Even if that were true, the “more government” aspect of AGW is on a different level than previous environmental efforts. And the science is also on another level. AGW really isn’t an environmental issue in the same way that clean water etc. is.
You still don’t get it. You are not citing facts. You are posting links to articles. The facts are buried deep down somewhere (maybe). AGW is a model-based science, not an observation-based science. It’s completely different.
I have the sense that for many years the anti-vax crowd was confident science was on their side, actually. You seem to be encouraged by some sort of mass vote on the part of the scientist consensus in general. But scientists are not somehow immune to mass psychology. And they are utterly dependent on research done elsewhere. So, for instance (and I am not saying this is the case) if it turns out GATA has been poorly monitored, any number of downstream papers depending on that and expanding on that would fall apart.
You are not using logic, again, if the facts were fucked there are organizations that would had demonstrated that several years ago, so far many on the denier side have just found 2 errors on the **probable **results, but not on the majority of them and not with the science behind those predictions.
History is not on side on this one.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
Nor are the facts buried, almost all of the data and programs used were already released.
On edit: your affirmation that “AGW is a model-based science, not an observation-based science” is bullshit.
Hey Gigo, you almost have me convinced. Three more links to pro-AGW websites and I’m all yours.
OK; is “bewildered” better? Basically I find it bewildering that both the pro and anti-AGW crowds cling to beliefs they cannot personally evaluate as if they were beliefs they can personally evaluate. Just part of human psychology, in my opinion. There is a qualitative difference in the way those sorts of beliefs are clung to, and it’s quite different from me believing the universe is 13.7 billion years old. If somebody figured out tomorrow it was not, I would not lose significance changing my belief. But for an anti-vax person, the core belief is Gospel, and challenging it affronts their soul.
I think I understand that your core argument is that this huge body of research and science can be trusted to be correct in the same way that we can trust science to be correct when it decided heliocentrism was nonsense. What that position conveniently forgets is the part where Ptolemy was widely accepted for many years, and any naysayers ridiculed for not accepting epicycles.
But perhaps we can post again in ten years, as I said.
“Significant” like “theory” is something that means something very different to scientists than non-scientists.
Are you suggesting that positions on vaccination can be personally evaluated in some way that is different than positions on global warming?
Maybe I am misunderstanding - are you an anti-vaxxer? That would actually be consistent with a rejection of the science behind global warming.
Nope, many scientific organizations did not change their tune as there was research that contradicted most of what the anti-vaxers were saying.
Until one can come with evidence that that was the case (again, most of the evidence reporting that there was poor monitoring/evidence is coming from misleading reports) this is just meaningless.
Duh, I meant to say that:
History is not on your side regarding this subject.
And observations came first, computer modeling came later.
I’m sure they were, and I’m sure many of them still are. Their problem was that there weren’t any actual reputable scientific researchers who agreed with them about that.
Gee, and yet somehow or other all those biomedical researchers managed to avoid falling into the mass-psychology trap of antivax beliefs. Remarkable!
Saying “Pro-AGW beliefs are popular in public opinion because laymen are credulous sheeple” is one thing. It’s pretty feeble considered as an argument against the validity of AGW, but it’s not particularly silly or untrue as a comment on public opinion.
But saying “AGW is the dominant hypothesis in climate science because climate scientists are credulous sheeple too” is something else again. That’s patently just wishful thinking on the part of deniers who want to believe that they’re wiser and more perceptive than the credulous sheeple.
Of course, it’s true that scientists, even large groups of scientists, can sometimes be mistaken about a scientific hypothesis. However, it’s also true that in modern science in general, there tends to be a significant correlation between the level of acceptance of a scientific hypothesis among scientific researchers and the validity of that hypothesis.
If and when climate-change deniers come up with valid alternative hypotheses that explain observed climate data at least as well as the AGW hypothesis does, then their positions on climate science will be entitled to equal respect.
But in the meantime, while sitting around sneering at the alleged credulity of non-denier scientific researchers may make the deniers feel good about themselves, it does nothing for their credibility on the issues of what’s really going on with global climate.
“I have the sense that for many years the anti-vax crowd was confident science was on their side, actually.”
Im not sure of any such thing. The whole issue was portrayed as a minority fighting big pharma from the getgo, with only a few researchers telling the truth vs the majority rejecting it or trying to hide it.
The exact reverse is the case with AGW, with the mainstream discipline accepting it, and only a small minority of the relevant discipline contesting it. If anything you’re the one in their company.
Otara
The way you cling to your beloved illusions of impartiality and skepticism on this issue doesn’t seem significantly different from the way a lot of other ill-informed people cling to a belief that the AGW hypothesis must be true or a belief that the AGW hypothesis can’t be true.
There are plenty of other mainstream scientific hypotheses, like AGW, that are equally uncertain and far from definitively confirmed at present. Yet you seem able to provisionally accept those hypotheses as reasonable current approximations to scientific understanding. You recognize that in the future they may change significantly or possibly even be completely discredited, but you don’t desperately resist the prospect of allowing them even conditional acceptance.
Yet on the subject of anthropogenic climate change, for some reason, you’re such a True Believer in the validity of your own “skepticism” that you refuse to even consider re-examining your attachment to it except in the safely distant future of ten years away. Somehow, the thought of even provisionally acknowledging that the mainstream scientific consensus on this issue is reasonably likely to be valid affronts your soul.
Seems kind of bewildering, but I guess it’s just part of human psychology.
As a physician, my position on vaccines is simple: they do more good than harm and they have nothing to do with causing autism. I base that belief on what I’ve read; if good research came along to refute it I would abandon that my belief. It’s not a Great Cause for me, and I do not achieve any personal significance from defending a position nor do I have any particular compulsion to proselytize that position.
This is qualitatively different from a belief that my wife loves me. At attack on that belief would result in a rather passionate and ferocious defense against the attack. That relationship is part of who I am and I can personally evaluate it.
With AGW (pro and con) there is this remarkable mass psychology taking place. It (the psychology) is not built on any sort of logical ranking of concerns for the Earth. For instance, the already-burgeoned and rapidly burgeoning human population represents a threat an order of magnitude beyond CO2 production (in fact, without our too-large population, there wouldn’t be a CO2 issue…). But over-population has not attained Great Cause status, so it just kind of sits out there like an ugly elephant in the room no one wants to address. Or, for instance, AGW’s effect on agriculture in temperate zones is probably net positive and areas where it’s net negative are not breadbaskets, but overwhelmingly the negative effects are the ones embraced. While I’m not particularly interested in getting distracted into all the subthemes dissected on every AGW thread, what is bewildering to me is the way folks have put so much…energy…self-significance…missionary zeal…into this particular Great Cause.
If any one factor lends me confidence, it is the growing consensus amongst scientists that AGW is based on solid fact. I am not a scientist, as mathtards are brutally discriminated against, so I do not have the intellectual tools to directly assess the data.
So I observe those who do. And I see that what was, at one time, a scientific hypotheses largely scorned becoming widely accepted, that is a kind of evidence. To my mind, a very strong form of evidence. In that scientists are people, and if there’s any three words people hate to say, the are these: “I was wrong.”
So the scientists who are moving to the AGW camp are doing what they would rather not. They are doing so under the compulsion of fact and data. Therefore, I am confident that the facts and data, analyzed by competent professional minds, are sound.
In ten years or so, one or the other of us is going to have a most delicious comeuppance.
Let me ask you to remember one thing: I was skeptical in 2010. I said I was skeptical when it was unpopular to be skeptical. I will admit the error of my skepticism about the science, and admit it publicly on this forum, assuming the forum exists and I’m alive.
What else can I say? I realize I will remain the Great Unwashed in your and other eyes, but I think my ego will handle that just fine, as well as any crow in my future diet. 
I just can’t get fired up around this Great Cause. It doesn’t pass my smell test for the Cause itself and it ranks so far behind the personal bug up my behind–overpopulation–that I can’t see myself getting fired up any time soon over AGW.
FWIW I think you would be pleased with my generally soft personal footprint on this earth, though. I’m not so arrogant as to think I get to consume all I want just because I can afford to jet around and have lots of Stuff.
Interesting that you’re so emotionally invested in this that you regard the outcome as potentially “delicious”. It’s also interesting, as I noted above, that you’re insisting that any such outcome must be deferred to the safe distance of a decade or thereabouts. Are you really that determined that nothing could possibly change your attachment to your beloved AGW skepticism in the nearer term?
AFAICT, the “True Believer skeptics” such as yourself aren’t so much the “Great Unwashed” as the “Great Egotists”. It seems that the reason you refuse to grant even provisional tentative credence to the AGW hypothesis, despite its widespread support among scientific researchers, is not because you’re dumb or uncouth or anything like that. Rather, it’s because you’re so enamored of the idea of your own intellectual superiority to the credulous sheeple with their “Great Cause”.
And this I also addressed to you in a past thread, so I have no idea why you are proud of not paying attention. Many environmentalists are not ignoring population control.
AFAIK the main reason is because it would take time to adapt and climate change does not have a fixed date on when a tipping point will be reached locally, also experiments with CO2 effects on crops show that insects that are pests for the crops benefit with more CO2 in the air.
For me in reality the interest to this issue came thanks to “The stupid! It burns!”
It was not you, but there was a doper in a very early thread on this subject that made a very stupid mistake: He confused proxy temperatures with the instrumental temperature record. Then he compounded the stupid by pointing to a graph from an early IPCC report, and ignored that it came from one of the earliest IPCC reports, new data and information had rendered that graph obsolete (You know, thanks to something silly called more data gathered and records) by the 2007 IPCC report more up to date reconstructions and graphs were used that showed the now familiar hockey stick shape.
Yet, deniers still claimed that the obsolete graph gathered by the same group was the “beesnees” as it showed a big medieval warm period and no hockey stick; however, a simple reading of the evidence showed to me that the denier was incredible stupid by using the same organization’s graph that was later dismissed/corrected as not being more accurate than the new ones gathered by the same organization.
It was clear to me then: “Corrections made by the IPCC are even denied by these guys!”.
It was clear that that denier was never aware of the old saying: “The LORD gave and the LORD has taken away” new and more samples of three rings, boreholes and corals showed that the medieval period was not as huge or global as previously thought.
So yeah, you may attach religious reasons to others, as for myself I go for being biased in favor of science and against stupid ideas.
Video showing how it is an article of faith among deniers that the graph that showed the medieval warm period is **still **the good one and not the latest ones:
Yes, and that does not disagree with what I posted. "
There is little doubt of a current warming trend, as I said. There is little doubt humans are one of the causes of that trend. How great is the trend, and how much humans have caused is a matter of debate."
None of your cites in any way disagrees with what I have said. Are you actually reading my posts or just arguing with what you think they say?
There may be a debate on how much humans have caused the warming, but it is clear that nature is not the main forcing, not since the 1960’s at least.
You are missing the first part of the cite, it is a reply to this contrarian point:
The reply was that the climate sensitivity of around 3°C is the most usually agreed level of temperature that can be blamed on humans that will come as a result of doubling the CO2 concentration in the atmosphere, human activity is most responsible for this.
There is also the levels of radiative forcing that have been found for CO2: