Facts won't change your mind about anything

Great Debates
81

Because as you said it is the empirical fact, as I also mentioned. It is good to point at the obvious, but that is not the whole history and it has to be pointed out that what you explained is the line of the researchers and climate scientists. In the end it is less helpful to the so called skeptics as the ones that look at the obfuscations showed already.

And the bottom line remain, it is not likely that when an el nino appears that we will see cooling, the warming that is coming from the CO2 and other global warming gases in the atmosphere will still be there and there is no good mechanism from the contrarians to expect otherwise.

82

It is NOT a fact. The measurement error is larger than the effect they measured. That very specifically means that there is uncertainty that the result is correct. This is pretty basic stuff.

83

Only that FX already linked to what former skeptic Professor Muller did report, the warming could be in danger of falling outside the margin error (meaning that it was not yet outside the margin of error) but now it is not.

Not good to ignore the big picture, it is not significant that 2014 might be the hottest year in over 160 years of accurate measuring? 2014 might be number 2 or even number 3, It is really underwhelming to ignore that 9 out of the 10 hottest years in 160+ years worldwide happen to fall in the last 20 years.

In any case the analysis made recently shows where researchers are coming from: it is significant when looking at the temperature record with change point analysis:

Warmer than the past decades, the reality is that the effort observed by contrarians is to remove the context.

Indeed, and as I said, missing a lot of context should not be allowed for the good reasons you mention. Hence the need to add to what you mention here.

Ok this is really silly, are you willing to declare that the scientists are not looking at the recent data to report that? Or that they are inventing it?

It was not supposed to be, but here the context once again shows that you are ignoring the full history, there was a time when Republicans and conservatives listened to science, but powerful groups made it political by equating science with political opinions.

FRONTLINE: Climate of Doubt

Transcript:

84

Basic stuff to claim so then one can throw a big misleading bone to deniers.

It is not likely that there will be much a change on what the researchers declared today when going forward. And there is the fact that declaring 2014 as the warmest year in instrumental record history is not just based on what USA researchers found:

85

Sam Stone, you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.

86

Really? Measurement Systems Analysis is one of the things I do in my day job. How about you? Ever done a gage R&R? An MSA study? In control theory one of the challenges is removing the noise of measurement error so you can find the effect. If your signal is below the noise threshold, you cannot draw any conclusions from it.

87

This sounds suspiciously like you are saying it’s okay for such press releases to shade the truth, because otherwise it might give your opponents ammunition against your beliefs.

I think we just found another perfect example of motivated reasoning.

88

Just out of curiosity, do you think James Hansen knows what he’s talking about? I was directly quoting his paper.

89

If one would concentrate only on the recent years, and that is why contrarians always concentrate on that, ignoring the big picture.

As the Japanese reported and NOAA and NASA did your experience is fine, but not as impressive when them and other experts report and conclude about what the data is telling us.

As the head of NASA/GISS tweeted: “The uncertainties were directly addressed.”

But as it happens many times in discussions like this one the uncertainty is not the friend of the contrarians.

90

The press release is talking about the results of current research - not the long term trend. It was clearly misleading. Why are you bringing long-term trends into this? That’s not what the paper or the press release were about. It was more of a ‘current findings validate our theory about the long-term trend’ type press release, when in fact the current findings are that the temperature measurements of 2014 are statistically equal to the measurements in 2005 and 2010, and that it is significantly lower than the models predicted. NASA’s press release turns the finding on its head - a perfect example of how to mislead without lying by leaving out crucial information.
And I really wish you would stop moving the goalposts. I’m not talking in general about global warming theory - I was using the fact that a misleading press release gets a pass from the AGW crowd so long as it misleads in the ‘right direction’ as an example of motivated reasoning. That’s all. To back up my point about it being misleading, I showed that in the original paper there are many proper caveats and warnings about not reading too much into very noisy data. But the official press release does just that, claiming that 2014 is the warmest year on record as a fact when in fact there is much uncertainty and so much noise that no conclusions whatsoever can be drawn from the dataset we’re talking about.

Indeed, the paper spends a lot of time speculating on why the GC models might be wrong, what might be causing the ‘pause’ in warming, etc. None of that makes it into the press release.

That was the limit of my criticism. But now apparently I am being forced to defend some random blogger against another random blogger, or make a stand as to whether it’s likely that global warming is happening, or whatever. You do this all the time - when faced with a specific criticism you can’t refute, you instead revert to generalities, claims about oil money distorting science, what the models say, etc.

By the way, that site you linked to further makes my point. They go after some guy because he’s using words like ‘admitted’ to describe scientist comments, and that apparently is beyond the pale because it suggests that the scientist was trying to hide something. Fair enough, if trivial. But the elephant in the room is that NASA also used misleading language in its press release, but all those guys can think to do is to defend them against criticism regardless of its merits. Again… Motivated reasoning.

And by the way, the constant use of ALL CAPS and Bold Text along with the language and tone makes that site sound like it’s run by a crazed loon. I wouldn’t use that as a site too often if I were you. It doesn’t make your side look very good.

In the press release? I linked to it. Show me where. If you’re talking about the actual paper, you’re making my point. I’m not claiming the science is bad - the paper appears to have all the proper caveats against over-use of their conclusion. My point was simply that the bureaucrats and politicians take those papers, strip out all the caveats, and then present the conclusions as fact. And they know damned well that it’s the press release with the attention-grabbing headline that’s going to be sprayed all over the news media and the internet, and not one person in a thousand will bother to look up the paper or the press conferences to get a fuller picture.

Soon ‘everyone will know’ that 2014 is the hottest year on record. It will be ‘settled science’ in debates like this. The caveats and uncertainties will remain buried in the papers outside of the public debate.

91

That is not what Gavin Schmith was talking about. Read it again.

And as I pointed before, so far it does looks that the idea of many conservatives is to push uncertainty in favor of not doing much about controlling emissions, but the reality is that the uncertainty is not a friend of the contrarians.

As the Japanese reported it too with their own research and other science groups agree, I think that you do protest too much.

92

Of course, but it’s so much more complicated than that.

Just out of curiosity do you actually think that will happen? The tap dancing and side shows are par for the course it seems, when you want to discuss any specific thing.

Thank you for simply stating what happens all the time. It’s actually a good tactic for avoiding answering a point. Just throw out so much flak, everything might go down in flames.

For example, somebody asked what “facts” are against my view of things, which is an absurdity. In science facts can be viewed as for or against a theory, they either support a hypothesis, or disprove a theory, and certainly people attack any evidence that they think will show them to be wrong. Pretending this doesn’t happen is also an absurdity. For example, the recent global trend for land and ocean temperatures.

2014 Hottest Year On Record Globally by Far Says Japan Meteorological Agency - Our World

Has Global Warming Paused? | Scientific American

Causes and implications of the pause - Climate Etc.

List compiled of reasons for the pause (WUWT blog, this does not mean an endorsement of the blog, anymore than linking to realclimate is an endorsement)

Updated list of 63 excuses for the 18-26 year ‘pause’ in global warming

And from the MET Office

Is it any wonder there might be some confusion, some uncertainty, when one wades into the stinking bog that passes for science on blogs? The MET and the BBC can’t easily be dismissed as “not good facts”, nor can the satellite data. But of course it is.

This is an example of why “facts” don’t matter. At the exact same time there are at least 64 “reasons” to explain the pause in warming, there is also a constant barrage of voices telling us there is no pause, that in fact global warming hasn’t even slowed, much less paused.

93

As usual, you are doing the mistake of thinking that blogs like Hockeystick or WUWT do science, they do not. Indeed the main idea on that post is to seed doubt. Of course the BBC also did not find as much to complaint as many contrarians did about the NASA/GISS and NOAA reports.

94

Yes. Do you? Then refer back to the phrase immediately preceding the one you have bolded and are handwaving so hard about.

The same guy wrote that whole sentence. Until you figure out how both pieces of the sentence can be true, you will continue to have no idea what the fuck you’re talking about.

Have you ever done modeling using hierarchical linear regression? Generalized estimating equations? Growth mixture modeling? Latent class analysis? Ever published your findings in peer reviewed journals? Ever been a peer reviewer?

You’re engaging in the very kind of motivated reading/obfuscating behavior that you appeared to be decrying a short time ago.

95

Speaking of tap dancing, one wonders when FXMastermind with acknowledge that Sam was wrong on what the oil companies were doing regarding alternative energy and that other years are less likely to be as warm as 2014.

And the Met office reported on their notes about the pause that: “There is substantial evidence from other components of the climate system, beyond the global mean surface temperature, that the Earth has continued to warm over the last decade.”

Of course that item was mentioned many many times before in previous discussions, but contrarians are the ones ignoring it.

96

And it is also noticeable that what the Japanese reported about 2014 was ignored too, it is likely that the MET office will also agree soon with most of the other climate research groups:

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/news/2014-temperatures

97

The Japanese have nothing to do with it. The press release was a summary of NASA and NOAA research. What is it about this that you aren’t getting, exactly?

98

The point that you miss is that independently from NASA/GISS NOAA and very likely the MET office the The Japan Meteorological Agency announced that 2014 was the hottest year in more than 120 years of record-keeping.

It is only logical to realize that the uncertainty you want to make as the only guiding reason for telling us otherwise is less likely and as I said before: uncertainty is not really the friend of the contrarian. It still tell us what the probabiilities are and they point to the safer say so that 2014 was indeed the warmest year on record.

And the conclusion remains: The evidence for the influence of human emissions of greenhouse gases on this year’s likely global mean surface temperature record is irrefutable. And we should had controlled emissions yesterday.

99

A common way to avoid responding to facts, is to change the rules, move the goalpost, or just ignore any fact you don’t like. Or even worse, change your story so the new fact, which would make you wrong, somehow now makes you right.

100

Of course, that is why one has to look at the experts or good sources of information that also are investigating constantly to find if a group like NASA or NOAA are wrong, as it turns out, there not many good pickings among contrarians to support the idea that NASA or NOAA are doing it wrong as the BBC reported…

Unless you are trowing the BBC also under the bus now that they did not find much to complain about this like the contrarian sources did.