Slashdot Mirror
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.""
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/22/3099141/climate-denying-groups-funding/
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/dark-money-funds-climate-change-denial-effort/
http://guardianlv.com/2013/12/climate-change-denial-a-billion-dollar-industry-of-fabrication-says-study/
(sampled from the first few hits for: https://www.google.es/search?q=climate+change+denial+lobby+billions }
No sig today...
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.
No sig today...
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.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
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?
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
If I google "California rainfall reconstruction" (because there weren't many rain meters out in California in the 1800s) I get a pile of articles on the subject showing data going back over 1000 years:
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=california+rainfall+reconstruction
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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.
actually what is happening is that most climate change skeptics do not dismiss that the climate is changing, We know you mean AWG change. We simply believe that either
A - there is not enough data or data has been cherry picked to push an agenda
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
C - The costs to "stop" if thats even possible climate change is far greater than we are willing to spend.
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
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.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
You realised you linked to a search with one result about a pro-climate-change lobby, and all the rest are reports on anti-climate-change lobbying efforts several times it size?
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
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.”"
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!
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?
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).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
No, A model is not a curve-fitting exercise.
Why don't you read up a bit on HadGEM3: Design and implementation of the infrastructure of HadGEM3: the next-generation Met Office climate modelling system, Hewitt et al, Geosci. Model Dev (2011).
As you can see, it is not an extrapolated curve fit, but an imitation of the global atmosphere, ocean and biosphere, based on physics.
For instance?