with everything, let's just ignore it. Except that the damage that climate change causes is already estimated in the billions per year.

The cost to "stop" is massive, because we've built our society on an unsustainable model. In simple terms, you have a family and a house and a car, but it's all built on credit - you spend more every month then you make. It worked this far because your bank and your credit card company are happy to give you credit. You don't know exactly how long you can maintain this, but you do know it's not forever.

In that simple model, it should become obvious that even though stopping will be painful (smaller house and car, probably), the longer you wait, the more painful it will become.

Unfortunately, we are human beings and pleasure in the now (which is certain) is psychologically more valuable than avoiding pain in the future (which is uncertain). It's just how evolution turned out to work best for us (unless you're also a creationist, in which case you believe in a truly terrible, sadistic and utterly fucked-up god).

Re:Which shows that people don't understand

[KermodeBear]

Which to use? That's easy - whichever one supports your conclusion, which is the conclusion that most pleases the person funding your "research".

Unfortunately, climate and environmental "science" has been taken over by political interests. It's very difficult to find studies that aren't tainted in some way.

Lies, Damn Lies, and Statistics...

Re:Which shows that people don't understand

[Tom]

Science is not democracy. 99% of the scientists can and have been often wrong in human History. There is no real scientific model that is able to predict climate changes. All we have are conjectures and giving the weight of fact to them is irresponsibility.

Wow, so much hogwash in so few sentences.

First, yes, most scientists were wrong for a time, with the available data, and as proven later by other scientists .

When science is wrong, it is almost always science which corrects itself. Very, very, very rarely (in fact, I don't know a single example, I just can't say for sure there isn't one) has a non-scientist disproven an entire field of science.

Two, of course we have models predicting climate change. Are you living under a rock? What you probably mean is that the current models don't predict what exactly will change where exactly when exactly. Which is normal given how complex a system climate is, and how many feedback loops it contains, meaning that anything that happens will change everything again.

Given the chaos (mathematically speaking) of the system, our predictions are fucking great. As someone said it in response to a similar bullshit "criticism": When scientists say "estimate", they often mean a precision that's equivalent to measuring the distance between New York City and Los Angeles to one millimeter.

I always find it funny how people trust science with their lives when it comes to cars, airplanes or medical emergencies, but not when it's a bikeshed problem.

Re:An ode to wankery

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah it's amazing how every d*ck with an internet connection is suddenly an expert on the weather and climate change. The latest study on how many scientist's actually deny climate change found the number to be less than 0.01%. So Practically every scientist in the world, who isn't being paid off by the Koch brothers, says that climate change is happening and it is man made. Yet we all feel qualified to say its crap. Based on what studies that we've done? Oh, it's snowing out so the earth can't be getting warmer. One of the side effects of global warming is more extreme weather conditions. Thus extreme cold could also be a result of global warming.

Re:An ode to wankery

[Joce640k]

Yeah it's amazing how every d*ck with an internet connection is suddenly an expert on the weather and climate change.

Yep. Education and/or experience is no barrier to being a fully qualified climate scientist. All you need is opinions and you're as good as the guys in white coats.

People are tired of the endless guilt trip.

[jellomizer]

Why do people choose to misinterpret global warming? Because they are stress out from the endless guilt trip on everything they do.
The issue is everything we do has some sort of trade off. But it feels like we are being judge for every choice we make.
Do you use reusable grocery bags? Then you better be sure that you clean them good enough, otherwise you could get sick from the germs.
Do you use new plastic bag? Then here is this documentary about a sea torturous who dies from eating your plastic bag that you threw away.
How about if you stick with good old paper? Your Cold/Frozen food creates condensation and break the bag and you waste all this food.

How about the car you drive?
A hybrid, which needs more green house gasses to build.
A small, car which cannot carry enough people and good thus needing an extra car.
A medium sized car, which gives off more carbon, and yet still doesn't fit everything you need.
A large car/Suv/Truck you can carry what you need however a lot of time you just polluting gas.

Do you cut down that large tree in you back yard? If so you can prevent it from falling on your house, if not it can suck up so much more carbon?

Don't even get me on, food choices....
We do want to do good, however there are so many tradeoffs we need to think about, and with science showing us more, it overwhelms us, and in essence paralyzes us. So we choose what science we choose to follow and what we choose to disregard as a coping mechanism.
It is emotional, it isn't about being stupid, of ill informed, it is just about being emotional on your choice.

Re:People are tired of the endless guilt trip.

[leptogenesis]

Let me get this straight. You're saying that when people research and consider the negative consequences of their actions, and then attempt to minimize them, they're being irrational? That it's impossible for people to consider these negative consequences without getting paralyzed, and, therefore, that nobody should research the negative consequences of their actions, and everyone should act purely selfishly? That's a great strawman; I know many altruistic people, and none are that stupid.

Most sane people consider it a fundamental goal in life to make the world a better place. It's true that this isn't a rational choice, but then again, it's not a rational choice to act selfishly, because that, too, is based on your emotional response to the stimuli your body receives. In our society, people who make the selfish choice are generally called sociopaths. The only possible explanation for your post is that you are one of them.

Re:People are tired of the endless guilt trip.

[gnasher719]

How about the car you drive?
A hybrid, which needs more green house gasses to build.
A small, car which cannot carry enough people and good thus needing an extra car.
A medium sized car, which gives off more carbon, and yet still doesn't fit everything you need.
A large car/Suv/Truck you can carry what you need however a lot of time you just polluting gas.

That truck can't carry your stuff when you move home (well, not when _I_ move home), so why don't you buy a removal lorry?

Seriously, in the last ten years I have once or twice hired a minibus, shared with others, once hired a white van to transport a treadmill, once had to ask a friend with a white van to transport a garden shed, and once hired a 7.5 ton lorry when I bought a complete new home office on eBay. Buying a large car for these rare situations is ridiculous.

Re:People are tired of the endless guilt trip.

[dasunt]

We do want to do good, however there are so many tradeoffs we need to think about, and with science showing us more, it overwhelms us, and in essence paralyzes us. So we choose what science we choose to follow and what we choose to disregard as a coping mechanism. It is emotional, it isn't about being stupid, of ill informed, it is just about being emotional on your choice.

I'm going with being stupid, emotional, and ill informed, plus I'm throwing in lazy. Look at your examples - grocery bags: Use the reusable ones, wash the damn produce once you take it out of the bag, and use reusable containers for other food. Grab the small car. Last time we used a van, it was for camping a year ago with friends, and they supplied a van they rarely used. Last time we needed a truck, we borrowed it, for yard work. We could have just as easily rented them, and it would be easier than trying to convince ourselves that we need a car, a van, and a truck. And cheaper! That large tree? If it needs to come down, it needs to come down. If not, it can stay. As for food, some of the best food for us tends to be food we make from scratch - which tends to take up less space, weigh less, and is easier to transport and store than eating out all the time or buying premade food. And don't give us the BS about time - there's plenty of easy one pot meals that only require a bare hint of foresight and setting a timer on the stove once it starts cooking.

People are stuck in their habits, and they are trying to justify those habits, for the most part. It's amazing. Frugality and being environmental often goes hand in hand. Reduce, reuse, recycle. Arrange your life in such a way that trips can by done by foot, bike or bus. Preplan a bit. It's a time saver, cheaper, and healthier.

So, personal story time: We live in a small house, ridiculously small by American standards. It's cheaper to live there (and less CO2!). Plus, the yard is just big enough for our hobbies, and nothing more, so we can get by with just a shovel and a manual push mower - which gives us more exercise, while being cheaper (and less CO2 than a gasoline mower and a snowblower). We're on bus lines, which means we don't need two vehicles. Ideally, we'd need zero and rent an hour car when needed - I think we're close to that point now. We're now both on bus routes to work - one bus each, no transfers. Pretty damn nice. The house is small enough that we don't have the urge to pack it with junk, which is, once again, cheaper. And since we don't have a house packed with toys, we have the urge to head out more (ideally on foot or bike), which contributes to our health. Oh, and we tend to cook from scratch which is, once again, cheaper.

We've upped our income significantly quite recently since my better half got her second degree, and a job, and someone told her that we now could now afford to buy a larger home. The idea caused us to laugh. We already could afford more, but we're already saving money, and we'd rather save more for better things down the road (and early retirement). Why get caught up in the rat race where everyone is convincing everyone else that their wasteful lifestyles are needed? We figured it out - we have the good life. And unlike so many people, our debt is minimal, gets quickly paid off for the most part, and we aren't living from paycheck to paycheck. If we need something, we can get it without worrying too much about the price. But we both realize that we don't need a lot of things. And that's benefiting us while benefiting the environment as well.

Meh

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think anything is more annoying that articles on who believes in Global Warming or not... On the "I could really care less"-oh-meter, it spikes the chart.

Propaganda Piece fudges truth . . . News at 11

[Traciatim]

Of course, if you cherry pick 1996-2012 you can get a small trend line... but if you start in 1996 (instead of 1998 like the article states, as most skeptics avoid that since it's such an easy counter-point) you have no statistically significant warming 17 years. Benjamin Santer in http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011JD016263/abstract declared that "Our results show that temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature."

Translated, it essentially means that if there is no significant warming for 17 year periods we need to start searching for the real causes and not just sink money in to finding more human causes to blame.

Then you add in that the sun goes in to a lull and suddenly we have no more warming and a huge number of record colds being recorded in the northern hemisphere yet the alarmist have been shouting it from the rooftops that changes in the sun are too small to affect climate citing the TSI changes rather than the changes in different frequencies (which are quite large). http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-25771510

Maybe instead of people having a decrease of scientific understanding they are just waking up to the facts and as they learn more they realize the alarmists are hand waving ninnies.

Re:This isn't helping...

[andydread]

By linking to a rabid patiasan source like the daily caller you have basically invalidated your post here. Nothing you have said here can be taken seriously because you are linking to the Daily Caller for gods sake.

Re:the sky is (not) falling... you're thinking abo

[ChunderDownunder]

Well if it makes the Yanks feel any better, one can colour Australia blue from July 1 onwards, when the new senate repeals legislation as their first act.

Our new PM (back in 2009) "The argument is absolute crap. However, the politics of this are tough for us. Eighty per cent of people believe climate change is a real and present danger." 4 years on and he convinced a majority of electors that action on climate change was "socialism masquerading as environmentalism".

So it's not just conservatives in the US that regard climate change as a big socialist conspiracy...

Re:An ode to wankery

[oscrivellodds]

That's the big trend these days. We must respect everyone's opinions equally. It doesn't matter if they are expert in a specific field or know nothing but what they see on the "news". All are of equal value. That's why we don't tell kids who are getting F's (do any of them get those any more?) that they are stupid. We let them find out what the world thinks of dummies after we push them along and graduate them. Then they find out that they are dopes and can't get/keep a job that pays a living wage (are there any of those any more?) and start taking antidepressants.

The US is in the death throws of democracy. Future generations (in other countries) will study this period of US history to try to figure out what happened. How did stupidity and ignorance get elevated to virtues?

"Decrease in scientific understanding"

[Vermonter]

This is an incorrect statement. Americans (and honestly, the general public worldwide) never had a great understanding of climate (or any) science. Many people who accept global warming are just as scientifically illiterate as those who reject it. Just because you are right about something doesn't mean understand it.

Re:"Decrease in scientific understanding"

[Dixie_Flatline]

But at least the ones that accept it have the good sense to defer to experts.

The one thing people need to know about science is that you don't have to take the word of any one experiment or any one person. It's very much like medicine in that way. By all means, get a second opinion. And a third. But if 99 doctors tell you that you have a tumour and one doctor says that it's psychosomatic, the rational choice is to trust the 99 doctors.

Nearly everyone with training says that it's us. I've got just enough schooling in climate science from University to follow some of the actual science, as opposed to the science that gets reported in the media. I can't do the work myself, but I can read enough to tell you that I'm convinced by the models and empirical evidence rather than just the bluster and anecdotal evidence.

But it would be really great if the people that deny that it's happening could stop blocking what we need to do to fix the problem for their own selfish reasons.

Exactly 0% argue static climate

[smittyoneeach]

The brilliance of "climate change" is that the possibility range of "change" is kinda infinite.
In one stroke you can bin everyone who'd gainsay you in any way with Flat Earthers.
That there is some nifty rhetorical kneecapping. Bravo.

Re:This isn't helping...

[AmiMoJo]

Apparently the UN Climate Chief just said that only Communism can stop global warming.

No, she didn't. She said that communism is good at dealing with that kind of thing, not that democracy was incapable of fixing it. She made the rather obvious point that communist states find it easier to act for the collective good, while in democracies people tend to act in their own interests.

This just shows how desperate the sceptics have become now it looks like they are losing the debate. They have to try and conflate dealing with climate change with that old enemy communism. Kinda surprised they haven't figured out how to link recycling to helping terrorists yet.

The answer

[vikingpower]

lies not in the so-called "global warming pause". It lies in the fact that most, if not all of the naysayers, are creationist, drill-baby-drill Americans. Sorry. I know - I am going to be modded down into oblivion. So what.

What guilt? Stick it to the man!

[Anonymous Coward]

People are under the erroneous impression that they are giving up something good. They feel guilty because they have been conned by the marketers. Fell guilty about trying to live more ecologically? Congratulations! You are a sucker! Big corps WANT you to be stubborn and keep buying their shit and sucking the money out of YOUR wallet.

Big cars? Look on the road. How many people actually fill them up? They are mostly single drivers - maybe two.

Food? We've been brainwashed into thinking eating what we evolved to eat (vegetables, fruits, nuts, a very small amounts of meat - which is optional) as being depriving. The big junk food makers have conned us into thinking that green salad is tasteless and we need a shit load of salt and grease. I've changed my tastes back to where they should be and I find prepared foods - pretty much anything that I don't cook - to be too salty and too greasy.

Grocery bags? Whatever. I do all of them. I reuse the plastic bags - they're great for picking up dog poop when you walking it.

AND -this part I LOVE - living ecologically saves money (use less expensive gas, cook healthier meals, medical costs go down, dont' get suckered by big corp America) AND it sticks it to the man!

No sir! The green and crunchy people have shown me that I can loose weight while eating as much as I like, reduce healthcare expenses (lost weight, better LDL/HDL ratio: 1.0 Baby!, and less stress on the knees and other joints), help local farmers - they grow awesome stuff, save on gasoline, and more money in MY pocket - all because I'm living like an eco-"whackjob" as Neil Boortz used to say.

Here we go again...

[geminidomino]

responsible for a documented decrease in Americans' scientific understanding

Oh, FFS. The core of "scientific understanding" is critical thinking and questioning presented "facts", the possession of which naturally results in skepticism when doing so invokes this sort of garbage. "Clearly anyone who doesn't blindly accept what we're saying, without question, doesn't understand science" isn't "science", it's dogma.

I've still never had anyone offer me any reasonable answers to many of my legitimate questions on these "studies." e.g.:

1. 1. Some studies claim to be based on as much as 1000 years of temperature data. Exactly how widespread, accurate and rigorous was temperature recording during the Dark Ages?
2. 2. How, exactly, is 100, 200, or even 1000 years a suitable sample period in geological terms? It seems remarkably short-term.
3. 3. Why is any study that doesn't rival "Young Earth Creationism" in Anthrocentrism derided and disregarded as "bad science"?
4. 4. Is there anything to any of these studies that's *not* spawned of wanton use of extrapolation?

Okay, admittedly #4 is more an expression of frustration. I'm not a geologist or meteorologist, so pointing me at the raw data doesn't tell me anything, but having it "translated" for my by "experts" has proven all but useless, since this "debate" still doesn't seem to have much to do with science as opposed to politicization of funding.

Ideology and science are incompatible, whether it's about teaching schoolkids about evolution, or the world catching on fire. As it is now, I still don't know if global warming is a thing, if it's a human-caused thing, or if it's bullshit. All that's come out of this whole thing is that I pretty much don't care, since the way it's being handled is more like two schoolkids arguing over whether Batman can beat up Superman.

Re:Here we go again...

[Sockatume]

1) You reconstruct data from proxies. That lets you get back a lot further than 1000 years.
2) Obviously this is why you do "1"
3) It's hard to say, as there are few studies which actually claim global warming isn't happening. There are plenty of studies criticising methodologies and exactly what the end results are, lots of academic back-biting but there is a remarkable consistency across field and technique in the general conclusion that mean temperatures increase.
4) It's observational science. The entire basis of empiricism depends on interpolation and extrapolation.

Wrong Website

[novae_res]

I think timothy posted this to the wrong website. Ars is where all the alarmists / AGW religious fanatics hang out these days. They even have a writer dedicated to regularly pumping out the propaganda, and moderators that silence any dissenting voices. It used to be like that on Slashdot too, but too many readers have woken up to the politically and financially motivated religion of climate change (Global warming). It was renamed for this very situation. Now it doesn't matter if the temperatures go up, down or even stay flat, they can claim their religion supports all these outcomes :D

Re:An ode to wankery

[SuperTechnoNerd]

How did stupidity and ignorance get elevated to virtues?

I wish I had an answer for you, other than the media. The last 20 years has been the "coming out" years for stupidity. Ignorance and stupidity are rewarded and intellectualism, logic and reason is to be avoided because it's "geeky". No one seems capable of critical thinking anymore. There are people who know they are stupid, and are proud of it! Really - with all thees low-brow TV shows like "honey boo boo", "duck dynasty" , " kardashians", etc - they seem to make being stupid vogue somehow. Then on the flip side of the coin, last month CNN did a short bit on CERN'S LHC and the 2 reporters were giggling, making jokes, couldn't keep a straight face during the piece. They were obviously uncomfortable reporting on this subject for fear they may get labeled a geek or something. Perhaps our future is shown in the movie "Idiocracy". I fear for our future generations. I saw something here on Slashdot the other day which I posted on my fridge; that sums it up:

"“There is a cult of ignorance in the United States, and there has always been. The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.”"

The Numbers Lie.

[Dishevel]

Not sure exactly what is what, but those numbers are skewed at least a bit. You become a pariah if you publish Anti Global Warming stuff. The people of tolerance are the most angry and hateful if you choose not to agree with them so I would think that if you want decent relationships with your peers and do not want to be screamed down every time you speak best to speak in favor of or shut the fuck up.

Re:Count on every Warmist...

[phlinn]

That study is presented in a fundamentally dishonest way. 0 TLDR version: It's deceitful to label that disagrees with any portion of the alarmist agenda (disliking a carbon tax for example) as a climate change denier. Taking all groups that fit under that broad category and totaling all of their funding regardless of what percent actually goes to climate issue magnifies the deceit.

Re:The Unanswered Question

[fredprado]

The answer is that you don't need to argue that the world is not getting warmer. The world got warmer and colder multiple times in the last billion year, and glaciers advanced and receded multiple times during this period. Still here we are.

Skeptics do not contend that there are climate changes, they defy the notion that human factors are as significant as the alarmists say, and the theory that what is happenign now is outside the bounds of what already happened to Earth many many times.

Re:White Coats vs solar output

[Vitriol Angst]

No but BoRegardless point is that the SUN could be having large temperature swings, because he doesn't believe the climatologists and just imagines that the huge sun isn't very stable - without actually checking on this presumption. But he's not going to believe in the Global Warming regardless of whether he's proven wrong on this pet theory or not -- I'm just going to make that prediction right now, without the benefit of Google.

Sorry but this pisses me off. These a-holes throwing stones at Climate Change don't bother to check that they've got about 9 excuses / theories of why the climatologists are ignorant -- and they can't be bothered to check that all of these suppositions have not only been proven wrong, but extremely stupid. Sun = Hot + Variable has been brought up about every year for the last 10. The "but Mars ice caps are melting" is due to follow next week. Rinse and repeat.

When the sun heats up (as it is won't to do), it expands, as it expands, this reduces fusion and self-stabilizes the output. In longer term trends, the higher output causes more lighting and more ozone production and more EM reflecting atoms created in the upper atmosphere -- which is damn lucky because it prevents us from having wild temperatures swings. It does have an effect -- but we can look at various inputs and STILL SAY THERE IS TOO MUCH DAMN CO2 in the atmosphere.

Our oceans are more acidic and our atmosphere has more CO2 than we've seen for about 75 million years. So WTF? Isn't that enough to say; "Houston, we may have a problem?" Without the Climatologists and just looking at measurements of air and water -- we should realize that Human activity has changed things and "we have a problem."

Without Hollywood, we can't do anything about the sun, of course.

Re:It is about development

[Tanktalus]

Wow. Really?

If your doctor tells you that you need antibiotics, you weight the risk and cost vs the reward to determine your course of action. In this case, the risk to you is low, the cost is similarly low, the reward is that your infection likely goes away faster (in extreme cases, saving your life, but not in general).

If the AGW politicians tell you that you need to sacrifice your entire standard of living in order to curtail a problem that they still don't understand (and, let's face it, they don't understand it because they still can't predict it, even on a decade-by-decade basis, nevermind year-over-year), the risk is high (no understanding of likely outcomes), the cost is even higher (likely resulting in many human deaths), and the rewards are vague.

Those aren't even kind of similar. For an analogy to work, there must be a reasonable amount of similarity, and your analogy has almost none.

I'm all in favour of technology improving our cheap-energy viability. But the problem is that the only realistic cheap-energy that is currently technically viable is nuclear. And that has the same group of environmentalists opposed to it as are trying to decry AGW. They're shooting their cause in the foot.

Other than oil executives, most of the rest of us don't care where our energy comes from. But we know we need it. And most of us don't want to double (or more) our energy costs. We have a viable alternative. Use it. That will kill more opposition to AGW changes than any "scientific" argument you can come up with. Make our lives easier for less cost, and it will be adopted overnight (relatively speaking). Use your scientists to proclaim the actual safety of the nuclear industry. You'll do far more to remove carbon emissions than anything else currently being tried.

It's the old adage - catching more flies with honey than vinegar. Don't accuse us, attract us with what we want. Cheap, reliable energy. Remember Aesop's fable about the North Wind vs the Sun. The man wears a coat to keep warm - blowing a cold wind only makes him hold it harder, but give him warmth and he sheds his coat willingly. Give us what we want, cheap, reliable energy, and you get what you want, fewer carbon emissions.

Re:It is about development

[zugmeister]

There's a very large group of sect members that BELIEVE in this faith. Acting now will not harm us, it can only improve our current life style. If we don't start pushing this faith, other problems will eventually arise such as catastrophic event.
Believe in faith, it can only bring good in the end. If it's a big scam, at least we know it's not celestial villain paying for it.

I would argue that the truth very much matters. To run with your analogy, the doctor is not prescribing antibiotics, rather he is saying you need to drive a different car (or maybe stop driving altogether), move to a different place (cities are much more efficient from a CO2 standpoint), and make major changes in how you live your life. Yeah, I'd be inclined to ask questions!