It’s an example of exactly how “the debate” stalls, and turns into muddied waters. I know exactly what I mean by my terms, and offer clear definitions and links to sources. When YOU ask a question about something, it’s on you to explain what you are asking about.
This blanket refusal to simply state your case, when asked directly, seems to be a hallmark of the disaster side of the debate. Obviously I can do the heavy lifting, and describe the entire list of issues at the heart of the debate, I’ve done it multiple times. It doesn’t make any difference.
Facts don’t seem to matter at all. Not even a little bit.
It doesn’t cost me anything to argue for global warming, and I have stated clearly multiple times that science tells us that we are increasing the CO2 levels, along with other vast changes to the world. And these things will, and are, changing the biosphere, the land, rivers, forests, oceans and atmosphere.
The most egregious opponents are those that dismiss the very idea itself, that we can in any way alter our world with our actions. This is pure denial, the actual denial-ism that is an affront to the scientific mind. I’ve read those who deny that CO2 even causes any greenhouse effect, which is the most base level of denial. These people actually believe no matter how much CO2 we add to the mix, it won’t change anything. Or it will be so tiny we can’t measure it. That seems like pure denial, they don’t even want any study of the matter, which is indeed like the same problems with tobacco, coal, mercury, lead, arsenic, or Methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE).
MTBE is a prime example of a known carcinogen being used when the evidence was overwhelming that it was very bad news for humans and everything else. The groundwater contamination from it is truly hideous. That it was the replacement for lead is just horrific irony, since lead wasn’t nearly as bad for most of us as it’s replacement.
But none of those facts has caused it to be banned. It’s still used, it’s like so many other solvents and chemicals and other compounds, which the facts are not really in dispute. But the facts don’t run the show.
I have changed opinions many times based on facts or on new evidence.
But the subjects we debate most vehemently are ones in which “facts” are all but irrelevant.
What “facts” could I produce that could or should convince a liberal to oppose gay marriage? What “facts” could a liberal offer that could or should convince me that abortion is a moral choice?
Scientific data OUGHT to persuade, say, anti-vaxers that they’re wrong about childhood vaccines causing autism (though, as the OP would expect, the data rarely convinces passionate anti-vaxers that they were wrong). Legitimate studies OUGHT to tell us whether a given government program is cost-effective (though there are passionate Head Start fans who’ll never be persuaded by studies that indicate Head Start has few, if any, long term benefits).
But there aren’t any “facts” that can win over an opponent whose position is based on emotion, religion, ideology or ideals.
Yes, there is. Don’t confuse models and interpolations as ‘facts’, no matter how strong you think they are.
Yes, there is. Again, our estimate of how much CO2 is released by industry vs other sources may be very good and based on very robust models, but that doesn’t make it a fact. It makes it a hypothesis backed by strong evidence.
For ‘ranges of consequences’ that include “Not much will happen” to “It will be pretty bad”. Once you start making specific claims, the broad consensus collapses.
Have you read the IPCC reports? Every conclusion is couched in uncertainty. Various effects are listed as ‘very likely’, ‘somewhat likely’, etc. You won’t find many aspects of global warming stated as cold hard fact, other than things like the absorption of energy in a CO2 molecule, etc.
Nonsense. Once you get past the basic science of global warming, it all becomes very speculative, and both sides engage in motivated reasoning. The leap from “Global warming is happening” to “We need a carbon tax of X amount in America” requires a huge number of assumptions and unprovable suppositions, and it requires ignoring things like the discount rate on money and the likelihood of unilateral carbon restrictions stimulating more carbon consumption in China and elsewhere due to lower prices for fossil fuels and a lower social cost of carbon.
I can give you a perfect example of how the pro-AGW side uses motivated reasoning: When anti-AGW people claim that there has been an 18 year ‘pause’ in warming, the AGW side is quick to school them on the nature of the statistics, the amount of variance in the signal, etc. You tell them that it takes several decades for the ‘signal’ of AGW to rise out of the noise of annual variance, so a ‘pause’ proves nothing. And you’d be correct to do so.
And yet, just last week NASA put out a headline saying that this year was the hottest year on record, and this has been dutifully parroted without question by the AGW side and most news organizations. And yet, the ‘hottest year’ beat last year by .01 degrees, which is a change almost an order of magnitude smaller than the measurement error and known variance. In other words, the real headline should have been, “This year’s temperature is statistically no different than last year’s.”
Any bets what the headline would have read if it had turned out that this year was .01 degree cooler? I doubt it would be “The global temperature for 2014 falls from record high.” And if an anti-AGW source put out such a headline, the AGW side would leap all over them for shoddy science and a misunderstanding of variance.
Now you’re the one engaged in motivated reasoning. The IPCC says that warming below 2.5 degrees may be beneficial to the planet overall, and that value is within the range of estimates for future warming. Unlikely, but possible. For you to flatly deny that it could happen is, well, unscientific. Are you some kind of IPCC denier?
And claiming that the future consequences of AGW are largely unknown is not ‘false’, because the opposite, that we know exactly what is going to happen, is not a fact - it’s a hypothesis based on models of multiple complex adaptive systems. I don’t think it’s unreasonable at all to question the accuracy of those predictions and our ability to predict the future with such a high degree of specificity.
Getting back to motivated reasoning, I’ve said before that if global warming turned out to be caused by government action and the only way to stop it would be to shrink the size of governments around the world, both sides in the debate would flip. The left would be arguing that global warming is not real, and the current anti-AGW people would be touting it as settled science.
For an example of such a flip, just look at how nuclear energy is treated by the right and left. There, the left continues to scare-monger and continues to ignore research that shows how safe nuclear reactors are, while the right accepts the science and considers opponents on the left to be ‘deniers’.
We all pick and choose which science we want to believe, and that choice has a lot to do with whether the results line up with our ideology or our pocketbook. Even when we try hard not to, this happens.
Richard Feynman documented a great example of this, which is not political and hence perhaps a better example for debate:
The motivation this time is that people assumed that a great scientist like Millikan wouldn’t make such a large mistake, so when they found much bigger numbers than Millikan’s results, they went back to the drawing board and changed the experiment or just through out the data assuming it was an outlier.
You can imagine in a world were everyone is told that global warming is ‘settled science’, that scientific results that contradict it might get more scrutiny than ones that don’t, and that could be biasing the field. There are many other ways that motivated reasoning can subtly shift results.
Or, you know, ignoring or minimizing the complex systems aspect of the problem could be motivated reasoning on the part of climate scientists, much as how economists are very reluctant to accept the conclusions of complexity theory when applied to economics, because it might imply that economists have no control over the future direction of the economy. This despite their models have a horrendous track record with prediction, and their suggested economic interventions seem to rarely have the results they anticipated.
Perhaps it’s motivated reasoning on your part to assume that the anti-AGW side is largely controlled by oil companies. For that matter, since every major oil company I can think of is engaged in alternate energy research, your claim that they assume that fossil fuels will truck on forever is clearly false.
Your language also gives away your bias: A ‘misleading’ emphasis on ‘alleged’ uncertainties. Given that there ARE major uncertainties, where you put your emphasis probably says a lot about which side of the overall debate you’re already on, and how well it lines up with the things you’d like government to be doing anyway.
It has everything to do with the original topic. It just doesn’t have anything to do with the Global Warming Debate Hijack that so many threads seem to devolve into these days.
The motivated reasoning comes in after you’ve laid out thousands of dollars for copper wire electrically identical to the lamp cord sold at Home Depot for .30 per foot. No one wants to look stupid, so you’ll defend your choice to the death. Arguments against it, such as double blind tests that have never shown an audible difference between any two reasonable speaker wires (or even between a high-dollar speaker wire and a rusty clothes hanger), are summarily rejected with specious, unprovable arguments such as the supposition that the formal nature of a ‘test’ somehow causes the ears and brain to clam up and not hear what they otherwise could.
We’re not just talking about scientific inquiry. We’re talking about participants in debates who have been presented ‘facts’ that upset their already-held conclusions.
The OP is turning to a very silly way to evaluate facts.
In the past me and others did point that we **agreed **to the definitions he posted when linking to NASA about the issue. The game here is to claim that only he understands even after we already told him we already got it. The willful ignorance is based on the idea to claim that only he gets it when that is not the case.
Because that does not explain why then he believes in climategate (a conspiracy that has been debunked many times) or claims what Mann did “an abortion of a paper” regarding the Hockey Stick. Seems to me that only of late he is beginning to realize what crowd he is facing over here. Not really believable still on his latest claim to understand the issue when he already dismissed posters that pointed at papers that explained important theories like the one from Plass and ignored what was reported before. (One big problem I see from the OP is that he does not realize that AGW is based on many lines of inquiry and several theories.)
Going forward it is clear that while the OP claims that the basic science is understood, he still can not help but to trow lots of bones to the deniers of those basic facts. And then continues to seed doubts on other areas like feedbacks and seasonal temperatures.
It’s not a ‘record year’ if the change in temperature is well inside the margin of error. It’s just freaking noise. How hard is that to understand?
You’re providing a perfect example of what I’m talking about. People point out that the results of the past X years are all within the margin of error, but instead of confronting that truthful statement, your snarky site just labels them "Pause-ists’, while defending a much more egregious case of misrepresentation of data because it happens to fit the narrative.
It’s also ridiculous to claim that NASA was just saying that the trend indicates that this year is hotter, because that’s not what they said. They were reporting on what the measurements showed, not what an extrapolation of the long-term trend would show.
I’m not sure you have a good handle on error around estimates. Specifically what margin of error are you talking about? What is the value of the estimate and what is the range of error?
Secondly, if the estimate of the temperature is larger for a given year than for all others, it is the hottest year. Why you’re bringing change into it is unclear, as is your concern about the margin of error around change. You’re also confusing issues of significant differences between estimates.
Now, if your point is that the true value may vary from the estimated value based on factors associated with the data from which that estimate is derived, that is true. It is false to say that the higher estimated value is not higher, and to say that the difference is “just noise.”
It is almost as if you were just throwing jargon around instead of dispassionately dealing with facts.
The article shows that noise is misused by the so called skeptics to make a very unfounded point.
The trend is the issue, not just the latest year.
You are not reading carefully, what you point out is there and noted already, but it is not as important as you want to make it be.
So indeed, the fact is that it was hotter, but the point was that we should not ignore what the scientists at NASA conclude about that when looking at the trend and the big picture.
Sam Stone, as usual I really enjoy reading your responses, because there is logic, and reason and actual examples and it is always a welcome change in these topics.
Oh yes indeed it does, and always has, but each generation forgets the lessons of the past, and imagines we will not repeat them, especially when it comes to Science(!), which of course guarantees it will happen. Your example documented by Feynman is good, because it’s simple and easy to explain.
And yet it won’t matter, because of that ability we have to simply handwave it away, and say “Oh sure, but that isn’t going to happen to me, I am different, better than that”, which is pure hubris of course.
And there is an essential fact, (which won’t matter of course). The PERSON who says something often matters more than the facts of a matter. The entire history of science is filled with examples, it’s actually a basic thing, and anyone who studies science will find it, in all fields, at all times. Except maybe math, but even them it has happened. Even with math.
In regards to the modern war over climate, I find the examples from history of Roemer or Payne to be much better for advancing understanding, but they both are lengthy and complex, and require understanding facts, and learning, both of which doom a post to being ignored or dismissed out of hand. In both examples the complete rejection of hard facts is so utterly beyond modern belief, it is hard to fathom how such things could happen. Until you look at the modern situation with climate change, in which case one might realize not that much has actually changed after all.
If you refuse to state the facts of the matter, it’s impossible to debate anything.
I didn’t ask you to debate. I asked you to identify some facts that you feel support the opposing position.
I’ll make it even easier. You define the position opposing your own yourself, and then you identify a few facts that you believe support that position.
You didn’t start this thread as a debate. You started it, purportedly, as a reflection on epistemology. Didn’t you?
Clearly you are not getting the memo from the fossil fuel industry, only Shell remains there and most oil companies are actually moving away from renewables or alternate energy with only Shell being more responsible.
And FX is wrong, Sam Stone is not offering a very good example on two items so far and the rest does not look so impressive.
Patent nonsense. Another example of what one finds all the time, in which even the most basic things are somehow a matter of great contention. Or for some reason, obscured behind unclear language and frivolity. Or a subject of word games.
If the most dire predictions are correct, we are discussing the biggest real threat ever known for mankind. Or at the very least the biggest threat we can do something about (as opposed to comet impacts, super volcanoes, an ice age, or a bio-engineered smallpox/super infuenza hybrid)
OK that last one we can also do something about.
But the ever present baffling behavior? What do you mean by AGW? Anything other than a concise and understandable answer, (or at least a link to a source you got your idea from), is ridiculous behavior, considering you believe it’s a huge threat, and an important issue. Very important.
Who would pass up a chance to state the problem clearly?
Here is what people convinced global warming is even worse than ever beforewant you to look at.
Are those images facts? Of course, in the sense they are graphical representations of lower troposphere measurements in the first case, and adjusted and combined surface station temperatures along with the NCDCD SSTs, in the second.
It’s an example of why the facts won’t make any difference. One side claims there is a pause, the other claims global warming hasn’t even stopped to take a breather, but has actually increased.
The facts here is that this was explained before, but nothing was learned, the trend you look there is for the lower troposphere, and the curators of that told you not to assume that that represents the surface temperature properly.
Oh? Then why are they making such a fuss over 2014 being the ‘hottest year’?
The actual press release is here. This is supposed to be a summary of the findings of actual research, and the release is extremely misleading in that it talks about actual measured data from last year. This is not a press release highlighting the fact that an upwards-sloping line will necessarily reach a peak each year, but rather it’s worded as to say, “Hey look, actual NASA and NOAA data proves that the trend is correct!”
This is what they said in the press release:
Now, anyone reading this headline would assume that there is NEW RESEARCH backing up previous findings of global warming. They go on:
Again, they’re not saying “2014 is the warmest because the trend line previous established says it should be.” They are saying that the DATA FOR LAST YEAR shows that it’s the warmest year on record. No caveats, no error bars, nothing. It’s presented as a straight-up empirical fact.
So for fun I went to see if this was really the conclusion of the actual papers on which this press release is based.
The first is by James Hansen, which contains this:
(bolding mine)
Right in the abstract. The measurements are within the margin of error. Hansen continues:
So, It’s the ‘hottest year EVER!’, except that we have no idea if that’s true, and in fact the last 15 year’s results all appear to be statistically identical with the anomolies from year to year all being within the margin of error of measurement.
Yes, the trend line previously established suggests that if we could eliminate the noise we’d find that it really was the hottest year, but the trend line’s results are expected to be validated with actual empirical data, and the press release for the public strongly suggests that this has been done and that the empirical data follows the trend, which is not the case.
From what I can tell, given the caveats in the actual scientific paper, you could write the following headlines, all of which would be technically correct:
“New NASA data fails to find increased warming outside the margin of error.”
“New NASA data confirms that there is no statistically-meaningful increase in temperate over the past several years.”
“New NASA data shows that the temperature in 2014 is statistically the same as it was in 2005 and 2010.”
"New NASA data confirms continuance of global warming ‘pause’.
All of them would be misleading and tendentious, because the paper actually does provide some evidence that the earth is still warming, even if we have no idea if 2014 was the ‘hottest year’. But I don’t see how they are any more misleading than saying “New evidence shows 2014 was the hottest year on record”, because new evidence shows no such thing.
This happens all the time in climate science because it is so politicized. The IPCC is guilty of this too: The actual research is nuanced, contains uncertainty and risk measurements, then the politicians and bureaucrats draft a summary that strips out all the uncertainty and makes bold claims about ‘facts’ which are simply not supported in the research they are reporting on.
Oh, and here’s a headline that you could write from that paper which would be absolutely true and stated right in the paper itself:
“NASA study shows that global warming has been tapering off. The Earth has not been warming as fast as global climate models predicted.” And that result is NOT within the margin of error. There is no question that the warming trend in the past decade and a half has not followed the consensus estimate based on general circulation models. That doesn’t disprove global warming, as there are many factors that go into global temperature, but it sure suggests that the models are not complete or are simply wrong about some things.
The paper theorizes that this is because of El-Nino and warming water in the Pacific, but that’s just a guess. As the paper says,
Wolfpup, if you’re reading this, I hope you notice the uncertainty in the language over issues you declared to be ‘fact’. “Whether a slowdown in the long-term warming rate is real awaits further data” . There are ‘many suggestions’ as to the ‘possible cause’ of the slowdown. Warming is ‘likely to’ accelerate as the El-Nino passes.
I particularly like this exchange at the end:
Man, that just reeks of complete absolute mastery of our understanding the climate system, doesn’t it? The major ENSO models diverge not just in magnitude, but in sign. And one of the leading experts in ENSO modeling has no idea why, no idea if the physics are right, and speculates that it may be a difference in “initialization schemes.”
Another scientist tried to validate his (wrong) model by tuning it with the unpredicted changes in ocean temperature. This is highly suspect from a predictive standpoint, but perfectly valid when using the model to try to understand what’s going on. which has been the traditional use of such models.
The fact that there is this much uncertainty over changes in model output vs reality over just a few years really makes me question the validity of climate predictions extending 100 years into the future.
However, I think we’ll get a lot more data after the next El-Nino cycle. If the guesses are correct and the ‘slowdown in warming’ is the result of a weak ENSO cycle, then we should see much higher than predicted temperature anomolies over the next decade as the climate reverts to the mean along the predicted trend line. If global warming doesn’t pick up, then a lot of scientists have some explaining to do.