Slashdot Mirror
Scientists Study How Non-Scientists Deny Climate Change (theguardian.com)
A new research paper suggest climate change opponents are "simulating coherence by conspiracism".
Slashdot reader Layzej says the paper "examines this behavior at the aggregate level, but gives many examples where contradictory ideas are held by the same individual, and sometimes are presented within a single publication." From the paper:
Claims that the globe "is cooling" can coexist with claims that the "observed warming is natural" and that "the human influence does not matter because warming is good for us". Coherence between these mutually contradictory opinions can only be achieved at a highly abstract level, namely that "something must be wrong" with the scientific evidence in order to justify a political position against climate change mitigation...
In a nutshell, the opposition to greenhouse gas emission cuts is the unifying and coherent position underlying all manifestations of climate science denial... Climate science denial is therefore perhaps best understood as a rational activity that replaces a coherent body of science with an incoherent and conspiracist body of pseudo-science for political reasons and with considerable political coherence and effectiveness.
"I think that people who deny basic science will continue to do so, no matter how contradictory their arguments may be," says one of the paper's authors, who suggests that the media should be wary of self-contradicting positions.
In a nutshell, the opposition to greenhouse gas emission cuts is the unifying and coherent position underlying all manifestations of climate science denial... Climate science denial is therefore perhaps best understood as a rational activity that replaces a coherent body of science with an incoherent and conspiracist body of pseudo-science for political reasons and with considerable political coherence and effectiveness.
"I think that people who deny basic science will continue to do so, no matter how contradictory their arguments may be," says one of the paper's authors, who suggests that the media should be wary of self-contradicting positions.
Global warming is WRONG for one reason:
Hillary Clinton believes it.
TRUMP 2016!
Science is not immune to politics. It's really that simple.
It's very simple. Plain, ordinary folks who haven't experienced mind rot as a result of being entrenched in ivory halls of academia have never ended up joining the Church Of Global Warming, never bought its left-wing bullshit, and have never prayed at the altar of Al Gore.
Plain and simple.
Actual climate scientists are usually very open to the idea that they could be wrong, even though they currently have a firm conviction that they're right. After all--that's the essence of science.
The problem we "deniers" have is with all the political hacks and communists who think they know how to take action, all the redditors who think they know shit because they can regurgitate what their commie profs told them, and that we need to confiscate all the private property in the name of being "green". Fuck them. That's what it's all about. Yeah, man is *probably* altering the climate, and it could cause some serious problems down the road; but we'll manage it our way, not your UN ultra-leftist way. That's what you're not going to change, and I know that just pains some of you so much. The USSR lost. Deal with it.
Didn't they recently say that many scientific papers/studies cannot be replicated? I've also heard that many of the global warming studies don't include the solar cycles the sun goes through as well.
Bad Predictions:
Claim from the late 20th to early 21st century: Global Warming means that the planet it getting hotter. Temperatures will rise.
Life: Record lows in winter
Reaction: Change the term from Global Warming to Climate Change.
Claim from 2007 post multiple hurricanes: Global warming will only make hurricanes more frequent and more powerful.
Life: They haven't, they aren't.
Reaction:Just wait
Claim: Global warming will cause droughts.
Life: Flooding and heavy rains.
Global Warming Experts Reaction: Dry places will get drier, wet places will get wetter.
Claim: People who deny global warming should be discredited as scientists.
Life: Debate, discussion, new data and learning happen. Global Warming/Climate change has had its share of bad science and reckless predictions on both sides of the fence and it makes it easy for people to believe what they want OR what they SEE OR simply become resistant to the concept believing the issue to be more political than scientific.
Slashdot Reaction to this post: Predictable
These scientists are wrong! Liars! They don't respect our religion!
That's basically it. If your personal magic sky-daddy says one thing 2,000 years ago and those tricky, unreliable scientists say something different, who ya gonna believe?
I mean, a book written by ignorant, desert-dwelling sheep herders 20 centuries ago couldn't possibly be wrong about anything, could it? Never mind that these people knew nothing of science, biology, astronomy, meteorology, oceanography, chemistry, zoology, botany, astrophysics, climatology, cosmology, hydrodynamics, hygienics, immunology, magnetics, neurology, oceanography, palaeontology, or geology, and never mind that most of them had never been more than about 10 miles from the place they'd been born in their entire lives, they just couldn't be wrong about complex scientific stuff, could they? OF COURSE NOT!
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...
The problem is that everybody has been hearing Doomsday predictions for so long that they're all just sick of it. Back in 2000 my university prof was showing all his graphs and basically stating that by 2010 we would have massive deserts all over the place - and everywhere else would be underwater. Things are obviously nowhere near as bad as what all the climate scientists were saying back in 2000. Massive scare tactic stuff.... and that's the only thing that is talked about. Whenever you read an article or watch a show about it - it's an "end of the world" type of presentation which we all know is preposterous.
What we do know for a fact is the untold number of jobs that would instantly be lost if government funding was taken away from climate science. So it is hard for these people to have an unbiased opinion. Does humanity need to stop polluting? Absolutely. However I am personally more concerned with dumping oil and garbage into our oceans than I am about c02 emissions. That being said - I am all for any regulations or technologies that makes the air in our cities cleaner to breath.... if we can reduce c02 at the same time then that's good but can we stop with all the doomsday crap? It is getting old. Humanity will adapt.
A lot of people also remember that it wasn't that long ago that climate scientists were predicting another ice age. A lot of older folks remember this so it's hard to blame them for taking the global warming scare with a grain of salt.
Science news is largely presented by reporters with journalism educations who don't have any background in the science they're covering and as a result don't really understand the nature of what it is they're covering.
As a result, when they report an issue like climate change, they're completely unqualified to explain the actual science and instead of covering the work that scientists do, they cover the scientists instead. Instead of explaining the research that led Dr. Jones to conclude climate is changing, we get an appeal to authority.
So the reason non-scientists deny climate change is that the argument for climate change is largely being presented to them via non-scientific arguments.
Alot of the skepticism stems from the doomsday-esque presentation of the scientists. I lost count of all the embearded professors who predicted the world would be under water by now, or one big desert, etc. These people are extremists so of course, rational people tune this stuff out.
If they would present their case in a more level-headed manner I think most people would be receptive to what they have to say.
This is why we should read books written by the great sea pirates. They know all those things, and more. They could navigate human biospheres for months to distant lands, come back, and do it more than twice.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Climate Change is not a religious issue for those who "deny" it. (The other side, arguably yes...) You're confusing it with Evolution.
But keep ranting, you're making anti-religious bigots look like angry, confused assholes here at the top of the page. Carry on...
Not really it is simply people making dishonest arguments. The scientific evidence that the planet is warming is overwhelming the problem is that the proposed solution - reducing greenhouse gas emissions - carries with it a huge economic impact. Not surprisingly this means there are a large number of people who believe that the economic problems from reducing greenhouse gas emissions outweighs the problems of just warming the planet.
However they believe that this argument is not strong enough to prevent everyone deciding to cut greenhouse gas emissions so, although they really believe the science, their only option to prevent the economic problems they are worried about is to attack the science and try to pretend that it is wrong. So really this is simply a dishonest argument made be people who are so afraid of the impact of curbing greenhouse gases that they attack the arguments for this in the only way that has any chance of success even though they don't really believe the argument they are making themselves
When the chips are down so to speak it is amazing how overwhelmingly people will back science. One of the best examples of this which is often pointed out is despite all the arguments in US schools about whether to teach evolution vs. creationism (or whatever fancy name is the flavour of the day) everytime there is a concern about a new disease evolving an spreading e.g. SARS, bird flu, swine flu etc. no politician stands up and says that we should do nothing because viruses can't evolve. So when lives are on the line people really do believe in science to help and guide them but if they do not see an immediate threat to their well being then they'll happily undermine and ignore it to keep up their own standard of living.
Are the "scientists" conducting these "studies" psychologists or behavioral scientists? Because as far as I know, those are the only "scientists" who study why people would react one way or another to a situation. I mean marketing people do too, but that's hardly science. The cited article is unclear although what is clear, apart from the APA format of citation, is that it does not follow the standard format of SCIENTIFIC articles. Usually an article by SCIENTISTS doesn't go "1. Introduction 2. Conclusion". There's a whole lot missing on things like materials and methodology, discussion, etc.
So if you want an additional tip as to why people (including scientists, for I am one) reject climate change "science" - here's a big hint: follow the scientific method. Note that I am not even discussing the actual data evidence for or against climate change. I am discussing the lack of credibility of people who call themselves "scientists" but clearly are not. The scientific method and the way scientific articles are laid out is not new and does not need to be reinvented.
Perhaps the confusion arises because social sciences people are actually starting to believe that they are "scientists" because they took Poli Sci.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
I give the bible as much credibility as I give Frank Herbert's Dune series. In fact, the latter is much better.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Agree that some scientists have hidden motives, but so had those who wrote the bible. The point of writing a religious book is to control people, and ride a gravy train of donations (and in some cases, church taxes) A side activity of comforting people and talking about "morale" lets them keep such control for a long time, as some people really believe the stuff.
"Scientific" evangelists cherry-picking to frenzy the over-"educated" masses into an uninformed, unthought-out dogmatic opinion which they believe is "fact".
Whether or not "climate change" is true or not doesn't really matter as much as whether or not people who are supposedly educated use a sane thought process to investigate the matter. Most people are not leaders. They don't own a piece of any industry. They don't have power. What they say doesn't matter and they will never stand up and insist on being heard (I CAN JUST VOTE LOL, ALL MY THOUGHTS BOIL DOWN TO MULTIPLE CHOICE ANYWAY LOL).
"Climate Change" is totally ambiguous. Is the climate changing because of a natural process, or is the climate changing because of an artificial process? Correlation/causation????
"Scientific evidence" is a completely loaded term. It doesn't mean anything. It's a propaganda device.
"pseudo-science" is the same. Pseudo: A special greek word to sprinkle fairy dust on an argument to make it correct without support of reasoning and investigation.
These are totally ambiguous terms that mean absolutely nothing that have obviously been crafted specifically to appeal to people who have no experience with science (or evidence either).
If evidence is evident, then why does it need this qualifier "science" in front of it? It's obviously an attempt to jam extra words into a phrase to confuse people who are uneducated into entertaining an authoritarian (rather than logical) assertion of legitimacy. (almost all of you college graduates on this site count as uneducated just as much as (probably more than) any blue collar worker).
Tell us more about the "(literally) trillions of dollars driving" the GW scam.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
Much of what was in "documentaries" like Inconvenient Truth and Gaslands was obvious BS. And we hear claims that Earth will be a lifeless cinder within a couple of generations even though CO2 levels have been much higher in the past.
Most of the denials that the climate is warming goes against well documented measurements.
The truth is somewhere in between. The best approach to minimizing the problem won't involve wealth transfer to poor nations. But neither side is going to budge.
It is a debate on how much data were fabricated to draw the conclusions on climate change in the first place
No, that is just people who've been duped by propaganda demanding that scientists pick sense out their nonsense.
If you've been following Earth science since the 70s (as I have), you'll realize that there was a decades-long, vigorous debate that has gone on that was largely decisively finished by the late 90s. That said indivividual results continue to be debated vigorously, simply because the nature of evidence in a complex system like climate is always contradictory. Some places will warm while others cool. Sometimes will be cooler in places that are generally warmer. Some consequences will not appear when expected and other, unexpected things will happen.
Some misunderstanding of this complexity of course was inevitable when this first became a public issue, but by now it's clear that misunderstanding is supported by a conscious program of propaganda. Like the claim that the world "hasn't warmed since 1998", which was later modified to "the world hasn't warmed *significantly* since 1998," and which will soon become "the world has actually cooled since 2016". The problem with those 1998 comparisons is that they picked the hottest year ever by far as their *baseline*. This doesn't happen by accident; it happens as a result of a conscious and sophisticated attempt to mislead.
So yeah, it's beyond the point where these kinds of objections are worth taking seriously. Science is hard, but you can manufacture bullshit out of thin air. If you don't like the fact that people are ignoring you, join the flat-Earthers and perpetual motionists.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Most people who consider themselves to be morally upright will become amazingly lazy once any degree of actual sacrifice is warranted.
For example, nobody wants to stand up and take action to hold their elected officials accountable. They all want someone else to do it for them.
Same is true for climate change. They don't want to do anything costly or hard. So instead they engage in amazing mental gymnastics to justify that nothing needs doing, and that doing something might actually be harmful.
It's how we're wired, I guess.
Oh, a *physicist* is telling us the climatologists are making it all up. Not based on data, of course, merely on the phrasing of some leaked emails (never mind that those "climategate" scientists were thoroughly cleared by *eight* independent investigations).
And again the old accusation of vast amounts of money tempting the scientists (though all the scientists ever see is a moderate salary), while desperately ignoring the *far* vaster sums thrown around by fossil fuel industries, who have already been caught suppressing research and bribing scientists.
Yet deniers eat it up, literally denying the decades of scientific data they don't like, insisting they *must* be falsified somehow by a global conspiracy against all of us - yet never able to produce any data of their own...
Whilie the tactics of the pseudo-skeptics certainly have borrowed heavily from the Creationists (and the tobacco company-funded pseudoscientists), the intent isn't really to tap into belief that AGW is some sort of religious heresy. Rather, it taps into two streams; the tendencies of certain groups, particularly in conservative circles, to adopt a sort of kneejerk contrarianism to anything that requires a significant shift in the way society thinks, and in part of pure selfishness (i.e. I don't want to have to pay more for gas).
Note that not just conservatives are guilty of contrarianism. You see similar views among antivaxxers, who are often liberal or left-leaning.
For the pseudo-skeptics, having identified the audience they need to convince, it's simply a matter of tapping into the contrarianism via the classic path; associating the science with a "Liberal agenda". It probably hasn't helped that some of the chief advocates of AGW on the public stage have been liberals like Al Gore. This gives the pseudo-skeptics the target they need. When you couple that with a general Libertarian-style of anti-regulation, in which any attempt to price carbon will immediately lead to cries of government interference, well, you have a perfect mix; AGW is a Liberal lie whose sole purpose is to increase the power of the State. Finally throw in the pseudo-science itself; find a few like-minded scientists in related fields, get them to write articles in friendly papers, go on speaking tours and the like, and when they are inevitably critiqued, declare those critiques as attacks by the evil liberal scientific cabal.
Again, this was all worked out a very long time ago when the Creationists began their own attacks on science. Tap into inherent contrariarnism in certain groups, attach nefarious motives (those evolutionists are trying to get rid of God), and throw in a few friendly scientists (Michael Behe, for instance, the intellectual forebearer of Frank Spencer), concoct some scientific sounding word salads, and voila, you have your Creationist attack on science.
The AGW pseudo-skeptic community is also progressing towards the Creationists final tactic; accepting just enough of the science not to look utterly absurd. For Creationists, this was the creation of Intelligent Design, for AGW pseudo-skeptics it involves memes like "climate is always changing", or the newer "well yes, it is warming up, maybe we have something to do with it, maybe we don't, but we shouldn't do anything about it and instead should deal with the effects:.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
Why would you believe the Bible more than, say, Greek myth, Nordic paganism, or heck, an even older religion like Hinduism or Zoroastrianism?
And who said the Bible doesn't have motives attached to it? The entire book of Leviticus is about a pack of religious laws whose major purpose appears to have been social control. Seriously, do you think a law banning having sexual intercourse with your menstruating wife has no motive?
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
that, as history has repeatedly shown, the political left loves to kill anybody who disagrees.
See: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, National Socialist German Workers Party, etc.
It's always the Marxists... Mao, Pol Pot, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini (headed socialist party before creating mutant socialism AKA fascism which is just indirect socialism via puppet corporations) ...
Also see Big Tobacco's decades-long war on research into the dangers of tobacco smoke and nicotine, or the more recently revealed sugar industry's war on research showing the dangers of refined sugars to human health.
Creationism was probably the first really sophisticated propaganda war on science, but it has inspired several later pseudo-scientific propaganda wars. Creationism's intentions were more to protect Christianity from the perceived threat that if science could provide answers to the life we see today, it was going to chip away at the edifice of Theism until Atheism reigned supreme. I'd also argue that for at least some branches of Protestant Evangelism, there was the more real threat that the vast amount of social control those churches wielded being undermined if they were forced to accept that vast swathes of the Bible became understood as being metaphorical, and not literal.
The story is a bit different for the tobacco, sugar, and fossil fuel industries. For them, a general acceptance of science has material costs. People reducing sugar consumption would lead to significant drops in profits. Of course, we know just how much damage the defeat of the tobacco companies has cost their investors. As for the fossil fuel industry, well it's the biggest beast of all. The entire global economy, and some of the greatest accretions of wealth ever known to humanity, are tied up in the continued exploration, extraction and use of hydrocarbons. If there is a significant shift to alternative energy sources, the fossil fuel industry will find itself a lot poorer for it, with the long-term outlook not exactly healthy.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
The precise CO2 sensitivity figure hasn't been nailed down - but we know with *very high* confidence it's well above zero.
The fact that the globe has been warming *is* black and white, because *we can see it warming!* Record land temperatures again and again, huge increases in ocean heat content, 50,000 year old ice sheets melting, sea levels rising - how much more black and white can you get? Are you still waiting for final confirmation from a burning bush??
So a leg of your argument is that "this is what Nazi Germany and Russia engaged in". You lost it right there. And starting your argument with "I am a thermal engineer" is the same as saying, "I have some facility with math based models [maybe], but I have no expertise at all in climate science, observations, modeling or predictions, however here is my uninformed opinion..." We might as well take Jill Stein's (Green party presidential candidate) opinion on global warming, she's an MD, you know, and must be smart.
One of the hallmarks of conspiracy theories is that they imagine huge numbers of people to act in ways that contradict their own interests, and for them to all do it with perfect (or near-perfect) levels of secrecy.
The idea that there's more money to be made shilling against burning petroleum than there is shilling for it is simply farfetched. And leaving that aspect out of it for the moment, what scientists want more than anything is to see the scientific consensus overturned. When that happens it's like a gold strike: everyone rushes to the new fields and tries to stake his claim.
Once upon a time there was something called the "Central Dogma of Molecular Biology" (it was actually called the "central dogma"): DNA makes RNA, and RNA makes proteins. Except then Howard Temin and David Baltimore discovered reverse transcriptase, which explained how RNA from retroviruses were able to alter host DNA. Their reward for finding an exception to the dogma? A Nobel Prize, and a brand new area for research and technological development. Reverse transcriptase made the highly sensitive and accurate PCR test possible.
Any scientist who can conclusively disprove AGW would be able to dine out on that for the rest of his life. He would go down in history as one of the greatest benefactors of the human race. Most importantly, everyone would think he was waaay smarter than the other scientists.
People don't understand the function of scientific consensus. It doesn't represent a final version of the Truth; it represents a division between things statements that can be stipulated for the time being without recapitulating the entire lie of evidence (e.g. that matter is made up of atoms) and things that require citation of specific evidence (e.g. that there are stable elements with atomic numbers > 118).
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
That religious meme is mainly confined to evangelicals and southern baptists in the US. It's not their own dogma, it was deliberately fed to them by politicians. Many other Christian sects use the same passages to argue god gave us ownership of the natural world and therefore we are responsible for keeping it in working order. At no point does god say "Don't worry, if you screw up this planet I will replace it"..
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Have you seen any sign that the Roman Catholics don't believe in birth control? They may consider it a sin to practice it, but they believe in it as a fact.
You need to distinguish between what someone believes to be a fact and what they consider to be a moral or ethical good (or evil). The two can be nearly orthogonal. If the church didn't believe in birth control, they would probably be less active in arguing against it.
Thus, the Roman Catholic church not having the attitude towards the practice of birth control that you believe proper is not a sign that they have an unscientific disbelief in it. Until Ethics, Psychology, and Sociology become real sciences the church's current attitude is not unscientific. If they do, perhaps it will be able to adapt to them, also.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.