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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."
And hackers would like the media to stop calling computer criminals hackers.
Funny, because the science that I learned about in college was ALL ABOUT being constantly questioned.
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
And I want all journalists to stop adding a -gate suffix to political scandals! Also, Santa, I would like...
I'm not skeptical of carbon impact on climate change, and do not want to be associated with those who are.
That said I'm VERY skeptical of anti-petroleum advocates who brandish solutions which are capitalized on by opportunistic capitalists. Save the rain forest. Don't forget, it's about the rain forest. The policy-driving "warmists" are not wrong about carbon and climate change, but they are using a straw man of anti-science deniers to taint valid arguments against their solutions.
And then we can call AGW proponents the Church of Global Warming. I'm sure people agree far more when name calling is involved.
Very convincing argument.
Given the corruption in 'science', I'm quite a skeptic. And given the ignorance of most people, especially the kiddies in /., I'm skeptical about being called a skeptic on the interweb. Apparently, completing Intro to Science with a C average qualifies people to be experts.
This sounds like a George Carlin bit.
...and burn them at the stake as witches? That aught to take care of those pesky people who disagree.
Because scientific theories have always been infallible, haven't they?
Oh, Science, please go back to the lab and transmute some gold or something.
Sent from my ENIAC
By perpetrating this misnomer, journalists have granted undeserved credibility to those who reject science and scientific inquiry.
How can people who perpetrate misnomers have the nerve to call themselves "journalists"?
First, pointing a finger and screeching 'DENIER' seems a lot like pointing the finger and screeching 'HERETIC', lending credence to the whole environmentalism-as-a-substitute-religion theory.
Beyond that, these scientists might find more traction for their beliefs if they could get away from the folks who are peddling 'solutions' for AGW. You know, the activists who want to make energy so expensive that poor people will have to live in dark, cold homes, and gasoline so expensive that they have to stay in those cold, dark homes.
I imagine, however, that any activist or scientist advocating the use of 'denier/(heritic)' has substituted Gaia for God, and would be very happy to burn their opponents at the stake.
As for me, I'm not qualified to analyze the science. Instead, I'll consider the matter when the people who say it's a problem act like it's a problem. Until their personal conduct matches their words- buying carbon credits ('indulgences') doesn't count- then it's just a continuation of prior climate panics.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
My suggestions would be "fool", "crazy", "deluded" and "zealot".
When you actually look at the science itself, it's pretty clear. And nowhere near what the proponents claim.
For that matter, when you look at the history of AGW catastrophism, you see a lot of, well, denial. By the people whose predictions failed miserably.
So far we have NOT seen an increase in the number and size of hurricanes. We have also NOT seen an increase in droughts, an increase in tornado numbers or strength, a decrease in winter snow, or a number of other things. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of events that were predicted as part of CAGW that have not happened (and in many cases, the reverse has come to pass).
We still have a fairly icy polar ice cap (the "sciency" prediction from just a few years back was that it would effectively be gone by now).
We're also about 0.1 C below the low-end value of over 95% of predictions for global temperatures (and 0.5 C below the "most probable" number). That in itself invalidates CAGW as a scientific theory.
Yes, the Earth has warmed. Yes, some of it has been due to CO2 increases by humans.
But the amount - and the results - are both badly blown predictions. That means that the followers of CAGW are, by and large, denying science because it didn't give them the result they wanted.
So you're clearly in the denier camp.
Or is it more like playing with matches around gasoline? I'm going to go make the popcorn and sit back and watch now. Anyone want to join me?
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
The science is on the skeptical side of the CAGW argument.
No, it's not. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...
"skeptics would like [to own the term skeptic]"
And the people's front of judea would like the splitters to call themselves the front of judean people.
The third link, and the page that the statement was published on, is by the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry . They feel that the media is giving undue credibility to the deniers by allowing them to co-opt their name. "The mission of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry is to promote scientific inquiry, critical investigation, and the use of reason in examining controversial and extraordinary claims."
They dont account for the sun?
Son, that the was among the first things they looked at.
And theyve looked at it several times since.
It's not the sun, son.
If it was the sun, we would be cooling right now.
The 11yr cycle bit is also misleading: there is some periodicity, but there is a lot of noise in that signal, as shown in this graph (which also conventiently shows that temperatures, and solar output have been moving in opposite directions for the past 35 years): http://www.skepticalscience.co...
From: http://www.skepticalscience.co...
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
The science is on the skeptical side of the CAGW argument.
I'm not sure how Citizens Against Government Waste is relevant here, but, indeed, science is always on the skeptical side. That skepticism is expressed by making calculations, making measurements, doing experiments, and learning about the physical world. Making models and testing those models is what scientists do; it is what climate scientists have been doing for a century.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
People modded this up and called it "insightful"?!? The science is firmly on the side of the current and ongoing several decades-long (so far) warming trend being attributable entirely or very nearly entirely to human activity, mostly the burning of fossil fuels. Arguing that "skeptic" is the wrong term for someone who flatly denies science is not an emotional plea. I don't recall ever seeing anyone announce themselves to be "true believers." The use of "sheeple" makes me wonder if the parent comment is trolling, but either way the comment is wrong in almost every way, and anything but "insightful."
Pro-Life people would like the media to call Pro-Choice people, "Selfish Baby Killers."
Pro-Choice people would like the media to call Pro-Life people, "Bullying Woman Haters."
PETA would like the media to call everybody else, "Animal Haters."
Republicans would like the media to call Democrats, "asshats."
Democrats would like the media to call Republicans, "asshats."
I am afraid that, as I use the language, deniers are skeptics. Illogical or irrational skeptics, maybe, compared to the rational skeptics that the complainants would like to reserve the word for. Denying the evidence of your eyes is both skeptical and sometimes foolish.
Consciousness is an illusion caused by an excess of self consciousness.
The term Cracker is much more descriptive, draws a distinction between the two but, just never seemed to catch the ear of the media darlings the put on the news.
The problem is that the term " cracker " is already well established in use, a derogatory term referring to white people from the rural south.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Of course science is never settled--not exactly--but the leading explanation for observed facts tends to have *earned its position*. And even when supplanted, it usually remains reasonably accurate as an approximation. Think Newtonian mechanics versus relativity. Relativity theory didn't make Newtonian mechanics stop working on the stuff for which it had already shown itself to be useful. The current mainstream scientific conceptualizations about climate response to various forcings and feedbacks is certainly open to, and in need of, further challenges and refinements. But it's extremely unlikely that any new information is going to make the big picture change very much. The new information will fill in details, shrink error bars, etc.
On what side do you think are the physicists questioning the identity of the Higgs and believing it may be another particle while the probabilities are much more higher than 95% it is in fact the Higgs? You just don't get it. It is not a matter of probabilities. At the beginning of the XXth century, it was taken for granted (almost 100% of the scientific community) the ether exists until two skeptic guys, Michelson and Morley decided to setup an experiment to determine if it actually exists and they found it didn't. Science is not a poll.
Achille Talon
Hop!
This will backfire. The idiots driving this would associate dissent on climate change predictions with folks who reject the historical fact of the Holocaust, the only other place where the term "deniers" is routinely used.
You can't have a brain in your head and seriously think that the modern climate change predictions have a comparable level of certainty to the historical fact of the holocaust. This sort of gross overreach is obvious even to mere mortals who can't readily follow the scientific arguments for or against global warming. It makes the speaker, and every other claim he makes, suspect.
The media has done climate change scientists a great favor by labeling the folks who still challenge the predictions as "skeptics." That word carries connotations of government conspiracy and alien abductions. It's a gift.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
All I can say is QBA to your TLA; you should AYA or at least TTMS. Because PWHAFI.
QTFA, OK?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Of course it's not a poll. But you really think one day some scientists will discover that all these researches were wrong, that AGW didn't happen?
I'll trade the label of 'skeptic' for 'science denier' sure, but I'd ask that people stop using the blanket term 'climate change' when they really mean 'a host of sweeping economic, societal, and governmental changes that spend $billions and $trillions to effect what we optimistically expect to be trivial changes in a dynamic system that we mostly don't really understand and have been unable to reliably predict, and which only coincidentally SEEM to conform to a leftist agenda that otherwise nobody was listening to'.
That'd be great, thanks!
-Styopa
We all know "science deniers" is accurate. But you can't expect journalists to adopt the term. According to the standards of their profession, they have to adopt neutral terms to avoid being perceived as having bias.
Two years ago, the intelligent, thinking people realized that the most powerful person in the US government, the president, can't even get a blow job without the whole country hearing about it.
Wow! I thought that was more like 1998-ish - closer to ten years ago. I know I wanted to forget about 2000 and the Bush election and a lot of Obama's terms, but I didn't want to forget it so much I traveled in time like you!
That is all.
Can you simultaneously accept X while questioning X? Seems illogical.
Of course you can. Terms for this in the science community include "working hypothesis" and "the best current model" and phrases such as "subject to further analysis, we currently believe..."
Skeptical has synonyms such as :distrustfull, suspicious, unconvinced. These would all describe a person who is either a "denier" or a skeptic.
No. Deniers have made up their minds already; they are not "unconvinced" at all: they are firm believers. That's the difference between a denier and a skeptic.
So then what you are saying in reality is that anyone not accepting your way of thinking is a "denier" and that "You are either with us, or you are against us!"
No. Deniers have made up their minds already; they are not "unconvinced" at all. That's the difference between a denier and a skeptic: a skeptic can be convinced by evidence.
Established science can and has been and should be questioned as that is how we advance scientific knowledge and processes
There is a difference between paying attention to the science and denying the science. That difference is the difference between a skeptic and a denier.
When you start with the conclusion that the science is wrong because you don't like it-- you're not a skeptic.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I suppose I'm a global warming denier, by the common standard here on Slashdot. The global warming alarmists and pitchmen said "San Francisco will be underwater by 2010". Unfortunately, it's still there.
That's one of two big problems for the global warming camp. Well-known leaders of that movement have publicly admitted to organized, widespread lying and intentional exaggeration in order to "spur the public to action". I deny that they've been telling the truth, and they agree! Has the "science" gotten any better? Well, we know that a typical volcano releases a couple tons of CO2 each day. A few months ago, there was an "OMG Global Warming!" story here on Slashdot that reported atmospheric CO2 levels rising more than expected - based on measuring CO2 on a friggin a volcano! Which is kind of like reporting global average humidity based on moisture measurements taken below Niagra Falls.
There IS some good science supporting global warming, but the alarmist stuff makes better headlines, so 90% of the "science" reported is complete junk, obviously so. I reject all claims based on this utter junk pseudo-science.
The second problem is more recent. Every president has their slush fund, a federal program or two which they use to send tax money to their donors, who send some back as campaign donations. It just so happens that THIS president's slush funds are included in the $100 billion we're spending on "green". For example, the tax payers loaned over a half a billion dollars to Fisker to develop their electric car. Fisker turned right around and handed millions of it to Obama and other Democrats. There's nothing new about that, of course, other than the exchange of greenbacks is normally labeled "green energy" right now. That makes anything labeled "green energy" or "save the planet" inherently suspicious, just like Haliburton contracts were suspicious when Cheney was in the White House. We know that any proposal to spend "half a billion for green energy" means $10 million for the DNC, $10 million for Hillary's campaign, $10 million split between a few congress-critters, $50 million for their CEO friend's golden parachute, and $420 million to who-knows-where. Again, not new - Haliburton was the same. "Green" is the new "Haliburton".
It's hardly worth bothering to reply to these anonymous cowards, I'm afraid; they never admit to being wrong, and even if they did, they'd just keep on posting. Pretty much every single statement he says makes no sense.
Except for religious nuts, nobody has predicted that the world is going to end. This is an argument by the technique of wildly exaggerating what has been said, and then pointing out that the wild exaggeration is wildly exaggerated.
Again: Nobody has predicted that the world is going to end.
There's really no point in arguing these straw men.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Do you think W could get a BJ without bragging to his buddies, and without forgetting to turn off his mic first? We'd have heard about it.
...and then test it. By all means, question everything, but back it up with relevent, scientifically sound data.
Eventually your data may help form a scientific consensus. That's how global warming came to be understood. The opposing view has been totally unable to form a gain such support.
(By the way, no, "global cooling," was never a real thing, before somebody ham-handedly posts a link about it. There are fake magazine covers out there, etc., but ignore the deniers.)
I do not deny the science I embrace it. I challenge you as well to present one piece of evidence of CAGW.
CAGW is real: Not only do they have a web page, they have a wikipedia article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Oh, and QWTFCA, OK?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Tabloid, much?
Who cares what dem people call dem other people??
Only freaks publicly insist on labeling other people freaks.
Says I, in public.
There are places where folks are still covering topics of pure-CO2 temperature causation (or not) that involve studies of available data, and just as important these days, breakdown and evaluation of the various 'corrections' that have been retroactively applied to those datasets, the reliability of models and various proxy methods. WattsUpWithThat is one such resource. If you conclude that it is on the other side of the fence than perhaps you should ask yourself, who built the fence?
Branding dissenters as heretics in the popular press on this level --- it is as if they are appealing to some Supreme Diety to descend from the heavens with a 'Mighty Dog' branding iron --- to mark the foreheads of chosen persons. It's ridiculous, boring and trite.
The climate furor may be part of a larger trend in science noted by master lexicographer Daniele Fanelli. The paper Negative Results are Disappearing from Most Disciplines and Countries [2011] is a fascinating read. It notes that "Of the hypothesized problems, perhaps the most worrying is a worsening of positive-outcome bias. A system that disfavours negative results not only distorts the scientific literature directly, but might also discourage high-risk projects and pressure scientists to fabricate and falsify their data."
Let me spell it out, what is being claimed here is a progressive shortage of applied effort to discredit popular hypotheses. Is it because we are such great guessers. we tend to get these things right so often the first time it's a waste of time and effort to back-check, to reproduce? Does it come down to money?
Or are people letting themselves become religious about science?
Isn't this what Carl Sagan warned us about?
Note to self: add citation to paper, "Climate Change may decrease eggshell thickness of duck-billed salamanders by 0.25mm by the year 2050."
<blink>down the rabbit hole</blink>
This is a pretty good illustration of being a denier rather than a sceptic:
The problem with the notion of "science denier" is that is entirely too close in concept to "heretic". The AGW advocates are entirely religious in their zeal, and their religious belief is that the End Is Near, and We Must All Repent!
Straw man. The discussion is scientific, not religious, and you're distorting what the scientists are saying. If you have scientifically valid objections against the current state of the science you are very welcome to the debate. If you just object because you don't like what the scientists are saying, you're a science denier. Nobody will burn you at any stake, but nobody will take you serious either.
Remember, before Al Gore got into politics and invented his own Church of Warmism, he had flunked out of Divinity School. Being the High Priest of Warming, he has invented his own religion - and every religion has to have heretics.
Shooting the messenger. You may not like Al Gore, but that doesn't mean that his message was wrong.
You're trying to discredit climate change based on emotional arguments, rather than on objective arguments. That makes you a denier rather than a sceptic; exactly what this discussion is about.
They dont account for the sun?
Son, that the was among the first things they looked at.
And theyve looked at it several times since.
It's not the sun, son.
If it was the sun, we would be cooling right now.
The 11yr cycle bit is also misleading: there is some periodicity, but there is a lot of noise in that signal, as shown in this graph (which also conventiently shows that temperatures, and solar output have been moving in opposite directions for the past 35 years): http://www.skepticalscience.co...
From: http://www.skepticalscience.co...
It's the sun. And no, according to the guys who actually study this sort of thing, we're not far enough into the solar minimum to be in an actual cooling phase yet. Give it a couple more years.
No, the CAGW fans didn't look at the sun "first" - and they keep looking everywhere else. I had a climate scientist angrily tell me that "insolation is a constant!" Not according to the astronomers, it isn't.
What's even more fun is that, even if you treat total solar irradiance as a (very wobbly) constant, you have moderate variations in the frequencies of light that make up that "constant." On big variable is the amount of UV light that makes up sunlight - and (again, oddly enough), that variation has a strong match to global warming.
Some of the CAGW folks looked at the number of sunspots (after the skeptics pointed out the Sun as a possible driver) - but that's not the cycle to look for. It's actually a combination of several cycles, and the 11 year cycle is pretty much the least of those.
One more thing: if you're interested in following the ACTUAL debate over CAGW, stay away from skepticalscience. They're deeply dishonest, and have a strong tendency to delete any posts that argue against CAGW in any way.
Like you, when I was in schools being a skeptic was a good thing. "Curiosity killed the cat, and satisfaction brought him back!" is one of the oldest quotes I remember being teased with by teachers. There is absolutely nothing wrong with being a skeptic, and this modern push to demonize anyone that asks a question is really frightening. It is a cyclical part of our history, but usually when curious people are demonized we ended up with the Salem Witch trials, and purges, or other various mass tragedies (genocides).
Real science is exactly proving your arguments, over and over and over again. This is how we progress in science. If nobody in history questioned we would not have round globes, Zeus would still be the cause of lightning, and we would still be killing people to appease the Sun god(s).
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
"Climate Deniers" is a bit of a misnomer. There are very few people who don't believe that the climate is changing. One would have to be quite an ignorant fool to believe such a thing.
Quoting from what the article actually says, distinguishing deniers from skeptics:
Skepticism is all about critical examination, evidence-based scientific inquiry, and the use of reason in examining controversial claims. Those who flatly deny the results of climate science do not partake in any of the above. They base their conclusions on a priori convictions. Theirs is an ideological conviction—the opposite of skepticism.
"Warmists" will tell you that climate change is caused by humans. Period.
I'm not sure what "warmists" say, and I'm not sure I care. What climate scientists say is that carbon dioxide emitted by humans has exactly the same effect as carbon dioxide produced by any other process, and that the relatively well understood effects of carbon dioxide absorption of infrared radiation can affect climate.
However, anthropogenic climate change is not instead of natural variations in climate: it is in addition to natural variations.
These are often the same people who are pushing the big 'carbon tax' scam,
No. No, no, no!
You are confusing political advocacy with science.
What the climate scientists are saying is: here is the calculated effect of carbon dioxide emissions on the atmosphere, here are the error bars; here are the measurements showing the effect, and here are the predictions for what will happen if we do X amount of emissions in the future.
That's the science.
What you are talking about is essentially the invisible backward reasoning behind the denier's arguments: "If the science were true, then taxes! And big government and oppression and the end of free enterprise! But we hate taxes and big government! Therefore, the science is false."
That's backward reasoning, and makes no sense. The science is accurate, or inaccurate, regardless of whether we like the consequences or not, and regardless of what we chose to do about it (or even whether we chose to do anything about it.) "I don't like the politics, therefore the science is wrong" is bad reasoning. Don't attack the science; go argue the politics.
This is in some way the real bad consequence of the deniers. There should be some real discussion, and real debate, about what to do, and even whether we should do anything. But whenever somebody tries to start talking about this, the conversation is hijacked. One side says, maybe a carbon tax, or cap and trade, or incentives for "green" energy, or an international commission. And the other side says "the science is a hoax!" That's not a discussion.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Did you ever stop to consider the possibility that the arguments being pushed at the top of both ends are to ensure the status quo remains? If we argue about "Global Warming" where do we begin to solve the problems causing Global Arming? We have inched forward a bit with alternative source of power, but how far have we moved with pollution (dumping) and massive deforestation for profit? Very little has changed during the time we have been arguing about Global Warming, except that some of the biggest polluters have increased profits dramatically.
I agree with your post from the point of implying that bitching without taking actions to improve is a futile approach. I don't agree that building nuclear power plants is the answer to all of our woes, because this introduces a huge set of problems in and of itself. It would have been more fair to say "Alternative" vs. "Nuclear".
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
The science is on the side of AGW. That's it. Challenge all you want, but when you start ignoring study after study and claim they're all wrong or in some sort of conspiracy, you are not engaging in science or skepticism but block-headed cynicism.
Skeptic? I prefer the term "debunker".
Global cooling: A fringe belief in the 1970s, and never the prevalent theory (but oft reported as such in media which seeks to lampoon actual scientific discovery)
Global warming: The increased heat in the Earth's system (in the atmosphere, seas, etc.)
Climate change: Changes to the climate, which might result from cooling or warming
Climate disruption: The specific changes to the world's climate which cause disruption to the existing industries and societies
You playfully confusing these terms only shows your ignorance, and does not cast dispersion on the people who use them, or on the phenomena they describe.
"The vast majority of the loudest global warming proponents are certainly not scientists. Most of them are environmental activists, with their own agenda to advance."
The "skeptics" of Evolution said the same thing.
They said "the vast majority of the loudest Evolution proponents are certainly not scientists. Most of them are atheists(/secularists) with their own agenda to advance."
I didn't accept that argument from Creationists. Why would I accept it from you?
Warning: This sig is not thread safe. For more information see Slashdot's sig policy.
I personally don't like the word "skeptic"; it carries the feel of that cynical and smug kid at the back of the class who is trying desperately to conceal social retardation and fear of rejection.
That kind of person is deeply interested in the value of labels and identifies with their own opinions on the ego level. -They have little else to derive confidence from other than their carefully polished sense of intellectual superiority. I've not met a self-professed skeptic who was free of this influence.
-And when I say self-professed, I am NOT talking about the person who accepts the label out of deference, thinking, "Yeah, so I guess I'm a skeptic because I'd like to reserve judgment and not jump on your bandwagon." -I'm talking about those rabid assholes. You know the ones. The ones who subscribe to the newsletter and put the word in their website banners and attend the meetings. Those guys are *damaged*.
People who have more clues and agility in thinking will usually cringe away from the term 'skeptic' and tend to not bother with self-labeling at all. I'd call such people, (if forced to identify them as a group), something like "Curious" or...
Nah. I'm already bored trying to come up with a label.
People with no emotional investment tend to find their way to the right answers (or at least the right-er answers) as a result of their basic approach. I want to know what those people think. -Not what a bunch of angry and socially traumatized post-adolescents are trying to hammer into place.
Here's the California Energy Commission STILL saying it. SInce 2010 has passed, as of 2012 they pushed the "underwater by" date to 2050:
http://www.energy.ca.gov/2012p...
Here's an "underwater San Francisco" map that GW alarmists were circulating in 1997:
http://www.sfgate.com/news/art...
Asked about the effect on California, professor of climatology at the University of California at Berkeley Orman Granger said in 1997:
"Climatologic records over the last 10,000 years show that species move north (in the Northern hemisphere) roughly 500km for every degree C temperature increase ... in order to survive they have 100 years to move to Canada".
If someone discovers a heat source at the center of the Earth that has been increasing its heat output lately, then yes, they will have found out that it wasn't caused by human activity.
The point being made was that it's very difficult to predict what discoveries will be made in the future and change our understanding of some scientific topic.
The thing is, with what science currently says, we should reduce our CO2 emissions. Maybe some day we will discover that it was wrong, but probability is so low that we shouldn't live according to that possibility. And that doesn't change the fact that current science is that AGW is happening.
And popular technology isn't either. Read the sources on wikipedia. The problem with those 1350+ articles is that as an individual, I don't have the time to read them all to verify your claims. So I have to rely on synthesis reports such as those from the IPCC and various science academies. And they are well summarized on wikipedia.
There you go: http://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/...
Unfortunately, the examples you give are typical examples of denier style of argumentation-- you just throw random stuff out, without even doing a back of the envelope calculation to ask whether what you're talking about is even close to being significant, on the assumption that you can make somebody else can waste their time explaining basic orders of magnitude to you. Basically: do some basic calculation before just randomly saying stuff like "undersea volcanoes! What about undersea volcanoes?"
What is the order of magnitude of the effect you're talking about? How does it compare to the effects driving climate? Has this been looked at by others? What have previous studies concluded?
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
He said that they'll have to migrate further and further north each year, so that those in the bay area in 1997 would have to be all the way in CANADA within 100 years. So roughly 20 miles per year, or 340 miles in 17 years since he made rhat statement. Has anyone or anything moved an inch, much less 340 miles?
Your next step is to say he's a fringe kook, not representative of what people have been saying. Well, he's a tenured professor of climate science at Berkeley, a position as well respected (by the left) as a constitutional law professor / community organizer.
Overall I like the sentiment of the post made, but it falls apart at the point when it incorrectly defines sharing:
>> "Sharing: Willingly giving a portion of your possessions to another, denying you use or benefit thereof."
You have just redefined sharing for your own purpose. Your argument makes the same mistake it seeks to oppose, loading words for it's own purpose.
Sharing is not so limited in definition. I can "share" my knowledge with my students, and not be deprived of anything myself. In addition, I can share things that don't belong to me with others, although it might be illegal, it's still pretty clearly sharing. In particular, transferring information is definitely "sharing" and is not always illegal. I could be sharing information I created myself, perhaps my own artwork.
Even if your definition is copy pasted a dictionary definition, one particular dictionary definition does not suffice to fully define a word. Dictionaries are extremely simplified definitions written for quick reference. Etymology and semantics of words are much more complex. For example, even by just using other dictionaries I can find that a common definition is "to use or enjoy something jointly".
Specific types of copying can (and do) run afoul of particular laws, so "copyright infringement" meets your definition of it, but sharing simultaneously meets a definition of sharing that is more reasonable and widespread than that which you use. Copying itself, and in general, is not wrong. Whether particular copyright infringement is ethical or not depends on a lot of factors too complex to really get in to here (eg. the legitimacy of the laws in effect, the proper functioning of democracy, the consent of those governed, etc).
There isn't much difference between the two religious camps, except one gets excused by the AGW proponents much more quickly.
One side shouts--LOUDLY-- that scientists are frauds, scientific results are a hoax, anybody paying attention to science is participating a "scam", and there's a worldwide conspiracy of scientists to defraud the public.
The other side doesn't.
I see a very clear difference.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
You mis-understand the Michelson & Morley experiments. At the time science had shown that light had certain properties, namely traveling as a wave, things like interference patterns showed the wave like nature of light.
All the current evidence showed that waves needed a medium to travel in so it was postulated that space was full of a mysterious substance known as aether.
Questions came up such as is the aether stationary or moving? Can we use it to measure the motion of the Earth? and such.
To test these ideas meant accurately measuring the speed of light and towards the end of the 19th century better apparatus was made to accurately measure the speed of light.
Michelson & Morley used the most up to date apparatus to measure the speed of light expecting to get different numbers depending on things like the time of day and time of year as the speed of light relative to them should vary.
They got totally unexpected results, namely that the speed of light was constant. This resulted in having to rethink the whole idea of aether and eventually led to better theories.
They were not skeptics but trying to advance knowledge and were honest enough to recognize that current theory failed in the face of experimentation.
Now if someone can show an experiment that shows that the greenhouse affect doesn't exist, that would be similar and then we can go on to figure out why the Earth is 30 degrees warmer then its black body temperature etc. This is much harder now as so many experiments have been done that shows the greenhouse affect does exist rather then we only lately have got good enough instruments to accurately measure temperature.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
For your review:
Peer-Reviewed Survey Finds Majority Of Scientists Skeptical Of Global Warming Crisis
Article: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja...
Peer Reviewed Survey http://oss.sagepub.com/content...
- A Frog in a pond utters an azure cry. -
If you have data, make a model, and then either make experiment or prediction on model and come with a different result than the actual science, youa re doing science you can PUBLISH and then you are a climate skeptic because you have reason to.
... It can, but with a proper data and evidence. Not with bullshit from a sofa).
Climate change denier, usually the same people which respond to criticism with "hey science is a religion you can't question it" are usually armchar people havign read a blog or two or have a poltical ground and have no fucking clue about the real state of climate science state.
How many people worldwide can be called climate science skeptic ? AKA : publish article and have data model to back it up ? Not many. I can count them maybe on a hand or two. ALL the rest are denier which throw any excuse up and they are present by many many order of magnitude more than the previous group (including the false criticism "established science cannot be questionned"
And this is essentially why your criticism is not warranted. Science is about being constantly questionned by other falsifiable science hypotheses. Not by idiot in a chair repeating some conservative BS they saw somewhere abou solar flare or volcanoe.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
He wasn't talking about scientists, he was talking about science. Your link talks about scientists.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
"Trend for more than a decade" = statistical and signal detection illiteracy, or attempted deception. At all time scales at which a *statistically significant trend is detectable*, the trend is exactly as would be expected given the scientific consensus as expressed by, for example, the IPCC. Which means warming at the surface, warming in the upper and middle layers of the oceans, warming in the lower atmosphere, and cooling in the stratosphere. On shorter time scales, the signal is too noisy to say anything meaningful. Also, as you either don't know or don't want others to know, there are lags of differing intervals in the temperature response to CO2, determined by the efficiency of various climate components (like the oceans) as heat-sinks. Your suggestion that you should be able to see an instantaneous and simple effect, obvious to your naked eye in the 3 charts you generated at wood for trees would suggest that you are deeply ignorant of how climate works and what climate scientists are saying is happening. However, I don't think that's the whole story. The fact that you chose the specific start dates that you did..2001 for hadcrut, 2002 for UAH, 1998 (!) for RSS...suggests that you are deliberately cherry-picking start dates to give a visual impression that your (statistically meaningless) statements are accurate. Make the plots again with the whole available data sets, and it becomes obvious that we are looking at a noisy system trending upward on a multi-decadal scale.
If CO2 had any significant effect, it would show up in the temperature record.
Which of course it does. Google "temperature CO2 graph." It's glaringly obvious, if you don't truncate the graphs to only show a few years. Or does the AC believe that if the CO2 in the atmosphere disappeared, there would be no impact? (without the greenhouse effect of CO2, the current surface temperature would be about 30C lower)
Since the US calls them skeptics and the rest of the English world calls them sceptics. I propose the following:
Climate change deniers from now on, are to be called septics.
They stink. They are pollution.They are a waste.
[Australian slang etymology: septic tank = yank]
Cryonics - Keep cool and carry on.
So you're saying that repeating fallacies is the act of a skeptic? Seems like a skeptic would try to learn from her mistakes.
So do you reject all but the most optimistic projections? Time to find out who is the real "True Believer".
You are confusing (perhaps on purpose) the two meanings of skeptic - those with good-faith skepticism, and those who claim to be skeptics but are liars.
Holocaust deniers would rather be called skeptics, but everyone knows it's not really about skepticism.
Excellent. You have at least tried to put some numbers down: you have now met minimum standards for actual debate.
So let's analyze your numbers:
First, the link you gave which you listed as "30,000 submarine volcanoes," when you follow it, actually states "An estimated 30,000 seamounts occur across the globe," where it helpfully defines seamount: "typically extinct volcanoes that rise abruptly from a seafloor of 1,000 - 4,000 meters depth." So, the first caveat is that you will want to answer the question, how many active submarine volcanoes are there?
Next we need to figure the energy emitted by a volcano. It's a weird calculation to take an estimate of potential electrical power from a volcano and back calculate that to thermal power; I'd go with cubic meters of lava times temperature times heat capacity, but right now we're analyzing your calc. So, 60,000 GW = 60 TW. (I calculate that at 500 million TW-hrs per year, by the way: check your numbers.)
Indeed: that's more than human energy consumption. But, why do we care? This is a climate calculation, so we are looking for a climate answer: does this affect climate?
Googling "solar energy absorbed by the Earth," Earth receives 340 watts per square meter times the surface area of the Earth (510 million square kilometers= 510 trillion square meters), that comes to 170,000 TW. So the estimated volcanic heat contribution is a 0.00035 increase in input energy. From the Stefan-Boltzman equation, we can translate that to a temperature increase (Kelvin) of a factor of 1.00009. At Earth's equilibrium temperature, that's an increase of roughly 0.025 degrees K
But, that's not a calculation of the contribution to observed warming-- that's a steady state effect. It's the amount that the Earth's climate would change if all those 30,000 volcanoes were originally off, and suddenly turn on. They're not likely to be all turning on in phase. So, the modulation in the Earth's climate is at most that number, and most likely less.
Not significant.
That's the back of my envelope, care to share yours that would state unequivocally that it's not a possible contributor?
Sure.
The entire heat flux from the interior of the Earth is 0.05 watts per square meter. That's all of the volcanoes, including your undersea volcanoes, all of the geothermal energy, everything. The estimate radiative forcing from carbon dioxide emitted by humans is order of magnitude 1 watt per square meter. Thus, heat flux from the Earth's interior can account for, at most, 5% as much warming as anthropogenic carbon dioxide.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
I see that my post got moderated as a troll. Seriously?! There are many intelligent individuals utilizing science and reasoning to support climate change, but there are also idiots who for some reason try to match some of the mudslinging of the anti crowd. Hotheads on either side of the issue are still hotheads and serve to discredit their respective viewpoints.
Don't you oppress me.
I'm not the guy making the emotional "WE HAVE TO DO THIS IMMEDIATELY OR THE WORLD WILL BURN" arguments. Science isn't a thing; it's a method, a technique for discovering the truth.
A scientist will share his raw data so that other scientists can replicate his work. Warmists have not done so. Scientists will reveal their algorithms and explain their assumptions. Warmists have not done this, either. Scientists don't invent data, or make bogus and conflicting claims about their data. Warmists have. Scientists will attempt to make predictions about the future, and if their predictions are falsified, they modify their predictions. Warmists have been predicting greatly increased tropical storms and disappearing north polar ice caps. Neither has happened.
Warmists actively manipulate the "peer review" process, and attempt to have opposing views banned. Warmists claim that the government should hunt down and execute "deniers". OK, that's from the more hysterical faction, but it has been said.
https://devilsneuroscientist.w...
A nice response, and interesting. But if you dig a little deeper, you'll see it's not that trivial.
Yes it is.
I would note that your post didn't address the relative orders of magnitude of CO2.
Calculations, please. Making stuff up isn't science. Calculating effects is. If you think that relative magnitude of CO2 is relevant, give me a back of the envelope showing plausibility. You can use as a starting point the fact all the volcanoes worldwide emit, on average, an estimated 130 to 440 million metric tons of CO2 each year. (Sounds like a lot, doesn't it?)
My revised argument (I didn't type the following in the earlier post) is that natural CO2 dominates anthropogenic CO2,
Correct.
and any changes we induce to the overall temperature are overshadowed by natural variations.
Nope. They add to the natural variations... but the natural variations tend to average out with time, while the anthropogenic CO2 is monotonic upward.
In particular, the variations in chemistry and temperature of the ocean dominate the chemical equilibrium.
Don't speculate, calculate. About two minutes of work should show you that this is not even within a few orders of magnitude of being relevant. You need a back of the envelope calculation showing plausibility.
What I didn't add about the undersea volcanoes is when heat and acid are added to water, LeChatlier's principle states that the alkaline ocean (remember, ocean pH varies from 7.0 to 8.0) will go slightly more acidic (sulfuric acid is a much stronger acid than carbon dioxide) and push the carbon dioxide out of the water, and increasing temperature raises the dissociation constant of water (or lowers the pKw, take your pick) and also forces out more CO2.
Now you're talking effects that aren't even close to being relevant. Don't speculate, calculate.
Anyone who has drunk a warm, flat beer, or poured vinegar into soda water and watch it fizz, can observe this. The assumed heat added by volcanoes is 525,000 TW-h, [check your numbers too ;-)], and the acidity from sulfuric acid is enough energy (in terms of chemical potential) to affect the solubility and cause the ocean to release more CO2 into the atmosphere, or absorb more if the volcanic activity decreases.
Show me an order of magnitude. How much is the effect?
If there is a 10% variation in the volcanic releases of heat and SO4 (or 52,000 TW-h, compared to 142 TW-h from anthropogenic sources), that will affect the environment more than what we add, and it can be argued that from the energy balance difference (recall the worlds energy demand is another way of showing the chemical potential differences between the hydrocarbons and CO2 + H2O). This is significant,
Sorry, but your numbers fail a check of units. The units needed are warming in degrees K. Any other numbers need to, eventually, be turned into warming in K by a calculation.
and the argument cannot be dismissed by calling me a denier.
You have stopped being a denier when you started doing calculations with actual numbers. You may be wrong... but you have now demonstrated that you are not a denier.
It could be dismissed if all volcanoes were identified and their activity cataloged.
Unnecessary. If the effect is many orders of magnitude too small to think about, no need to pay further attention.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Yes it is.
It's not, and one point that needs to be clarified is that AGW proponents must supply the burden of proof. The null hypothesis is that climate and weather are determined by natural processes, and human effects on that must be proven.
I would note that your post didn't address the relative orders of magnitude of CO2.
Calculations, please. Making stuff up isn't science. Calculating effects is. If you think that relative magnitude of CO2 is relevant, give me a back of the envelope showing plausibility. You can use as a starting point the fact all the volcanoes worldwide emit, on average, an estimated 130 to 440 million metric tons of CO2 each year. (Sounds like a lot, doesn't it?)
I'm not talking about the CO2 from the volcanoes, it's the heat and acidity. Simple order of magnitude won't work, but to give it a sniff test if you take the total mass of oceans at 1.37e21 kg and the potential variation of volcanic heat at 52,000 TW-h, converting that to Joules 1.872e20 J, then you get the rough dT of 0.13K, or about 0.2 deg F. That assumes uniform energy distribution throughout the ocean.
The argument is the heat and acid from volcanoes disrupts the CO2 equilibrium. Start with the data, and note the data do not have error bars (which is my main point): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C...
Every number in this figure is calculated on an average, and if you want to calculate it effectively, you'd need to use Navier-Stokes, heat convection/diffusion, combined convection/diffusion mass transfer equations with reactions , and thermal radiation integrated simultaneously with known time dependent, boundary conditions. These equations aren't solvable.
and any changes we induce to the overall temperature are overshadowed by natural variations.
Nope. They add to the natural variations... but the natural variations tend to average out with time, while the anthropogenic CO2 is monotonic upward.
Ahem, calculations please.
In particular, the variations in chemistry and temperature of the ocean dominate the chemical equilibrium.
My two minutes of work showed the lower limit is 0.12 Kelvins, that is significant enough. As for the chemistry, I can direct you to Smith and Van Ness and a physical chemistry text, it takes a little bit of work but I can't put it on a slashdot post (I do numerical chemistry for a living).
Now you're talking effects that aren't even close to being relevant. Don't speculate, calculate.
It is relevant, remember, AGW needs to prove that it isn't.
Sorry, but your numbers fail a check of units. The units needed are warming in degrees K. Any other numbers need to, eventually, be turned into warming in K by a calculation.
See above.
You have stopped being a denier when you started doing calculations with actual numbers. You may be wrong... but you have now demonstrated that you are not a denier.
It could be dismissed if all volcanoes were identified and their activity cataloged.
Unnecessary. If the effect is many orders of magnitude too small to think about, no need to pay further attention.
Denier is being applied to skilled scientists. That is my objection.
Gotta go to bed, nice chat.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
A nice response, and interesting. But if you dig a little deeper, you'll see it's not that trivial.
Yes it is.
It's not, and one point that needs to be clarified is that AGW proponents must supply the burden of proof.
Nope. You have just proposed a hypothesis. Unless you show that it is plausible, there's no reason for anybody to pay attention: your hypothesis, your burden to show it's plausible.
As it turns out, about two minutes of calculation shows it's several orders of magnitude too small to be relevant. But you need to learn to do your calculations.
Unsupported speculation is not science. It may be the start of science... but it's not science until you start using numbers.
I would note that your post didn't address the relative orders of magnitude of CO2.
Calculations, please. Making stuff up isn't science. Calculating effects is. If you think that relative magnitude of CO2 is relevant, give me a back of the envelope showing plausibility. You can use as a starting point the fact all the volcanoes worldwide emit, on average, an estimated 130 to 440 million metric tons of CO2 each year. (Sounds like a lot, doesn't it?)
I'm not talking about the CO2 from the volcanoes, it's the heat and acidity.
You randomly shift back and forth from saying its the CO2 (first quote in this thread this one), it's the heat (listed first in this sentence), or it's the acidity (end of this sentence). Three completely different effects; three completely different calculations. This leads me to suspect you haven't actually thought it out. Pick one. Do the calculation. Check your numbers. Check them again.
Sorry, gotta go.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
How about call them idiots... ?
You randomly shift back and forth from saying its the CO2 (first quote in this thread this one), it's the heat (listed first in this sentence), or it's the acidity (end of this sentence). Three completely different effects; three completely different calculations. This leads me to suspect you haven't actually thought it out. Pick one. Do the calculation. Check your numbers. Check them again.
Sorry, gotta go.
There's nothing random about my statements, you're not understanding them. The hypothesis, based on known chemistry that is well supported, is that addition of heat and acid changes the solubility of the massive CO2 inventory in the ocean (the CO2 I discuss in my first post), and the energy (both heat and chemical) are sufficient enough to dominate CO2 inventory changes introduced by man. We've already done enough estimates to show the energies are sufficient for further review.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
that a couple organizations with the word "Skeptic" in their name feel they have the right to represent all skeptics everywhere. And that otherwise intelligent people buy into such bullshit.
If you have data and facts that are conclusive, talk about them. The constant focus on the tiny percentage of people who call themselves MMGW skeptics naturally causes me to suspect the veracity of the oppositions claims.
The more you rail on and on about the Skeptics the less you're talking about the data and the facts. Why would you DO that if your evidence wasn't as solid as you shrilly claim it is ?
the attempt to label them deniers is an attempt to compare them to holocaust deniers. that in itself is despicable.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Sure. Once you've done the numbers to support your hypothesis then get back to us. At the moment, to be honest, it sounds like more wild speculation. Let's say your hypothesis is correct and undersea volcanoes have reduced the ability of the ocean to absorb CO2 from the atmosphere. Wouldn't this act in such a way as to increase the sensitivity of the climate to anthropogenic CO2 emissions?
I see you forgot to read the title , much less the summary or article. This is about how the MEDIA portrays people in debates over POLITICAL proposals. Most such "science" simply isn't science.
Unfortunately, politics is process of apportioning money and power, so the department head of Climate Science at UC Berkeley, whose job is to maintain their funding, is essentially a POLITICAL position. When the continued existence of your department is contingent on you acquiring a $20 million federal grant paid by taxpayers, that's a political job, not a scientific one, regardless of what the title "tenured professor " might imply.
If the extent of your skepticism is repeating No No No, even though you have a different reason each time why it's No, you are a denier. If you can cite a priori precise criteria which, if satisfied, would prove it to your satisfaction (which are possible, i.e. not "two identical planets, one burning fossil fuels, one not", then you are a skeptic.
Star Trek transporters are just 3d printers.
I agree. But how do we do that? Cap and trade is under investigation throughout Europe for fraud. Maybe we should follow systems that actually produce carbon sinks instead of enriching more bankers and politicians.
There has always been corruption in democracies. Should we abolish democracies? Oil companies are also corrupt. Should stop using oil?
Cap and trade works, just like taxes on CO2. Europe emit far less CO2 per capita than US/Canada/Australia. That some politicians fail to implement policies or are corrupt is not a valid reason for doing nothing.
And popular technology isn't either. Read the sources on wikipedia. The problem with those 1350+ articles is that as an individual, I don't have the time to read them all to verify your claims. So I have to rely on synthesis reports such as those from the IPCC and various science academies. And they are well summarized on wikipedia.
Oh, so now the argument is that there is too much evidence for GW to be checked by one man alone, so it can all be disregarded.
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Not disregarded. Synthetized by other scientists.
And i am skeptical about the science, which is science. Other scientists are also skeptical. But the insult is when trying to debate the validity of the data from the science in its relation to cause and effect, especially when the recorded data is such a small miniscule portion of the timespan of the subject itself (earth), relatively with an even smaller portion of coinciding timeframes that neglect the larger non coinciding timeframes, the skepticism suddenly becomes laffable and ignored because of the inability of other skeptics (religion) to express themselves.