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Skeptics Would Like Media To Stop Calling Science Deniers 'Skeptics'
Layzej writes: Prominent scientists, science communicators, and skeptic activists, are calling on the news media to stop using the word "skeptic" when referring to those who refuse to accept the reality of climate change, and instead refer to them by what they really are: science deniers. "Not all individuals who call themselves climate change skeptics are deniers. But virtually all deniers have falsely branded themselves as skeptics. By perpetrating this misnomer, journalists have granted undeserved credibility to those who reject science and scientific inquiry."
Yes constant questioning is at the heart of scientific inquiry however deliberate obfuscation of established science for political and economic objectives is not scepticism but subterfuge.
Constantly questioning is running experiments, taking measurements, and trying to model the future and see how well it lines up with reality. Scientists are doing that all the time, and the result keeps being that climate scientists are as sure the Earth is warming as biologists are that animals are evolving.
When you deny the evidence, slander the scientists, buy into conspiracy theories, you're not honestly asking questions. You're "questioning" climate science the same way creationists "question" evolution.
Funny, because the science that I learned about in college was ALL ABOUT being constantly questioned.
Exactly.
A skeptic will ask questions, and will pay attention to the answers, open to the possibility of their views being changed by evidence. That's science.
A denier will pretend to ask questions, but with no real interest in the answers: their opinions are already set, and won't be changed. That's not science.
Deniers pretend to be skeptics. However, they are actually exactly the opposite: the distinguishing feature of deniers is not skepticism, but credulity-- they seen to credit pretty much anything they hear (or read on a blog somewhere)-- if it supports their pre-existing opinions.
(Amusingly, Fred Singer wrote an article making that exact point: "Deniers are giving us skeptics a bad name.")
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
My stance in AGW is that you can bitch all you want about climate change, but if you're not willing to build a bunch of nuclear power plants and shut down a bunch of coal plants, then yes you ARE arguing global warming to advance a political agenda and nothing more.
If you don't back real solutions that can yield real results then I am going to call bullshit on your advocacy.
No you havent. If youd been looking you wouldnt have said the stupid things you did.
Changes in behaviour are all but irrelevent for measles, polio, or smallpox. Its so contagious that if an infected person walks through a room, that room is contagious for as much as 4 hours after the person left. Ppeople were forcibly quarentined in their homes by law enforcement to prevent its spread, and even so it infected 3 to 4 million people each year in the United States. Of those people, 400 to 500 died, 48,000 were hospitalized, and 4,000 developed encephalitis (brain swelling) from measles.
Yet within a couples year of the vaccine being introduced and a widespread vaccination program start measles cases plumetted, from millions per year to fewer than 20k. By the 1990s it was declared eliminated from the US, even though our population had doubled and more people lived in closer quarters in cities.
"at the same pressure"
You do realize that in order to be at "the same pressure" you have to be more than 50 km (50,000 meters, or >160,000 ft) above the surface of Venus?
that on the surface pressure is more than 90x greater than earths? and temperature is greater than 850F ?
what you said is an invalid comparison, a misdirection that relies on ignorance, and that is ultimately irrelevent.
(im not even sure its true, as im quite sure from the venus article earlier this week, that we established that even at the same pressure, the temperature is signifcantly higher)
If you cant find satisfactory answers, its either because you havent been lookng hard enough, or you simply lack the intellect.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
I can't help but notice that the reasons you give for being skeptical of AGW are the character of some prominent people pushing for actions to counter AGW, the cost of said actions, the fact that other countries aren't being forced to take action, and that our current weather models aren't perfect.
NONE of that has anything to do with whether humans are responsible for climate change. All of your skepticism is around what do to about it and the extant of the warming.
Which is why we should NEVER ever stop questioning "science". Newtonian Physics is wrong, but close enough to be functional in many circumstances. Science should be about continuous improvement, which requires ongoing skepticism.
Agreed, and this is what happens. Anyone who tries to publish a paper can tell you how much fun it is, even for papers that follow the current thinking in a particular field. I work with a couple scientists that published a paper in regards to climate change, and it took two years of sometimes colorfully worded review comments and re-submissions before it as accepted.
AGW or "climate change" is one of those things I simply do not believe is "settled science", mainly because of the huge number of variables, and the models and advocate predictions have completely been falsified.
And this is where you turn stupid and destroy whatever argument you were trying to make. Global warming as a result of increased greenhouse gases was discovered well over a century ago, and falls out quite readily as a result using some basic high school level chemistry and physics. The equation for determining the atmospheric forcing of CO2 was developed by Svante Arrhenius (a.k.a the father of modern chemistry) back in the 1890's, and it is still used today.
A much more difficult problem (and where the vast majority of research is going) is what will the effects on the climate will be. That requires advanced coupled models across multiple science domains.
Call me a denier all you want. I'm not denying the "Science" part of this (CO2).
Yes you are. You made unsubstantiated claims that all the results from current as well as historical climate research has been nothing but BS. You claim that global warming isn't "settled science" when it is a direct result of fundamental chemistry and physics that have been around for a century or more, the same chemistry and physics that are used in many other applications today. This is the very definition of a science denier.
I am denying the predictive hyperbole from the likes of Al Gore, who keeps making ridiculous claims, while having a huge Carbon Footprint (carbon offsets not withstanding).
AL GORE IS NOT A FUCKING CLIMATE SCIENTIST. Stop using him as a pariah for the climate science community, because he has NOTHING to do with climate science research. He does not publish papers. He does not perform climate research. He has no credentials for doing so, nor does he have any credentials in any related field. He is an activist for a cause he believes in, nothing more.
Using Al Gore as an EXCUSE for your ignorance would be like someone using Michele Bachman's claims as the reason why they don't get their kids vaccinated.
And if you are going to make fun of Fox News, great, but the real person you should make fun of is the stupid chicken littles who have been proven wrong, but continue to spew their idiocy and the climate lapdogs keep licking up.
Again, this is pure denier speak. Fox News has a documented history of misrepresenting science (among other things), especially climate science. The science has not been proven wrong. Not even remotely. That is, at best, willful ignorance on your part.
~X~