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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.
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