Global Warming Denial
- Thread starter medv4380
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It doesn't need to be a conspiracy if all these people think alike. If you'll indulge me for bringing up an off-topic event: Look at the Oscar nominations making everyone get the vapors. When the people protesting the lack of black actors and actresses being nominated are accused of saying that those Oscar voters are all in on some scheme to keep awards out of the hands of black actors, those accusers will turn around and say something along the lines of, "Well, they're all a bunch of old white men - they all think alike." That may be perfectly true, and I think it's very likely that all the scientists and politicians, and easily duped people all just think alike. They're all liberal ex-hippies or would-be hippies who embrace feelgood policies and soft environmentalism that they figure they'll never actually have to sacrifice for and get off on wagging their finger at other people. It's not a conspiracy if everyone agrees before there can even be a meeting.Silvanus said:
Oscar nominations are a subjective matter. For this to be false, the research and data itself-- countless studies, metastudies, thousands of datasets-- would need to be falsified, and every researcher and employee involved-- in the hundreds of thousands-- would have to be in on it. Thousands of pieces of sophisticated measuring equipment, across every continent, would have to be tampered with.LysanderNemoinis said:
medv4380 said:
No, the first statement simply doesn't follow. I explicitly said that cloud coverage and lowering irradiance from the sun was likely to be the primary contributor; aerosol use was merely one potential contributor, which you've latched onto. Aerosol increase has different impacts under different conditions (like anything); see below.
"Improperly worded"...? What did I word wrongly, exactly? I provided the studies, and paraphrased the findings accurately.medv4380 said:
The impact of the Pinatubo eruption-- and the effect of volcanic eruption on global temperature in general-- are well understood [http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/hazards/gas/climate.php], and do not contradict anything I've said. Simulated eruption has even been considered as a response to global warming [http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/cas/adai/papers/TrenberthDai_GRL07.pdf], though dismissed for the other harms they do.
You're making a claim which requires a grand conspiracy. You have to be willing to support that.medv4380 said:
I'd like to point out something more general in this that I've seen in more "denial of large claims" thingies on the internet.
It's simply this; you're asking questions. That's not the same as giving proof.
I see this kind of "X denial" type of arguing more often, and it seems to be (read: not is, but seems) a kind of arrogance and sureness in ones opinions which is not at all honestly concerned with finding answers. If you have genuine questions, that's fine, but the way these things are phrased don't seem at all to be just that. You've already made up my wind before you've asked those questions to actual climate scientists, instead posting them on a gaming forum as if those questions are proof. But they're not, that's not how engaging with science works.
Also, simply ignoring stuff because you say it's an ad hominem/ad populem/etc argument is by itself a logical fallacy. For example, calling out an expert on something is not by definition a fallacy, argument by authority, and therefor wrong. Everything should be judged on a case-by-case basis.
Anyway, content-wise Silvanus is already engaging this. But I would suggest that you don't use questions as proof and engage scientists genuinely. It's fine to have doubts, science thrives on questions, but that's not the same as doing what you're doing here.
It's simply this; you're asking questions. That's not the same as giving proof.
I see this kind of "X denial" type of arguing more often, and it seems to be (read: not is, but seems) a kind of arrogance and sureness in ones opinions which is not at all honestly concerned with finding answers. If you have genuine questions, that's fine, but the way these things are phrased don't seem at all to be just that. You've already made up my wind before you've asked those questions to actual climate scientists, instead posting them on a gaming forum as if those questions are proof. But they're not, that's not how engaging with science works.
Also, simply ignoring stuff because you say it's an ad hominem/ad populem/etc argument is by itself a logical fallacy. For example, calling out an expert on something is not by definition a fallacy, argument by authority, and therefor wrong. Everything should be judged on a case-by-case basis.
Anyway, content-wise Silvanus is already engaging this. But I would suggest that you don't use questions as proof and engage scientists genuinely. It's fine to have doubts, science thrives on questions, but that's not the same as doing what you're doing here.
Oh my. Desertphile is the first comment. And most of the related videos are Christopher Monkton.medv4380 said:
I'm probably going to have to watch this for the lulz alone.
From his links alone, however, I think a better counter-argument than I or anyone else in this thread could offer is "watch potholer54."
And, in fact, if you're going to tell people to watch an hour-long video just to understand your perspective, rather than explain yourself, then it seems appropriate to use someone else's videos as a rebuttal, as well.
However, there's one bit that I thought I'd address right now:
The headmaster's comment seems perfectly on-topic. You are asking me to put the opinions of largely laypeople above one of the strongest consensuses that we have to date. The notion is that more than 95% of the people in their relevant fields either are completely wrong about their own fields, yet you are not, or that they are conspiring to some end. And I struggle to think of a viable third option, because the idea that literally millions of people in these specific fields all happen to have the same wrong idea about the field, to the point that they have missed their own data, and published it so randoms on the internet can find them, unacceptable.Silvanus said:
The first assumption would be overwhelmingly arrogant, and I can't imagine anyone making it in any sort of good faith. The latter seems to be necessary. So let me ask: why is it that you think so many of the professionals disagree with you on their home turf? Even NASA disagrees with you, despite one cherry-picked NASA link being included in Michael's description box.
Let's not mince words. Why is the overwhelming opinion, held by the experts of the fields, the one that's wrong?
You are aware that it's not just thinking alike?LysanderNemoinis said:
It's also in the published articles in reputable journals right? Unlike say, Oscar voters having not even watched the films in question, climate scientists do actually have to know their field.
And hell, there was even the case of Richard Muller, a physicist who was skeptical of the data analysis and specifically the "Hockey Stick". So he did it himself, setting up the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperate Project(BEST) (Notably funded by the Koch brothers, who have somewhat a vested interest in a negative outcome for global warming). What he found was in good agreement with what had already been established. He actually changed his mind.
Genuinely suprised by the level of Global Warming denial on these forums, but I guess that fits in with the general science denial.
When there was still a lot of debate about the reason for the K/T extinction event, people often pointed to all sorts of apparently contradictory data in the fossil record of dinosaurs and other big land creatures, and many continue to argue against the evidence of asteroid impact based on having a philosophical dislike of catastrophism even to this day. The sensible scientists ignored the noise and fury around the big charismatic dinosaurs and focused instead on the simple and high volume data sets - like tiny boring marine snails and similar.
Global Warming is a "debate" I see in similar terms - many people are getting over-excited about the chaos of the data when looking at atmospheric weather patterns, which is pretty much THE most chaotic thing known to science so far, and they are somehow using that lack of predictability to claim that global warming doesn't exist at all! Again the sensible scientists will ignore all of this, and concentrate instead on the oceans - where some of the variability and chaos is less extreme than in the atmosphere, and the absorbtion of CO2 and increased acidity present a clearer picture like this -
Global Warming is a "debate" I see in similar terms - many people are getting over-excited about the chaos of the data when looking at atmospheric weather patterns, which is pretty much THE most chaotic thing known to science so far, and they are somehow using that lack of predictability to claim that global warming doesn't exist at all! Again the sensible scientists will ignore all of this, and concentrate instead on the oceans - where some of the variability and chaos is less extreme than in the atmosphere, and the absorbtion of CO2 and increased acidity present a clearer picture like this -
Well the whole problem with all this data is scope, our weather patterns are insanely chaotic and the changes span across hundreds to millions of years. Yet we are observing a very small fraction of it, we only had semi accurate global data collection for the last 50 years.
In a system of this size and inertia it is like measuring weather conditions for one nanosecond in a day and proclaim you have the entire picture... we aren't even close. Especially talking about stuff we only measured for a couple years, that is a highly irregular data point in a gigantic stirring pot of chaos.
And of course to top that all off we get political, financial and emotional investments in having one extreme result that can make someone happy, so they sell it as if they actually have a clue. Goes for both sides of the argument by the way.
In a system of this size and inertia it is like measuring weather conditions for one nanosecond in a day and proclaim you have the entire picture... we aren't even close. Especially talking about stuff we only measured for a couple years, that is a highly irregular data point in a gigantic stirring pot of chaos.
And of course to top that all off we get political, financial and emotional investments in having one extreme result that can make someone happy, so they sell it as if they actually have a clue. Goes for both sides of the argument by the way.
I'm am only asking for you to watch the video if you doubt the questions. I'm only asking you to answer the questions. I am fully willing accept anyone's video rebuttal of what I've said. I've yet to even find a single person willing to rebut my argument. If you really want to try here http://www.debate.org/debates/Video-Debate-Global-Warming-Denial/1/Something Amyss said:
There has been many times in the last century where the opinions held by many experts in the field where wholly wrong. The early half of the last century has the Ice Cream Cause Polio [http://www.ck12.org/earth-science/Correlation-and-Causation/rwa/Ice-Cream-Causes-Polio/] which nearly destroyed an entire industry.
Then there is the issue of the Mass of the Neutrino. Ray Davis provided the first evidence that the assumption of the neutrinos mass was wrong in the 50's. Rather than accept the data, or perform their own experiment the Astrophysics community merely mocked him for not being able to count the number of neutrinos correctly, and the quantum physics community didn't want to budge on the mass being nothing because heaven forbid another particle other than the Higgs Bosson be responsible for mass. It wasn't until the late 90's where another grad experiment with too many Phd's on the line did another experiment even attempt to verify the data. Nearly a half century after his experiments the mocking stopped, and he was given the nobel prize albeit at the end of his life.
So it is entirely possible, and has happened before for the whole of science to convince itself of something that is fundamentally wrong, and ignore all evidence to the contrary.
Why am I right? Provide an reasoned alternative to the questions I proposed, or prove that the data was processed incorrectly. If you can't then I'm left with only one reasoned response.
I'm not even interested in a video debate, or I'd put one up on YouTube. The reason I'm not interested in your video is you're not making a case for anything. Unless you made the video, I'm not debating you. I'm debating the guy whose video is up, and he's not here to argue. So then, what's the point? If you're going to argue with a video, I might as well respond in the same way. Should I just link potholer54's GW playlist here?medv4380 said:
More over, you haven't answered what I've actually put before you, so I have no good faith reason to believe you will address any further qualms.
Except it wasn't science that ran with the ice cream/polio link. Much like the "scientists believed in global cooling" in the 1970s, the source for this isn't scientific consensus, but popular culture, folk wisdom, etc. I'd give this to you if you could show overwhelming scientific consensus on the causal link, however. So do you have that evidence? Can you show me the mountain of published papers on the subject? I mean, I can't find them, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Since you're so sure this is the case, why don't you show me?
Do you have evidence, or are you just parroting something you saw on a website? Because by all appearance, you're trying to compare the opinions of laypeople with the scientific consensus of people within their fields. And that's kind of par for the course.
As far as Davis goes, the scientific community was skeptical until they did the math. There's this folk story that blows this out of proportion, and it's used by skeptics of everything from Global Warming to 9-11 to the "round" Earth, but it's as much myth as substance. This is the way science should work, for the record. We should not be accepting new data as fact until it can be verified. The problem with this comparison is that we have decades of work where the numbers are confirmed on global warming. "Science" accepted Davis' numbers, specifically because he had a solid mathematical basis.
Emphasis mine. Perhaps you should not only be willing to take rebuttal in video form, then; I have provided various studies and research, which are far better cited and authoritative.medv4380 said:
Videos are a very poor way to debate a complex scientific issue. They do not afford the details the appropriate depth and examination; they are not conducive to discussion and examination; they make poor, specious reasoning seem compelling, by knowing how to present it.
Videos are the politician or salesman's medium; studies are the scientist's.
I don't know how anyone educated can deny climate change.
And debating climate change on the internet is pointless because it inevitably leads to one thing. Climate change deniers are made to look like ignorant peasants, much like creationists. Often times they're the same, but not always.
Anyways, showing these people actual scientific data and evidence on climate change inevitably shows them just how shallow their understanding of the subject is. And that hurts their inflated egos and their sense of self worth. So instead of accepting the evidence and changing their mind after learning something new, they'll try to keep the conversation going forever because they simply can't admit that they're wrong. It's as if their entire life depends on them being right about that one thing they know nothing about. Their focus then shifts towards trying to prove how intelligent they are so they could keep their precious bubble from bursting. It doesn't work, naturally. But for irrational people like creationists, conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers it's all they have.
So just let them live in their bubble. Nothing will change their mind. Even if you manage to burst their bubble they'll simply try to rebuild it rather than explore what's on the outside.
And debating climate change on the internet is pointless because it inevitably leads to one thing. Climate change deniers are made to look like ignorant peasants, much like creationists. Often times they're the same, but not always.
Anyways, showing these people actual scientific data and evidence on climate change inevitably shows them just how shallow their understanding of the subject is. And that hurts their inflated egos and their sense of self worth. So instead of accepting the evidence and changing their mind after learning something new, they'll try to keep the conversation going forever because they simply can't admit that they're wrong. It's as if their entire life depends on them being right about that one thing they know nothing about. Their focus then shifts towards trying to prove how intelligent they are so they could keep their precious bubble from bursting. It doesn't work, naturally. But for irrational people like creationists, conspiracy theorists and climate change deniers it's all they have.
So just let them live in their bubble. Nothing will change their mind. Even if you manage to burst their bubble they'll simply try to rebuild it rather than explore what's on the outside.
This is probably true. For what it's worth, I provided studies on the off-chance that some undecided (or apathetic) soul might wander in. It's a very common attitude among those who aren't terribly invested that both sides of any major debate are essentially the same, and I'd like that attitude broken here if anywhere.Adam Jensen said:
How many hours did you spend making that 55 minute video?
Imagine the good you could have done had you spent that time doing something constructive. Imagine what you could have accomplished if you'd done something to help humanity instead of spending that time attempting to deny the truth.
At the risk of sounding rude, your video argument is suspiciously similar to the average Creationists denial argument against evolution. It comes across just as fallacious.
"Answer my questions or my counter-argument is right!"
That's not how it works.
Imagine the good you could have done had you spent that time doing something constructive. Imagine what you could have accomplished if you'd done something to help humanity instead of spending that time attempting to deny the truth.
At the risk of sounding rude, your video argument is suspiciously similar to the average Creationists denial argument against evolution. It comes across just as fallacious.
"Answer my questions or my counter-argument is right!"
That's not how it works.
They don't spend their time studying the sciences that deal with global warming. Even when I was pursuing a degree in environmental science (later switched to computer science), the actual science behind global warming only occasionally came up (granted, I spent most of my time taking ecology courses). I'd imagine people spending time in other fields like business, economics, or certain engineering fields may never come across it. I know at my university it would be incredibly easy to bypass all of it during the general electives, and that's at a reasonably well-respected university.Adam Jensen said:
And yeah, they could just look that stuff up, but how many people actually spend their free time reading academic journals in a field they have no formal education in? At that point, their opinion is probably just swayed by whatever politicians and semi-competent (at best) journalists they happen to hear or read, and at that point they can be exposed to all kinds of stupid yet well-articulated ideas that someone without enough background in the field could easily fall for.
This thread in particular seems to be a case of that. I seriously doubt the OP has any formal education in the science behind global warming (otherwise they wouldn't hold the position they do), despite possibly being well-educated in another subject. And their comment about "logical fallacies" really gives me the impression they've gotten most of their understanding of the subject from politicians, journalists, and random people on YouTube and forums rather than from reading the actual studies. Why should they trust us any more than that random guy on YouTube? Most of us probably have no more understanding of the subject than whoever the OP got their opinions from. We just know that we're on the side of practically every respectable scientist.
So yeah, probably best to not put too much effort into changing the OP's mind (especially since they haven't really done a great job interacting with those who challenged them). I've seen threads where the OP was genuinely curious about the science and was hoping someone could point them in the right direction. This is not one of those threads.
Or you aren't asking the right people. This is a video gaming forum. It's not even r/askscience on reddit. If you find us lacking, take into consideration the possibility that no one here is educated in any of the highly specialized fields all of which have converged on this one notion that is backed up by the data they've spent years gathering and analyzing. Before you talk about scientific links, consider that none of us here are knowledgeable enough to find such links or they're behind a paywall. I'm currently in university studying a particular subject that relies heavily on documentation. Thanks to my status as a student at my institution, I can easily access all that information. As an experiment, I abandoned all my ordained resources and used Google. It was very hard to find anything nearly as useful as I could using resources that the average person doesn't have.medv4380 said:
Back to the questions you've asked and the manner in which you're addressing everyone, this tactic is something I see far too often. Ask those who aren't particularly knowledgeable on the subject and then declare victory when they cannot effectively refute the questions. For example, I talk about Titanic a lot (look at my avatar), and unfortunately there's a conspiracy theory about it. Knowing as much as I know about the Titanic (which isn't even that much comparatively speaking), it's rapidly apparent to me how little the proponents of the theory know about the subject. They go to YouTube comment sections (when they aren't talking in echo chambers) to ask random people who haven't spent any appreciable time studying the subject shockingly ignorant questions and then declare victory because Xx420BlazeItxX can't effectively dissect the talking points. They don't go to places like Encyclopedia Titanica or email Dr. Robert Ballard, James Cameron, Parks Stephenson, Steve Hall, Mark Chirnside or Bruce Beveridge et al about any of it. Why? Because they know what answer they're gonna get and they don't wanna hear it.
What's the point I'm trying to make? Find someone who actually knows what they're talking about and challenge them. You'll most likely realize just how out of your depth you are. That's not necessarily an insult. It's a literal impossibility to study everything to an effective level. Climate science is highly complicated to levels that I fiercely doubt I'm aware of.
I think that is only a secondary reason. The real reason is that ideology comes first, and science which threatens one's own personal investment (monetary or egoistic) in the world must therefore be challenged. If you've ever argued with such people you'll see that it's impossible to win. They keep looking for reasons to defend their stake, and even when they know they've lost they refuse to acknowledge it or change the question.MysticSlayer said:
I was just going to lurk here but then I saw this and thought "Hey! I'm someone who knows what I'm talking about!" So without further ado...PainInTheAssInternet said:
You're going to first need to explain what that is (according to your own understanding, if we're to have a productive exchange here) and why you think it's significant.medv4380 said:
Is the evaporation rate the only influence on precipitation? Is increasing the evaporation rate the only result of global warming?
Let's cover some basic stuff about global warming and the greenhouse effect, and just thermodynamics in general.
First, you need to understand the relationship between heat, work, and temperature. Solar irradiance does work on certain gases in the atmosphere (these gases being called the greenhouse gases), and when work is done, heat is added. Because only some gases absorb radiation in the spectrum of the Sun's output, increasing the concentration of these gases will increase the work done per unit time by the Sun on the atmosphere, that is, more heat added.
Temperature is the flux of heat from a mass with more heat to a mass with less. If the temperature of a mass has increased, then the total heat of that mass has increased because more flux is being exchanged over the boundary between the mass and a sensor (be it a thermometer, a person's nerves, or an arbitrary test particle) when they are in thermal equilibrium.
Now the reason that this is significant is that when you're considering a gas, "heat" means the total kinetic energy of all of the molecules in the gas. When you increase the kinetic energy of a gas you increase the amount of work that it's capable of doing. In simple terms, that means that you've increased its tendency to "do stuff" and you're going to see more dynamical behavior in the gas, like convections, currents, transport phenomena, etc. In atmospheric physics, "dynamical behavior" means "weather", and weather events will do more work, that is to say that they will be more energetic. You get more precipitation with a warmer atmosphere because the water vapor in the atmosphere is more active, it's moving around more and doing more, and there's more movement in the gas in the atmosphere to carry water vapor around.
So global warming does not increase total precipitation, it increases the proportion of severe weather events compared to ordinary weather events. The confusion here comes from a conflation of "severe weather" with "storms" (which isn't always the case) and an assumption that a storm necessarily will produce more total precipitation.
Also, we haven't reached the point yet where the air is warm enough that we should expect more evaporation. Right now it is still cool enough that "global dimming" cancels out the effect of global warming on bodies of liquid water. The point where that reverses is around 2 - 3 degrees centigrade above normal temperatures, when it becomes warm enough for the water vapor feedback cycle to start, which is one of the main reasons that efforts to mitigate climate change have been focused on keeping the increase in temperature below 2 degrees.
What's your understanding of solar cycles and why it would be significant?
Anyway, the answer is that at current levels of carbon dioxide concentration Solar irradiance is a more significant factor in water evaporation than ambient air temperature. Continue to increase the ambient air temperature, though, and you will start to see evaporation rates increase, and an impulse in the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere caused by a Solar maximum could jump-start the feedback cycle.
That Solar activity is a strong influence on climate should amplify your concerns rather than ameliorate them, because we can't always predict it. We've been lucky for the last few decades, with Solar maximum being less intense than it was in previous cycles, but our luck could run out at any time, and we're putting ourselves in a position where we'd be in more danger when it does.
You may not be "making them up" yourself, but just taking the talking points someone else came up with in a Youtube video isn't much better.
We like to say that science is driven by people asking questions. Of course that's true, but that statement itself leaves out the more important parts: how to come up with questions to ask and the attempt to answer those questions for oneself. When no effort is made in either of those, then there's no possibility of learning anything.
If not for the fact that I go to school in a different city, I would be living with people (my parents) that disagree with global warming among other scientific ideas (e.g. they're creationists, are against vaccines, etc.). Sure, I get why they're creationists (very conservative Christians), but I've honestly never been able to pinpoint what ideology drives everything else. My only real guess is political: They have no formal education on these matters (one's in engineering and the other is into banking), so they can't call out the politicians they listen to on their bullshit.Blood Brain Barrier said: