# Facts won't change your mind about anything **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 19, 2015, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facts-wont-change-your-mind-about-anything/710293 "2015-01-19T17:29:12Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 174
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [January 27, 2015, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facts-wont-change-your-mind-about-anything/710293/174 "2015-01-27T01:13:27Z")
> [@FXMastermind](#): > > Now I know you are joking. Because if you have been telling us for a long time that the winters are going to become far worse, colder and with much more snow, you better be able to link to it here. (and certainly with over 8,000 posts about global warming, you will have multiple examples to share) Otherwise I am calling bullshit on your claim. Oh bullshit. :rolleyes: What I reported was that in some regions that was going to happen. You are still going for your mistaken idea that warming was going to be homogeneous all over the world. What I said was in relation to the accelerated loss of ice in the north polar regions and why the IPCC was conservative on that. From 01-15-2011: > [@"It's cold, so there's no global warming." Do they KNOW that's false?](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/its-cold-so-theres-no-global-warming-do-they-know-thats-false/567421/130): > > Indeed, early I think a poster mentioned that we should follow the null hypothesis, in this case the IPCC has follow it by punting on the possible acceleration of the melting of the polar ice. > > Back in 2007 there was still not enough information to make a good prediction on what the ice was going to do in a warming world, so it was assumed that a \*\*potential \*\*act of the ice would had little or no effect. Giving us the conservative estimates that by the end of the century we could expect about 50 centimeters of sea rise. Like that, other possible feed-backs have not been used or minimized in the past reports because, gosh, the IPCC did the right thing and avoided dealing with the then still uncertain feed-backs. So a conservative report was the result. > > The fact that deniers even attempt to discredit the conservative reports\* shows that deniers are not even wrong, they do not even have a clue. - Of the IPCC indeed. That BTW is part of the whole thing, I was aware indeed of more precipitation in areas of the globe because global warming increases the water vapor content specially in some areas, Cohen is telling us the loss of ice is one of the factors in the Arctic Amplification increasing the precipitation on the lands around the polar region because of that ice loss. More than once I pointed out that in some regions this would increase precipitation, and depending when, it does mean more snow in some areas, what Cohen and others are figuring out is where the amplification is sending more snow. > [@FXMastermind](#): > > The scare stories and alarm-ism about the loss of water from a lack of snow, the warnings about warm winters, the projections of increasing rain in winter, the insects moving north, the entire alarm has been about winters warming up, and snow decreasing. There is no possible way to spin it to say no IPCC or consensus scientist was worried about telling us winters would become colder and with much more snow. Uh, what Cohen and others are reporting is to explain why many made the mistake of ignoring what the arctic amplification (the warming) was going to do in some areas, as Cohen also reports the warming continues even in winter (as it was predicted) and it seems to be worse than expected, but some regions are getting more precipitation (snow) thanks to more water vapor in the air in those areas. > [@FXMastermind](#): > > You have got be kidding. Of course if you present facts, and show us where YOU have been talking about this, from years past, it will actually matter. As pointed before I was referring to the accelerated loss of ice, and how the IPCC was conservative for not worrying too much then about the acceleration that was possibly going on then, not about increase precipitation of snow in some regions of the earth thanks to the arctic amplification; but recently that is now in the picture, and thanks to Cohen and others. What Cohen reports is a more recent development. The point stands though: Cohen and many others explained that global warming thanks to CO2 increases in the atmosphere is influencing the Arctic amplification. > [@FXMastermind](#): > > Now stepping back from this for a moment, and talking about facts, and if they matter, [here’s an example of using “facts”](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=18083249&postcount=80), where I don’t think it will actually matter. Several people presented their opinions and I countered by using expert astronomers, to counter ignorance on a subject most people simply don’t care much about. Really, most people don’t even know about it, much less care at all about Olbers paradox. > > Will facts make any difference? Will the facts be attacked? Or will the goal post get moved? Will it just be ignored? or will I be told I don’t understand the facts? What will happen? > > I’m actually always curious about these sorts of things. But rarely surprised. Oh goody, the problem I already noticed (Yeah, I do follow the **Bad Astronomer** ) is that you are ignoring that other explanations are still more important than the dust one. And there is another basic problem you are looking indeed at a problem that is happening around and at the center of our galaxy, but the paradox is referring to all directions, not just what you are doing that in essence is just 2 dimensional thinking. Other factors are more influential and used to explain the paradox and that is a reason why most experts out there do not see the dust as the main reason to explain it. [http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/10/01/why-is-the-sky-dark-at-night/](http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2012/10/01/why-is-the-sky-dark-at-night/) > [@](#): > > One thing educators like to say is that there are no stupid questions. I disagree, mildly: unasked questions might fit that category. Still and all, even basic questions are worth asking, and sometimes can lead to profound insight. > > For example, one of my favorite questions is also one of the simplest: “Why is the sky dark at night?” The wonderful folks at Minute Physics took this query on, and show you why this question is so very important. > > See? Just by asking why the sky is dark, you can figure out that the Universe is neither infinite in space nor in time. It had a beginning! It doesn’t get much more profound than that. [http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/olbers.html](http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/physics/Relativity/GR/olbers.html) > [@](#): > > There are many possible explanations which have been considered. Here are a few: > > ``` > There's too much dust to see the distant stars. > The Universe has only a finite number of stars. > The distribution of stars is not uniform. So, for example, there could be an infinity of stars, > but they hide behind one another so that only a finite angular area is subtended by them. > The Universe is expanding, so distant stars are red-shifted into obscurity. > The Universe is young. Distant light hasn't even reached us yet. > > ``` > > The first explanation is just plain wrong. In a black body, the dust will heat up too. It does act like a radiation shield, exponentially damping the distant starlight. But you can’t put enough dust into the universe to get rid of enough starlight without also obscuring our own Sun. So this idea is bad. > > The premise of the second explanation may technically be correct. But the number of stars, finite as it might be, is still large enough to light up the entire sky, i.e., the total amount of luminous matter in the Universe is too large to allow this escape. The number of stars is close enough to infinite for the purpose of lighting up the sky. The third explanation might be partially correct. We just don’t know. If the stars are distributed fractally, then there could be large patches of empty space, and the sky could appear dark except in small areas. > > But the final two possibilities are surely each correct and partly responsible. There are numerical arguments that suggest that the effect of the finite age of the Universe is the larger effect. We live inside a spherical shell of “Observable Universe” which has radius equal to the lifetime of the Universe. Objects more than about 13.7 thousand million years old (the latest figure) are too far away for their light ever to reach us. > > Historically, after Hubble discovered that the Universe was expanding, but before the Big Bang was firmly established by the discovery of the cosmic background radiation, Olbers’ paradox was presented as proof of special relativity. You needed the red shift to get rid of the starlight. This effect certainly contributes, but the finite age of the Universe is the most important effect. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/facts-wont-change-your-mind-about-anything/710293)._