When We Don't Like the Solution, We Deny the Problem

Ichijo writes: A new study (abstract) from Duke University tested whether the desirability of a solution affects beliefs in the existence of the associated problem. Researchers found that 'yes, people will deny the problem when they don't like the solution. Quoting: "Participants in the experiment, including both self-identified Republicans and Democrats, read a statement asserting that global temperatures will rise 3.2 degrees in the 21st century. They were then asked to evaluate a proposed policy solution to address the warming. When the policy solution emphasized a tax on carbon emissions or some other form of government regulation, which is generally opposed by Republican ideology, only 22 percent of Republicans said they believed the temperatures would rise at least as much as indicated by the scientific statement they read.

But when the proposed policy solution emphasized the free market, such as with innovative green technology, 55 percent of Republicans agreed with the scientific statement. The researchers found liberal-leaning individuals exhibited a similar aversion to solutions they viewed as politically undesirable in an experiment involving violent home break-ins. When the proposed solution called for looser versus tighter gun-control laws, those with more liberal gun-control ideologies were more likely to downplay the frequency of violent home break-ins."

Comments

Senator James Inhofe

[goombah99]

Inhofe is now the head of the senate environmental commitee that oversee 100% of all climate change legislation and policies in the US.

He wrote a book 305 page book entirely on the subject of global warming. The name of this book is "the greatest Hoax".

http://www.amazon.com/Greatest...

Re:Senator James Inhofe

[Gadget_Guy]

Wow! That's a pretty damning list. Now all you need to do is prove that they are in fact lies. The problem is, your list of lies contain lies of its own. And when it can be found that something was said that turned out to be incorrect, can you prove that those are lies as opposed to the results of early models that didn't have the sophistication of our current models? If you claim that someone is lying, then you are saying that they are attempting to deliberately mislead people.

Being wrong or making a mistake does not prove that deliberate misleading is going on, nor does a handful of claims invalidate the thousands of other claims that have been shown to be correct. Even the scientist who pointed out the mistake that the IPCC made about the glaciers still said that he believed that the errors shouldn't shake people's belief in climate science..

If you do believe that catching someone in a lie disproves what they are saying, what should we think about how you have misreported what people said? You claim that Al Gore said that "Polar ice caps would be ice free by 2010", but what he actually said was this:

Some of the models suggest that there is a 75 percent chance that the entire north polar ice cap, during some of the summer months, could be completely ice-free within the next five to seven years.

So instead of the definitive claim that it would happen, he said that just some models predicted that there was just a chance that it COULD happen. A model being inaccurate does not constitute a lie. Misquoting someone to twist what they say into a lie, is actually a lie.

So did anyone really claim that there would be hurricanes more powerful than Katrina? It seems they did claim the number of hurricanes in the Atlantic that are as strong or stronger than Hurricane Katrina will increase twofold to sevenfold but that was for every 1 degree C increase, which hasn't happened the time of Katrina.

I'm getting bored, so I'll skip to the end. Your assertion that every single prediction of the IPCC from before 2007 is demonstrably wrong.

Fundamentals of AGW

[Tenebrousedge]

There are useless predictions, damned lies, and statistics all around if you want to look. Clearly the scientific community has failed to predict all aspects of the future. This has nothing to do with the evidence for AGW and you're disingenuous for suggesting so.

There is a very simple set of measurable facts that are the foundational basis for the theory. Solar irradiance is constant to within .1% as far as we have been able to measure. Carbon Dioxide is known to absorb outgoing long-wave radiation. Human activity has increased the partial pressure of CO2 markedly, extending the CO2-rich region further out into space. There is only one way for the Earth to radiate heat to space. That is enough to determine that CO2 causes warming, and what the direct effects of a doubling of CO2 will be (roughly 3.7 W/m^2 of warming).

However, it is well known that Earth has large reservoirs of a much more potent greenhouse gas covering about 70% of its surface. Given that warmer air can hold exponentially more water vapor, it is unlikely that the CO2-water vapor feedbacks will be anything but strongly positive. By itself, a doubling of CO2 would only produce about 1 degree C difference to the global average temperature. With water vapor and other feedbacks, no one knows for sure, but you can read the IPCC report if you would like to know what the current estimates are.

You can argue as much as you like about the scientists' moral character, about their predictions, and whatever credibility you think they do or do not have. The science is inarguable, and you can even measure the warming effect of CO2 yourself with simple lab equipment. The deniers need to bring more facts to the table. Unless they can poke holes in the fundamental theories of radiative transfer, all the rhetoric on either side is worthless.