Maybe this question could be turned into a poll. There’s certainly enough interest in it.
The only movement I’ve seen that fits the OP, IMO, is apocalyptic peak oil. They’re the ones who believe that the post disaster world will be better; climate change scientists think the exact opposite.
"And you know this how? You have studied it at length and concluded that climate change is a hoax. Or you’ve concluded that the global average temperature will go up a few degrees but we will somehow adjust? That the drought in California is just a random blip? Not saying it couldn’t be, but why can’t you pay attention to the people who have spent their lives studying it? " (Hari Seldon)
What I have studied is John Cook’s global warming consensus study (called 97 percent something or other), and his public presentation. He claims to be a scientist of some kind (a social scientist, I think), and he’s spent his life studying how to create propaganda, apparently. That so-called study is so hypocritical and twisted it makes me want to shout from the mountaintops that no one should trust this man. Nor should you trust his website, Skeptical Science. Not because what it says is or isn’t true, but because you can’t trust the creator of it. If someone was willing to put so much effort into putting out propaganda like his consensus study, who knows how he twisted all the facts in Skeptical Science?
(I’d like to point out that the reason I looked at that 97 percent consensus study so intently is because I read Jose Duarte’s very dense essay of criticism directed at it, and besides actually viewing the Youtube of Cook’s presentation, all I really did was fact-check Duarte’s essay. I encourage everyone to read it, maybe print it all out and take it in one paragraph at a time. It’s reeeeallly long.)
And my point is…
I don’t think Dr. Cook is an anomaly. I think there are a lot of university professors who output papers with twisted facts and outright lies. So no, Dr. Seldon, I am not content anymore to believe those people who claim they have spent their lives studying one topic or another and take them at their word. I’m not stupid; laypeople are not incapable of understanding logic arguments simply because they are not in the enlightened golden circle of the tenured.
Especially with something so crucial to the world as AGW, I want it explained to me, bit by laborious bit, no matter how complex. And I’m nothing special; there must be plenty of people out there who feel the same way I do. So there’s definitely a viewing audience for this TV program that keeps running in my head:
(cue the trumpet solo)
Nova presents… Anthropogenic Global Warming 101… How Man’s Activity is Warming Our Beloved Planet to Dangerous Levels…
(more serene music)
…made possible from support by viewers like you… thank you…
Ever since I heard of global warming as a political issue, I’ve been waiting for this program, something dumbed down just a little for laypeople, that explains fundamentally and incontrovertibly, from A to Z, how artificial activity has affected the Earth, and the evidence for it.
I’m still waiting.
Can someone translate **anthonymortadella’s **stream-of-consciousness post, please?
Apparently he wants someone, anyone, to laboriously explain AGW to him.
However he’s opted to not trust the people that have studied the issue extensively because they have a vested interest in the conclusion that AGW exists.
Quite the quandary n’est pas?
One of the things I meant was, if anyone were willing to prove AGW to me, and provide some evidence for it, then I wouldn’t care who they were.
Another thing I meant was, since global warming is such a hot political topic, some revered and trusted PBS program like Nova should have done the above already, and they have not, which raises alarm bells for me.
I’ve opted not to trust the AGW scientific community anymore because I’ve spotted this one flagrant liar in their group. Isn’t that a valid reason to be skeptical?
It’s a definite sign of something.
Grude, emphatic “yes” to your OP, but I can’t come up with anything not already expressed above.
Here you go: Global Warming for Kids. Written by a guy name Chris Woodford, who doesn’t appear to directly benefit, financially, from AGW.
The alarm bells are for the missing information, what usually happens is that your sources are willfully ignorant of how old this issue is and the research that was done, This documentary was shown on PBS NOVA (one reason why this was not apparent is that it was a NOVA/FRONTLINE production:
Since the show was from 2000 (!) only excerpts are available:
(The conclusion was that indeed global warming was going to be a big problem and alternate sources of energy are suggested. And currently the news are better on alternative energy)It has been noticed in the FAIR media watchdog group that ever since the Koch began to fund NOVA a lot, then the documentaries on the subject have almost disappeared, and the recent documentaries on the issue are not titled in a way that it would be easy to look for.
Yes, they did called it "Extreme Ice" (sounds like a sport documentary) but that title now seems inappropriate as it does deals with how climate change is accelerating the ice cap loss.You miss the point of the site, it is called Skeptical Science because one has to be skeptical also of the science the deniers are pushing. And because what contrarians are doing is usually wrong or they misrepresent the published science they are the ones that should be not only skeptical about, but the deniers that publish a lot of nonsense in their blogs need to be put in the same column as creationists.
Oh, and BTW, many of the ones criticizing Cook are the ones with the creative accounting or as in the case of the contrarian blogs, they are pulling their data out of their ass.
As it was shown in GD Thread, the levels of the consensus are way over 90% in many different surveys and studies.
Cite?