Why didn’t I think of that before? Let me get right on it :rolleyes:
@anthonymortadella:
Read the booklet from the National Academy of Sciences that I linked for you. Or for increasing levels of detail, the SPM and the Technical Summary from the IPCC AR5 Physical Science Basis of climate change. The entire report is there, too.
Then come back and tell us if you’ve learned anything. I’ll wait.
Well, thanks for that, but I do have to note here that you missed that human induced global warming is also mentioned a lot by many pseudo scientists as being a continuation of the environmentalists using religion or faith to press an agenda; nope, it is just science (although that is true that there are environmentalists that do not know the difference between shit and shinola). And I have to mention also that before you came to that thread global warming was already mentioned.
The point is that global warming is a part of that thread since many deniers out there and even posters on the SDMB do continue to use that tired argument about this being based on religion and faith “just like many environmentalists of the past” as many misguided do think. In reality it is once again the old argument made by “Storm” against all science in general.
[QUOTE] Storm to her credit despite my derision Keeps firing off clichés with startling precision Like a sniper using bollocks for ammunitionSTORM: “You’re so sure of your position
But you’re just closed-minded
I think you’ll find
Your faith in Science and Tests
Is just as blind
As the faith of any fundamentalist.”
TIM: “Wow, thats a good point, let me think for a bit…
Oh wait, my mistake, its absolute bullshit.
Science adjusts it’s views based on what’s observed
Faith is the denial of observation so that Belief can be preserved.”
[/QUOTE]
Septimus, I’m glad you brought that up. I knew even as I wrote my OP, what I said about only believing things you understand doesn’t hold true in real life. But I was trying to make a splashy point, because in principle it is true. The only sure way to know something is to understand it for yourself.
In practice we rely on experts for almost all of our technical information. Not just in fields of science that most of us will never have a chance to do hands-on, but in all sorts of mundane technology, like will my new roof hold up? What’s the best way to insulate my house? How often should I change my motor oil? But when we do that, we make it a priority to look for people we can trust. The best roofers, the best car mechanics are the ones we trust.
For the reasons I described (actually referred to), I don’t trust the climate science community. So I feel I’m forced to fall back on standalone arguments, ie, I’m forced to look up the information myself, understand it myself.
We could make the extraction and transportation of this fossil fuel safe, clean and environmentally friendly. The companies involved know how to pass the added expense on to the end consumer. Let them pay for a while, then these renewable alternatives will become cost effective.
It is only when we, the individuals, work to reduce our carbon footprint will the solar system be saved.
I think that was whoosh from septimus.
Once again, check sites like NASA and not places like WUWT.
No, he understood the point I made sarcastically, and responded
I’ve only skimmed the thread, but it seems that John Cook (social scientist?) is one reason he mistrusts, partly based on an essay by Jose Duarte. But there must be more than that to his mistrust. What could Duarte’s views on a social scientist have to do with the trustworthiness of climate scientists?
Indeed, but she also needs to check the second link I made on post #2. In essence Duarte’s ideology is clouding his judgment of the data, and as noted he ignores all other surveys and polls made before and after.
Knowledge requires commitment. Saying you’re willing to sit down for an hour and watch a TV show is a pretty minimal commitment and you’ll emerge with minimal knowledge. If you really want to understand a complex science you need to commit to several years of university level studies.
Now I’m not going to condemn anyone who doesn’t want to make this kind of commitment. But if you’re not willing to do the work, you’re not justified in claiming disbelief. You don’t get to say that you don’t believe in some scientific fact just because you couldn’t be bothered to learn the science that supports it.
Nothing, of course. It’s a variation of the standard meme: “I don’t trust the climate science community.” Because, whereas normal scientists can be trusted, climate scientists are the spawn of the devil. 
Cook has been vilified because the 97% consensus is extremely inconvenient to the denialist argument being promulgated by the oil and coal industries and self-serving business factions. The fact of the matter is, though, that the consensus is real and has been duly expressed in the unanimous statements of major science bodies including every major national academy in the world. There is absolutely no ambiguity here.
OK, let me get around to my annoyance with that idiot Santorum and his appearance on Bill Maher last Friday, which dealt with the same issue. IIRC, Santorum claimed that there was a new study that claimed that “57% of climate scientists disagreed that CO2 was the dominant cause of global warming”. It’s quite interesting to actually look at the facts.
Santorum didn’t know it but he was referring to a recent publication by Strengers, Verheggen and Vringer at the Netherlands PBL. And there are two major issues with his claim, which to a rational person would be mind-boggling since the world’s major scientific institutions all say otherwise. So how could Santorum be right? Well, the answer is that he isn’t.
The first problem is that, by their own admission, they had a skewed sample that included large numbers of known denialists, and not a fair cross-section of real climate scientists. This isn’t hard to see from some of the other responses they got. My favorite was the question on present sea level rise. This is a straightforward question with an unambiguous numeric answer. Well it turns out that only a minority of these geniuses – 48.3% – got it right. All the others either got it wrong or didn’t know, and here’s the best part: a whopping 24.3% of these budding Einsteins checked off “I don’t know”!
Not only was this a skewed sample, but the results were also cherry-picked and distorted in the blogging wackosphere. So it was kind of a double-whammy of stupid – bad data leading to skewed results, then the wackosphere pounded the last trace of any kind of reality out of it. Then they gave those numbers to Rick Santorum.
For instance, one of the principal authors of the study, Bart Verheggen, wrote a blog about it whose title and introductory text was rather dramatically different than what Santorum was claiming. In fact, it was the exact opposite:
PBL survey shows strong scientific consensus that global warming is largely driven by greenhouse gases
As Michael Tobis rightly points out, the level of scientific consensus that you find “depends crucially on who you include as a scientist, what question you are asking, and how you go about asking it”. And on how you interpret the data. We argued that our survey results show a strong scientific consensus that global warming is predominantly caused by anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Others beg to differ. Recent differences of opinion are rooted in different interpretations of the data. Our interpretation is based on how we went about asking certain questions and what the responses indicate.
This is the kind of bullshit deception that goes on all the time by the denialists. And then the gullible start believing this crap and saying that they “don’t trust climate scientists”.
So the OP wants to find out for himself. Fine. Still waiting for him to acknowledge that he now has a wealth of reading material to get up to speed on the science himself, so that’s no longer a problem. Still waiting to find out what he has learned from it. I don’t expect to ever get an answer. I wonder what the next illuminating thread on this subject will be about? :rolleyes:
It shouldn’t be looked at as having to “trust” experts on a matter of science. Nor should someone take the attitude that scientists must bend over backwards, contort themselves into impossible shapes and beg and plead with doubters to accept the massive evidence that supports the evidence-based position.
Doubters should instead approach the outlier view on a subject for which there is an overwhelming scientific consensus, by demanding that the outliers work overtime to make a convincing case that they’re right and that they deserve your trust.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Whether it’s climate change, genetic modification technology, the cause of AIDS, immunization, whatever - make that tiny minority of scientists/pseudoscientists who preach denial prove themselves beyond doubt. No good their shouting “shill!”, saying “science wuz wrong before!”, yapping about Galileo - nope, they must show their facts (such as they are) and try to make a coherent case.
Wow… and here I had just assumed everybody that read that question just died from boredom…
Around 1978 to 1981 I studied astronomy and physics. There were conspiracy theories about the moon landings being hoaxes, as well as hollow earth theories in which the poles were big holes, and UFO cover-ups, and the like. I learned various ways a person could verify for themselves that we had equipment on the moon, and that the earth was solid and the poles were not openings, and that you could take zillions of photos of the sky and share them with zillions of other people without any controlling authority able to interrupt it. I’m sure there are opportunities for people who think humans causing climate change is a hoax to do similar things. If you work around science, you know it generally behaves this way.
For example, wherever you live, you can record local temperatures, and then later go and find recordings that match your own in big online databases, which therefore obviously can’t just be made-up numbers. And you can download datasets and do your own statistical analysis on them.
Project Budburst might be a good one to start with. With very little effort anyone can participate. You can compare your own observations with history, or just keep at it enough years and see it for yourself.
And of course, perhaps the best example of this sort of thing is Richard Muller and the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project.
A skeptical scientist funded by such sources as outspoken denier Charles G. Koch, proposed several reasons not to trust the science consensus and set out to test them. He proposed a brand new study methodology and took into account many of the potential problems pointed out by the denial community.
His article after the project developed a dataset that largely confirmed mainstream science starts:
He didn’t remain loyal to the pimp who hired him? Why would anyone trust him? :rolleyes:
The most funny part was that one of the most famous contrarians out there, Anthony Watts (WUWT), promised that he was going to accept the conclusions of Muller and Berkeley Earth, his promise was not kept.
That life work was indeed the reason why WUWT was made, but it will be hard to find any admission of how flawed that work was, and so it goes for virtually everything that he is posting in his sorry blog nowadays.
Obviously, the world’s climate scientists feared that their global scam was going to be exposed, so they drew on their vast wealth and passed the hat around to offer Muller more money than the Kochs were paying. Michael Mann flew in on his personal 747 with several suitcases of cash, joined by some members of the Illuminati flying in on a UFO owned by aliens from the distant planet Gazoomba, to make sure it would happen. So Muller forced his team to fudge the numbers to make it look like the science was right.
From their web page:
A great update on this. When Santorum made this claim Maher had not heard about this survey, so he just let it slide and expressed skepticism that it had any validity. Just watched this week’s show (he was off last week) and I just wanted to say that I was delighted to see that Maher’s staffers researched the issue and tonight Maher took a few minutes to expose Santorum’s complete bullshit pretty much exactly the way I laid it out in that post. I can’t remember a previous occasion when a claim made by a guest in a prior show was considered so egregiously wrong that it was refuted in a later show like this once the facts were known. But it’s a great example of how the denialists roll … bullshit, fabrications, and distortions.
The complete original post debunking Santorum’s bullshit claim was here.
BTW, I wonder if we’ll ever hear back from the OP, who claimed to be seeking a personal understanding of climate change because he doesn’t trust scientists. We provided him with links to so much material that he must surely have educated himself by now.