. . . must . . . not . . . Godwinize . . .
Damn! :smack:
But, facts relevant to public discussion are rarely if ever of that nature. Scientific facts never are.
You would think so, right? I mean, I agree with you on that, in principle, facts about scientific issues in regard to the public are never hidden, modified or in any way. There isn’t any deception, slanting or cherry picking of facts when it comes to something as important as the public good.
Right?
And we also have to trust that the people doing the gathering of data, and storing it, and presenting it are perfect in all ways, so that there can be no errors, or made up data of any kind. And no data is left out, hidden or lost, so that the actual facts, all of them are on the table.
Obviously none of that applies to military secrets, or facts about computer systems, phones and other secret activities, in which case the public may never know the actual facts. But that is another arena.
But back to climate change/AGW, that invisible elephant that we are told is trampling all before it. And being ignored and denied.
Why would anyone deny scientific facts about something like the climate? I mean, that is the claim being made, that “these people” simply deny evidence, scientific facts, they simply refuse to look at them, or accept them, somehow they are just pretending they don’t matter. (behavior quite common when financial or military interest would be threatened by facts)
So it’s human nature, and we even know from science that intelligence is no defense.
An even better Goldacre quote:
“Repeat after me: pharma being shit does not mean magic beans cure cancer.”
No, I mean, scientific facts are never the kinds of facts you “don’t want other people having.” (Technological facts, maybe, that’s where military security and proprietary info come in, but that’s a different matter.)
But, to say a fact is one you want or don’t want others having assumes you have it yourself in the first place. Now, in scientific research, the scientists don’t know what they have until the research has been done, and peer-reviewed, and published, and attacked and criticized and picked apart, and more research done to plug the holes so made, and the whole process done over and over again until it results in a sturdy theory that satisfies all or nearly all scientists in the field.
That process may well at some stages involve “slanting” or “cherry picking” on the part of a proponent of a given hypothesis – but that is usually a matter of self-deception; the scientists wants his/her pet hypothesis to be true and is, like others, subject to confirmation bias, etc. (No scientist would ever try to sell a hypothesis he did not himself accept, unless he were a quack literally selling it, for money – and even then, quacks do appear to believe in what they’re peddling more often than not.) Well, that’s why we have a peer-review process, to catch those self-deceptions.
You will find similar psychology at work when ideological or psychological interests are threatened. Creationists have no military or profit motive to deny the science of evolution, but they do have other reasons. See Anti-science.
In the case of climate change, denial is based on both financial and ideological interests. Corporations who judge any remedial action would hurt their bottom line fund denialist think-tanks and denialist political candidates. Political conservatives and libertarians who judge any remedial action would essentially be governmental action, and therefore bad, and expensive, therefore bad, seek out and/or propagate denialist arguments for confirmation.
Researchers like Mann are accused of pushing scientific papers (about the hockey stick) that are “abortions” as contrarians call it. Never mind that many other researches confirmed what he found and even Mann himself also got the help of an skeptic of his methods to come with an update that confirmed what he had reported earlier. (Thank goodness the “climategate” emails revealed that part of Mann joining forces with an skeptical researcher. 
) Unfortunately people that call climate scientists “nobodies” never got that memo.
As for trusting the data and models we had already a team of skeptical scientists that did not trust the way climate scientists were handling it. The skeptics did an independent review of the data, using more resources and even got funding from a rich denier and in the end came to conclude that well; yes, the earth is warming and humans are mostly responsible for the current rise.
And so the efforts to confuse the issue are no longer seen in academia and scientific journals, they are done in the public arena.
Of course, and I left religion out of it, as it is an obvious example of how science and facts won’t matter.
Now here is where you have to be specific in your claim. (obviously facts won’t matter, but even so, you have to be clear on what you are saying at least)
There are so many issues involved, a blanket claim is meaningless, and certainly won’t sway anyone. What do you even mean when you claim “denial of climate change”? I’m certain you aren’t accusing people of denying the climate of the world changes over time.
For example, here are a couple of “factual” papers, about two contentious issues, the recent trend in surface temperatures, and the calculated annual mean for 2014 being the hottest year ever.
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/memos/examining-the-pause.pdf
Here we see a major issue with the observed data, and what some have predicted would have to happen, based on theory and computer models.
The BEST calculation for the global annual land and ocean mean temperature anomaly.
http://static.berkeleyearth.org/memos/Global-Warming-2014-Berkeley-Earth-Newsletter.pdf
The amount “hotter” is .01 degree, with a margin of error of .049 degrees. Will these “facts” make any difference? Isn’t it much more likely, based on human nature, that skeptics will see it as confirmation of their view, while those insisting warming hasn’t even slowed, will claim global warming is still happening, just as they said it would?
It’s a rhetorical question, both those events are already historic events. It’s as if facts just don’t make any difference.
Then there is this other extremely odd thing, where facts are considered to be confusing. People who use facts are accused of trying to confuse people by using facts. Or “their facts” are no good, only some facts are good.
This is certainly not limited to the great debate over what is happening (and why) with our global climate.
The tap dancing comedy over which facts can be trusted is quite amazing.
Of course what FX is posting there is only going back to confuse others, it is not really clear that there was a pause and Berkeley Earth already commented that “few expect the pause to persist much longer” because the ones that want to confuse the issue always go for the noise and not the trend:
Okay, 1,300+ posts of this stuff in another thread is not enough for you?
Based on experience, I am quite certain facts won’t make the slightest bit of difference, to somebody who has already decided on the truth.
The question is, if facts won’t matter, and opinions certainly won’t make any difference, then what will? Will anything matter?
Those questions are in the OP here. I mean, you have somebody claiming it’s time to abandon facts as a tool in the climate debate. Do you agree with that?
Okay, let’s try this. If your position is that facts matter to you, please identify for me one or two facts that you find supportive of the AGW argument.
I mean, surely not every fact argues against that position. Lacking the jaundiced eye of your counterparts, you must be in a good position to fairly evaluate each fact.
(I must admit to going into this exercise being a little dubious, because I’ve seen you introduce “it’s cold outside my house today” (essentially) as a fact supporting your position.)
Well, he is trying to be “in the middle of the road” but as usual he is even failing at that and not really the best spoke person for impartiality when one looks at his past work.
When looking at what are the facts I do see the current consensus as giving us another clue of who is playing loose with the facts, specially the contrarian politicians and pundits out there. To me the many surveys that shows that virtually all scientists accept the evidence in a field leads to another logical conclusion: even if there are less scientists that are conservative and/or Republican the numbers still tell us also that virtually all conservative climate scientists agree that the facts are on the side of the ones that propose that humans are currently changing the climate with their emissions.
The few exceptions left are indeed letting their biases triumph over the evidence. Some of the few contrarian scientists left in the Climate Change issue fall for both ideology and religion like Roy Spencer.
https://thingsbreak.wordpress.com/2008/07/28/yes-roy-spencer-is-a-creationist/
You have to explain, and I mean in a scientific way, what YOU mean by “the AGW argument”.
What was that link in aid of?
So, that’s a no, then? You don’t seem a very good ambassador of the land of the Unbiased Fact Evaluator.
So this is why you refuse to believe global warming is a man-made catastrophe? Good to know. For someone like you who works for the oil companies, this is quite a revelation
Regarding the financial interest, see here. ExxonMobil etc. would not be spending all this money on think-tanks unless they perceived the issue affecting their profits – would they?
Regarding the ideological interest – well, I don’t need to explain that, do I? One hears it all the time, the notion that AGW is a hoax concocted as a pretext to expand government or usher in socialism or the NWO. See Global warming conspiracy theory.
:rolleyes::dubious::mad: Of course, and as you know, I mean denial that Earth’s present global warming is 1) real, 2) dangerous, and 3) anthropogenic.
Obviously, he meant to post this link, and was not in any way trying to evade a straightforward question or anything. 