Why would climate change be a hoax?

wolfpup · May 13, 2015, 3:52am

No, science is science – the processes and methodologies have not changed just because you don’t like the conclusions. That the results of climate science have been subject to politically motivated re-interpretation and misrepresentation by vested interests doesn’t invalidate the science, it has just served to politicize and block policy implementation efforts and to confuse the general public including, apparently, yourself, about the facts of the scientific consensus and the difference between science and policy.

And the reason that governments have offices and agencies that deal with the environment and climate change is because these are important policy issues.

Nobody’s career is in danger if they publish legitimate research with substantiated evidence and valid methodologies. Furthermore, as I pointed out in #74 which you apparently didn’t read, there is a minority in climate science (like Soon and Baliunas, and the other examples I cited) who can actually publish discreditable denialist bullshit and still have a storied career and lucrative funding and get their names in headlines, because there’s a thriving market for denialist bullshit. So aside from the fact that science always welcomes honest evidence-based discussion whether or not it aligns with a prevailing theory, in climate science there has come to also be a special and very lucrative place for ethically challenged charlatans who have made their careers by challenging the orthodoxy.

I honestly cannot parse through all the errors in that sentence to understand what you’re trying to say. But the sense I get is that it reflects once again a lack of understanding of the difference between scientific inquiry and public policy.

Aji_de_Gallina · May 13, 2015, 5:38am

wolfpup:

No, science is science – the processes and methodologies have not changed just because you don’t like the conclusions. That the results of climate science have been subject to politically motivated re-interpretation and misrepresentation by vested interests doesn’t invalidate the science, it has just served to politicize and block policy implementation efforts and to confuse the general public including, apparently, yourself, about the facts of the scientific consensus and the difference between science and policy.

And the reason that governments have offices and agencies that deal with the environment and climate change is because these are important policy issues.

Nobody’s career is in danger if they publish legitimate research with substantiated evidence and valid methodologies. Furthermore, as I pointed out in #74 which you apparently didn’t read, there is a minority in climate science (like Soon and Baliunas, and the other examples I cited) who can actually publish discreditable denialist bullshit and still have a storied career and lucrative funding and get their names in headlines, because there’s a thriving market for denialist bullshit. So aside from the fact that science always welcomes honest evidence-based discussion whether or not it aligns with a prevailing theory, in climate science there has come to also be a special and very lucrative place for ethically challenged charlatans who have made their careers by challenging the orthodoxy.

I honestly cannot parse through all the errors in that sentence to understand what you’re trying to say. But the sense I get is that it reflects once again a lack of understanding of the difference between scientific inquiry and public policy.

I know the difference scientific inquirí and public policy, it is you who apparently doesn’t get it. Pure science means nothing (especially in such an important thing like AGW) that regardless of what science says, it only becomes important when it is transformed into public policy.

I’ll go for a non-AGW hypothetical to make my point clear.

Suppose that it became a 100% scientific fact, proven by countless studies in every (un)imaginable situation that legalizing rape reduced the incidence of forced, unwanted sexual intercourse by 50%. Legalize it and it gets cut in half.
That’s the science stuff. Incontrovertable.

Can you imagine any mayor, governor, representative, senator, secretary or president who’d sign the law that legalizes rape?

Re: Soon and Baliunas:
Getting published is simple, anyone can “get published” and you absolutely make my point by saying “[they] can actually publish discreditable denialist bullshit and still have a storied career and lucrative funding and get their names in headlines, because there’s a thriving market for denialist bullshit.”
Would you say they have a credible/viable carreer in academia/peer-reviewed stuff?

Let’s see if you answer this time.
What % of your disposable income would you be willing to relinquish in order to get your desired AGW results?

Look to how much it took for warmists ro accept that (at the very least) thermometers are showing “the pause”. It wenr from “it’s not happening” to " it’s cherry-picking" to “the heat is in the ocean”

GIGObuster · May 13, 2015, 6:10am

I begin to see what ideology one follows where hypotheticals like that are considered “useful”

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/05/04/477921/heartland-institute-compares-climate-science-believers-and-reporters-to-mass-murderers-and-madmen/

Thing is that what deniers and contrarians have published has not withstood even the smell test, but people like Senator Inhofe called Soon and Bailunas the “Galileos” of our time.

Even if evidence has surfaced about their blatant conflict of interest.

I’m not wolfpup, but clearly you are not paying attention about what was posted before.

That is because it is very likely that contrarians did manage to drive the conversation for a while, but that was very likely based also on a mirage.

No, climate change is not experiencing a hiatus. No, there is not currently a “pause” in global warming.

Despite widespread such claims in contrarian circles, human-caused warming of the globe proceeds unabated. Indeed, the most recent year (2014) was likely the warmest year on record.

It is true that Earth’s surface warmed a bit less than models predicted it to over the past decade-and-a-half or so. This doesn’t mean that the models are flawed. Instead, it points to a discrepancy that likely arose from a combination of three main factors (see the discussion my piece last year in Scientific American). These factors include the likely underestimation of the actual warming that has occurred, due to gaps in the observational data. Secondly, scientists have failed to include in model simulations some natural factors (low-level but persistent volcanic eruptions and a small dip in solar output) that had a slight cooling influence on Earth’s climate. Finally, there is the possibility that internal, natural oscillations in temperature may have masked some surface warming in recent decades, much as an outbreak of Arctic air can mask the seasonal warming of spring during a late season cold snap. One could call it a global warming “speed bump”. In fact, I have.

Some have argued that these oscillations contributed substantially to the warming of the globe in recent decades. In an article my colleagues Byron Steinman, Sonya Miller and I have in the latest issue of Science magazine, we show that internal climate variability instead partially offset global warming.

It is possible that the downturn in the PMO itself reflects a “dynamical response” of the climate to global warming. Indeed, I have suggested this possibility before. But the state-of-the-art climate model simulations analyzed in our current study suggest that this phenomenon is a manifestation of purely random, internal oscillations in the climate system.

This finding has potential ramifications for the climate changes we will see in the decades ahead. As we note in the last line of our article,
Given the pattern of past historical variation, this trend will likely reverse with internal variability, instead adding to anthropogenic warming in the coming decades. 
That is perhaps the most worrying implication of our study, for it implies that the “false pause” may simply have been a cause for false complacency, when it comes to averting dangerous climate change.

septimus · May 13, 2015, 6:52am

Thank you, wolfpup, Anne Neville, GIGObuster etc. for fighting ignorance about science, both in general and in specific. For me, right-wing views on science will now forever be epitomized by their leading intellectual Ted Cruz who compared himself to Galileo – the Galileo famous for defying the accepted wisdom that the Earth was flat! :eek: (Galileo lived a century after Ferdinand Magellan, for heaven’s sakes, not to mention the ancient Greeks.)

I’m just skeptical enough to think there might be scientific objections to AGW models, but if there are it’s the right-wing anti-science nuts themselves who drown them out. For example, a main talking point of the nuts is that the Earth has cooled over the past 15 years even though anyone casually clicking Google News would have stumbled upon

I’m not sure anyone in the thread has answered OP’s question, but whatever the conspiracy theory is, I guess Google.com and most of the world’s liberal governments are all in the Illuminati’s clutches too.

BigMan · May 13, 2015, 8:21am

Money. It’s always about money. For one look at all the dough global warmings head spokesman al gore has raked in since he started jamming the hoax down everyone’s throats, while at the same time his tennesee mansion sucks up a whopping 221,000 kilowatt hours of electricity annually, that’s more than 20 times the average citizen, rides around the country on Gulf Streams, a little hypocritical of someone saying we are making to big a carbon impact on ye earth, for two, you can look at all the falsified data, or all the data showing that completely contradicts global warming advocates. Or three, go they don’t call it global warming anymore because it wasn’t actually getting any warmer so now they call it climate change, the long term goal is implimant a carbon tax on everyone, taxes like how many miles a year you drive your car, and others, more government in your life, more regulations on buisness. Long story short, there is no evidence what so ever that man has made any effect to the climate to cause changes in tempature or ozone depletion or polar ice or any of that, global warming or “man made climate change” is a religion invented by the leftist environmental liberal wack jobs called the Democratic Party

septimus · May 13, 2015, 8:46am

Welcome to the Dope, BigMan. And kudos for giving a detailed and definitive answer to OP’s question.

Gyrate · May 13, 2015, 9:29am

First the world economy has to pay off the buggywhip-making industry…

As always, there’s an XKCD for that.

And for summarizing all the points that have already been thoroughly rebutted in this thread. Good to see them all in one place.

Anne_Neville · May 13, 2015, 12:57pm

Al Gore is not a climatologist. Even if he were, any personal failings of his would have nothing to do with climatology data, unless he were faking said data. If you’re going to claim that he is faking climate data, let’s see some evidence. Preferably some from a peer-reviewed journal.

Werner Heisenberg literally tried to help Hitler make atomic bombs. This has nothing to do with whether or not the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle is valid. Isaac Newton thought it was appropriate to have someone hanged, drawn, and quartered for counterfeiting coins. Lots of scientists have been assholes. Lots of scientists have held reprehensible political views. None of that has anything to do with whether their theories are correct.

People used Darwin’s theory of evolution to justify some really reprehensible public policy decisions. That doesn’t have anything to do with whether or not the theory of evolution is correct.

Aji_de_Gallina · May 13, 2015, 1:48pm

(my bolding)

Say what?? Galileo didn’t have to convince anyone, at least anyone with even a tiny ammount of scientific knowledge, that the earth wasn’t flat

Anyone saying that the Earth has had considerable cooling for 15 years is wrong, nuts. However, science-based sceptics say that the increase of Earth temperatures has had a dramatic flattening, and it took warmists about 10 years to change their tune.
You cite google.com, and nothing else, as a source. mI¿d go for UK’s MEt Office

Even if 2014 were, by 0.01°C the warmest, it doesn’t negate the flattening of the curve.

Anne_Neville · May 13, 2015, 2:05pm

If the government did want to restrict energy usage, for whatever reason, why would it stop them if it were proven that anthropogenic climate change were not happening? Governments do things that go against scientific advice all the time. They don’t need to falsify any climate data or pay off any researchers to justify doing what they want to do, so why would they? They don’t do anything to suppress data saying that abstinence-only sex education isn’t as effective as comprehensive sex education in reducing teen pregnancies. They don’t do anything about research showing that needle exchanges are an effective way of reducing HIV transmission- they just outlaw the needle exchanges regardless of what the science says. If a criminologist finds that the death penalty isn’t an effective deterrent to crime, that doesn’t make the government abolish the death penalty. Elected governments just need to persuade at least some members of the public that their policy decisions are OK. You don’t need scientific evidence to do that.

Gyrate · May 13, 2015, 2:07pm

You’re missing the point - it’s a dig at Cruz who wrongly claimed Galileo was persecuted over his view that the Earth was round (a view not only accepted but proved at that point). Galileo’s persecution was actually over his insistence on a heliocentric model of the solar system.

Eppur si muove…

bump · May 13, 2015, 2:47pm

In my experience, this combined with a deep distrust of the government, and in particular, the Democratic party, is the primary motivator of climate change denial. Throw in tiny amounts of conspiracy theory and other nuttery for spice, and you have what a LOT of the less thoughtful conservatives of my acquaintance believe.

They’re absolutely convinced that this is an issue that’s blown out of proportion so that Obama can wreck our economy and remove their God-given right to drive Ford Excursions and huge diesel pickups via emissions control legislation and energy conservation initiatives.

Essentially they perceive the climate change noise as coming from the government, since it’s generally scientists from large state schools and publicly funded research institutions releasing the papers. And since it’s the “government” saying this, it’s automatically suspect, and since the implication is that their way of life and things they like are going to change in a way they perceive as negative, they fight it like hell in a rather reflexive manner.

The sad thing is that many of them aren’t really stupid; they’re just letting their own ignorance of science, personal biases and preconceived notions override their common sense.

GIGObuster · May 13, 2015, 2:47pm

Once again the contrarians ignoring the ocean temperatures (still going up) do think that they are being scientific, in reality they are just like creationists insisting that Piltdown man discredits all the fossil records, forever and ever Amen. in reality subsequent discoveries showed to all scientists that Piltdown man was at odds with what human evolution and was not needed, it was because how contrary to what was being discovered that scientists took another look and found that the bones were frauds.

It is clear that the same goes for the so called “pause”

But besides just rising with the trend, temperature fluctuates up and down from year to year; hence the dashed red lines above and below the red trend line showing the likely range. Assuming global warming continues without slowing down, we would have expected this:

[Chart showing trend within the probable range]

This is what actually happened:

[Chart with the recent data well within the middle of the probable range]

Just what was expected, that’s what actually happened.

That kinda lets the air out of any idea that global warming has slowed down — the data simply do not support it. But in a clever misinterpretation, one ultimately rooted in cherry-picking, there are those who actually claim that the data do demonstrate global warming has slowed down.

Unbelievable as it may seem, they actually do. While the data have followed the global-warming-continues-without-slowing-down pattern just about as closely as one could have imagined — this year right down the middle — they still insist that global warming has slowed down. They like to call it a “pause.”

The reaction of the “pausemaniacs” to the record hottest year has mostly been protest. Breakin’ some temperature record just don’t mean a gosh-darn thing worth payin’ no attention to. It only broke the record by a little bit. And besides, it ain’t the individual years, record hot or not, that count, it’s the pause that counts — a record hottest year don’t end the pause!

Methinks they do protest too much. Perhaps they fear that a record year really does threaten their beloved “pause.” But that’s not the real threat at all, it’s the fact that the data have followed the global-warming-continues-without-slowing-down pattern just about as closely as one could have expected, because all the while they’ve been bellowing about the pause that never was.

But the record year does do this: it makes it harder to sell the whole “pause” idea. And for many, it really is the “pause” that matters. It’s the propaganda keystone that enables Ted Cruz, new chairman of the Senate subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness, to make statements like this:
The last 15 years, there has been no recorded warming. Contrary to all the theories that — that they are expounding, there should have been warming over the last 15 years. It hasn’t happened.
I suspect that Cruz’s claims are what he has learned to say, again and again, from the experts at crafting persuasive “spin” for any issue, the spin that doesn’t just captivate the politician’s target audience, it captures the politician too. These days that spin relies heavily on the so-called “pause.” I can’t say I’m surprised by Cruz’s comments, or even claim to be surprised that some who claim to be scientists are actually prepared to defend such a statement.

Based on the vehemence of their reaction, the record year is something of an embarrassment to the “pause” crowd. Heck, the next time Ted Cruz says such a thing at a press conference some sassy reporter might ask him, “But what about last year being the hottest on record?” Perhaps Cruz will respond by saying he’s not a scientist.

They just don’t seem to realize that the real embarrassment to their precious “pause” is the trend.

GIGObuster · May 13, 2015, 3:26pm

Indeed, and I would say also that many smart Republicans do not want to be voted out of the island.

I have to say that Republican scientists like Richard Alley are too optimistic by thinking that the politicization of this issue should hopefully disappear soon. Not likely when considering how successful powerful interest groups financed not only the bad science but also the ones that are deciding what to do about it in government.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson (who is AFAIK an independent) has agreed that Republicans did do a good job of financing science, but recently he is worried about what they are doing, his reply here deals with education but it is relevant here too.

BILL MOYERS: …

Right now, two powerful belief systems have converged to counter facts staring us right in the face. Just as the number of Americans who question the science of evolution has gone up, so too has the number who deny that global warming is happening, and that human activity is causing it. This, at a time when the global scientific community is more certain than ever that you and I, and everyone else, are helping to turn up the heat and seal our fate. And here’s the scary political reality: on both fronts, evolution and climate change, radical right Republicans have made denial a litmus test.

…

NEIL DEGRASSE TYSON: Well, in a free, elected democracy, of course. You vote who you want on your school board. There is no provision in the constitution for the government to establish what’s taught in schools. That’s all relegated to the states. Hence, we speak state to state about what’s in their science textbook versus another.

And so that’s the country we’ve all sort of bought into, if you will, or born into. I think it’s a self-correcting phenomenon. Nobody wants to die, okay? So we all care about health. But above all else, among the Republicans I know, especially Republicans, nobody wants to die poor, okay?

So educated Republicans know the value of innovations in science and technology for the thriving of an economy and business and industry. They know this. If you put something that is not science in a science classroom, pass it off as science, then you are undermining an entire enterprise that was responsible for creating the wealth that we have come to take for granted in this country. So we’re already fading economically. If this, if that trend continues, some Republican is going to wake up and say, “Look guys, we got to split these two. We have to. Otherwise, we will doom ourselves to poverty.” And so I see it as a self-correcting, I don’t know when it’ll happen, but they know.

Well, we should hope too, but IMHO we also have to raise a stink as voters to accelerate that correction, not only in education, but also in congress.

Aji_de_Gallina · May 13, 2015, 4:01pm

:smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack::smack:

septimus · May 13, 2015, 4:30pm

Don’t hit yourself on the head, Ají ! At least you got this basic fact of the history of science correct.
Unlike Ted Cruz (R-Texas) who, among other distinctions, is Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Space, Science, and Competitiveness.

HookerChemical · May 13, 2015, 5:12pm

I need to disagree with the portion I bolded. Global warming was theorized back around 1900, which predates the modern environmental movement, which was more or less born in the 1960s here in the US.
I think you’re also confusing cause and effect when you say environmentalists want people to use less energy. Using less energy reduces environmental impact in several ways (less pollution from power plants, less land disturbed for fuel production), so it’s a convenient means to an end rather than the end itself.

elucidator · May 13, 2015, 6:15pm

If the power of the monster AGW scientific cadre is based solely on the accepted orthodoxy of AGW, however did it get that way in the first place? AGW got its legitimacy the hard way, by piling mounds of data on top of other mounds of data. IIRC, its original proponents were met with skepticism and derision, but as the numbers piled up, the skeptics and deriders slowly came around. And* then *it became the “orthodoxy”.

If us hippies and tree-huggers actually had that kind of power back in the day, the NHL would be that National Hacky-sack League. Having us endorse a view actually made it harder to get acceptance! We started pointing out that pot was pretty harmless in the late sixties, now we get legal marijuana, and in just short of fifty years! Zoom!

John_Mace · May 13, 2015, 7:36pm

Time flies when your stoned.

Greg_Charles · May 13, 2015, 10:14pm

When you’re stoned, apostrophe use is the first thing to go.

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