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When Beliefs and Facts Collide
schnell writes A New York Times article discusses a recent Yale study that shows that contrary to popular belief, increased scientific literacy does not correspond to increased belief in accepted scientific findings when it contradicts their religious or political views. The article notes that this is true across the political/religious spectrum and "factual and scientific evidence is often ineffective at reducing misperceptions and can even backfire on issues like weapons of mass destruction, health care reform and vaccines." So what is to be done? The article suggests that "we need to try to break the association between identity and factual beliefs on high-profile issues – for instance, by making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still be a conservative Republican."
It's okay for Liberals to admit that there is no global warming.
Humans aren't motivated by logic. Instead, they use logic as a tool to satisfy their emotional needs. No tool suits every problem.
The inherit problem is that we second-guess our subconscious intuition with emotional overrides.
Those damb religio-political dogmatists keep blocking publication of my papers on the theory of anturgic phrogneal boropathy.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
A permanent insult for knowledge. Whether you are scientific or not religion makes you a delusional fucktard.
It's like giving up on due thought process and effectively life.
Religion people are already dead.
"for instance, by making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still be a conservative Republican."
Unsurprisingly, TFA/NYT chose that polarity as an exemplar instead of its opposite.
I'll believe in CAGW when the scientists quit fudging the numbers and it still shows it...when they can explain historical data that contradicts the theory...and when they can explain why the warming has stopped for the last couple of decades.
As it is, he fudging is so blatant that "climate science" is nothing of the sort...it's a Trojan horse for the same lod tired leftist government takeoff of economies. That trick never works.
Disinfect the GNU General Public Virus!
Is something Christopher Hitchens would say
Why should anyone "believe" that human-caused climate change is happening? That's not science. It's ironic that the religious zealots are the ones who see most clearly that science functions as a religion in modern society, while the scientists, for the most part, are the least likely to recognize it...because it conflicts with their beliefs.
The whole idea of (whatever they're calling it now) global warming is inextricably bound up with centralized economic planning or, at the very least, extensive economic regulation; and in many cases it goes beyond that with the advocating of international boards that threaten national sovereignty. Furthermore, many of these proposed treaties are seen by their opponents—and not without good cause—as a way of stifling rich, developed countries while favoring un-developed or developing countries. They're seen as a political punishing of the "Great Satan." This is what people can't get past.
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
Based on the example in the OP I suggest "you are what you resent" is proven yet again.
http://science.slashdot.org/story/14/05/28/0332258/belief-in-evolution-doesnt-measure-science-literacy?sdsrc=popbyskid
It's not like it was a buried Slashdot post. It had >500 comments to it and has appeared for over a month in the "Stories you Might Like". How about reading Slashdot once in a while, Slashdot editors?
You may be able to convince a conservative Republican in Congress that he can believe that anthropogenic climate change is a real thing, but unless you convince millions of Tea Party conservatives of it too, that one conservative Republican will never admit it, for fear of his job.
Influence, t4e
> by making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still believe that Sadam Hussein had anything to do with 9/11.
Sorry, but as soon as you start doing evidence or science based political reasoning, most of the Republican platform stops making sense.
for instance, by making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still be a conservative Republican
How about making it clear that people have a wide variety of views on things like GWT, and its not simply true believers vs deniers. How about making it clear that not all Democrats believe in gun control.
I'm relatively literate from a scientific perspective, I hate all politicians equally and I have no religious beliefs.
Where does that put me?
...gis sdrawkcab (usually not responding to ACs; don't bother posting as AC)
Climate science recognised El Nino/La Nina before the current bunch of "fundamentalists" got popular by blaming the 1906 San Francisco earthquake on Gods will instead of geology. The latest batch of science denialism is just the latest recruiting drive for that bunch of merchants in the temple - all you have to do is deny reality and fill the collection box with cash and a dumbed down cardboard God of an unchanging world will make it all better.
The facts are just ignored by the ignorant. Facts should eradicate any beliefs at time of presenting them.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
we need to try to break the association between identity and factual beliefs on high-profile issues
I suspect that there are more than a few groups and people with influence who disagree. And from the evidence, they're likely to continue to get their way.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
This strategy won't work on groups whose identity is fundamentally based on a false belief. For example, you'll have difficulty convincing holocaust-deniers that the holocaust actually occurred.
Something like this might go a long way in providing an alternative to the usual suspects:
http://ideologicalfootprint.org/
" for instance, by making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still be a conservative Republican."
But you can't. The Republicans won't have you.
Ignorance is a choice, just like belief. The real problem is to get people to reject ignorance. The difficulty in that is that ignorance, like belief, is easy. Rejecting ignorance requires effort. That is why there are so many people who choose ignorance and belief over reason and fact.
For many, being identified as a member of a specific group, even if that group wants you to believe stupid things, is more important than objective reality. They must get something from that group membership that outweighs what they would get from reality. Reality CAN be a bitch.
There comes a time when a doctor sees so many bad things in the X rays that there is no starting point or point at which any health can be sustained. If a person has degraded to the level of being a conservative republican there simply is no starting point for their rehabilitation or return to sanity. People in this state of depravity are dangerous and yet we have no laws that allow us to confine them until they lash out directly and harm someone. Their denial of global warming for the last 15 years will certainly cost us human lives and yet they will proclaim that they were only being responsible in delaying programs that might moderate the crises. Of course their response will be that I must be a communist as I have challenged one of their beliefs. I use Linux which apparently gets me on an NSA watch list already.
One of the main issues is that we teach kids what to think, but we don't teach them how to think. You can shove facts at them all you want, but if they don't have the ability to critically analyze something then what's the use. A critical thinking course in philosophy should be mandatory for high school students.
Well first off I'm rather disturbed that more people believe that humans have existed in current form since the beginning of time (33%) than are skeptical of global warming (26%). Before blaming that on the religious right, I think the more likely group is the people who listen to top 40 radio.
But overall this article mixes so many things that make little sense. For example, it uses the belief in WMDs prior to the invasion of Iraq, something that has nothing to do with scientific knowledge. Many of the other things (evolution, global warming, etc) really require a very high level (post graduate) to really understand. I have some high school and college life science knowledge, but I was not a biochemistry major. Based on my limited knowledge, the internal workings of the eukaryote cell is darn close to freaking magic. I found it much less amazing and magical when I had less knowledge. I'm not a religious guy, but I could certainly see how a little knowledge would INCREASE my belief in intelligent design.
Increased scientific literacy increases sceptism toward those who claim to be the standard bearers of truth. "The more I learn the more I learn how little I know." Some old smart dude said something like this once.
The article talks about scientists' consensus about AGW but that isn't fact. ..they just have models (which have issues with recent data - read: facts)
Really?
Science says fetuses don't have the brain capacity or structure to be even vaguely human until 20 weeks or so. Whether this is true or not is another matter.
Conservatives do not reject climate change, just realize humans play a miniscule role in it versus the panic-state of the liberal mind.
Bad example, as Human Induced Climate Change is a hypothesis contradicted by alot of evidence and domain expertise
Factual belief ? isnt that also a strange phrase
Most people who 'believe' in Science never have seen the proofs of the majority what they 'believe' to be true.
Maybe an equal time 'example' of this political bias against facts should be a neo-liberal/leftist believing in an individual citizens right to bear arms should be offered as an equivalent....
clearly. THere Niggers everyw4ere world. GNAA members of open-source. to have to decide
Exactly, believe in man-made global warming all you want, but it collides with the facts that its not real. Conservatives are not like Democrats, Democrats will stick to party lines to matter if they know its wrong or not. Conservatives will believe in the facts and ignore the misinformation put out by the media to help their preferred politician.
Ger provable facts and republicans will believe it, that don't work for democrats. Democrats don't need facts, they just believe in whatever they are told. Like. "beams in the WTC can not melt" (Of coarse that is untrue, but some democrats believe it).
Anyone who says that climate isn't changing has their head in the dry dirt of the Oklahoma Dust Bowl. Recorded history shows clearly that there is climate changes over time. Indeed, climate shifts have influenced man's history more than any other single event source. Scientific evidence shows that climate changes constantly. The problem I have is the intensity which climate cultists point to humans as the cause.
Given that the magnetic poles have been shifting regularly, if slowly, means that the solar wind's interaction with the Earth will change as the magnetic field moves. ("Settled science"? I haven't heard any nay-sayers.) How about the argument that carbon dioxide has been "building up"? Yet one study I finally found, that looks at wider time periods than a century (http://www.biocab.org/carbon_dioxide_geological_timescale.html) suggests that (1) temperature has no significant correlation with CO-2 content, and that we are coming out of a period of low CO-2 concentrations.
Does this mean that man is completely blameless? No. Temperature is a function of released energy, and the Earth had stored sunlight for millions of years. We are releasing that stored sunlight at an increasing pace, which eventually ends up in the atmosphere, one way or another, as heat. How much is due to technology, and how much is a by-product of man's actions such as the clear-cutting of Amazon rain forests and covering the land masses with asphalt and concrete, and how much is caused by other, non-man-made changes? So the question is whether the existing natural system for expelling heat are up to the task. More importantly, details are important. How much heat does technology dump into the atmosphere? Clear-cutting (and clear-burning) of land? Other sources? Without numbers, everything is just opinion. And when it comes to such "science", one option is equally as good as another, absent accurate and provable forecasts -- I believe that is why the climage deniers hold to their beliefs. Cultists haven't proven their case, or even shown their case has merit.
Are there other solutions than those proposed by the client cultists? One way to keep heat out of the atmosphere, if that is the goal, is to keep sunlight reaching ground level from being converted to heat in the atmosphere. Photovoltaics can help, although the energy would be released -- just perhaps in a different spot or a different time; the benefit would that such energy would displace energy released from fossil fuels -- current sunlight instead of ancient sunlight. Ditto solar thermal power plants -- using today's energy instead of million-year-old energy.
Sunlight that never reaches the ground can't contribute much to the heat load. How about reflection and dispersion? Some of the energy would be converted to heat by the air itself, but the rest would escape into space in the form of radiation (light, infrared). Another way to trap sunlight so it doesn't contribute heat is to increase the surface area of leaves, to increase photosynthesis -- and that has the benefit of eating up CO-2 as well as keeping heat out of the air. (Cultists: when did you re-roof your homes with grass? It would lower your air-conditioning bills, too, by keeping the heat out of your attic.)
But is that all there is? There is considerable heat trapped in the core of our planet. Further, there are energy sources in the ground that contribute to the atmospheric heat load...but I never see that heat source mentioned in the Climate Cultist literature. What is the effect of volcanos on the solar balance sheet? We know that ash can bring down airplanes, but what is the effect of that ash in the air? It could well be that geothermal power generation, replacing fossil-fuel generation, would be an excellent way to keep the atmosphere in thermal balance. Don't hear much about geothermal from climage cultists, do you...
I was part of the generation that "grew up with the Bomb" -- and I remember all those discussions about "nuclear winter"
It's the same unconscious instinct that drives almost everything humans do. The safety of the group has been burned in our DNA since cavemen slew ancient beasts. We survive because we are in a group. Our group becomes the most important thing - perhaps not consciously, but it is there. Our closest group is called "family", our next "community", next "state", "nation", and so on. Each successive outer group lowers our allegiance, since it is less crucial for our day to day survival. Groupism promotes groupthink - a term I'm sure everyone here understands. And what you are seeing in this issue is just groupthink. Move along.
The big mistake the AGW people made was letting politicians control the discussion.
They allowed some politicians to use it as a weapon against other politicians which turned the issue into a partisan weapon.
Around the time you saw Al Gore pushing an inconvient truth, that was when the AGW movement shifted from being about science to being a weapon.
Seriously... Al Gore has personally done more damage to the AGW cause then anyone else in the world.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Too many scientists use science to promote their own agenda. In addition, quite a bit of the conclusions one reaches from the facts depends on one's starting assumptions.
The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
Our entire economic and political systems the world over are faith based. It is imperative that things remain as they are, or there will be chaos :-/
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
What...like they would supposedly go and tell them to vote for someone else?
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
The big issue is the realisation for the liberal establishment that not all creationists are scientifically illiterate, the belief which they have tended to cling to whenever a creationist asks them a hard question about evolution and they can't answer. The reality is that SOME of 'creation science' is asking legitimate questions which evolutionists find hard work to explain (e.g. the irreducible complexity of some biological systems that requires a BIG leap of faith to believe emerged spontaneously, some rock formations with fossiled trees extending through far too many layers). People who ask these hard questions tend to get disdained rather than engaged with; this is bad science.
Someone claimed: "Yes, but climate change is scientific fact. "
No one of any significance is disputing that climate change happens. That's a straw man. What climate records indicate is that temperatures drift up and down over a several decade span. For instance, we're now in a flat period that's lasted longer than the warming trends that trigger the global warming hysteria. There are also more serious cooling or warming trends that are centuries apart and often last for a century or more. And finally, there are those dreadful, terrible, horrible Ice Ages.
The debate is over human impact on climate change. It's difficult to impossible to see that over historical timeframes and it's certainly not driven as mindlessly by atmospheric carbon dioxide as the alarmists are claiming. In fact carbon dioxide makes up only about 2% of the heat exchange between the earth and the sun. That small a percentage has little impact on climate in comparison to, for instance, changes in cloud cover.
This quote from the NYT also begs for a comment: "We need to try to break the association between identity and factual beliefs on high-profile issues Ã" for instance, by making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still be a conservative Republican."
Yes, but only if you're incredibly naive, naive enough to believe with almost all liberals and Democrats that an unimpressive Chicago-machine politician who'd never demonstrated any executive skills would make a great president.
We're reaping the consequences of that liberal folly about Obama. There's little reason to take seriously their judgment about climate change either.
When you make a partisan political figure your spokesperson, it becomes a partisan issue.
Nero wasn't a bad guy, he was just a serious fiddle enthusiast. Enjoy your 50-cent-per-post income while your coastlines dwindle!
All this time, I thought I was just trippin' on acid. Now, what about the walls? Are they really melting into a pool of psychedelicly colored dolphins?
Evidently the writer does not understand coorelation as it applies to the social sciences. For instance, the OP includes such a silly statement as:
>making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still be a conservative Republican.
Yes, you can be-- but that would make you a strange outlier. The nature of conservative Republicanism, in short, is to be host to a series of memes, which define conservative Republicans (and which are largely determined by the central Rove mind). One does not truly have freedom to remove oneself as a carrier of these memes, and continue to be part of the groupMind.
To be a conservative Republican zombie is to be entirely immune to scientific fact, and the only way to prevent further spread of the badMemes contagion is destruction of its zombie hosts, which are no longer human.
For methods, I refer you to CONPLAN 8888.
Wasn't Richard Lewontin who said:
"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."
Now, call it what you want, but the quid of the matter here is that the denial of statements that may contradict our worldview is based on faith in the set of facts that we already believe in. Theists do it, non theists do it.
Interesting belief you have there.
I believe that belief is inherent to the human mind, necessary for operation in the world. I see belief in two general categories: rigid and fluid. When rigid, a belief is maintained even in the face of evidence to its contrary. When fluid, a belief can change in nuance and substance based on life experience and information.
We all have beliefs and operate from biases that do not agree with others. I see this as natural and as it should be. Each person is their own subjective lens on reality, and no one person nor committee can determine what objective reality ultimately is. Once we think we have it, something comes along and blows away our vaunted conceptions. Life will never fully give away its secrets, we will always be left guessing. To me that's the beauty of the mystery. What we each make of it is our own journey, and we should not try too hard to fit our personal beliefs to any consensus.
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
In the case of the Bible. The Bible is true and science agrees with it. Evolution has hijacked science and is unscientific. Watch Kent Hovinds videos.
Maybe they could act like Democrats and hire brown shirts to illegally immigrate diseased people into the country (subverting federal law)?
Truth: The political left in the US organizes the vote almost exclusively through the politics of hate, fear, and balkinization (splitting Americans into subgroups and inciting them to anger by claiming victimhood).
In like manner, leftists see their political enemies through their own reality of hate and fear. People on the right want to encourage all Americans to reach their full potential and fight against the state increasingly chipping away at freedom towards the left's ultimate fantasy of an all-powerful state that will punish (read kill) the people they hate. But people on the left who are motivated through hate, fear, and anger can only see the right through their own motivations.
Note how hate-filled speech calling for physical violence or death to people they disagree with is almost exclusively from leftists while the leftists call any speech they disagree with "hate speech". It's really rather psychotic.
this is a known 'thing'. i think there may even be books about the phenomenon. commonly referred to as 'cognitive dissonance', maybe?
You can vote republican even if you believe in anthropogenic global warming, and they'll be happy to have your vote. You just can't have anything to do with setting the group's policies/platform/agenda. No one in the Republican party's leadership can say they believe in anthropogenic global warming and remain in their leadership position.
Being religious and "accepting science" is just drawing the boundaries in a different place. There is still a science no-go zone so they really do not accept science they just define the boundaries differently.
How about on all beliefs should be rejected and replaced with reality. A belief system that contradicts with the world we live in should be diagnosed as a phsycological disorder.
Psychosis is a loss of contact with reality that usually includes: False beliefs about what is taking place or who one is (delusions) ; Seeing or hearing things that aren't there (hallucinations).
Why does society accept the mass relgious psychosis yet reject other forms?
Science is about changing our "belief" system to match what we know about the world we live in. Religion is about denying the world we live in for a belief system that is a mental fugue.
In America soc-komz either hide behind guilt-pimping, jive-rapping Obama.nation Bantus or take the republican iron bootheel to the jaw. Overdue. Long overdue.
I believe rigid belief, as defined by you, is equivalent to ignorance.
The percentages come from looking at all studies, papers, research, etc. and determining the number one one side or the /i?
When the administrators of research funding withhold future grants from scientists who publish papers questioning some aspect of the current global warming scenario, while giving additional funding to scientists who publish papers supporting it (or claiming some global-warming tie-in to whatever phenomenon they're examining), the count becomes skewed. This is political action, not science.
This happened in the '70s with research into medical effects of the popular "recreational" drugs - before such research was effectively banned. Among the resuts were a plethora of papers where the conclusions obviously didn't match the data presented and a two-decade delay in the discovery of medical effects and development of treatments. Only NOW are we finding evidence that PTSD might be aborted by adequate opate dosages in the weeks immediately following the injury, or that compounds in marijuana may be a specific treatment for it - as they are for some forms of epilepsy and may be for some cancers, late stage parkinsons, and so on.
The same happens when the editors of a journal and their selection of reviewers systematically approve and publish only research supporting the current paradigms, to the point that scientists with contrary resuts must find, or create, other journals or distribution channels (which can then be smeared as non-authoritaive, creations of the fossil fuel industry, right-wing politicans, or conspiracy nuts - and their articles LEFT OUT OF THE COUNT). Again, this is politics, not science.
Then there's the question of the methodology of the count itself. What is counted as "support for" versus "opposition to"? What does it count as a scientific paper? Were well-established research methods used? Was it reviewed? By whom? Was it done by scientists with no established position on the issue, by scientists supporting one side, by pollsters, by an advocacy group, by politicians? (Hell, was it done at all? Truth is the first casualty of politics, and fake polls are one of the commonest murder weapons.)
For an instance: How would you interpret the study behind the Scientific American article that seems to indicate:
- Planetary temperatures have tightly tracked a function of three orbital-mechanics effects on the earth's orbit and axial orientation - up to the time of human domestication of fire.
- That occurred as the function was just starting to inflect downward into the next ice age.
- The deviation amounted to holding the temperature stable as the function slowly curved downward. (Perhaps a feedback effect - more fires needed for comfort in colder winters?)
- This essentially flat temperature held up to the industrial revolution, when the temperature began to curve upward, overcoming the gradually steepening decline of the function.
- If this deviation is the result of burning fossil fuels, they are expected to run out in about 800 years - after which the temperature might crash toward the "Ice age already in progress" as the excess carbon is removed from the atomsphere by various processes, or simply be overwhelmed by the orbita
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
In other words: There are far too many bad scientists.
(Stupid touchpad...)
- If this deviation is the result of burning fossil fuels, they are expected to run out in about 800 years - after which the temperature might crash toward the "Ice age already in progress" as the excess carbon is removed from the atomsphere by various processes, or simply be overwhelmed by the orbital mechanical function if it remains.
Does this scenario count as supporting or opposing anthropogenic global warming?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
If science were to admit that the scientific method itself had significant selection effects, when applied to certain questions, then science would have to admit that science can not resolve certain questions.
One of those questions might be "Is the Universe a machine?" Or if one wants to take quantum into account "Is the Universe a machine with a gazillion true hardware random number generators attached?"
If the Universe is a machine, then the scientific method preference for repeatable results is justified. If the Universe is a quantum machine, or statistically unbiased machine (i.e. a machine with a gazillion TRNGs attached), then the scientific method's preference for repeatable statistical results is justified.
But what if the Universe is not any kind of machine? What if the Universe is a living being as Eastern religion and philosophy assert? What if the Universe is adjusting itself to the questions and presuppositions of science? What if the Universe is like a child being questioned by a biased investigator alleging sexual abuse? What if the Universe is giving the answers that it thinks the investigator wants to hear?
It seems to me that the scientific method can not resolve such claims. In order to prove an answer, one would have to prove that the scientific method had no selection effects, which one could not prove with knowing the answer to the question a priori . In other words the question is hopelessly circular.
This means that one of the key assumptions of scientism , can not to be proved by the scientific method.
Unfortunately, that is not true.
So many political opinions are viable within any party IF you frame it correctly.
Somehow many anarchist/libertarians end up on the progressive/leftist portion of political because they are against corporation/banks/police/war.
Similarly, many anarchist/libertarians end up on the 'right' because they are against corporations/banks/police/war/government excess..
I'll give my own example.
I grew up in pretty conservative Islam. Now, as I grew up, I was still a Muslim. I could sit around and interpret the texts any which way I want and I could have a decent conversation and be a part of *most* Muslim communities. I didn't pray, didn't really believe in any of the rules, barely fasted... yet I was still by in large welcomed in *most* Islamic communities.
Eventually, I left Islam and would not be called a cultural Muslim or an ex-Muslim or whatever label you want. In practical things, I believe and act pretty much the same. Yet, by denying God and Mohamed was God's messenger/perfect man, suddenly I am shunned. I knew that going in. People suddenly stopped communicating.
The point I am making here, is that whatever practical issues I had with Islam, I could deliberate and discuss with people as long as I didn't threaten the Islamic identity and Islamic power. The moment I did, my opinion becomes meaningless.
The same is largely true of politics.
People think Climate Change is merely science. It is not. By admitting the 'science' you are automatically subscribing to a whole host of political initiatives from carbon taxes, road tolls, increased government spending...
But all that has nothing to do with the science. In some ideal world, climate change science could be independent of policy. But that is not the world we live in today.
How many scientists say we must act on global warming and have more taxes, more government spending...
Buying into climate change MEANS buying into the political policies of 'the other team'. Hence you are more likely to reject it the science.
The same is true again of religion. Evolution is pretty convincing. I know many Muslims who believe in Evolution as well. Some kind of God guided evolution :P But much better than the creation story.
In any case, however, if buying into evolution means rejecting god, siding with secularists... then they are likely to just ignore the science of evolution.
I'd be willing to wager that if the climate science was presented to republications without any stipulation of Big government / Left political action, most would not fight it.
And just to emphasize, there is no reason climate change should entail carbon taxes or anything of hte like. Those are all policy tools we choose. We could just as easily pay the oil companies extra money for them to deveolop green energy. We could just as easily reduce healthcare spending and entitlement spending, and use that money to build levies, green power....
Drug advocacy completely ignores science, it routinely reframes scientific research using words to cast doubt or to insult the professionalism of the scientists involved. Frequently "experts" are asked for their commentary on said research, these experts are discredited, retired, and often without any substantial knowledge of the field of study they are being asked to comment on. These experts are often drug advocates themselves, and they provide a highly biased interpretation of the research. This is passed on to the public as "fact" and "education" when even the most cursory examination shows it is highly biased pro-drug propaganda.
Of particular note is how recreational use of marijuana is "justified" by taking isolated cases where compounds -- almost always non-psychoreactive -- are used to help people with seizures or other problems. This specific type of use does not parallel recreational use, nor can these benefits be gained from recreational use. Regardless, drug advocates use it to bolster their case why the public at large must be able to use marijuana recreationally, despite being literally no link between these specific medical applications and recreational use.
In these cases feelings trump fact. Science is clear that marijuana, like any drug, has negative effects on the human body. But drug users and drug advocates desperately need to believe that what they're doing is normal and safe, so they disregard these findings. Just like TFA explains that people with religious or political leanings will put aside fact and reality to support their beliefs. This is an exact parallel for drug advocates, and even for gun advocates who can turn a blind eye to gun violence and truly believe arming the American public at large will stop gun deaths.
It's interesting that all these people are seen as being out of touch with reality: Religious extremists, political extremists, drug advocates, and gun advocates. All four groups are blind to their own problems because their beliefs are more important than reality. Direct contradiction from science, statistics, and medical research cannot change their minds.
The universe is an abstract mathematical construct.
Seriously... Al Gore has personally done more damage to the AGW cause then anyone else in the world.
THIS. He massively increased the politicization of the issue and almost single-handedly created the incentive to turn climate denialism in the US from a fringe conspiracy theory to a mainstream belief. I don't think things would be massively different today if he had stayed out of climate issues, but the brakes wouldn't be dragging nearly so hard on the science train. I don't think climate policy would be more contentious than any other environmental policy issue.
I'd say the biggest catastrophes in climate policy are:
1. Al Gore, for contributing massively to the politicization of climate science
2. Disinformation campaigns funded by fossil fuel companies and conservative think-tanks
3. Michael Chrichton's State of Fear, the Book of Revelation for climate denialists.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
You misunderstand science by ascribing motives to it. All a scientific theory says is "When I do A, then B happens." It does not try to answer the why, just the what. If the underlying reason is that the Universe is trying to act scientific, then that's fine. Science neither includes nor excludes God.
Maybe the purpose of the Universe is a test with certain things hidden in it that you have to figure out and still maintain your belief. In that case it is the scientists who passed the test, not the people who deny the evidence in front of them.
Science already knows that it can't answer all questions.
I haven't read Kahan's study, but it's disheartening at the least to see a Yale scholar allowing his work to be used for such blatant FUD and politically tailored psyops as this Times piece.
From the OP's summary: The article suggests that "we need to try to break the association between identity and factual beliefs on high-profile issues – for instance, by making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still be a conservative Republican." Yeah, all you have to do is accept what we tell you the facts are. Trust us, we're the pries...er, the scientists. Never mind we're using the religious model of moral exhortation commonly associated with policiticians, lawyers, and other practiced liars and con artists, and we are just so damned good at we do that there is absolutely no need for anyone to ever reexamine our results, conclusion, evidence, assumptions, or methodology. The matter is SETTLED, do you hear?! STOP BEING A REACTIONARY TROGLODYTE DENIER!!! Look, here is a new study in political psychology, from a law professor, yet, that will make it all so easy for, you, Winston!
"Believe in" as a scientific premise. In-fucking-credible! Is this what they call journalism these day?
The media and liberals conflate the three issues of-- Is the world warming? Is it human induced? Can human countermeasures have any worthwhile effect?" into one hoping the public will be too dumb to see the difference so that any skepticism about countermeasures like onerous carbon taxes can be shouted down as flat-earth talk. Any intelligent observer of the issue will arrive at the conclusion that the high costs Americans will be asked to pay for certain quantity of carbon reduction will be quickly overwhelmed by India and China opening one new coal fired power plant per week. Americans should be told that the extra $500 per month they will be paying for energy is largely symbolic and designed more to shame the developing world into adopting green energy policies and burnish America's image as a green nation doing its part to combat GW.
The study is wrong. I have always believed that the presentation of solid evidence will sway anyone's view, and I still do.
We don't need the same things when we don't face the same threats nor are we all the same.
... anything the disproves your believes is evil.
Plenty of evidence that religion is nothing but the world's oldest lies, yet people still believe in them.
The problem is that many don't trust scientists and researchers to be objective. The details of scientific claims are too involved for the average person to dig into directly and compare and contrast such that they are relying on somebody's word.
In the conservative world, people should be motivated by greed, and this means that paid scientists should say whatever makes their wallets fatter, and claiming there are climate problems allegedly increases the need for climate services.
I'm at a loss for a way to fix this, though.
Table-ized A.I.
... it is tough being so right about everything, like communism, welfare, "affirmative action", illegal immigration, the evils of state-run medicine, how "stimulus" will just entrench the economic malaise, etc., while your ideologically blinkered opponents just dig in their heels and deny the reality that is right in front of their faces.
Oh ... that's not what you meant? :)
The amygdala assignes emotional weights to facts.
For example, some poeple with a damaged amygdalas will head towards dangerous things because one part of the brain says, "Whoop! Something interesting there" and then the amygdala makes you fear it or like it, etc. Without the amygdala you only know it's interesting.
Oddly, without the emotional weighting, other people with damaged amygdala's lose the ability to make logical decisions. Without the emotional weighting- they dither. Everything is equally important.
So, when a person has a strong belief in something- the amygdala weights contrary facts as unimportant or even dangerous while supporting facts are weighted as important and good.
You really need to find some other belief they have to get into their brain. For example, some religious people believe that making human beings suffer is bad. So if you can humanize another group and then show that some behavior the person is doing is making the other human suffer, then they can change their mind.
A religious person has a fundamentally different axiom. They believe there is a real deity and usually also believe that their deity cares about the believer's existence and how they behave. Anything that doesn't agree with that axiom- or worse- is perceived to threaten it- is downweighted or even made fearful/dangerous by the amygdala.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
We could make clear that you can believe in natural climate change and still be a liberal Democrat.
And herein we find one massive problem with the idea that we shouldn't make things political - some people will find something political about anything.
97% is scientific, not political. That's why AGW should get 97% "pro-" coverage, and at most 3% "anti-" coverage, but people like this Spazmania will cry when their anti-AGW coverage doesn't get 50%.
"But we also need to reduce the incentives for elites to spread misinformation to their followers in the first place. Once people’s cultural and political views get tied up in their factual beliefs, it’s very difficult to undo regardless of the messaging that is used."
As long as the few can remain in power or make money by lying, they will.
Fascism: An authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization. See also: NAZI's
1. Al weaponized the issue and made it something that had to be met in ideological battle.
2. The disinformation is more broadly based then I think you realize. The oil companies don't have to do much. The reality is that the situation is primed for them there is an existing resistance to the whole thing due to the weaponization.
If the oil companies didn't throw anything at the issue the resistance would still be pretty strong.
3. State of fear was in large part a response to the climate change evangelism. That was a huge mistake.
The whole "your ideology is wrong and will be crushed and I have science behind me... and the science is settled" thing was a big mistake.
As you're doubtless aware a defense is made in depth. You don't just have one line of defense. You have many layers. To resist the whole thing you set up many points where it is slowed or stopped or confused.
Because the theory was weaponized the whole basis of the theory had to be undermined.
I think a good example would be Eugenics... lets say someone wanted to implement a eugenics program in the US.
Now the scientific basis for such a program might be strong. The underlying reason for doing it might make biological/genetic sense. But politically you can see how it would be a problem.
Consider what the political groups would do if you tried to push a eugenics program? I can tell you the conservatives would probably undermine evolution, DNA, and the very science of genetics itself.
Now is that scientifically valid? Obviously not. But it would help to stop a eugenics program.
Likewise, the issue with AGW is the solutions to it are basically "your political faction gets nothing it wants, our political faction gets lots of stuff it wants including power, and ultimately your whole society gets controlled to some extent by our programs."... People are going to fight that.
It was a big mistake to try and force people to comply to programs while at the same time putting rival political powers in charge of the whole thing.
Both nationally and internationally.
The whole thing needs to be run akin to the way that we are getting the chinese to comply with AGW. You ask nicely, talk to them respectfully, and accept the compromises they're willing to make right now as what you're going to get. If you want change beyond that you change yourself but you don't impose your will on anyone else.
So for example, in the US you could break down the environmental policy on a state by state basis without imposing a federal AGW guild line. Then you could set up environmental rules between the states that cause some states to do less business with states that create a lot of CO2 and more business with states that have better environmental policy.
In that way, states could choose and make those choices on sound business practices without being compelled by federal fiat or having a portion of their income taken as taxes to go in many cases directly to political rivals.
Its the forcing that has to stop. Maybe you could have forced people IF you had avoided letting the likes of Al Gore weaponize the issue.
But that happened... and there is a price for that. The price is that the forcing stops or the resistance won't stop.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Certainly. Yet there are times when a studied ignorance is called for, when the facts are far less evident than the clear desire of some to throw yet another yoke on humanity. Some infantile emotional need for a group identity has nothing to do with it.
Politics is even less of a science than meteorology or climatology, which themselves fail the scientific standard of reproducibility. Would that we could go back in time and redo those ocean temperature samples, at least. It is unclear, however, that the established order can tackle such a problem as putative catastrophic climate change any better than (truly) free markets, or just letting nature take its course. It is manifestly evident, furthermore, that there will always be connivers and opportunists ready to exploit any problem or crisis, real or imagined. They engineer or invent them, in fact, for that express purpose. This is from History, which is not science of course, but does entail much observation. Sometimes we don't know exactly what the elephant looks like, but we can reasonably infer that it exists, at least, particularly when it has been caught in the act so many times
And just to emphasize, there is no reason climate change should entail carbon taxes or anything of hte like. Those are all policy tools we choose. We could just as easily pay the oil companies extra money for them to deveolop green energy. We could just as easily reduce healthcare spending and entitlement spending, and use that money to build levies, green power....
Too true.
CO2 is interesting because it ONLY qualifies - marginally at best - as a potential negative externality (I won't use the "p" word) on a GLOBAL SCALE. Even ozone holes have more locality (although that is a close comparison).
Given that what one nation does is trivially offset by the nation next door, you would think that scientific-minded people would step gingerly and not fly off (at great CO2 expense) the handle.
From that perspective, I believe a nation might try to put itself in a position of bargaining strength, not weakness. From the start, the toothless, unratified treaties did the opposite. It has all been about wealth transfer, revenue schemes, and subsidizing research.
God made humans rational beings.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
People who disagree with Yale professors have brain damage. This finding makes it easier for Yalies to hold on to their prejudices without considering ideas that make them uncomfortable.
I18N == Intergalacticization
"But you can't. The Republicans won't have you."
Where someone as yourself loses me, especially on a subject like this, especially under a topic such as this, is your failure to recognize that while it may be true, it ommits that the democrats also have issues that become litmus tests where you become "no true scotman."
If you're only surrounded by democrats, that way of thinking makes sense and keeps you well-sighted within the tribe. But if you are trying to talk about complex subjects to both, you end up becoming another side of the coin. Just something to keep in mind.
Not all Republicans are fanatics that deny global-warming.
The problem is that the actual fanatic radicals in the party end up becoming the defining image of that group in the face of public mass media. (Same goes for the Democratic and other parties)
We've been trained to "follow the money" in all circumstances of public advocacy and to be highly suspicious of those who would befit financially. Scientists who say "increase funding for my field", or "I deserve a prize", or "better agree with this or you'll lose tenure and not get your grants approved." undermine the credibility of the whole profession.
Malpractice is what I call it when Scientists mask politics under the cloak of science. Science can speak about climate change, and perhaps about the cause. On the other hand, what to do about it (if anything) is a question of values, not science. It sounds immoral to spoil the world for our grandchildren, but that's not science. So when scientists get on the media and try to dictate what we must do about it (such as renewable energy), that's malpractice because it is a political issue not a scientific issue. When they threaten to label you as a denier if you disagree, that's even worse. When they tell the politicians to obey scientific edits or else, that's an attempt to create an uber ruling class.
My point is that much (not all but much) of the blame for cynicism goes to the scientists.
Whatever can be used to oppose the right to life, liberty and property must be regarded as cultural Marxism and thus shares the moral guilt of the death of tens of millions in the twentieth century.Ctrl-D
Australia's industry hired PR (aka propagandists) to attack climate change science. The publicly stated plan by the company they hired was right out in the open for people to read-- they would base their campaign around what worked in the USA. To redefine large demographics (like conservatives) so that the issue became part of their identity of who they are. That is how Australia which had high numbers of acceptance (and 1st hand experience with crazy weather) but went quickly to a high "skeptic" nation almost as bad as the USA.
Clearly the PR people know how to hack human brains better than the academics who are way way behind the curve (proving things and discovering truth is much harder than just using whatever seems to work without needing to know why it works.)
Identity psychology is extremely powerful stuff and a deep subject.
Searching for truth (science) may have some flaws due to the fact humans are involved, but it is still the best we've got. The elite scientists are the people who logically should be authoritative on their topics. You can dismiss them all you wish and go have the shit doctor or dentist or nuclear engineer, but me, I want elite expert advice and facts. Not mere opinions. If you are not a psychologist then they should feel superior to you when you spout baseless made-up psychology.
Academics may be greatly undermined today than in the past, but they still have plenty of freely exploring intellectuals without external controlling forces biasing their results. Government laboratories are a less free variation but are also in decline. Those two are the best we've got; there is nothing else. Think tanks are merely propaganda organizations which spew out whatever technobabble you pay them to do; with heavy agendas being their sole purpose for existing (as opposed to the pure actual research the other two aspire to.) Corporations have different agendas with their own strengths and weaknesses. As far as not liking what science is saying... well, "reality has a liberal bias" is simplistic but a generally correct assessment. Reality sucks, that is why people work so hard to escape or blind themselves from it.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
That explains how republicanism still exist.
We could solve this bogus problem of science, and I call it bogus because we just went through the coldest winter in anyone's lifetime, by going to carbon free nuclear. So I agree with you: reality really CAN be a bitch!
Indeed. I can't believe the coldest winter in anyone's lifetime can be ignored by those who hold a political belief that the globe is "hotter than its ever been before". But I didn't mean to insult your religious beliefs in AGW.
You exaggerate here: "readily observable and incontrovertible". The study of abstracts of assorted scientific papers was done very subjectively. Some authors said they were counted as on one side when they were aren't on any side. And so on.
That said, it's clearly a majority of climate science.
Climate science finds itself in the unusual position of making quantitative predictions of chaotic systems based on numerical digital simulations, which in turn are based on limited data. Compare that to, oh say, evolutionary biologists, who spent a 100 years proving their theories about the past were correct, but don't dare try to predict the future course of evolution.
I18N == Intergalacticization
Where is the Democrat campaign to define liberal as believing in global warming???
We KNOW PR corps are being paid to conflate the issue with conservatism. That is a fact. But where is the other side? Some tiny non-profits who might be trying it as a strategy? Maybe. Somehow I would think any that do would be going with SCIENCE instead of beliefs. When you can use science.... you do... when you can't, you resort to emotions and beliefs.
Politicians like science when they can exploit it; but they never praise science too highly because they know that it is going to backfire upon them sooner or later. Governing people isn't a game of reason or logic; today (with money) it is a science of human manipulation --- which means if your voters think Obama has no birth certificate, you appease their idiocy by acting the fool before the election.
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
See subject line. Humans don't go a good job minus logic. Look at how women think. Says it all.
You just cut and pasted a bunch of crap from some corporate Koch websites and though that it made you sound thoughtful instead of simply parroting whatever you thought would make you sound less self-entitled.
"and no one person nor committee can determine what objective reality ultimately is."
Unfortunately this is not true, we can test your assertion by bullet to the brain if you like. You're claiming that there is no reality independent of personal interpretation. But this can be tested.
Precisely.
All policies should be guided by science, not just whose voice is the loudest.
-- Martin Heinrich
It's amazing how much you know about Republicans, given that you obviously are not a Republican.
In the modern world truth is relative.
Give you an example.
The US *used to* Fluoridate to level x.
At the time many people complained and said it was not a safe level. Not unlike that from most slash-dotters, the general arrogant response from idiots who think they know everything and claim "scientific consensus" based on poorly designed highly biased and well selected studies, and a few pay-walled papers which are written by authors whose careers are on the line should they go against the trend, was that these people were crazy conspiracy theorists.
Well, low and f*cking behold, eventually the US lowered the "safe" level of Fluoride and now claim that y is the safe maximum fluoride concentration where y is less than x! Well that means that x was an UNSAFE level of Fluoridation and they were in fact POISONING US! Suddenly all of the morons who claimed to know everything now have to walk around saying exactly what the people they ridiculed before were saying. But alas, they still claim that this poison should be added to the water supply, but at level y instead of x, and that it is compatible with a free society to enforce mass medication on an entire population even though they have already had to admit that they were adding UNSAFE levels to the water previously. NO! If I want Fluoride, I WILL ADD IT MYSELF THANKS.
Real truth is not relative. It is an absolute - but in this f*cked up world that we have created where black is white and 1+1=3, torture is "enhanced interrogation", a Jewish State for the Jewish People is not a racist state, truth is very relative.
Another one. Let's look at the Big Bang Theory and the expanding universe. A few years ago, it was complete heresy to even think that perhaps we actually don't know what happened billions of years ago. Anybody who dared to say that the universe might not be expanding was cut down immediately. In the Physics departments there was a lot of political shenanigans regarding the enforcement of belief in the Big Bang Theory. It literally became, and to some extent remains, a religiously held belief.
But, low and f*cking behold, now there are some papers coming out which say that the universe is not expanding. But before they said that we live in an expanding universe. Yes there are caveats and details but one cannot ignore the dogmatism that pervades our universities.
My point is that all of the idiot morons who appeal to "scientific consensus" think that they are so open minded and well informed and that they know everything (although they will claim that they are humble and do not) keep closing down the debates and the discussions on a variety of topics, but then they get egg all over their faces. They are the most religiously dogmatic of people. They pick up on a scientific theory and make it their dogma and woe betide anybody who looks at the data and arrives at a different conclusion. So-called "Climate Science" is the best example of this to date. As the planet continues to not warm for two decades in a row now, as the Antarctic Ice increases and they tell us it is increasing because the planet is warming (even though the data shows that the planet is not currently warming), we are likely about to see another massive debacle of the dogmatically incorrect "scientific community".
Well I've got my pop-corn all stocked up and ready for that one.
And don't get me started on Vaccines. Please, just don't.
Much of your complaint seems to be equivalent to complaining that They are giving more research grants to people who appear to be competent, while denying grants to people seen as incompetent, corrupt, or unethical. Sure, this means that occasionally someone will be unfairly denied, and there will be a bias against unpopular things, but surely it's a good thing overall.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
for instance, by making clear that you can believe in human-induced climate change and still be a conservative Republican."
When it comes to politicians, the question is not what they believe, but what they say they believe. Politicians are not as dumb as they pretend to be, and would stop pretending the day we start treating continuous incompetence the same as malice.
For example, there already are lots of Republican politicians who believe in global warming -- they just know better than to admit it. It would weaken their position, both during elections and during negotiations (since they intend to vote against any spending on curbing CO2). For what benefit? Honesty? They gave that up when they decided to win elections.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Jon Huntsman got filleted in the 2012 New Hampshire primary for daring to say he acknowledged that evolution was real. The Republican Party is basically the Christian Taliban these days.
If you're rich then you're an easy sell to Republican.. "Hey keep your money and then some, and by the way Jesus loves you, global warming is a sham, and there's a massive shortage of software engineers in the US"
If you're religious, you're typically surrounded by generations of family and friends balls deep in it. It's easier to give in to fallacies than give up your coven.
The more you take the easy path, the harder the difficult path becomes.
"But you can't. The Republicans won't have you."
I believe in human induced climate change, and I'm a Republican - in fact, I''ve been a delegate to the last 3 conventions.
What was your point again?
I'd be curious to hear/meet any Democratic delegates who DIDN'T believe in anthropogenic climate change?
-Styopa
Congratulations. It is obvious from the Republican party's platform and statements made by leadership to news media on a daily basis that believing in AGW is NOT a Republican thing to do. You're an outlier, not a mainstream Republican.
I find it interesting that you ask about democrats who don't believe in AGW. It's as if the existence of AGW is a matter of opinion. You're in a group that denies science - not just AGW, but also evolution, and probably other things- i.e. the group you are in chooses ignorance over reason. To equate that position with believing AGW and evolution is ridiculous. AGW and evolution are based on science. It isn't a matter of belief. If there is a democrat who denies the science behind AGW they, too, are ignorant.
Your implication is like the ID advocates who equate their position with the position of scientists who study evolution. The positions are NOT equivalent. ID advocacy is based on nothing but poorly camouflaged religious ideology, evolution is based on 100+ years of research.
In US politics, the opinions of stupid/ignorant people are as valuable as those of intelligent people- everyone gets one vote. In real life, stupid/ignorant people can't accomplish much. But politicians don't care about what people can accomplish- they just want the votes and they know that there are a LOT of stupid/ignorant people out there waiting to be told what to do, so the message gets crafted to appeal to the hordes of the stupid and ignorant. You should be proud of yourself for being an integral part of that process.
What I know is what I hear them saying on the news every day. If you think my knowledge is wrong, tell your party leadership to quit saying the things they keep saying in front of cameras.
We have elected officials telling us that because a certain segment of the population does not believe in AGW that they are stupid. OK, these are the same people that voted them into office, who's stupid now? No wonder the US Congress has reached a historical low in public approval, they're calling voters stupid.
Instead of telling people they are stupid for not toeing the AGW line perhaps they should go about it a different way. If they want us to buy CFL bulbs to save on carbon emissions then perhaps they should convince us about how they can save us money. Or perhaps they can allow people to build nuclear power plants and we need not worry if people leave their lights on. Perhaps they can get rid of the coal fired power plant in DC that heats and cools federal buildings so they don't look like hypocrites.
Same goes for a lot of other things. Moving away from foreign sourced fossil fuels is a great idea. It can improve out economy, reduce entanglements in foreign affairs, makes us more secure, creates jobs, cleans the air, and more. There's a lot of good reasons to stop burning fossil fuels but these idiots in Congress chose AGW.
This is becoming a problem especially now that NOAA has been caught changing historical temperature data. Turns out there is no global warming. Now what are they going to do? Probably make up some other lie to tell us. These people could probably get things done much more quickly if they told the truth.
Truth is that modern nuclear power would do all kinds of good things for these United States. Its a solution to a lot of problems, even the fake problem of AGW. I have to winder if they don't want to solve problems. If they solve the problems then people might realize we don't need them as much as we thought. So they make up one crisis after another to get people to vote them into office.
With that people are going to reply on how stupid I am rather than focus on how our own government is calling us stupid. It follows I suppose, someone voted those idiots into office. It wasn't me.
I am armed because I am free. I am free because I am armed.
Without education, we are in a horrible and deadly danger of taking educated people seriously.' G.K. Chesterton
I think the issue here is more about the public perception of what "faith" is. The word as such has meanings like "trust" and "confidence in ..." - and the sciences spring very much from a positive faith in reality being the work of God. While the belief in a supernatural being is no longer part of science, it is still driven by the same, fundamental faith in the existence of an ultimate truth, that we can never fully know, perhaps, but which we can get closer to, little by little, by applying logic and scientific method to observable facts.
It is almost incomprehensible that "faith" is now generally accepted to mean, not a deep trust in God as the reason behind reality, but a fundamental distrust in everything that conflicts with one's view, even to extent of ignoring or misrepresenting simple, observable facts. It is also a relatively new phenomenon; there has always been wild-eyed fundamentalists, who would deny what was clearly visible, but they were not regarded as representatives of mainstream views - I think that came about mostly as a reaction to the hippie-movement.
Whatever the cause may be - in my view, what is needed is that we as scientists take back the claim on faith. As a scientist, you are willing to sacrifice your view of the world every day; each time you perform an experiment, you know that all your dearest theories may be proven wrong. Is that not faith? A trust in the ultimate good of knowing the truth a little better? Even the most atheistic, anti-religious scientist has more faith in their little finger than all the world's bone-headed fundamentlists together.
I'll believe in CAGW when the scientists quit fudging the numbers ...and when they can explain why the warming has stopped for the last couple of decades.
So, they are fudging the numbers to show a pause?
Curious that you rant about stupid/ignorant people, yet ignore the direct refutation of your own statement. Et tu, Democrat?
You said: "The Republican Party won't have you."
I illustrated that not only am I in the party, I'm an active and positive participant.
But please, don't let facts get in the way of your quasi-religious beliefs.
FWIW, the Left cheerfully ignores science when it wants to as well. Shall we talk about GM foods? Nuclear power?
But I understand. The world is much, much simpler when you can just castigate people who disagree with you as "stupid", right?
-Styopa
Denial of science is not limited to conservatives. We should also teach liberals that GMO crops are perfectly OK, that there is no link between autism and vaccines. Hey, liberals, nuclear power is the answer to global warming. Despite strong liberal religious belief to the contrary, profit is required to be successful in business and to provide jobs for the people.
I don't think any of us have a clue to how we came to being or why we exist, and even if we did, I think it would be impossible for our very finite minds to grasp. I get why people need something to believe in, we all want meaning, or what's the point, these questions haunt me, I cannot accept any answers as true whether it's science or religion.
The problem does't come from, "If I'm in group A, then I must have beliefs X," it comes from the recognition that an issue will be seized upon by a faction and used to pump their wider agenda. Use climate change, since the OP brought it up: Rather than a rational discussion of whether it's really happening, whether it's human-caused if so, and what to do about it if anything, we've got one side using it to justify all manner of intrusive measures, while the other wants to ignore the issue entirely. The same thing happens with any talk about WMD, terrorism, abortion, etc. The issue itself is the carrier wave for a lot of additional modulation that's usually far off the topic but important to one side or the other. It's the, "Never let a crisis go to waste" mentality. I don't know how you fix that.
The big mistake the AGW people made was letting politicians control the discussion.
They allowed some politicians to use it as a weapon against other politicians which turned the issue into a partisan weapon.
Around the time you saw Al Gore pushing an inconvient truth, that was when the AGW movement shifted from being about science to being a weapon.
Seriously... Al Gore has personally done more damage to the AGW cause then anyone else in the world.
I don't know who the "AGW people" are, who should somehow be collectively able to control what politicians do (it's like talking about "the gravity people" being responsible for politicians claiming we can't understand tide).
How about just ignoring Al Gore and listen to the facts from the science and scientists. There are politicians politicizing a lot of science, from evolution to vaccines to politicians also claiming climate change is a hoax, just ignore it. It shouldn't influence your view one way or the other.
Short and sweet. "I'll take my sorrow straight"
'Accepted scientific findings' are in fact not necessarily facts. The number of scientific findings that have been overturned by scientists is great, and that is the point of science. This story reeks of anthropomorphic climate 'cooling, warming, change' propaganda.
Where do they get this number? Is there a registry? Can someone tell me the actual total number of the US or Worlds climate scientists?
But there's a lot of people, especially on /., who refuse to acknowledge that, because it threatens their beliefs.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
Most Conservatives believe in Man Made Global Climate Change. We don't agree with the effects and the cures that seem to change ever few weeks and are not agreed upon by 97% of scientists.
Because "global warming" was a fairly terrible name for it versus "climate change"
Some places will get hotter, yes, but it also disrupts the flow of air/clouds/etc so that - as we've experienced locally - we get some extremely hot days coupled with an usual amount of wetter/colder days as well. I'm in what's considered a semi-desert climate, but it's greener than ever because we're getting a *lot* more precipitation than I've ever seen before.
For me, it's a positive thing since I'm not on a flood plain and the plants like it. The only drawback is the increased mosquitoes.
On the other hand, other people are suffering from floods, pests/pestilence (increased bugs and/or bacterium that prefer heat+humidity), and a change in biodiversity that is having both beneficial and detrimental effects on the local wildlife.
I don't think that, given your chosen example of climate change, is separated along 'party lines', or even conservative vs liberal. it comes down to more big gov't solutions and being 'forced' into one reality while not seeing the corresponding benefit and expansion of related individuals rights. The 'rights' of the majority does not trump the rights of the minority.
I don't believe the problem is selling climate change. I think the problem is selling the solutions. You want me to not burn coal, don't tax it into oblivion, build thorium reactors (like the US Gov ran at Oak Ridge for over 10 years), or other similar solutions. Solar and wind are good, but they can't cover the entire energy deficit. Want to have more electric vehicles, give incentives for more of them (give the incentives to the customers, not to the manufacturers). Restart industrial metals production in the US (one day we will no be able to import strategic metals if we step on someones political toes. Russia has the US over a barrel with no access for man in space since we ticked them off recently, so we need to get on the stick to get US based transport to space!)
Conservatives tend to be for less central government, more for individuals and even states rights, and more conservative economically than socially.
I plan on collecting social security. But I planned so that my wife and I will be OK if Social Security is NOT there, but I find it totally unfair to tax me so that I must pay for others poor personal preparation. I am not against Social Security, I am against putting so many additional programs under it and using the SS Trust Fund to pay for them. Social Security was actuarially (mathematically) based for many years, but as it has been 'touched' for additional social programs, the mathematical / actuarial basis was removed. SS is now 'just a tax', and we are not taxing enough if we want to keep SS alive as the program we now know it. ... You can't pull more out of a tow-sack than you put into it, and that is what we are trying to do. -- I did like the proposal to keep SS for those on it and within 10 years of retirement or 50 or pick some number. Pay out or endow a commercial style trust fund for the ones not currently taking social security. For those under 50 (for example) take the 'pay out' amounts and put them in 'ROTH' style IRA's, and require current percentage levels of contributions to be put 60% of the current 'SS Contributions' be put into a traditional IRA, and 40% into a 'ROTH'. This over and above currently allowed contribution levels for IRA/401K/etc contributions.
The idea is to eventually (in 65 or so years) to get the Government out of Social Security, and for retirees to have enough money to pay for their own retirements effectively. Those who get non-contributory social security benefits needs to come from the general fund (helping the young, blind, bereavement benefits, etc)
For any social tax or social program, the government does not pay for ANYTHING. Only tax payers do. Taxing tax payers beyond their ability to to support the programs is the government being a 'poor parasite'. Even in biology parasites live WITH their host. If the host gets sick or dies, the parasite dies too. A good parasite makes it a symbiotic relationship, where the host and the parasite both gain from the relationship, making the whole greater than the corresponding parts. But it requires first for the host to survive.
Enough for now, but I think you get the idea. -- I think we all want the US to be strong and looked up to in the world. We all want a good environment, education for our kids, and to treat everyone right. The only difference is in the road we think we need to take to get there.
I am trying to vote for politicians that are reasonable, will look for was to SOLVE issues, and not be idealogs on a
... "When you pry the source from my cold dead hands."
I have seen this seeming contradiction up close and personal and it has nothing to do with knowledge or training, it has to do with untested ideas and the lack of a challenge to form consistent sets of value. That is a failing of our culture, of many cultures, and of the educational system. The propaganda in media doesn't help nor does the numbness it creates to informal fallacies. If you spent your time discovering all the flaws in reasoning that get pitched at you in a day, you would have no time for anything else. This is a side-effect of "free speech" that depends on the size of the megaphone and what it costs to use. Citizenship requires time to reason and to think and the drivers of mass media do not want individuals to take time to think.So the barrage is a kind of mind control where the intent is to flood and discourage reflection. It is no wonder that people have such unconsidered views and that there are whole sections of their opinions that are inconsistent and viral. That is how the political machines and the corprorate controllers want it. They want a population of consumers driven by impulse and who are maleiable and easily manipulated.
A couple of days ago there was a post about a study in which the test subjects would rather give themselves electric shocks than have to spend fifteen minutes alone with just their thoughts. Not only is that classical conditioning but it may reveal that many people are afraid of the thoughts that come up when they are quiet and alone. Not only is it not in the interest of the power structure that people have the time to reflect but it is also in their interest, particularly of business people that people do not have any practice debating, discovering formal logical errors, or understanding the informal fallacies. Surely logic is important for many important pursuits in society, such as in mathematics, but a tiny elite knows about formal proofs and logic and can follow that kind of reasoning. It isn't that people are unintelligent, it is that they are unpracticed and untrained and there are powerful forces in society that want them to remain that way.
I believe that Social Media is actually a case in point, and that the blog is an impediment to people using the Internet to reason if they want. Social Media is about the propaganda va;ue of marketing in business, nothing more, and the blog restricts control of the discussion by ownership of topics. It isn't that you can't hold a reasoned conversation in a blog; it is that the structure of blogs and Social Media do not help you communicate and actually gets in the way. That is intentional by the comercal interests who drive Social Media, and makes the point that the power structure in society is not at all interested in helping us communicate and reason in the way that enables our citizenship in a society that pays lip service to democratic institutions.
What would change this is to restore some of the structure in discussion groups to the web and do away with blogs. Mark Zuckerberg's "Simple" criterion is just the wrong model and shows that Facebook is about manipulating its users.
We hear "Shhh, USENET" because it has become the avenue for pirated content and porn, but in the text-only groups beginning in 1984, there were some lively debates in which it was possible to practice your reasoning, debating, and writing skills. We need to bring some of that back and the Internet is a good place to do that, too bad that opportunity is being wasted on Social Media and Blogs. USENET discussion groups and their message structure contains the tools needed to rescue public discourse in the world, despite what Zuckerberg claims, If you want a demonstration compare what is in the DejaVu archive of USENET that Google owns with Google Groups and Google+, There is no comparison, and the fact that Google preserved the archive of old USENET posts is very telling WRT the above and as compared with the communication style they have set in their products.
Slashdot has some of the things needed, but the p
"Objective reality" is just a cloak people wear to make their own concoctions look bigger than they are.
See Nietchze, Kierkegaard, etc.
Interesting that they imply faith is a problem to be overcome.
The study makes a fallacious conclusion. It ignores the fact that people with scientific training are trained to be skeptics. Once you can find the holes in "proven research" and realize that expressions like "97% of all climate scientists" are bullshit because they do not define who climate scientists actually are- it is easy to dismiss many scientific conclusions and continue to hold beliefs that one knows are simply beliefs and not facts. As an example, a large number of scientists until very recently believed that oil and gas production in the United States had passed its peak production and the science supported that conclusion. At the same time a smaller number of skeptical scientists who were willing to accept a new geologic paradigm regarding oil and gas expulsion were working hard to find the oil that has now put the US in the top ranking spot for world oil production. Science is often wrong and those who change scientific belief are generally in the minority at the beginning of the change. Good scientists know that. Politicians, and those who are more inclined to spread their own agenda, either don't understand that, or ignore it. Science thrives on falsification of the proven. If there is a generally accepted norm that I do not agree with....it does not mean my political or religious bias is the reason.....it simply means that I do not consider the evidence conclusive based on my scientific knowledge and experience. If that happens to mean I agree with Republicans or Democrats, that is only a coincidence. Correlation is not causation.
I'm afraid the UN, Kyoto, the laws, the regulations, the taxes, etc are not ignorable.
The AGW people gave those things justification and therefore linked themselves to them.
As such the whole thing has to be fought as a single entity.
As I said, if you were pushing a Eugenics program, we'd be trying to discredit DNA, genetics, and evolution if only because it would make justifying a eugenics program more difficult.
By pushing for a massive nationalization of global industry, massively increasing taxes, attempting to put unelected international bodies in charge of domestic energy policy, and various other things you've created a situation where we cannot afford to have AGW be secure. It has to be undermined and discredited until such time as the "solutions" to the problem become more reasonable or the people running the whole thing are not merely our political enemies empowered to do whatever they please with no limits.
It cannot be borne.
If you want cooperation on the issue you have to take the weapon away from the socialists. They've gone power mad with it. They see the whole issue as a blank check to settle scores, punish enemies, reward friends, and do other slimy things. Its not acceptable that they do that. And they have ONLY been slowed down by denying AGW itself. We couldn't do it any other way.
We tried. We tried arguing the merits of these systems. We tried getting things to work in a bipartisan fashion.
We tried lots of stuff. We were bypassed, shut out, shouted down, sidelined...
And so we had no choice. So we went to DEFCON 1 and nuked AGW itself.
I'm sorry but we had no choice. Back off the above issues and give us an EQUAL seat at the table. Until that happens AGW will remain under just enough of an attack to keep it neutralized as a weapon against us.
Keep in mind... we are half of your society. You cannot just do whatever you please indifferent to our wishes. We live with you. We're all around you. To the left to the right in front of you behind you. We're right here.
And so are you. Cut a deal or you're challenging us to an arm wrestling contest.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Actually stopping climate change means going back to an 1800's lifestyle for 99% of the worlds population. The few who live that now desperately want out and the rest of aren't going back unless we have to.
Even people who sincerely believe their lifestyle is killing the planet only make token changes. Only a world wide authoritarian government with firing squads for those who resist has any chance of working. Better make a lot of pop corn, it's going to be quite a show.
Al Gore didn't turn climate science into a "partisan weapon". The denialists needed a lightning rod to focus their hate on and they picked him because he's an easy target. All Al Gore ever did was try to communicate to the general public what he learned from scientists.
People will go with whichever is convenient
women only earn 70 cents to a man's dollar because it feels like the right thing to believe.
Totally wrong. The denialist thing didn't start until after "an inconvenient truth", Kyoto, and the push for international carbon caps.
That's just a fact. You are entitled to your own opinions.
You are not entitled to your own facts.
I'm sorry, but AGW was pushed... we took issue with some of the ideas... we were shut out of the process and given no recourse besides undermining AGW itself.
So... that happened.
If you want it to stop you need to back off and give us an equal voice at the table. Its our right as much as it is yours.
Because you denied the obvious above I'm going to assume you're not willing to accept opposition input...
The consequence of that is that the games continue.
We only need to work hard enough to stalemate you. We've already pretty much won. Your whole push is more sound and fury signifying nothing at this point. The international efforts are mostly for show. Many countries that initially had aggressive programs have either canceled them or included so many loopholes that they don't matter. Etc Etc Etc.
We're not stupid and we're not powerless.
I am not bragging when I say we have enough power to stop these political factions unless they cooperate with us. So those are the terms. Take it or leave it.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
I recommend to include https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... in your school https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Casteism
I already did: "John O’Sullivan showed the part of Figure 3 with the net fluxes in July 2009 but “forgot” to show the fluxes for the rest of the year."
Click on "Figure 3" then scroll down to Figure 3 to verify, but this shouldn't be necessary because a comment by truegoogle on your original "PSI" link already made that point.
Can we agree that our carbon emissions are ~200% as large as the rise in atmospheric CO2?
Almost all the "evidence" for evolution is post-facto interpretation of data to conform to the model. The usual evidence for evolution that is trotted out doesn't actually demonstrate EVOLUTION; it tends to demonstrate natural selection as a mechanism for explaining the prevalence of certain variations in species over others. There is no observation of speciation in, for example, viruses or bacteria where generations are extremely short. Evolution is a powerful story. It provides a justification for being an atheist - so is not adopted neutrally, but part of a wider ideological package.
Of course Karl Popper didn't define science - he simply wrote about the most basic requirement for the scientific method, that of falsifiability.
If you'd like to assert that falsifiability isn't required, by what method do you exclude astrology or creationism from being "science"? If falsifiability is not going to be the tool you use for demarcation, exactly what do you propose?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
The problem with posting any sort of article about facts vs. beliefs in todays society and, especially, on the intarwebz, is that you then get a long chain of things like this. (See above) (Go ahead, scroll. I'll wait.)
--- Say something clever. Pretend it was me. Thanks.
Ah, it seems we have someone who thinks there's a -1 "disagree" option.