I’ve been reading through (and periodically posting in) the various global warming debates, and I come away from them with the feeling that the debates are not so much about whether there is agreement or disagreement over the scientific conclusions, but are fundamentally about how people perceive science itself. The debaters seem to fall into several groups:
Those who seem to accept the conclusions without much (if any) further investigation
Those who accept the conclusions with considerable additional personal study
Those who don’t accept the conclusions until much more is known
Those who won’t accept the conclusions at all
My hypothesis here is that these groups correspond with people’s basic beliefs about science:
That it’s usually correct and therefore we should listen to what the scientists say
That it’s often correct, but we need to look into it ourselves before agreeing
That it may be correct, but because it’s often used to impose the scientists’ view of the world, we need to be a lot more certain about what’s going on
That it’s usually used to impose the scientists’ view of the world on us without our consent
(I toss these groupings out as examples across a continuous gradient of belief and recognize that they won’t adequately describe everyone, but I have to start somewhere…)
My question to the Great Minds of the SDMB (others are welcome as well ) is whether you think that this sort of gradient between complete acceptance and complete rejection is valid.
If it is valid, then my view is that the climate debates will continue unceasingly throughout the foreseeable future, in whatever manifestation the SDMB may eventually take. Buy stock in SDMB now!
Of course there’s a gradient. Of course the climate debates will continue unceasingly, just as the “is tobacco cancerous/addictive” debates continued unceasingly for decades.
But like those, after a certain point public opinion was so much on one side of the “debate” that public policy could be made regardless of the bitter-enders continued arguments. This will hold for the global warming debate, too, regardless of the truth of the matter.
>Tobacco has proven carcinogens; global warming is a vague theory.
In what way is global warming a “vague theory”? There hasn’t been serious scientific debate about whether global warming is real, and whether humans are involved in it, in quite a few years. Politicians who are beholden to fossil fuel interests can certainly interfere with working on the problem, but they can’t turn a clear conclusion into a vague theory or, if it’s more what you are getting at, a vague idea.
Well, you’re certainly free to feel that way. There’s quite a few of you armchair climatologists on the internet these days.
If it is a scam, it’s one of the best-kept scams in history, as it requires the cooperation of thousands of climatologists worldwide and the acquiescence of politicians and governments, all in the nebulous hope of making a killing when we manage to convince the rest of you that there’s only so much carbon we can pump into the air. Presumably all those researchers who’ve been suppressing data and falsifying evidence all these years will finally be rolling in the dough once AGW is thoroughly faked and the supersecret Global Warming Cabal sends out the checks.
This is the point: there is no evidence of AGW. AGW is entirely possible, but there is not one actual piece of evidence to show that it is happenning. The link between the CO2 that humanity has emitted and the warming of the Earth since the Little Ice Age has not been proven. And maybe AGW is real but nothing to do with CO2 - what is the effect of so many heat islands?
Science deals with hypotheses and facts and falsification. AGW is a hypothesis as yet unverified by facts and I’m not sure if any falsification has been proposed or tested. Further investigation is required.
And there, OP, I think you have your answer. Science says there’s a consensus, and a whole lot of your third and fourth examples pipe in. So yes, there’s always going to be “debate”, just like there are still Intelligent Design proponents on this board, too. “It’s taking longer than we thought”, indeed.
Me, I’m in the first group with a large dose of the second when it comes to the specific methodologies of geochemistry. The whole thing’s already settled in my mind, but like wevets said in another thread, I have succumbed to SIWOTI syndrome.
Popper’s model is not the only scientific methodology possible, or even practiced.
Not true.
Global warming itself is the (lack of)falsification, based on Arrhenius’s predictions of the last century. If there had been none, or considerably less than we see, the theory would have been falsified. It hasn’t been.
Further investigation is ongoing. But the consensus is already in.
In my circle (economists) there is some debate as to whether the cure may be worse than the disease; which I think is valid.
In my opinion, most armatures think cutting back on carbon emissions means Prescott Buffington III may have to give up his motor yacht. In reality, it means that lots of people in Asia, Africa, and Latin America will remain in poverty for much longer. Of course, rising sea levels are no great shake for the worlds poorest either.
I think the effects of AGW are more important than the cause, and I think it’s valid to believe in AGW, but be dubious of proposed solutions.
I don’t know what the cause is. It might indeed be CO2, but it hasn’t been proven.
Exactly. There are hypotheses you can test. CO2 and AGW is not one of these as yet.
So? Facts are facts, no matter which way you cut them. The fact is that it has not been demonstrated that the CO2 released by man is responsible for global warming. Yes, the world has warmed. Yes, man has released CO2. The fact is, though, that the link between the two has not been proven.
This is arrant nonsense.
Consensus is meaningless in the face of facts. It used to be consensus that the Earth was the centre of the universe.
But back to the OP: AGW at the moment more like religion. Those who disagree with it have a very hard time. Those who are merely skeptical have an even harder time.
It’s been proven enough to convince every major science body. What more proof is there?
So why bring up that one, if you knew it was already debunked (which is what I take you “exactly” to mean?
Not true. If you doubt the link, you’ll have to explain why the physics of greenhouse gases and the geochemistry of the carbon cycle is wrong. The CO[sub]2[/sub]/warming link fits both.
Says you. Climate scientists disagree.
It was proven 100 years ago.
What? That Arrhenius made the prediction, or what?
Consensus has the facts on its side.
But that wasn’t scientific consensus, as “science” didn’t exist at the time.
AGW theory is nothing like religion. Get back to me when religion has scientific fact and peer review literature on its side.
Because they are disagreeing with the facts. And doing so in the public forum using didgy rhetoric, rather than the appropriate venues for science, the literature and the conference hall.
I have yet to come across the “merely skeptical” who suffers a hard time. Everyone I’ve encountered who enters these debates and gets shot down is a raging denialist, not a mere skeptic.
MrDibble, rather than hijack this thread, can I suggest you read one of the threads where jshore debates intention and watch how the former ducks, dives, squirms, and wriggles?
>whether you think that this sort of gradient between complete acceptance and complete rejection is valid
Wow. It’s amazing how tempting it is for most of us to post about whether AGW is real instead of whether the gradient is valid.
But, to answer this OP question, I think it is typical and healthy for there to be a gradient like this, which is a weak acceptance the gradient is valid. More specifically I think the OP’s four categories of belief in science may well manifest themselves in the OP’s four groups of debaters. And I think the first three of the OP’s four groups of debaters occupy valid positions, and think that the imprecise art of judging how critically to question experts before accepting their statements is the only way of choosing which group to join. However, I don’t think belonging to the fourth group is reasonable, any more than belonging to an unnamed zeroth group that would refuse to believe there is no AGW even if all the scientists changed their minds and stayed that way.
We must be seeing different threads. jshore holds his own against intention’s increasingly strident rhetoric, IMO. All intention’s been doing lately is going over old ground about who hasn’t made their databases publicly available etc. - never mind that the actual journals & NAS were happy enough with the process followed by Mann etc. Not that any of that would overturn the actual work done, so it essentially amounts to ad hominem attacks, not refutation of the science.
And why does it seem all the denialists want intention to do the heavy lifting for them? Is it because he’s the only one who shows even a little science background?
If you have cogent arguments, make them. My post was perfectly on point for this thread, discussing the science aspect as a proven thing. Refute away if you can - although endlessly repeating “no evidence!” is no refutation when I’ve already linked to same.
I’d say there has to come a point where even the third category is no longer valid - there has to be a point at which we can say “Enough! The evidence has spoken!” and can safely collapse the third category into the fourth. We can certainly say this is the case for Evolution, for Plate Tectonics, for Quantum Physics. Why not for Anthropogenic Global Warming?
I come across this nonsense often enough that I want to make sure the message gets home here.
You’re failing to distinguish between two opposite kinds of consensus: A consensus based on an immediate impression that’s not examined logically; and a consensus based on accumulation of evidence.
So, yes, there once was a “consensus” that the Earth was the center of Creation.
This was not a consensus based on scientific analysis of evidence; it was just an assumption based on the simplest subjective impression: it looks like the Sun comes up, crosses the sky and goes down. Likewise the Moon and the stars. (Turns out they were right about the Moon, in a way.)
So “untested assumption” is a better description than “consensus”.
Once somebody started investigating the question with careful observation and logical thought, an alternate hypothesis began to get consideration; when telescopes came along and provided crucial new evidence, the hypothesis (written by Copernicus, modified by Kepler, confirmed by Galileo) became accepted theory. Since then, every single bit of evidence collected has reinforced that theory, and now we really do have a consensus.
The consensus on AGW is the result of decades of evidence-gathering and analysis. A lot of the scientists involved would probably, if they had their druthers, prefer that the truth were different; I know I would. But they’ve got no choice, because they have to go where the evidence takes them.
[Colbert Report]Facts have a liberal bias.[/Colbert Report]
If there’s no evidence of the A in the AGW, then we’re back to the Supersecret Climatologist Cabal. Do you think the head of the SCC sent around a memo telling researchers worldwide to manufacture evidence and draw conclusions which support a politically- and fiscally-unfriendly theory with the promise of big bucks when the world bows to their demands?
Actually, I was being deliberate: there is no evidence of AGW. There is no accumulation of evidence of AGW. There are a lot of models, sure, but there is no evidence. Note that I don’t doubt that Global Warming is real; I’ve just yet to be convinced that man has anything significant to do with it. I have asked for proof on a number of occasions and none has been forthcoming.
) is whether you think that this sort of gradient between complete acceptance and complete rejection is valid.