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National Geographic Releases Alarming Climate Change Movie 'Before the Flood' On YouTube (youtube.com)
dryriver writes: National Geographic's Climate Change movie "Before The Flood," featuring actor-activist Leonardo DiCaprio, can now be viewed freely on Youtube. One of the most interesting points in the movie comes at around the 23 minute mark. At 23 minutes, scientist Michael E. Mann, famous for co-discovering the "hockey stick graph" via eigenvector based climate field reconstruction (CFR), recounts how media like the Wall Street Journal demonized him for his research, how he received death threats from unknown sources, how Congress grilled him about whether his scientific methods are credible, and how he even received an envelope in the mail with strange white powder in it. The movie is worth watching because it shows very clearly that a) man-made climate change is happening and that b) the negative effects of climate change are already impacting many areas of the world.
The problem conservatives have is that they've let the liberals own the issue. So of course liberals will come up with some giant government solution. Rather than come up with some small government solutions, conservatives chose science denial. Once the science got to be more certain, they doubled down. It's beyond debate that it is a thing that is happening and we're the root cause, but they've tripled down. There's no way for them to back down now without losing face and pissing off donors.
Unfortunately the demographics of Slashdot are no longer dominated by what we'd call "nerds". In this case, articles about certain hotbutton issues for right wing conservatives are very obviously flooded by certain external groups trying to influence opinion or at the very least talk so much and so loudly that they drown out any rational debate. Captcha: "invasion"
No, it's called AGW alarmism. Climate changes. It has changed. It will change in the future. How much of it is MAN MADE is the speculative non-scientific bullshit that we, as skeptics and protectors of the scientific method, are trying to stamp out.
No scientist with any SHRED of credibility will take the Al Gore/DiCaprio finger-wagging approach to climate change. We have politicized this phenomenon and its related effects to the point that ANY evidence to the contrary of the AGW cult is considered heresy and should be met with Puritanical stake-burning by those who "know the science is settled."
Observable reality is that climate changes. Observable historical records is that it has been hotter and colder than it is now, even in the blip of man's existence on this earth. So pardon me if I don't fucking cow-tow to the AGW cultists who consider us all "destroyers of the planet." This planet's survived worse. And since we're not killing it, it'll survive at least until the Sun explodes.
So if you are going to intertwine science and politics like that, in ways that will invariably lead to the needless suffering of many millions of people if you are wrong, what happens if you are wrong?
Indeed. You've got two areas here. People claim the problem is so huge that all means become justified. So there's a tendency towards eco-fascism. But to be clear, a tendency as most environmentalists are genuinely nice people. However, one has to be careful how these things get hijacked, just like, I'm sure it is fine for a good government to spy on people in order to catch terrorists with dirty bombs, as the threat is just too big, but those spying powers can be hijacked. So that's the political side of it. Back in 1970 you already had Ecologist magazine talking about the population bomb, and back then you also had films like Zero Population Growth (ZPG) doing a narrative on the totalitarian dystopia, which the population bomb view, could imply. And besides, in climate change, there's been a tendency to polarise the issues, often as "big oil" versus the "little eco-friendly guy". But how much do wind farms cost to build? Billions. And who benefits from building them? All sorts of people, including big gas. Because you need gas to backup the wind. So is it really big oil v. little guy? No. There's lots of vested interests all round. And that's fine, because big infrastructure means big money. So there is a lot at stake.
The other area then is the science itself. Here they invented the term "denialist" simply to mask the basic truth that the science cannot know the future climate of the planet. It is unknowable. Science has some wonderful methods. And often they can't be used because the thing you are studying doesn't allow them to be used. For example, if I was studying nutrition, I would lock people in a cage and feed different groups different things all their lives, and see the outcomes. Oh wait, that's against human rights. Can't use that method. So the kinds of rigorous methods you can use to smash atoms and crush concrete, you can't use to study humans. So we use other softer methods which require more inference and guess-work with poor quality data. Likewise, we can't study the climate in a "let's bombard a few Earths with different gasses and rays" way. So we use a lot of modelling. Climate science is one of the biggest for use of computer simulations, I gather. But because this natural vagueness runs counter to the "it is settled" claim, they have to call people "denialists". That's like someone calling me a "dog-hater" when I complain to the owner that their dog ran straight across a park and chased me and bit me. It masks the fact that they were not in control of their dog. So I'm the "dog hater".
The real issue here is trust. We naturally trust the organisations which are supposed to be the sources of knowledge, and socially, if you're a scientist, you have to trust your profession and trust your colleagues and a lot of this goes by reputation and power-structures. They are funding you, deciding if you get funding, and y'all have to work together. And the point is to uphold standards. But there are issues around the basic vagueness of some kinds of data and the way certain views become established and accepted simply in an evolutionary way, that ideas compete and by accident some become more prominent, and sure, science's validity is that it is self correcting, however, the big point here is that self correction takes time.
There are cases where we know that self-correction took 50 or 60 years. It is related to human lifespan. So that is the risk. Yeah, we have to act, given the current knowledge, and, you can't magic away the risk that in 50 years the knowledge will be quite different. So sure, you "can't wait", but just be honest and admit that in 50 years, the view can be wrong. So don't stand in the way of self-correction. Stop calling people "denialists".
Calling anyone who voices criticism a "denialist" is a sure way to interfere with science's ability to self correct. Once you go down that route, it stops being science.
Now, does anyone have a link to those charts which show the models continue to run much hotter than the real climate?
My biggest argument thus far is that so far I've seen absolutely NOTHING on the policy side which has a reasonable chance at doing anything other than marginally at the edges. The solution to this problem is not going to come from attempting to modify human behavior by carrot and stick. Sure, it can help but it's not going to solve the problem. The solution is going to come from some technical advancement that is cost effective for people to use vs what they already do now.
Why is he letting National Geographic spread these unpatriotic facts?!!!
He should be more like Florida Governor Rick Scott, who banned state employees from using the term "global warming".
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Mathematics is not an art. It's a way of proving truth and actualities. The solving of problems might take on an "art form" or people that solve at high levels might be considered "an artist" in mathematics, but that doesn't make it art. Mathematics can prove or disprove the science. You seem to be confusing "pure mathematics" with actual mathematics. Big difference.
.02C then later said the tolerance for correctness of that claim was ± .1C. That means that there is absolutely no chance that the number they claimed is accurate. That's mathematics and there is no evolving model of it that would change to make that number being any where close to being correct. So when someone shouts that from the mountain top and then ignores the questioning of how their math doesn't add up, I am going to believe that person is full of shit, mathematically speaking.
That's why I believe the group that pushes AGW ignores math because it disproves many of their claims. In 2014, I believe, Nasa and Noaa claimed it was the warmest year ever by
Science is never settled. It's always open to re-evaluation upon presentation of new evidence.
You don't seem to understand what "settled" means. "Settled" doesn't mean that new evidence is rejected; it means we've reached the point where the burden of proof is clearly on one side of a question.
If you invent a perpetual motion machine, a physicist isn't obliged to consider your position carefully. He just says, "That violates conservation of energy." and he's done. This is useful, and indeed necessary feature of the way science works; otherwise scientists would spend all their time re-litigating well-established results because some crackpot had a brainstorm.
Nonetheless it is possible to mount a credible attack on settled science. Retroviruses turned the whole "central dogma of molecular biology" on its head. Yes, they actually called it that. And there are serious attempts at overturning conservation of momentum using quantum theory. An attack on a well-established theory has to be narrow in its specific claims and impeccably supported. If it succeeds, then the burden of proof is subsequently altered.
We've reached the point where it's unreasonable to demand scientists spend their disproving your beliefs about what is happening to climate and why. It doesn't mean you can't attack the theory of anthropogenic climate change, you just do it from a point where the burden of proof is on you.
The burden of proof is on those who aren't funded, because there's nothing to be gained from the outcome if the answer isn't "yes, it's happening and it's accelerating." You're biased, so there's no reason to even talk to you about re-analysis. If you were proven wrong, you would fight tooth and nail until you had no option but to say, "But I'm still right" and fade into the background, so as not to be noticed admitting defeat. I'm NOT saying you would be. I'm saying that's how you fight an argument - like every other Human. There's nothing bad in that; the only bad that comes from it is biased output. Collective biased output combined with uneducated reading of "proof" only grows the biased culture, if you will. The only thing that can happen to prove you wrong is impossible. We're in a warming trend (actually overdue, given the rock and ice records). If it warms because of Humans, you're right. If it warms without Human impact, you're right. Either way, you're right. Reality is a bit different than a biased opinion that leaves you with a feeling of superiority and "everyone agrees with me". That's embellished far too much - everyone and superiority are black-and-white feelings and positions. The reality is that you're like other Humans - you have many biases, but the ones that are relevant in my point in this comment are anchoring bias, confirmation bias, attentional bias, the "cheerleader effect", you definitely have the "bias blind spot", clustering illusion bias, continued influence effect, conservatism effect (you're male; that's almost forced; hell, I have that one but I make efforts to overcome it to remain scientific), expectation bias.... Ok I'm going to stop there. I'm sick of wasting my time because you're not even reading.
This is all overshadowed by hyperbolic discounting. Good luck getting rid of that.
http://www.mprnews.org/story/2...
"Climate One program at the Commonwealth Club of California, recorded Oct. 21, 2016. Greg Dalton, moderator." 7:58+
"Truthfully...white people are the problem"
I'm curious in what context such a statement (applying any other ethnicity, or special interest group) could be uttered without the speaker immediately (& rightly) being castigated and socially outcast?
Let's see:
"Truthfully...black people are the problem"
"Truthfully...gays are the problem"
"Truthfully...jews are the problem"
And one wonders how the "Climate Change" message doesn't seem to resonate with the majority of Americans?
Perhaps patronizing racism *isn't* the kind of thing with which one builds consensus?
-Styopa