156 Climate Opinions
I hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving. To celebrate, I wanted to share a topic that sparked a Facebook argument involving most of my extended family. This was the spark:
That’s right, claiming that science literacy matters for politicians is a controversial statement. Want to see the effects in action? Try to listen to unscientific arguments against climate change and not cringe:
During the discussion I made the point that “Your poor understanding of climate change is not an argument against it” which was of course a highly offensive personal attack. I don’t understand relativity, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true either. Here’s the thing, once multiple experiments have verified a principle it is no longer a matter of opinion. If you want to refute it, spend the requisite years in academia and research and try to find evidence to back up your opinion. Maybe you will find what you want and overturn the overwhelming scientific consensus, or maybe you’ll realize that you were relying on irrelevant rhetoric. Remember:
These climate deniers even admit they aren't scientists!
MITCH
So what? They have the right to an opinion.
ROB
When you're flying, does the captain ask for opinions about how to land?
MITCH
I don't see what-
ROB
Have you published a peer-reviewed study?
MITCH
No
ROB
THEN YOU DON'T GET TO LAND THE AIRPLANE!
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Unfortunately, as a species we’re reactive. Humanity will rarely get around to making big changes until some sort of crisis occurs.
What is it they say? “You have a right to your own opinions, but not to your own facts.”
Climate has always changed through the ages and now it *may* be changing again. Mankind may be having some slight effect but it’s impossible to quantify. I suggest that you read some of John Casey’s work on the subject; he predicts a new Little Ice Age for the near future, and his past predictions have often been correct.
Thanks for your comment, but that is exactly what I’m talking about. That guy? Not a climate scientist (read it from his own site). He seems to enjoy inventing fake (for profit) “scientific” institutions, then naming himself to head them as a way to create credentials and send out press releases that occasionally dupe politicians. “Relationship Cycle Theory” is something he invented which has been completely rejected by mainstream science.
“his past predictions have often been correct.”. I’m pretty good with coin flips, I get it right about 50% of the time.
Even a broken clock is right twice a day
Not if it’s a 24hour clock ;o)
What some people don’t understand is that science is not a game of deification. No matter how smart, well respected, or successful somebody is, there ideas aren’t taken into account until they present evidence in the form of consistent and repeated experimentation. An opinion of a scientist is just that, an opinion. But if the scientist does research behind it, it becomes a fact.
Well, fact is a little severe, but “theory” would fit well, or maybe “proven”.
The problem with “Climate Change” scientists is that they dismiss possible evidence that might suggest that it might not be as big of a deal as people make it out to be. Not to say there isn’t sound evidence for climate change, but there seems to be evidence that the rate of change might be blown out of proportion. Also, I am a little leery of the politics surrounding this. It seems that there is a quick answer for anyone who disagrees with the science, and that should not be right. If the science that can refute it or at least provide information is available, should it not be pursued with the same fervor and zeal? Again, if I am wrong (and it wouldn’t be the first time) please tell me, and I am not decrying that climate change isn’t real, but just that it may not be as correct.
Yes, it is a difficult question of how to deal with people who oppose scientific findings for ideological reasons. As soon as a scientific principle is muddied by politics then we have this problem. How would you demonstrate to a creationist that evolution is a scientific principle that is the foundation of all biology and medicine? They will refuse the evidence to preserve their opinion. The scientific case for climate change is not controversial, it is the political battle between environmentalists and industry which has tried to make the facts controversial.
There’s also the flip side to consider, where scientists decide that it’s ‘in the world’s interest’ to act upon something, and to do this they exaggerate the actual results in order to get a reaction. The ice caps melting causing all land on Earth to become flooded? There’s not enough H2O on Earth to make that happen. Flooding? Yes, we’d lose a lot of coastline territory if the ice caps completely melted. But there’d still be plenty of land left over. Y2K is an example of exaggeration that’s already happened (and did essentially nothing that was foretold).
Every time these exaggerations happen, science loses some credibility, and it’s not politicians causing it.
Excellent point. I feel like most people are already past the “scientist who cried wolf” point, so they disregard science altogether.
“where scientists decide that it’s ‘in the world’s interest’ to act upon something, and to do this they exaggerate the actual results in order to get a reaction. The ice caps melting causing all land on Earth to become flooded?” Interesting comment, but can you tell me the name/s of the scientist or reference what you are actually talking about? It wouldn’t take much beyond basic maths to show the melting ice caps wouldn’t cover the land so they wouldn’t make very good scientists. I presume you’re mixing it up with the creationists’ flood?
Do you really believe the vast majority of climate scientists are exaggerating? That would be scientific fraud. That’s a pretty serious accusation. You should be able to back up your your assertions. Most scientists aren’t political (in the activist sense), and would be annoyed by your suggestion. Scientists are in competition to see who’s work is better, and more relevant. They are constantly digging and critiquing each other’s work. Exaggeration wouldn’t last very long before it was exposed. Science is not politics, where lying and exaggeration are common. By the way, I have never heard any scientist say the earth be be covered by water. You must be exaggerating. I call straw man.
Thank you for taking time out to answer the response. I wasn’t, however, referring to the people who reject science outright, but those who, using sound science in the same field, come to a different conclusion and are shunned. We see this with AIDS research. There was an article in Time, I believe, about a man who didn’t buy the base theories on AIDS and HIV. Not to say there isn’t sound evidence for the link, but this man claimed that risk viruses stay with the risk population, while HIV and AIDS did not. People have this deadpan look when this man is mentioned, almost as if they have passed him off as a lunatic. I agree that politicians should not use personal belief as evidence, but we are sadly seeing a rise of theocrats in office.
Ah, Time, always my first port of call for serious science.
That made me laugh!
So it’s getting warmer? Every study I’ve read about was using flawed modeling and making absolutist statements from it. Then there’s the fact that my inner scientist wants to go burn something down every time I hear the words ‘consensus’ or ‘settled science’ used to discredit anyone who presents a dissenting view — many of whom ARE climate scientists.
Short of going to war, how precisely does the first world expect to compel the second and third world nations to essentially dismantle their entire industrial system? If you think third world nations are bad now, wait until they have no industrial capacity whatsoever. Polluting technologies may be bad for the planet but they cannot AFFORD anything else. Some of those nations whose economic and industrial systems must be destroyed to eliminate pollution have nuclear weapons.
As a third point, people have been panicking pretty much like clockwork every 30-40 years or so about climate changes. Back in the 1970s the panic was about the possibility of an incipient ice age. Oddly enough, that never happened. Each time they panic, the intensity of the panic increases. There’s a strong correlation to how intense media coverage fueling the panic was each time. I recall seeing an archived newspaper article from the early 1800s about how all the ice was melting, and soon we’d have to deal with warmer temperatures worldwide. And the ice came back.
Lastly, people are panicking about changing climates, but they’re all making the same fundamental assumption — why is climate change bad? The world used to be warmer than it is now, and not only are we not extinct as a result of it, many of those warm periods have rightly been described as golden ages. The Middle East and North Africa used to be gardens. People used to live, even building large (for the time) cities, in northern Siberia.
Good point, there is a gap in how we communicate science to the public – many of them confuse terms like theory and hypothesis. Consensus is a word used to explain the field of climatology of which more than 90% attribute their findings to man-made climate change. However, the your second and final argument has no bearing on the phenomenon of climate change itself, what to do about it is a separate issue.
My second point and final points are relevant, in that what to do about climate change is inseparably bound up in the matter unless all the furor amounts to ‘nothing we can do about it.’
I have no doubt that sooner or later some politician will decide to ‘do something’ about climate change, and with little to no understanding of the processes, have the military go do something like dust the poles with carbon black or set off a series of clean thermonuclear detonations to elevate the amount of particulate matter in the atmosphere, all in an effort to ‘do something’ about global warming/climate change.
Science does not exist in a vacuum (aside from the odd rocket scientist, heh) and when politicians get involved it can get very messy. What happens when a highly polluting nation decides that they cannot afford clean industry and refuses to agree to a treaty? That country by itself could conceivably produce enough pollution to make the green technologies of all of its neighbors (possibly the entire planet) a moot point.
The only way to stop a large, relatively self-sufficient nation from polluting all it likes is to go to war. Such a war, particularly if the nation in question proves to have a secret nuclear, chemical or biological arsenal could easily be worse for the world than that nation’s pollution. Even without the problem of WMDs, can you morally justify murder to enforce poverty on thousands or millions of people?
As for my last point in my post above, politicians and the non-scientist public are not seeing the climate change issue as pure science, they are seeing it as it is being presented to them — the end of the world. As such, once technology becomes available (and some already is) to directly tinker with the climate, there’s the risk that they will tinker based on alarmist predictions rather than solid science. There are far too many prophets of doom in the AGW camp, despite the fact that their best models cannot accurately predict much of anything.
Wow. You really said “prophets of doom in the AGW camp.” You should read everything you just said above that line, and tell me who’s prophesying doom. Alarming consequences of our actions have zero bearing on the validity of the science. Going to war? Alarmist. Dismantling industry? Alarmist. Un-freaking-believable.
Excellent points, Bergman. Too bad Kyle didn’t really respond to most of them.
This sounds like kettle logic. At first, you’re saying it doesn’t exist, but in the end you’re saying it does exist, it’s not a problem. It sounds like the people that say we still need to study it, then when they acknowledge the problem, well, it’s too late to do anything about it, so let’s not try. Anything to avoid trying to solve the problem, I guess, because vested interests in avoiding the solution would be devastated if we tried harder to deal with it.
As it is, we’ve still been having the hottest years on record in many sequential years. Arctic ice has been on a downward trend for 30+ years, and there’s no reason to believe it’s going to abate. We get occasional minor lulls because of volcanic eruptions, but when they clear out, it’s worse than before. We’re at a 40% increase in carbon dioxide since the beginning of the industrial revolution and growing, and somehow we’re to believe it’s not going to be any kind of substantial problem.
There are dissenting climate scientists, but they’re quite a minority, a percent or two.
You really think that we’d have to go to war to solve this problem (which would really make it worse)? Why do you assume that industrial systems would have to be dismantled? There have been treaties in the past where pressing problems were solved internationally. The Montreal Protocol is one. Stockholm Convention.
You think the ice is going to come back soon, when we’re at a peak of atmospheric carbon for a million years? When, as far as we can tell, climate has been changing far more rapidly than most eras, short of the periods of mass extinctions? Do you think the deserts are going to bloom with more heat? Most of those climactic changes are due to relatively slow wobbles in the earth’s orbit, over a few tens of thousands of years, not hundreds of years.
The article from the 1800s I mentioned (no available URL I can find) noted a loss of ice in Greenland and sea ice that was more severe than what we have now. The writer speculated about the impact such warming would have globally. And then the ice came back.
In the 1970s, people were worrying about an imminent ice age that would destroy civilization as we know it. They segued almost directly into worrying about global warming. Which never materialized the way the models said it would. Then suddenly everybody changes their buzz words to ‘climate change’ instead of ‘global warming’ while talking about the same alterations to the planet. It sounds to me like they’re hedging, since a few record cold winters would make them look like loons if they were going on about global warming, but climate change is a LOT more vague.
Those problems, taken together with the way the AGW folks can make claims that it’s settled science so they don’t need to listen to dissenting voices or even dissenting research results makes me wonder if we’re listening to scientists…or high priests?
Citing an article from the 1800s which turned out to be scientifically inaccurate is a terrible attempt to ‘poison the well’, a logical fallacy you have used several times.
In any case, “a few record cold winters” here would not mean much considering that during any particular winter it is also summer in the opposite hemisphere. Your arguments demonstrate a narrow scope regarding how science is conducted and vetted, when worldwide temperature and carbon measurements recorded by thousands of international scientists independent of US politics have all independently verified global climate change.
But if you can provide some evidence that it’s really getting cooler, I’m sure they’d give you a Nobel for ending this unnecessary climate panic.
Poisoning the well? Apparently you read a different post than what I posted. That or you’re committing your own fallacies in the form of straw men.
Giving you the benefit of the doubt, perhaps you’re so used to arguing a certain position that when confronted with a different argument, you have trouble changing gears?
I’m not arguing that climate change does not exist, yet you persist in ‘refuting’ arguments I never made.
Perhaps you should address the arguments I made, rather than the ones you wish I had made?
Yes, poisoning the well. “Scientists have been wrong in the past!” is an attempt to discredit modern science, but in reality has no effect on the evidence for climate change.
I’ve been reading your webcomic from the beginning, but when people start using the phrase “climate change deniers”…as if they were Holocaust deniers…then I’m out.
Too bad.
That’s sad, but thank you for reading. We all have an irrational opinion that we will defend – how come you could enjoy reading about all of them until we touched on one of yours?
Did you know there are Flat Earth societies still exist? I do classify these people along with moon landing deniers, anti-evolutionists, and yes, Holocaust deniers.
“We all have an irrational opinion that we will defend – how come you could enjoy reading about all of them until we touched on one of yours?”
That’s like saying, “We were having such a nice conversation…why did you get all upset when I called you a Nazi?”
Not being entirely convinced of AGW is hardly an “irrational opinion”…and I’m speaking as someone who agrees that AGW probably *is* happening, and that humans are at least partially to blame. My main problem with global warming zealots is, well, their zealotry: they seem determined to come off as smug, know-it-all jerks. (Protip: Stephen Colbert is a *comedian*, not a scientist.)
Climate change is a well-known, potentially serious problem. So why isn’t belief in it getting any traction? Probably because the people pushing it are doing a very poor job in convincing others — and, no, not because nonbelievers are all a bunch of idiots, but because of the awful attitude so many scientists take (see above). The AGW scientists are probably right, but they suck at winning friends and influencing people.
“Did you know there are Flat Earth societies still exist? I do classify these people along with moon landing deniers, anti-evolutionists, and yes, Holocaust deniers.”
Oh, you’re not really going *there*, are you? Saying that AGW skeptics are equivalent to *Flat Earthers*? And moon landing deniers, and every other member of the crackpot crowd? That’s not an argument, that’s a nasty, feral rant. You’re better than that, aren’t you?
Guess not.
Calling someone who opposes climate change a “denier” is not the same as calling them a Nazi. You are right though, how can you emphasize scientific ideas to people politically opposed? But why is climate change so different a science that everyone feels entitled to an opinion about it. Would you disagree rocket scientists about their launch profile? Tell Stephen Hawking that his black hole theory is flimsy? If you agree AGW is happening, then that’s good enough for me.
If you want to discuss further, please use the Carbon Dating Facebook or Twitter. Thanks!
“Climate change is a well-known, potentially serious problem. So why isn’t belief in it getting any traction? Probably because the people pushing it are doing a very poor job in convincing others ” I think we need to look not at the scientists but at the huge opposition from vested interests, both commercial and political and the representation of the issues in the media.
The influence of the industries which are major causers of global warming is sometimes subtle, but they also unfortunately command huge political clout and resources way beyond the scientists working in this area. it’s a one-sided battle, but hopefuly the climate change scientists will turn out to be David’s against the Goliath’s they are up against.
A lot of the responses here show the effectiveness of the media over real scientific evidence.
The biggest issue with climate change is the “scientist who cries wolf” to get funding. Who is going to fund a study about a 10% ice cap change over the next 20 years? No, the guy claiming the ice caps may be completely gone in 20 years gets the research grant. The public doesn’t know enough to dissect the abstract and get alarmed. Finally, with geologic and astrophysical processes that operate on the order of 1,000’s of years how can you make a causal link based on 10 or 20 years of climate data?
Where does the funding come from for those who oppose climate change? Apply the same logic.
That is where the politics comes in. You have environmentalists, anti-capitalists, animal rights groups, etc… where the man-made climate change fits their narrative, so those studies get promoted, and follow ups get funded. You have 1 maybe 2 studies on the other side that are boring, with ho hum conclusions that get buried in the white noise of the political arena. As Mark Twain once said, “there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.” The dirty secret of science is that if you know ahead of time where you want to end up, you can set up your experiment and data analysis to get you there. That’s been the biggest problem with corporately funded research.
While your argument is convincing, it seems like you’re relying on a couple flaws. First, you
quoting a 19th century author with the intentions of a 21st century global warming. Second, this doesn’t explain why scientists aren’t being bought out by some of the richest people in the world, the climate change deniers. Lastly, it seems your only argument is: they`re lying. It’s hard to argue against that someone’s lying, but it doesn’t seem like you have any conclusive evidence.
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/paleoclimatology-data/datasets/ice-core. Ice core studies have enabled us to discover accurately past CO2 levels, as well as shown a long area of data. This gives us a lot more than 10 to 20 years as data.
I’m going to have to counterpoint that ‘spend years in academia’ thing. Information is widely available, somebody with passion, and time, and even slight resources CAN gain enough knowledge to know what they are talking about.
Let’s talk about what makes a worthy scientific argument.
Experiment logs are a qualification.
Theories drawn from near-certain principles are a qualification.
The ability to replicate results is a qualification.
The ability to resolve a theory with existing greater behavior models is a qualification.
A bona fide document from a socially empowered bureaucracy saying that you are Technically a Scientist™ is not a qualification.
ANYBODY can be right.