Academics discover civlity –
Guest essay by Eric Worrall
A study into why skeptics are not persuaded by the apocalyptic predictions of broken climate models has concluded that the solution is better communication.
According to the Toronto Star;
““When talking to skeptics it is probably important to focus on aspects that both skeptics and believers have in common rather than the differences between them,” said Ana-Maria Bliuc, a behavioural social scientist at Australia’s Monash University and one of the authors of the study.
As an example, the focus could be on “things like cleaner air, low power consumption, improved public transport, better waste management, efficient agriculture, reforestation … (they) are all in public interest, regardless of position on climate change,” she said.
Improving communication between the two sides of this big divide could be an effective pathway to reaching consensus, said Bliuc.
According to the study abstract;
“Of the climate science papers that take a position on the issue, 97% agree that climate change is caused by humans, but less than half of the US population shares this belief. This misalignment between scientific and public views has been attributed to a range of factors, including political attitudes, socio-economic status, moral values, levels of scientific understanding, and failure of scientific communication. The public is divided between climate change ‘believers’ (whose views align with those of the scientific community) and ‘sceptics’ (whose views are in disagreement with those of the scientific community). We propose that this division is best explained as a socio-political conflict between these opposing groups. Here we demonstrate that US believers and sceptics have distinct social identities, beliefs and emotional reactions that systematically predict their support for action to advance their respective positions.
The key implication is that the divisions between sceptics and believers are unlikely to be overcome solely through communication and education strategies, and that interventions that increase angry opposition to action on climate change are especially problematic. Thus, strategies for building support for mitigation policies should go beyond attempts to improve the public’s understanding of science, to include approaches that transform intergroup relations.”
http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/pdf/nclimate2507.pdf
This isn’t the first time researchers have blamed “communication” for climate skepticism.
Given that the abstract bases its rather imprecisely defined assumption of climate consensus on the heavily discredited Cook study http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/12/19/97-articles-refuting-the-97-consensus-on-global-warming/ , I suspect there may be problems other than communication which need to be addressed, before a common understanding can be achieved.
It took researchers tax payer funded money to figure out what “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie could’ve told you? Or any business/self improvement/relationship/EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE book could’ve told you?
Holy crap.
SAB: Carnegie’s book should be required reading in schools. The most memorable quote I took from it,and which guided me in my professional life when dealing with others, was:
Don’t know if this is in Carnegie’s book, but another effective way to communicate is:
Praise in public, admonish in private.
A key reason that academics are academics is that they are devoid of people skills.
“Climate Science” academics are also devoid of science skills, too.
Great book. I try to re-read it once a year.
+1 to that. I reread that book each year too. Talk about a classic in human communication and relationships.
“””””…..Improving communication between the two sides of this big divide could be an effective pathway to reaching consensus, said Bliuc……”””””
So just who is interested in reaching “consensus” ??
We know what Dame Margaret Thatcher thought about “Consensus.”
Spot on final paragraph. What is this “scientific community”?
The ‘scientific community’ = people we pay via grant cheques to tell us to mend our ways or we’re all doomed.
(A wasted posting effort by a banned sockpuppet. Comment DELETED. -mod)
icouldnthelpit,
That was an uncalled for insult to serial killers.
icouldnthelpit & stormy223, good work, seems you both totally missed the point of the study.
well, if you actually took the time to read the unibomber’s manifesto, as well as that the work of that other sociopath, al gore, you would see the similarities….
(A wasted posting effort by a banned sockpuppet. Comment DELETED. -mod)
icouldnthelpit,
Well met. stormy223’s comment had me in stitches. If we must sling jibes, it does help if there’s some amount of class and wit to them.
(A wasted posting effort by a banned sockpuppet. Comment DELETED. -mod)
It’s the “climate science community” (aka trough-feeders) who sling the term “denier”.
If there’s balance needed, direct it that way.
(You’d think as much money as they confiscate they’d be a bit more appreciative.)
I can see that they wanted to nullify some brainwashing but it was a poor effort. They were not calling the scientific community serial killers because sceptics are a part of the the scientific community. This is why your rant, icouldn’thelpit, was so stupid as well.
Remember what preceded that. Academics who were IPCC authors and strayed from the party line with respect to non-scientific conclusions, were being written about as being like holocaust deniers and not simply ‘deniers of the science’ (which was completely off the mark).
And here I was, stars in my eyes, always wanting to be an”Author”. (Glad I decided to grow grapes instead, much more beneficial to humanity).
icouldnthelpit, this can be a trying lot.
Unpicking the top paragraph of the abstract, the “scientific community” in question are the authors of the 97% of papers on climate science that took a position on whether or not climate change is caused by humans.
Does anyone have an estimate of what proportion of the rest of the science world agree with their position?
A lot less than 97%.
I work with a lot of people who analyze massive amounts of data, primarily in the areas of telecommunications and consumer behavior. Among the top 10 most skilled that I know it’s 4 that would be on Al Gore’s crap list, 2 luke warmers 3 who would rather use his brain cells for other things, and one who believes AGW is highly plausible, but backs down pretty quickly when you ask him why. FYI, they all have PhD’s or have advanced degrees in math or statistics. I count myself in the group and my PhD is in Applied Statistics and Information Theory, with a whole lot of structural modelling. I’m proud that Al Gore would believe that I’m on the payroll of the Koch Brothers
We have an estimate of peer-reviewed papers — 99.9%+.
Studies by Dr James Powell, appointed twice to the US ScIence Board, by Presidents Reagan and Bush, and Dr Naomi Oreskes of Harvard, find 4 out of 10,000 and 28 out of 25000 peer reviewed papers dispute AGW. Those 0.04% to 0.1% — Galileos, I’m sure –must be hiding out somewhere. We’re not hearing much from them.
So, please tell me Mr Mark from the Midwest.
..
As you go about analyzing all that telecom and customer data……what does it say about global warming? I’m betting not much of anything right?
What is this “scientific community”?
=> *Takes a deep breath*
It’s a collective of pseudo-intellectual activists with scientific or academic credentials. They thrive on being taxpayer funded parasites through their tenure and live in their academic or govt-based ivory towers.
They don’t have any real people skills. They gladly ignore academic honesty/integrity and scientific method in order to push a political agenda; where they end up being the financial beneficiaries of taxpayer funded committees, organisations, and Govt subsidies.
They have no problem in destroying the public reputation of science as they politicise it and use it as a tool to push their agenda. (Its a tool to generate numbers to support their propaganda).
They will come up with their own vocabulary, re-define existing words, as well as nonsensical ideas to sound smart. Regular masturbation and group circle-jerking of their ego is necessary to re-charge their weak self-esteem. This is why they regularly have those Climate Change conferences in lavish places that are often involving the privileged and economic elite.
They often lean to the political Left and are an infection to most colleges and universities in Western countries like USA, Canada, Australia, UK, etc.
Anyone who doesn’t follow their narrative are to be censored, silenced, bullied, and removed from their academic position. Mainly because they cannot argue the merits of their agendas and it would cause people to question them. (They cannot handle open debate as it would reveal their true intentions, nor can they handle the very idea that anyone could oppose them).
The believe themselves as “all knowing” and know what’s good for all. They see the general public as “stupid” or “ignorant” through their pseudo-intellectual world view.
…Since they don’t produce anything tangible or useful to society, they will come up with all sorts of nonsensical studies and ideas to position themselves in a way where they are the problem solvers.
ie: Look for OR create problems when there is none, in order to promote themselves and their ideas as the solutions to those problems…Often, you’ll see them form their own Climate Change or green companies or Govt depts (like Australian Govt’s “Climate Commission”) in order to acquire taxpayer money through subsidies and “studies”. They are also found in the eco-side of United Nations circles.
In the area of Climate Change, you’ll often find them telling you that you should “feel” and “believe” in them. Its all about expressing their feelings and blindly believing them like some sort of cult.
Right now, they are losing the argument. Public support for them is waning. So they must come up with all sorts of nonsense to continue their taxpayer-funded existence and are often assisted by those in the mainstream news media. eg: “Today is the hottest day in a decade!”
The news media know they can shape public opinion. By repeatedly saying a day is the “hottest day on record”, they want to make such thinking as the new norm.
Everything about this “scientific community” is politics, social justice, and Left-wing oriented activism. (Where Govt is the arbitor of a “Carbon Tax” or “Emissions Trading Scheme” that re-distributes money from middle class to eco-companies and organisations they just happen to be involved with…Follow the money trail and see for yourselves!)
You can tell they are becoming desperate as they throw more tantrums and spew out nonsensical rhetoric in public or online. (Jump the shark)…Ironically, it drives the public further away from them as they no longer make any ounce of common sense.
If the public become aware of what is really going on, they will demand taxpayer funding be pulled. Their income stream will dry up. This is why they must keep this charade going indefinitely.
Have they looked at the idea people don’t like to be lied to and told not to think for themselves, as those who know will tell them what is good for them and what to think.
James Bull
Based on the newspaper article and abstract the study fails to understand WHY they use the term deniers. It is an attempt to shut down the debate about the evidence so far. It is an attempt to smear and embarrass. They don’t want you to look at the evidence. Let’s look at the article some more.
Let’s look at some facts and you tell me who is the repeller of facts?
IPCC Temperature Projections
http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/seaice.anomaly.antarctic.png
http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/images/nhland_season1.png
Here are some more failures from the IPCC
Jimbo, I expect that sort of thing from the IPCC and I would be shocked if they ever decided to publish fair and honest reports on anything. What really bothers me is that any person involved in climatology will get in deep, deep trouble if he does not bow before the current orthodoxy. It is as bad as the Roman Church of the middle ages. (maybe worse)
markstoval, they want people to believe there is a consensus because of the sheer volume of papers. There are billions of Dollars available in the USA each year for
global warming‘climate change’ research. Sceptics who apply are very unlikely to get approved unless they add “but that doesn’t mean we should not reduce our co2 emissions. Dangerous……”Both did eventually appear in the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, but what this shows you is a certain mindset. Gatekeeping. Trying to get editors fired et al. Dreaming of punching people in dark alleys. Why should I give you my data when all you want to do is find something wrong with it. We must get rid of the Medieval Warm Period. Why the [1930s] uptick and all that……..
Ridicule, smear, marginalize and ultimately and silence dissent is the point of using the term “denier.”
I think a study should be done to see how susceptible to peer pressure people who use the term “climate change denier” are. I believe we will find they engage in group think, are highly suggestible and really like to fit in.
Where are our usual pair of alarmists? Where are any of them? They never explain what a denier is denying. It’s just a label that takes the place of thinking; it’s laziness. And it demonizes millions of people who simply don’t agree with the current media narrative. They also use it because they lack credible facts.
No wonder they hide out from public debates in a neutral forum. Whenever people like Mann and his gang debated, they lost. Now it’s all internet and media propaganda. They’re even losing that debate.
@James Baldwin Bull
Please forgive the presumption, but I’d like to build on your comment, James.
The article, quoted in the above post, is yet another in the hive’s long and incessant line of such urgent, little, “communication strategy” brainstorms that, true-to-form weds some perfunctory, two-bit pop-psychology to a full-throated call for a double-down on the hive’s same-old, shop-worn, flim-flam stratagems. So what else is new? And, as usual, the article’s basic pitch, stripped of its academic, orotund humbug, is one of gulling the rubes, closing-the-deal, and soft-soaping the rip-off. Indeed, the whole mentality, on display in the above the article, is indistinguishable from that exhibited by freak-show carnival-barkers; the sort of oleaginous, low-rent psychopaths, who gravitate to the planet’s seediest, used-car lots; clip-joint femme fatales; and Nigerian e-mail scammers.
And, of course, the article’s thrust conforms to one of the hoariest of the hive’s con-job templates: the doltish, hoi-polloi “skeptics” suffer from a false-consciousness, derived from, in the instant case, “distinct social identities, beliefs, and emotional reactions” (I just love it when the ivory-tower B. S.-artists roll out trite, party-line crapola, like this, I really do!), and it’s the duty of the shock-troop, “good-comrades”, serving in the revolution’s vanguard-cadres to sweet-talk (or else!) their wary-prey and, by fair means or foul, win them over to the hive’s sulfurous, gulag-friendly, group-think green-orthodoxies. Again, so what else is new?
I mean, like, all this dreary, mind-numbing, going-through-the-motions pretense that the hive just needs the right jingle, catchy-slogan, snappy-zinger, PR-stunt, or, in the instant case, just a little-extra, goofy-dork, back-slapping bonhomie in order to sink its agit-prop gaff is not only maddeningly wrong-headed, but frustrating to the max, as well, given that there is, indeed, an alternative “communication strategy” that will work–sure-fire guaranteed to ensnare the most “dug-in” of the skeptics.
So what is this “communication strategy” that can’t fail, you ask? Well, it’s…it’s…(better be sitting down for this one!)…it’s LEADERSHIP!!!! And the most important component of a “LEADERSHIP!!!”-based “communications strategy” is for those most vocal about the perils of demon-carbon; those most outspoken about the need to save the kids, and more importantly, the polar bears; and those who are trend-setters and public role-models–like, for example, all those eco-committed royals, movie-idols, big-cheese politicians, and money-bag jet-setters–to, one and all, PRACTICE WHAT THEY PREACH!!!TO LEAD FROM THE FRONT AND BY INSPIRING, PERSONAL EXAMPLE IN MATTERS OF CARBON-REDUCTION!!!
So, hive-bozos, exercise “LEADERSHIP” and you’ll realize your thrill-cull, dystopian Commissar dreams. On the other hand, if you just want to ride your little, brazen-hypocrite, carbon-piggie eco-scam for all the troughs, gravy-trains, and CO2-spew eco-confabs (which could easily be held as zero-carbon video-conferences) that you can squeeze out of the deal, then that’s a choice, too. But remember, if you keep on the path of in-your-face, two-faced carbon-piggery then you’ll never get to be a Philosopher King who gets to boss everyone around, and who makes mummy proud, and who settles scores with all those former grade-school classmates of yours who used to call you a “nasty, little, geek-ball creep-out”. Think about it.
Brilliant! +10. The CAGW carny barkers were thoroughly beaten over the head by this especially talented use of a thesaurus.
mike, I like your razor-edge and dissecting prose — an art form. Prb’ly lost on the trolls tho.
In the west one test of leadership quality is that they stop and ask “why” when you say “I wouldn’t do that.” More over, when you tell them “I won’t do that!” they have no reason to fire you for not doing what they tell you without inquiring further first. Once they have crashed the one-ton through the top of the septic tank, well, after all, you did warn them. Their complete disinterest lead to the current contretemps in which they will have to re-hire you at a higher wage just to help them get the truck out of the excrement they parked it in.
““When talking to skeptics it is probably important to focus on aspects that both skeptics and believers have in common rather than the differences between them,” said Ana-Maria Bliuc, a behavioural social scientist at Australia’s Monash University and one of the authors of the study.
As an example, the focus could be on “things like cleaner air, low power consumption, improved public transport, better waste management, efficient agriculture, reforestation … (they) are all in public interest, regardless of position on climate change,” she said.
—————–
Translation: “”When talking to skeptics about anthropogenic CO2-induced climate change, it’s best to change the subject …..
+10
That sounds about right to me.
As to “ceaner air”, I’d argue that CO2 has nothing to do with cleaner air. As to low power consumption, medievals had drastically lower power consumption than us, and they were drastically poorer than us. The more power we have access to, the wealthier and more comfortable we are.
We don’t even have the things in common that Ana-Maria Bliuc SAID we have in common.
The EPA strategy in a nutshell. Shut down energy production from coal by confusing CO2 with air pollution. Promote the advantages of clean air, while failing to mention that the actual reduction in warming by shutting down coal will be less than can be measured, let alone felt by any plant or animal on earth.
While completely ignoring the effect of billions of dollars of increased costs on the economy, as well as the trillions of dollars of sunk costs due to US government promoted investment in coal to help make the US energy independent following the Arab oil embargo of 1973; which revealed the ability of oil producing countries to bring the US economy to its knees in a few short weeks.
Now, completely ignoring the strategic advantages the US has with the worlds largest coal reserves, the EPA is marching ahead to tie one hand behind the US’s back, while at the same time the US is facing an increasingly hostile Arab world, with radical Islam and civil war on the rise in many oil producing nations.
All the while the US political leadership is blind to the risk, ignoring the rising tide of radicalism that gave rise to 911 and is transforming the US into a police state, with reduced “Liberty and Justice for All”. Instead, Global Warming remains firmly in place in the US academic, political and military leadership as the “greatest threat”. A country built on freedom, defeated from within by fear.
Global warming did not cause 70,000 abandoned buildings in Detroit. Global warming did not cause the economic meltdown of companies “too big to fail”. Global warming did not cause quantitative easing and the growth of the US public debt to $55,000 per man, woman and child.
It is the growth of the debt that is unsustainable. Spending money you don’t have to solve imaginary problems, while ignoring real problems today. Over time this will bring down the US as surely as it brought down mighty Rome 16 centuries before. Global warming will not be the cause, but fear of global warming will most certainly play a key role.
Ferd, (et al), I can’t help but see coal and wood being black market commodities in the future for the desperate bourgeois to heat their dwellings above what the government allowed maximum energy ration will allow. If this is a fallacy on my part please inform me.
There are many of my friends and neighbors who burn wood and under the right conditions create a smoke haze at low altitude, which locally affects our rural air quality in cold weather much more than the 1 gigawatt scrubber equipped generating station, which I can see the 500 foot stack of from my property. It makes no sense to me to return to thousands of low chimneys and shutting down a cleaner and more efficient method of providing energy from a single emissions source that it engineered to cause the least possible pollution. On a summer afternoon you can’t even make out a plume from this (continuous base load) generating plant.
Over at Revkin’s Dot Earth, I’ve been pointing out just how poorly the IPCC’s FAR Business as Usual predictions (from 1990) have fared compared to actual temperature records.
Of course, the “denier” epithet flies. But these shameless fools are denying both the IPCC’s predictions as well as the lack of sufficiently steep temperature time slope in the record.
One commenter pointed to a “Skeptical Science” .gif which purports to demonstrate how the IPCC got it right while “denier predictions” were wrong.
Funny thing, there are several misrepresentations on the SkS graphic:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/comments/blogs/dotearth/2015/01/21/how-warmest-ever-headlines-and-debates-can-obscure-what-matters-about-climate-change/
http://www.skepticalscience.com/graphics.php?g=72
Some problems:
1) IPCC FAR “best estimate” prediction was 0.3 deg. C / decade, whereas the dark red line shows 0.2 deg. C / decade (which was the lower bound).
2) line for TAR (2001 prediction / scenario) orange color, starts in 1990 (instead of 2001).
3) line for AR4 prediction (2007) green color, starts in 2000 (instead of 2007).
4) satellite data is shunned, as is HADCRUT3 (probably because profile is even flatter than the adjusted data sets displayed.
In short, a poster child for misrepresentation, hypocrisy and denial.
Kurt in Switzerland
I’ve noticed that your comment keeps being pushed to the last position while 2 other comments with later time stamps have moved ahead of it. It’s an odd behavior. Anyone know a reason for it?
Maybe the position is bookmarked as you begin to write a comment, while the timestamp is punched in when you hit the Post Comment button.
Could it be using Swiss time internally, even though the posted time is displayed as USA Pacific time?
I noticed this too. Don’t know why it is happening
TOBS adjustment
It’s caused by Global Warming. GW messes up time.
Louis, they might have been in moderation thus posted before the comments you saw.
I’d trust the Swiss timekeeping.
They are masters of delusion.They are trying to convince themselves the 97% figure is correct when we know that it is less than1% in the true figures.
They are also good at beating up scares that the media love to sell papers. Except for politicians who want the carbon tax/ trading rights and the media, the majority of people have worked out it is a scam.
We have a retired politician here that said recently, it might take a while but eventually the people will work you out. That is what they have done with CAGW.
Which is a shame because and awful lot of good science has been done on climate but it will take decades to sift out the politics.
“Here we demonstrate that US believers and sceptics have distinct social identities, beliefs and emotional reactions that systematically predict their support for action to advance their respective positions.”
We’re not capable of independent rational analysis of trumped up statistics of inconsistent quality data. We need to be spoken to as creatures bound by the predictable limits of our “social identity”.
Stereotypes – that’s what we are. …… Uuummmm – they can speak for themselves.
“Here we demonstrate that US believers and sceptics have distinct social identities, beliefs and emotional reactions that systematically predict their support for action to advance their respective positions.”
The only support for action I can think of to advance one’s position in the actual sciences, like palaeontology , or astronomy, is more funding for fieldwork to get better data, which hopefully will support one’s position. Telling people how to live their lives is purely political, and has nothing whatsoever to do with science.
A new study from the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology is careful to use the term “skeptic” instead of harsher names, but it will still piss you off. I don’t know about you, but I would rather they call me vile names than have them throw such shoddy science in my face. This study makes the ridiculous claims that climate model simulations actually agree with observations and that “Climatologists have been fairly correct with their predictions.” For your amusement, I’ve included the summary, below, followed by a couple of key sentences from their report:
Summary: Skeptics who still doubt anthropogenic climate change have now been stripped of one of their last-ditch arguments: It is true that there has been a warming hiatus and that the surface of Earth has warmed up much less rapidly since the turn of the millennium than all the relevant climate models had predicted. However, the gap between the calculated and measured warming is not due to systematic errors of the models, as the skeptics had suspected, but because there are always random fluctuations in Earth’s climate, according to a comprehensive statistical analysis.
… The 114 model calculations withstood the comparison. Particularly as an ensemble, they reflect reality quite well: “On the whole, the simulated trends agree with the observations,” says Jochem Marotzke.
… The community of climatologists will greet this finding with relief, but perhaps also with some disappointment. It is now clear that it is not possible to make model predictions more accurate by tweaking them — randomness does not respond to tweaking.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/02/150202114636.htm
I now live only for the day when someone comes up with a new figure for “global average temperature” to replace the 15.7 degrees or whatever it was supposed to be until the oceans made themselves players in the global warming game.
There are science publications who are happy to take on papers talking about denial.
Red herring time. Of course climate change is real – the climate has always changed and caused terrible casualties during the Little Ice Age and wonderful crops during the Medieval time. The warming ‘anthropogenic’ part ’caused’ by greenhouse gases is mild according to observations so far and co2 fertilization has been beneficial so why curb them? They say I can’t understand, the problem is they can’t understand me.
They understand you just fine. Trouble is, if you are correct, they’re out of a job, and they are exposed as incompetent or, even worse, a liar. Thus they cannot allow you to be correct. Therefore they mis-characterize your stated position into something they can attack and maybe even disprove.
On the whole the gap between the simulated trends and reality has increased year on year. They do not agree. And if ‘Randomness’ can cancel all your predictions – then surely ‘randomness’ could also have produced the ‘warming’ you were so worried about?
So the 114 model calculations performed well as an “ensemble”. I wonder if the predictions of 114 kindergartners would have been closer to reality than the averages of those models.
Sorry, when you define ‘sceptics’ as those whose views are in disagreement with those of the scientific community, it is just another insult to the large number of scientists that are skeptical of various aspects of climate change “theory” one degree or another. Maybe not as insideous of a comment as calling one a “denier,” but certainly calling a scientist, basically, a non-scientist is only slightly more civil.
Has there been a study done to see if their is a correlation between scientific belief in climate change and climate change funding?
I would expect that 97% of scientists that receive government funding for climate change studies believe strongly in climate change. the more funding received, the greater the belief.
While those scientists that have not received funding for climate change will tend to be more skeptical.
The same will be true for corporations, charities, NGO’s, the UN and the public. Since the public receives no funding for climate change, and must pay all the costs, they will be the most skeptical of all.
It isn’t your political belief or communications that drives the belief or skepticism, it is your pocket book. If you stand to benefit economically from a belief in climate change, you will believe in climate change. If you stand to lose economically from a belief in climate change, you are not going to believe in climate change. Rather, you are going to ask for reliable proof before you part with your hard earned cash.
+1
Yes, ferd, exactly right. As writer Upton [what a hoity-toity name, eh?☺] Sinclair wrote:
It is difficult to make a man understand something when his livelihood depends on not understanding it.
That’s the principle at play here. Their opinions are bought and paid for. It is the same with the IPCC and all the professional societies. They were either created and financed to push a narrative, or they have been co-opted by activists on their boards.
That is really very easy to do, as Prof Richard Lindzen writes [see Sec. 2]. Lindzen names names, too, and I very much doubt if any of those named would even disagree. They’re true believers, not scientists.
Official ‘science’ is no longer interested in finding answers. Rather, they are interested in a particular agenda, a position for which they are well compensated.
Ferd says – “Since the public receives no funding for climate change, and must pay all the costs, they will be the most skeptical of all.”
I disagree. Think of all the tax rebates for solar panel’s & electric cars. That is gaining those who ‘Play-the-Game’ with increased property values and lower bills at the expense of the non players
I think this is probably the starkest contrast I’ve ever seen between the concept of “Book Smarts” and “Street Smarts,” and street smarts are the smarts that are truly critical to success. It’s why I said “hell no” to grad school. This is a bunch of academics attempting to intellectualize and categorize people who they won’t even open themselves to start a relationship with, versus a street smart person who knows full well that insulting someone isn’t the best way to get to an agreement.
That aside, I find it funny, that the one person who actually got it right as to why Climate Activists/Scientists are having so much of a problem getting people to believe in them, is a satirist. Maybe they should read this highly pertinent quote…
Science’s Biggest Fail
And then afterwards read a book on basic human relationships and communication, which you can pick up for the cost of a coffee…
That’s the trouble with intellectuals” They have no common sense.
As I often say: Common sense; its not as common as you might think…
It should be called uncommon sense!
Historically there is a see-saw relationship between empiricists and theorists. In the last century, especially following Einstein’s theorizing, the status of mathematical and philosophical models as a means of doing science has increased many fold at the direct expense of acquiring new, real-world knowledge. Francis Bacon’s New Organon and the advocacy of the experimental method 400 years ago were a direct attack on the dominant scholasticism and dogmatism of the time, the faith that “pure thought” could reveal “truth.” The reward for adhering to the party line then was survival – as in not being prosecuted for heresy by Catholic or Protestant religious courts. Bacon’s decline in fortune immediately followed the assumption of the British throne by James the First, a rabid Protestant. It took something like another 50 years to finally establish the Royal Society. History, the mistakes we have already made.
What they have in abundance is communist sense.
The reason that there is less support for climate extremism in the US, Canada and Australia (compared to continental Europe) is that these countries have large mining, oil and gas industries, operated by tens of thousands of engineers, physicists and geologists, whose jobs depend on the application of rigorous science. There are also plenty of other experts in science, medicine, and economics who can give rigorous critiques of reports such as that by Stern. These countries, as does the UK, also have a culture of defiance of autocratic governments, and authority is generally questioned. These are not nations of the meek and subservient. When these experts look at the CO2 hypothesis, they simply see weak science, and high opportunity costs in unnecessary emission reductions. So they speak out against the policies pushed by climate change extremists and all the vested interests.
We don’t want better communication of weak science – we want better science and honest politicians.
MAGB,
One is far more likely to happen than the other. Reversing Citizens United would be a good start. Publicly funded national elections would be my end goal. But not only are the foxes watching the henhouse, they’ve all but taken up residence.
Really, Honest politicians ? No, who’d a thunk it. :))
Publicly funded elections are likely to end up like publicly funded science.
As soon as you remove the market and turn the allocation of resources over to political decision making you have introduced the mechanism for corruption. Friends receive the benefits of the decisions, while enemies are punished. This corruption introduces waste into the system, which eventually cannot be sustained in a competitive world, and the economic and political system fails.
That would institutionalize the problem in perpetuity, not fix it.
Sometimes works in my experience. The sticking point usually comes down to how to get that done. We’re a ways off from it happening due to free market forces alone, so some form of gummint intervention would be required to swim against the medium-term tide of economics. In a more perfect world, my order of preference would be loan guarantees, tax credits, subsidies, mandates/regulation. Better to balance the tax credits and subsidies with bumping taxes elsewhere than debt financing them — which is how I feel about the Federal budget in general.
If the wheels haven’t already fallen off the conversation, that last part pretty much the point where it goes south. Where it tends to derail before that point is over concerns for displaced fossil fuel workers, usu. coal miners. Doesn’t help when I point out that the first year of the 2008-09 financial crisis put more people out of work than there are coal miners in the US by a factor of over 300, no gummint intervention required. Or that W. Va coal miners were already losing jobs due to the market-led move to more and more natural gas (which is a good trade in my book) well before the War on Coal got started in earnest.
Sometimes it sinks in when I tell folks that coal power prematurely ends the lives of 30-60,000 people in the US, especially when I say that my preferred trade is coal to nuclear because the expected risk of death for a one to one replacement would be about 100 per year. And would likely create more job$ than it displaces from the construction work alone.
But then we’re back to talking about how to fund building the plants. We didn’t used to have this problem. TVA anyone? The Interstate highway system?
Ayup, I sometimes get tempted to use the d-word. As in forgetting the history of what worked to build this country to begin with. It’s very frustrating.
I’m not sure the free market has been given a chance, in the case of nuclear power.
I’d love to know how much of the cost of a nuclear plant is all the red tape and super redundant safety systems – and how price competitive nuclear power would be without all that government interference.
Obviously you wouldn’t want a Fukushima style plant to be built without safety systems, but in principle you could eliminate the need for most of the elaborate safety precautions, by using more advanced nuclear reactor designs, by moving to passive safe nuclear technology.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_nuclear_safety
However, it is crazy difficult enough to get a conventional nuclear plant approved. Can you imagine trying to convince a herd of bureaucrats to sign off on a new inherently safe nuclear design, which doesn’t incorporate all the standard safety features?
Haven’t got any figures for you, Eric, but I’m sure you’re right that the reactor is a relatively small part of it, and the great bulk of the cost is in the safety setups. However, most people would probably line up behind the idea that you can’t have too much safety where nuclear is concerned, as they don’t have an unemotional handle on risk analysis. Probably the biggest overload in these costs is the vast decommissioning cost that the builders are obliged to include.
UK Govt is going to pay a multi-billion dollar overprice for a couple of new nuclear stations (to be built by a French government owned utility because UK destroyed its own capabilities years ago) as no operator is going to take this on without a fantastical bribe.
It’s a great shame really that environmentalists invariably include anti-nuclear clause in their religion – nuclear ought to be their greatest logical ally.
Eric and mothcatcher,
Easiest source I can think of is the Wiki article on US energy costs, they break down the US DOE estimates for total levelized system cost by technology on a per unit power basis. IIRC, next-gen fission plants come in comparable to current gen coal, and less than advanced coal. Rigged numbers? Good chance. GE would love to sell more reactor licenses.
I do think a big problem is NRC red tape, and will go so far as to allege that the green lobby had no small or accidental influence in its presently byzantine nature. That prolonged, staunched opposition serves as a never ending source of driving me to distraction.
“I tell folks that coal power prematurely ends the lives of 30-60,000 people in the US …”.
==============================
I’ll bet they’re amazed.
The EPA estimates President Obama’s Climate Action Plan to cut ‘carbon pollution’ from power plants will lead to avoiding 2,700 to 6,600 premature deaths in 2030.
http://www2.epa.gov/carbon-pollution-standards/fact-sheet-clean-power-plan-overview
And even that EPA estimate is based on linear projections of extremely weak evidence – now where have we seen that before?
A little thought experiment in EPA logic
A filthy drain next to a water pump leads to disease and 10 people a month are dying.
Hosing down the drain reduces the problem with only 5 people a month dying
Improving sewerage and the drain design leads to 0 deaths
How many deaths will keeping the drain totally sterile save?
EPA would answer another 5 _and_ as a side effect it will prevent any use of the drain as it would then not be sterile. So that reduces the risk of 5 more people dying and moves the dirty users away to another country. If you argue against this EPA position you are told you are risking the lives of 10 people.
That logic is being used above. There are now no provable deaths from ‘pollution from coal’ we are in the improved sewerage and drain design state from the thought experiment. But because the linear ad absurdum argument is dressed up in large numbers and questionable statistics nobody appears to notice its absurdity.
Chris Hanley,
That’s the non-alarmist estimate. See, Obama does listen. I didn’t read the details of the plan, but unless it calls for 100% coal power replacement with nuclear, the absolute figures aren’t directly comparable. You have to break it down on a risk per unit power basis for it to make any sense. I wouldn’t expect a political document to do the proper stats, which is why I went to the primary literature when I first looked into it. Here’s a secondary source which does a decent job of it: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/
Ian W,
Epidemiology is tricky stuff, no proof will ever be forthcoming. But you have to be pretty thick to think the shit that comes from burning coal is good for you.
Brandon Gates, the problem with the ‘lets stop polluting for reasons we can agree on…’ is that it’s a good idea, but the credibility of warmist side is threadbare to non-existent. So before you can even start the obvious charlatans have to go, the warmists need to actually admit they were wrong and have maligned the people who were right, and the lying, spin and exaggeration need to be reigned in hard. Otherwise you could say in perfect truth ‘ there is a ten ton truck coming, step left to save your life’ and no-one is going to believe you. They’ll assume you’re lying and have an ulterior motive. And much needed honesty check is not going to happen while vested interests in politics and science remain in control. So the best thing you could do is help get rid of the rotten apples. The next best thing that the warmists could do is lead by example. Don’t fly to Davos. Volunteer to pay an extra 20% carbon tax. Put that windfarm in your back yard etc.
davefreer,
Credibility is a subjective determination, but I’ll be the first to admit the planet hasn’t been helping its own case for the past two decades. Not a team player this orb of ours.
Basically the way I’m reading the first part of your statement is that if we agree with your position you’ll believe us. That’s normally a conversation ender, but I’m feeling stubborn today.
97% of the climate debate is politics. Which is about normal for any high-profile disputed science. I don’t believe what any politician says about anything by default, and typically I find that the truth (so far as I can suss it out) is found in what they don’t say. That credibility gap is never going to diminish.
That, and the truck is an awfully long way off in terms of what most of us think of in terms of planning horizons.
Something else which isn’t going to happen any time soon, and not just in climatology. Big agra, big pharma, medical science in general all have vested interests in influencing policy decisions and the ten ton truck loads of cash to buy it. Yet we don’t do so bad in my view.
In a perfect world where all were wholly logical and made decisions based only on what’s written in the primary literature, that argument wouldn’t rate mention. The very influential don’t have time to ride a bicycle to Davos, and the very rich don’t have the greatest track record when it comes to behaving in a manner consistent with what most of us would consider … fair. Not the right word, best I can do at the moment. Point is, you may be right about the optics but I frankly doubt it would make much difference.
To me this paper may be an interesting read because I like sociology papers. They’re easy on my brain, and I think people are fascinating. I think the authors mean well, certainly the absract makes all the correct noises about how to have a more functional debate.
But.
IMO, like it or not [1], politics is going to be the vehicle of getting more than just token mitigation done any time within the next decade. IF by then. I have a few sharp things to say about why i think it hasn’t happened already, running along the lines of poor political strategy and overly-ideological wishful thinking.
——————
[1] For the record, I don’t like it.
Without taking a position on finances, competition keeps them at check. AGW research has no such thing.
I’m convinced that leading by example makes a difference.
@ur momisugly Brandon Gates
Let’s see now, Gates, your position is that leading by example wouldn’t make much difference. Can we take that to mean that you are prepared, then, to just tough out the “optics” and quietly tolerate the brazen-hypocrite, trough-sucking eco-romps, the hive so generously provides its sell-out tools with a gravy-train in the fight? Somehow, I think so. But I could be wrong. Never ceases to amaze me, Gates, how the hive insists that countries like England and Australia cut their inconsequential carbon “pollution” as an inspiration to other nations, but when it’s proposed that the big-shot, CO2-spewing hive-hoggies, themselves, set the reduced-carbon example for us hoi-polloi, suddenly the hive goes into a “denier” mode about the value of leading from the front. I mean, like, let me ask you, Gates, just why is that it’s B. S., all the time, with you lefties?
But let me pursue matters, here, a bit further. So if the make-a-greenwashed-buck rich and powerful won’t set a Gaia-friendly personal-example, Gates, then why don’t eco-zealots, like you, turn the full force of the hive’s agit-prop resources on them–call ’em out, fatwa-their-ass, disinvest in their enterprises, make fun of them on late-nite shows, ban them from speaking on college campuses, etc. You know, that sort of stuff. Or would that be too much like biting the hand that feeds you?
As you can well imagine, Gates, like you, I too am so very, very concerned (even more than I am concerned about the polar bears, if you can believe it) that the hive’s nomenklatura don’t have “the time to ride a bicyle to Davos”? Is that it, Gates? Your hive-masters are too “time-conscious” to give up the obscene carbon-footprints they abusively stomp on Gaia as they flit about from one opulent gab-fest to another in their private jets, limos, and yachts, right? But I can see your point, Gates about the need for our considerable betters to save-time. Hence my modest proposal:
DON’T GO TO DAVOS AT ALL!!! Rather, video-conference the affair. And all the virtual “attendees” will thereby save all that precious travel-time getting there and back. I mean, like, it’s just as easy to put on your black robes and chant “Hail, SATAN!!!” at a computer-screen, in the privacy of your own home, as it is at Davos, right? And anticipating your principal objection, before you even lodge it, Gates, I propose that at the end of the video-conference, all the big-cheese attendees “drop-trou” and press their ample buttocks up against their camera, so that the flunky-grade attendees (anyone you know, Gates?) can all get “selfies” of themselves obsequiously making-out with the successive, big-shot rumps appearing on their computer screen. So you see, Gates, everyone comes out a winner, with my modest proposal. And think of the time saved, Gates!
Brandon Gates, credibility is only subjective if all it has is faith. Otherwise it’s a case of ‘I told you x would happen and it did. I told you this was the warmest year ever, and when you checked the figures, you did not find out that I’d left out the error bars, fudged figures, employed dodgy statistics, and straight left out new findings that didn’t agree with my statement and there was still only 38% chance I was telling the truth. Credibility is enhanced when someone admits they were wrong and accepts responsibility for that. If the ‘orb’ hasn’t been helping its own case’… then it’s not the orb’s case, it’s what think it ought to be, and it has proved you wrong. The environment does provably benefit, at a local scale, for reducing certain forms of pollution. Unfortunately hitching that wagon to CAGW -which the planet hasn’t ‘helped’ with, sadly discredits that.
The first part of my statement simply means that people who are known to have fudged and fiddled data, peddled porkies – Lewadonsky for instance need to be rejected. ‘admit they were wrong’ – the warmists said ‘with 97% certainty’ that global temperature today would be x, that global ice would be severely down, and that the Arctic would be ice free, and children would not know snow. All of these are confirmed as wrong in the real world. So yes, the skeptic position is reality. Do you believe your eyes? Then you you have to agree with the skeptics. No, actually you can’t just change the figures until they agree with your model.
And yes, vested business interests will also attempt to manipulate matters. On balance (and I say this having had to look for funding as a research scientist long, long ago. It’s one reason I got out) that’s not actually where the vast bulk of the money comes from, and it is severely questioned. Government and NGO money are very often just as vested, and yet rarely questioned. Far more typical than science being corrupted by industry, is politics being corrupted by industry, and government then adjusting funding to science.
As for my second part: The rich and powerful are as subject to society mirror as the rest of us. They also are role models for many. You don’t have to ride a bicycle to Davos. You can teleconference, which cheaper, quicker and far less polluting. I think it is a sensible call from the warmists side to get their rich and influential to start actually leading by doing what they want they want others to do.
@ur momisugly Brandon Gates
Up above, I left a comment that contained a “SATAN” crack. My reference to the “Archfiend” was intended as an edgy-humor zinger, so absurdly over-the-top that it could be taken for nothing more than some goofy, heavy-handed ribbing, good for a laugh–just maybe–in my “regular-guy” circles. Unfortunately, as I re-read the comment, I judged that my comment was not only a “dud”, but way out-of-line, as well. Therefore, I extend to you, Brandon, my sincere apologies. Of course, if there’s the slightest doubt in anyone’s mind, I have no reason, whatsoever, to think that Brandon Gates is a Satanist. On the contrary. Again, my earnest regrets, in this manner.
mike,
@February 3, 2015 at 4:06 pm
Heh, you know I completely missed that comment in my first pass, and didn’t read your apology for it until after I’d written all the below. Which I accept in the spirit that it is given. Had I read it, I may have changed the tone of my response below, especially my final rejoinder. Which I’m going to leave unedited … I was going to say it somewhere to someone here anyway.
@February 3, 2015 at 1:15 pm
Near enough to zero so as the residual is less than a rounding error. Yes. Not a damn bit of difference in power to persuade. I could be very wrong, but that is a correct restatement of my opinion on the matter.
I don’t see that I have much of a choice. I can’t force Al Gore to move into a median-sized home, become a vegan, and reduce his carbon footprint to negative-something. Nor can I force the opposition to not make a big deal out of his evident unwillingness to do it. So yeah, I pretty much have to grit my teeth and lump it. Hell, I’m not about to give up eating dead cow either. One might say that my stumping for geothermal and nuclear power — and roundly criticizing enviros who still stupidly oppose the latter — is just me tilting at different windmills by way of assuaging my guilt. I don’t know. I’m not a perfectly altruistic and benevolent human by any means. As such I don’t expect anyone else to be, including my opposition. I attempt to formulate my AGW opinions and advocacy within the realm of my understanding of social and economic realities, which is much poorer than my understanding of the relevant science.
The thing about partisan bullshit is that “nobody” thinks their own stinks. The stench from all sides is probably one reason political “science” eludes my more comprehensive understanding.
I’ve long held a dark suspicion that many nominal run-of-the-mill AGW believers don’t buy into the most dire CAGW scenarios even though they talk that game in public. Some public opinion polls suggest my suspicions are correct, yes? So I think it’s quite possible that climate is just another chip in political gamesmanship. A mark of one’s tribe. A way calling the other side a pack of blithering idiots and feeling good about oneself for knowing the Truth of how things Really Work.
It’s also possible I project here, and that CAGW will be every bit as catastrophic as the expert skyfallers predict. I do, out of necessity, frequently remind myself that playing a know-it-all on the Innert00bs does not mean I actually know everything.
I have a standard speech about polar bears, which is they’re not cute and fuzzy, and will eat your liver while you’re still alive and screaming given the chance. Some humans are the same way, figuratively speaking, and being sentient are therefore evil for it. My concerns for the environment are to keep it in such a state that it is capable of supporting our species in the style to which we’ve become accustomed. Even the ones I think are evil. And yes, even the private jets. My sense of egalitarianism doesn’t run toward economics the way it does on the fringe left.
Well you know, every corporate jet bought on the shareholders’ dime is justified the same way: we use it to make more money for you. “Everyone” really knows it’s just another perq. Don’t “they”?
Since we’re speculating on each others’ real feelings here: you sound a tad jealous. Tsk.
Now you’re getting it. Always good to know one’s place in the pecking order.
I don’t suppose it would make any difference if the gathering spot was Butt(e), MT, which is about as unglamorous a place as I’ve ever been. [1] No, of course not.
You know as well as I do that 100% teleconferences would not be at all the same. Yes, cheaper and less resource-intensive. But then you get what you pay for. As I see it, you simply fundamentally disagree with what is being bought with your money. I get that. So just say it. There’s no need to appeal to hypocrisy to hold an opinion that the core of your being staunchly disagrees with pretty much the entire environmentalist agenda in all its incarnations, so much so that you’ll take even a pragmatic moderate like me to task even when he makes some small attempt to reach across the aisle and hunt for a little common ground.
Which I very much am. I think building nuclear power plants and digging more geothermal wells in a big way would be an economic boon. This is something all sides should be able to agree upon even if the underlying motiviations for doing it may be wildly different for some people. The end result is what should matter, which in my view is overall cleaner power at an easily competitive market rate and practically zero GHG emissions.
The main sacrifice is that by agreeing on something and working toward it together, we’d have that much less to bitch about … which as I see it may be a fatal flaw of my own modest proposal. Were I hell-bent on forming generalized opinions about whole groups based on the anecdotal misbehavior of a loudly outspoken few, I’d rewrite Anthony’s headline to read:
Shock study results: Saying anything at all to climate skeptics they disagree with, no matter how politely, just pisses them off.
As it stands, my already well-established prejudices have been rather reinforced by this thread. Must be time to engage in some public liberal guilt-driven handwringing to assuage my self-loathing and vainly attempt to hide my own duplicity. Amirite?
I’m right.
——————
[1] No knock on Buttians intended, or indeed on Montanans in general, who are as solidly good folk as I’ve ever known and who on the whole live in a fantastically beautiful landscape. I miss it and them. /wistfulness
davefreer,
No, all that is required for subjectivity is belief which is intrinsically human as we lack omniscience. If you or I choose different beliefs about some reality which is difficult to determine objectively, we will necessarily think the other person lacks credibility just by virtue of being out of touch with our own personal subjective perception of fact.
When facts are difficult to determine, I look to how they’re argued for cues on credibility. Sucks, because even the most elegant, logically consistent argument can be dead wrong. And I don’t like being even marginally wrong.
You assume something about what I think ought to be which I don’t. To be fair, if the surface (and lower troposphere) temperature records had continued the trajectory of the 80s and 90s, I and a lot of other AGW believers might still be overly fixated on that yardstick to the exclusion of the estimated bazillions of joules accumulating unabated in the ocean depths. In retrospect, even the surface record shows that 40 year hiatuses in GHG-influenced upward trends are the norm, not the exception. That our present emphasis on oceans looks ad hoc is understandable. That doesn’t mean it’s wrong, and personally I don’t think it is.
That my own perceived clarity now is a post hoc revision to former beliefs is to be expected. If we knew most everything beforehand, we wouldn’t need science. I can’t wait to find out what else I’m wrong about. I can wait to try and explain it to people like you who imply that admissions of wrongness must also include adopting their own position as the only possible alternative.
I agree with that more than you might think. The reasons are probably different. When AGW first appeard on my radar in earnest in the mid-90s I wasn’t skeptical, I was dubious. My concerns at the time were bourne out of the energy crisis of the ’70s and the recently ended Gulf War I. Even before the war I was of the mind that it was a bad idea to be opposing nuclear power. All my readings indicated that converting corn to ethanol was a non-starter. A hydrogen economy sounded nice, but knowing hydrogen’s propensity to form high-energy covalent bonds with carbon I knew that it was just another perpetual-motion machine in waiting, with the added difficulty of transport and storage in high enough energy density so as to be convenient as present liquid fuels derived from petroleum. I could think of a thousand better reasons to push for workable alternative energy solutions that didn’t rely on appealing to avoidance some highly uncertain far-off future calamity. Plenty of reasons to do it for concerns in the here and now. My mind on those things has not much changed since then. It’s the source of much angst.
OTOH, I’m mindful that no policy proposal however framed will please anyone and everyone. In that sense your argument rings hollow to me. I simply don’t believe that any amount of concession to your point of view would budge your beliefs. So why bother. I think that’s very much part of the political calculus. It might make some beneficial difference to change that tone, but then I also know when such rhetoric is invoked it’s main purpose is to rally the already converted.
I think you know this, and that is one thing which makes it an attractive argument for you to use.
Yes, but I shouldn’t trust them implicitly so I don’t.
That’s a false dichotomy. Which “skeptics” for starters? You’re not a monolithic lot any more than we warmies are:
1) Do I subscribe to the lukewarmist camp which typically takes the big-three temperature records as reasonably representative of reality, but invokes some as-yet coherently specified mechanism for warming above and beyond what they claim is a less-than-IPCC-approved sensitivity to CO2’s influence?
2) Do I go full-on sky dragon slayer and believe that back radiation violates the 2nd law of thermodynamics?
3) Do I invoke motivated meddling with all climate data and say that The Pause lives on only because the skeptics are now watching them like a hawk?
4) Do I claim that the MWP and LIA were both far more extreme than the likes of Mann would have us believe, yet simultaneously hold forth that feedback gain must be 0.1 or less because that’s how a process engineer would design it?
5) Mix and match all the above as-needed even though many of them are not mutually compatible with each other?
So it’s to be option 3 then. Well here’s a problem with that one: why don’t the damn models agree with the adjusted temperatures more convincingly?
Not having long experience as an insider (I have some, my college years when I worked in a clinical/research lab) I can’t in good faith categorically disagree with you. I stand on what I lead with: I look around and observe that, warts and all, publicly funded science generally works. Maybe privately funded research would work better. I don’t know, I don’t have that comparative perspective. Mostly I trust science in general over pretty much all else because of the quality of arguments I understand when reading the primary literature. And having been raised by a research scientist (biology).
I don’t have any additional, novel ways to rebut that argument than what I’ve already written to Mike above. But I’ll try again: it’s not going to happen. You know this. You know that I know this. You know that I don’t want to cop to it but I have to or be a liar.
Which is a rhetorical tactic, evidently based on some political or other value-system animus you feel toward the likes of Al Gore, George Soros and the rest of the high-rolling fat-cat carbon taxation promoters. None of which speaks to the physical reality of the planet, whatever it is. Which I think is stupidly short-sighted because the planet doesn’t give a flying leap about our opinions of it or each other. The only f***ing way to figure that out is to research it. And discuss the research on the merits (or lack) of its arguments and findings, not our opinions of what an egotistically arrogant, thin-skinned self-serving hypocritical asshole the lead author is.
At 10:04 PM on 3 February, Brandon Gates had posited that:
Not quite.
Say rather that when I match my tentative conclusions about an aspect of reality – a diagnosis in a clinical case, for example – against contrary conclusions advanced by someone else, if I judge the evidence considered and the reasoning engendered by the other guy to be inferior to what I’ve observed and reasoned and matched against known criteria, then I’m going to stick with my conclusions. The other guy is going to have to convince me that he’s got a better “take” on the situation, and thereby change my judgement.
That’s certainly possible. Y’see, I admit in all situations to the possibility that I might be wrong. Because my “subjectivity” – my “belief” about something happening in objective reality – isn’t really “subjectivity” at all, but rather a conjecture predicated on best information available, always amenable to additional, better information when presented.
However, I don’t much care if the guy against whom I’m matching diagnoses is a highly-credentialed and much-published “authority” with all sorts of goodies in his vitae. I’ve seen such high muckety-mucks screw the pooch in flaming glory when it gets down to matters of real-world patient care, and arrogance is a toxic influence among such prominenti. I want to hear the reasons why he holds his opinion, and I must judge for myself whether or not his consideration of the matter at hand is of greater validity than my own.
What is there of real “subjectivity” in requiring lucid explanation before accepting conclusions which run contrary to one’s own interpretations of the facts in hand?
@ur momisugly Brandon Gates
Thank you for your very thought-provoking reply. Many good points on which we both agree, for what my “agreement” might be worth. And let me add that I like comments that have a forthright mean-streak to them (liver-eating–that’s a good one! You might want to Goggle “liver eating Johnson”, Brandon, and acquaint yourself with an improbable, but colorful gent who gave a unique twist to the saying “eating crow”). Likewise, I have a “soft spot”–again, for what that might be worth–for comments where the author indulges in a little, good-fun and funny, self-deprecating humor. So in short, your comment was a “good-read”.
Coupla picky-picky points:
-Contrary to your speculation, I am not jealous, in the slightest, of my betters’ jet-set life-style. Take the Davos gab-fest, for example Keeping with the “Johnson” theme that seems to be developing in this comment, I’ll paraphrase Samuel Johnson–air-travel for me is like being in jail with the chance of ending one’s days at the impact point of a wild, 30,000 ft plunge. Thanks, but no thanks. Living out of a suitcase in a hotel–however swanky–is also, for moi, like being in a low-security jail with the chance of dying of boredom. Again, I’ll pass on that pleasure. And, finally, the prospect of hob-nobbing with a klatch of tipsy, world-class, shot-caller psychopaths, and their pursuing, drunken horde of ambitious whippersnappers, all jostlin’ to ace out the competition and land a career-enhancing, lip-smacking smooch on some big-shot strutting-rump, is not my idea of a quality-time amusement. Home sweet home, is my style.
-Appreciate, Brandon, that the video-conferencing experience is not the same experience one finds in a “real-deal”, wild-and-crazy, grab-ass, press-the-flesh, party-time eco-confab. But if demon-carbon is such an existential menace that the hive-masters are seeking the coercive powers of the state to, directly or indirectly, deprive me of my babe-magnet monster-truck that goes VROOOOM!!! VROOOOM!!! and replace it with an electrified, weenie-bait, dork-mobile that goes huuuummm!, then CO2 is also enough of problem that my betters need to the video-conference their little B. S. gab-fests, as well.
Now I know, Brandon, that you are as solicitous of my gas-guzzler mode of transportation as you are of our betters’ private-jet, jet-set life-style. My only point is that if hive’s nomenklatura are comin’ after my little carbon-spew toys, then I’ll do my level best, such as it is, to come after theirs.
-Any broad hints that I might have dropped to the effect that I find my eco-betters to be a bunch of brazen-hypocrite assholes, is not a disguise for some other point of view or a pretext for anything else. You’re erroneously projecting your own multi-layered, refined sophistication onto poor, simple, coolie-trash moi, I’m afraid, Brandon.
Finally, I thank you, Brandon, for accepting my apology in the spirit in which it was given.
–
@ur momisugly Brandon Gates.
Jeez, Gates!–what are you doin’, guy? I mean, like, you go toe-to-toe on this blog, deliverin’ some pretty darn good, stand-up comments, on the one hand, and then, the next thing you know, you’re over at HotWhopper, all sniffles, and complainin’ that the “Whutter” big-boys are being mean to you. C’mon, dude, you’re better than that. You don’t need HotWhopper’s pants-suit pants to hide behind. And yes, carbon bigfoot’s comment is idiotic (which strongly suggests he’s a “crusher-crew”, provocateur hive-plant, of course). Regardless, Gates, you need to stay in the ring and tear “footsie” a new one. Isn’t that the way to do it, Gates?…Huh?…huh?…Yeah, buddy, Gates, that’s the spirit!
Hey, Gates!, check out ATTP’s latest blog post “Hostilities”. In that inimitable, wishy-washy, thinking-out-loud, quasi-mumbling “style” of his, the tri-polar Anders-wotts-ATTP makes some good points that apply equally to both the lefty, trough-seeker hive-tools, on the one side of the climate “debate”, and the lovers of freedom and ethical science on the other. All relevant to our little chit-chat here, too.
mike,
If I’m to take a shellacking, I’m ever so much more likely to realize I deserve it when done with plain-speaking accompanied by some colorful wit. I try to give the same, and appreciate your appreciation [1] on all fronts.
I have Liver-Eating Johnson in the to-read queue.
I see now that I have misjudged your perspective on things so It’s my turn to apologize. I really hate it when others make wrong assumptions about the sum total of where I’m coming from solely because I use a particularly common talking point or three.
[cackle] Ok, I totally believe you. I’ve done a fair amount of travel for work, as in living out of a suitcase for months on end weekends at home. The key to survival is finding a good hotel, which for me is all about staff. As in, by the end of it everyone is on a first-name basis, every third drink is on the house, and the fourth [2] one is shared. A new hotel every week would be a drag. I’d hate it. I never will like commercial air travel, so I don’t begrudge many true jet-setters their Gulfstream IV. A BBJ, now that’s excess. I don’t know what Al Gore flies around in, guessing he uses one of the services when he does, hopefully he chooses a Citation or something like it. Who knows. I really couldn’t care less about such trivia.
In ’75 my grandpa bought 48 acres of walnut trees in Central California. With that package came a couple of old junkers. One was a sedan of some sort, which was beyond all hope of rescue. We used it to solar heat water in 1-gallon plastic milk jugs for bathing. The other one was a 1951 Ford F-1 pickup. The original motor was shot, but everything else was good honest bombproof American sheet metal and castings from back when steel came out of Cleveland or Pittsburgh and even Ford knew how to build a proper truck. He and Dad went out and got us a pre-embargo small-block 289 from a totaled Mustang [3] and dropped that sucker under the sexy long hood. The sound. Oh the sound. And before regular gasoline became a shadow of its former self, the smell.
When I got old enough, it became my ride. I insisted on it. My buddies loved it too because see, there was nothing cherry about it. It literally looked like we’d pulled it off the set of Sanford and Son and let it go to even further rot. But Pops kept it running like a top (I didn’t get that gene) and it still knew how to move even by the time it was my turn to try and destroy it. One time some jerkoff in a spanking new ’88 Z-71 pulled up next to me at a light, started leering at me and my friend sitting on the passenger side of the barely upholstered and NOT original bench.
“Watch this shit,” I said.
Light turns green and I laid the biggest patch ever right across the intersection. I’d like to tell you that we were going 60 by the time we crossed it, but I can’t … the speedo never did work on that thing. Corbs there next to me with his ass now pinned to the back of the cab was howling with laughter in a way I wish I could describe, because that laugh apparently describes how far into his lap that fancy Chevy-shover’s jaw dropped while he was sucking on my tire smoke trying to catch up. Best sleeper ever.
The Kentucky girls across the river (I’m Californian by birth, a Buckeye by tradition) really liked that old truck too. God bless ’em. Those were some good times.
I drive a 4-banger Accord these days, dammitall, and NO I don’t want to take your dead-and-liquefied dinosaur sucking “pickup” vehicle away from you because how in the hell else am I going to live vicariously through you and remain guilt free?
Of that I’m sure. Carbon-neutral spew toys really could be a lot of fun, we just have to gather our collective wits and make that happen. In a perfect world, we’d cough up the bux to figure out how to turn algae into oil. That done, I’d go right out and buy what I was born to drive — a beat to hell 4×4 something with a large displacement V-8 in it and lotsa room in back for extracurriculars. But I’m going to be dead and in the hot place before that happens, which pretty much constantly pisses me off.
la la la la la …. The evil thing about projection is that you don’t know you’re doing it. There’s no settling this particular argument objectively with a clear winner, so I say we’re both batshit crazy.
No worries. I don’t get all that bent by such things. What turns my crank more is when the response is full of pedestrian “you’re an idiot” type stuff and not much else. I thank you for a pointy, sharp, but humorous and interesting rebuttal.
————
[1] If you know the script for the play, “The Last Days of Judas Iscariot” you will appreciate it that Satan has essentially the same line.
[2] Who am I kidding. The sixth one.
[3] Lotsa narrow curvy roads in those parts, and as I now realize in retrospect, a lot of dumb hicks driving them. 😀
mike,
This is why I hate the “tone” conversation whenever it comes up and I bite hard on it.
Of course not. But it is nice venture into friendly territory from time to time and let my hair down all the way.
Consider the possibility that I wanted to see how others here would respond to him.
Was just there saying ever more charitable things about WUWT. Not to be missed! You may even figure out what I’m actually pissed off about if you uncross your eyes long enough to read straight.
Tucci78,
I agree.
I couldn’t have written it better myself.
Ah.
Yup. I’ve had a hospital do its level best to kill me.
Consistent with my earlier statement that belief is a choice.
Speaking from the perspective of the most extreme form of philosophical skepticism, our own rational “objectivity” is just a little lie we tell ourselves since constantly facing the cold hard possibility that we know nothing about anything is too cognitively unsettling. “Facts” are simply the things we’ve decided to accept as reality to quell the dissonance.
At 11:01 on 4 February, Brandon Gates had commented:
Nah, that’s not even something I can accept “philosophically” – more precisely, rhetorically.
While I’ll admit that perception is intrinsically flawed (susceptible to misinterpretation), the phenomena apprehended by our perceptions are what they are, regardless of subjective differences of appreciation and interpretation, and there is no “little lie we tell ourselves” in that IF we’re willing to keep Cromwellian with our subjective individual and collective selves (“I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken.” [Letter to the general assembly of the Church of Scotland, 3 August 1650]).
The essence of scientific thought – much mistaken by those outside the “hard” sciences – is the fact that we’re perfectly willing to vest calculated confidence in our conclusions while at the same time admitting (always!) the possibility that we might not have it exactly right, and therefore always keeping open to refinements of information and even the prospects of radical contravention.
The real scientist is always humble in the presence of objective reality. There’s nothing “cognitively unsettling” about that, and we don’t give a greasy goddam about “the dissonance.”
But don’t expect real scientists to daven in the direction of credentialed authority when those fellas show unwillingness to make their reasoning pikestaff-plain. We’re all too aware of how the errors creep in, and the fact that such reputation-bearing critters are perhaps even more susceptible than the ruck when it comes to “noble cause” corruption.
Show us a “consensus” and we’ll come at with wrecking bars and high explosives. Heck, it’s our job.
@ur momisugly Brandon Gates
Yr: “You may actually find out what I’m pissed off about if you uncross your eyes long enough to read straight.”
You know, Brandon, I owe you one, anyway, so I’m doin’ the right thing here and heartily acceptin’ your reprimand–especially after I checked my bathroom mirror, after your last, and, sure enough!, my eyes are crossed! I mean, like, you pose a real challenge to my otherwise unremitting hostility to all things hive-bozo.
And having been a “lefty” once myself, it is walk-down-memory-lane to bump into a “good comrade” with a genuine good heart, again, after all these years (and here I thought the hive purged your type long ago)–I’ve always been a sucker for the left’s “noble language”, and it was with some disillusionment and pain that I was forced to admit that all those beautiful words were (some notable and inspiring individual exceptions, aside) just humbug-cant, employed as a agit-prop tool, by the hive-masters who count, to deceive useful-fool, “dumb kid” idealists (you know, like, that classic Bolshie bait-and-switch cull-booger: “Land to the peasants”, followed by the suppression of the Tambov Rebellion).
Genuinely enjoyed the exchange and intend to follow your comments across the blogosphere much as I do those of Latimer Alder and a few others. Please keep ’em comin’!
mike,
Happy to help you self-diagnose the issues with your eyesight. I find myself almost believing that you were once upon a time a sanctimonious Prius-driving own-flatus smelling libruhl pinko Commie. Why, I bet you even used to have at least one gay and one black friend. Mine’s a two-fer, he’s BOTH! I’m nothing if not efficient, chalk it up to my German ancestry. When I quit religion, I went through a very nasty and angry atheist phase until a notorious Usenet troll ruthlessly hacked my “logic” to bits and converted me to agnosticism. It was pretty rough, he didn’t use any lube for the cranio-rectalectomy portion of the procedure. I have some faint hope that one day I too will do the impossible: radically change someone’s mind on the Innert00bs. I’m nowhere near as smart as that guy, nor do I have his brass — which is ironic because he’s a eunuch — so I have less than faint hope I’ll dislodge you from your presently-chosen tribe of knuckle-dragging gasoline-huffing mouth-breathers.
It’s just as well. My worn-to-tatters, triple-highlighted and dog-eared copy of “Being a Liberal for Dummies” stresses that the only way to make everyone into carbon-copies of diversity and thereby achieve world domination where everyone is equal except those who aren’t is to actually fool ourselves into believing that we’re NOT culture warriors just the same as the humble huddled masses on the opiated right. Try as I might, I just can’t hypnotize myself into giving up my true inner malevolence on this matter — when I should call something doubleplus ungood like the manual says I find myself instead calling a spade a spade like honest people are supposed to. Being ever dutiful, I suppose I should stop playing the heretic and wish you a pleasant evening cruising Main in your overly-compensatory planet-killilng p-wagon. Get some for me, and send photos because in the meanwhile, I’ll be doing boring stuff like reading some Latimer Alder in hopes of figuring out the reference. Cheers.
Brandon Gates writes “I went through a very nasty and angry atheist phase until a notorious Usenet troll ruthlessly hacked my logic to bits and converted me to agnosticism.”
Those were the good times; self-moderated arguments where you would write what was on your mind without fear of moderators (at least in the alt groups) and each person could block whoever he wished. Freedom of speech combined with freedom to not listen.
Anyway, who was that particular Usenet troll?
Tucci78,
Then it shall remain my own food for thought.
Oh. Well I wager Cromwell would not have so flatly rejected my philosophical argument.
Even hard scientists screw that up. As Planck observed: A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
Odd statement. One major function of peer-review is to ferret out instances where the research team wasn’t able to willingly suspend disbelief in their own hypothesis.
I expect Real Scientists to deal in quantifiable specifics, not unsubstantiated broad-sweeping assertions.
That doesn’t gel for me. When any sort of corruption is operative, the “errors” don’t “creep in”, they’re deliberately introduced.
Real Scientists attack consensus with original research, data, and clearly stated explanitory causal mechanisms. In the meantime, those of us who don’t pretend to be something they’re not stick to what the majority of experts say, else we’d find ourselves tempted to believe every hair-brained crank theory published in some backwater journal — or even more desperately on a personal blog — solely on the basis that if it doesn’t look like groupthink it must be right.
Which is my approach to ALL science, not just climate-related stuff. Special pleadings are not my style.
B. Gates says:
Real Scientists attack consensus with original research, data, and…&etc.
Real scientists don’t give a damn about “consensus”. A consensus isn’t science.
But the alarmist crowd cares a whole lot about the consensus, for the simple reason that they mistakenly believe they constitute the the climate consensus. They don’t.
The true ‘consensus’ is heavily on the side of scientific skeptics. That has been shown beyond any doubt. In fact, what is called the “consensus” in the climate world is a bunch of fabricated nonsense. I can prove it:
Post the names of all the scientists and engineers you can find who contradict the idea that CO2 is harmless, and that it is a net benefit to the biosphere. I will bury you in names showing you where the real consensus is. The true consensus is on the side of skeptics.
The “consensus” argument is made because the alarmist crowd does not have convincing facts. So they fall back on anti-science arguments like ‘consensus’, and ad hominem arguments, and logical fallacies like the Appeal to Authority.
The public is coming around, too. Just a couple of years ago, there were always lots of concerned comments under media articles, about possible runaway global warming. But no more. Now it’s easily 90% ridicule. And when the public turns on you, you’re toast.
At 9:42 PM on 4 February, dbstealey writes:
Ah, but a “consensus” – a prevailing and effectively unquestioned orthodoxy – tends with some reliability to be a presumptive indicator of error and therefore demarcates an area of inquiry where investigatory effort might well pay off.
Heck, what better sign can there be that there’s something worth examination than observation that the dullards, the dimwits, the timorous, the “established,” the fat and the lazy receive the prevailing hypotheses as Holy Writ in spite of contravening evidence?
Ya gotta have some kinda trail markers to pique your curiosity and show you where to go poking in your nose.
Let us praise “consensus,” therefore. It guides us in the placement of the demolition charges necessary to blast our way past entrenched stupidity.
dbstealey,
Brandon says “I’m loving the 90% ridicule stat, that was a nice touch. Has that figure been peer-reviewed by chance?”
Indeed it has. The peers are here.
More than one consensus exists; each with its command and control (C2) mechanisms, peers and publishing houses. It is (IMO) arrogance to suppose only one set of peers can exist; a belief you reveal by failing to identify which peers you mean by your statement.
Thanx, Brandon. I’ll add you to my short list of nitpickers.
You might be right, maybe logic isn’t my strong point. I disagree, but then that’s a minor dispute. It’s merely your opinion, and I can’t recall anyone else ever saying that. They prefer to call me other names.
Here is my strong point: I watch what Planet Earth is doing. I pay attention to what the planet is telling us. And you know what? She is very clearly saying that skeptics are right, and alarmists are wrong.
Anyone who still believes in MMGW after eighteen [or ten, or 13, or whatever] years of no global warming — while CO2 keeps steadily rising — must either re-visit their original conjecture and try to figure where they went wrong, or they are living in their own make-believe world.
The alarmist meme is being deconstructed as we watch. Either those folks will be honest and admit that they were off-base, or they will argue incessantly. The former are honest, the latter are not.
It really is as simple as that.
Tucci78,
That’s a good point about consensus. It is somewhat related to the first step in the hierarchy: Conjecture, Hypothesis, Theory, Law. Some of them made a conjecture early on, and there may have been a slight consensus at that time. But most scientists watch the ongoing experiment that Planet Earth is doing, and the honest ones reject the original conjecture.
The alarmist crowd’s problem is that, although they claim consensus, it is a verifiably false claim. Many times I’ve challenged them to post a list of scientist by name who dispute the statement that CO2 is harmless, and that it is beneficial to the biosphere.
But no one has ever met that challenge, for the simple reason that there really are very few on the warmist side who will dare to put their names to that. They would not dare to contradict those points because lots of public ridicule would result. Instead, they are just happy to feed at the trough, keeping the MMGW scare alive and making a fat ‘n’ easy living at it.
So the “consensus” is solidly on the side of scientific skeptics. And you know what? It’s getting more lopsided. Every year that passes with no global warming builds the skeptical consensus.
At 9:39 AM on 5 February, after giving indication that he’s familiar with Dr. Jeff Glassman’s delightful essay “Conjecture, Hypothesis, Theory, Law: The Basis of Rational Argument” (December 2007), dbstealey goes on to observe:
While I expect that there may be pleasure to basking in the utterly unfamiliar warm fuzzies of majoritarian association (I’ve been calling this craptacular CO2-demonizing damnfoolishness a great blivet of uncomposted transnational progressive dung since 1981), my objective has never been the attainment of cuddly togetherness with the kinds of people botched enough to have been suckered by such weapons-grade bogosity in the first place. I just want them tattooed all over “Null & Void,” permanently blacklisted throughout governments, industries, and the academy, and laid open to civil proceedings seeking compensatory and punitive damages. Let the plaintiff’s bar be unleashed upon them, their heirs and assigns.
dbstealey,
That would be quintuple counting, but if you must I am honored.
I’ve pointed out what I think the specific flaws of your arguments are. They remain unchallenged with your appeal to my opinion.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MW_NJp28Udc/VNS3EAEqpOI/AAAAAAAAAUs/hjhuLZFkdoM/s1600/hadcrut4%2Bhiatuses.png
Michael 2,
It’s still out there in all its glory. I dip in every so often, but it’s been over 6 months since my last venture.
Kadaitcha Man. Also suspected to be Teh Ghod Troll, Chinahand and one other sock that escapes me. A true master of the art. Think Kibo, but vulgar, very good at math and logic, and … well I think … 10 times as hilarious.
Gates,
Thanx for the chart. Are you claiming some or all of that global warming is man-made?
dbstealey,
Purpose of that plot is to point out that up to 40-year AGW hiatuses have precedent. Conversely, 40-year warming skyrocketuses are also in evidence.
As for attribution, clearly I believe that CO2 has been the main driver for the positive delta-T from beginning to end of that time series. No, I’m not forgetting about the Sun:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/itsi_wls_ann.png
The 40-ish year cycles in the temperature record line up with AMO quite well:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/iamo_hadsst.png
And with PDO:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ipdo_hadsst3.png
IPO has some interesting things to say:
http://climexp.knmi.nl/data/ieof_pac_hadisst1_4_01.png
Conclusion: extrapolating the future from a 20 year least-squares linear regression is a Bad Idea because quite clearly one stands about a 50% chance of getting a very wrong answer. Which renders your argument above …
Anyone who still believes in MMGW after eighteen [or ten, or 13, or whatever] years of no global warming — while CO2 keeps steadily rising — must either re-visit their original conjecture and try to figure where they went wrong, or they are living in their own make-believe world.
… a tad naive. If not wilfully ignorant. Not very skeptical, regardless. In my opinion, of course.
Was there a point to your psychobabble? What scientific study confirms your 30-60K kill supposition? The American Lung Association propaganda funded by EPA?
NIH for the first estimate and WHO for the second. It doesn’t really matter which TLA did the research when it’s gummint funded. I do keep this favorable write-up in Forbes bookmarked in the off chance that makes any difference: http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamesconca/2012/06/10/energys-deathprint-a-price-always-paid/
How did the government’s “War on Drugs” or “War on Poverty” turn out? Aside from giving the US the highest rate of incarceration in the world? Did we win these wars?
Every solution leads to new problems. The “War on Coal” is a new problem waiting to happen. The problems it will cause will be revealed at the worst possible moment. Murphy’s Law.
ferdberple,
Shitty. The War on Drugs advocates apparently learned nothing from the Prohibition era, not even after it created the exact same problems … because by George they’re STILL stumping for it. The way to end poverty is to put people to work, not on a dole with a weekly requirement to send in “evidence” that one is looking for work. My view of the New Deal is that people went to work on the public dime, out of which we got lasting and beneficial infrastructure. They got the sastifaction of being paid to produce something useful. It’s blindingly obvious to me that’s the proper way to handle downturns in an inherently boom-bust business cycle.
That reads like apathy and wishful thinking to me. Climate aside, the world is changing economically and my view is that we are increasingly lagging in our ability to compete. Whether you like it or not, the whole world, including the US, sees the writing on the wall wrt fossil fuels and is taking appropriate steps to reduce their dependence on it. That’s a market opportunity. Your luddite-like view of intentional directed change is not the sort of attitude which lends itself to capitalizing on it. I think that’s stupidly short-sighted.
Gates says:
… the world is changing economically and my view is that we are increasingly lagging in our ability to compete. Whether you like it or not, the whole world, including the US, sees the writing on the wall wrt fossil fuels and is taking appropriate steps to reduce their dependence on it. That’s a market opportunity. Your luddite-like view of intentional directed change is not the sort of attitude which…
Sometimes Gates makes less sense than others. What are we “competing” at? A race to the bottom? There is nothing that helps poor folks more than cheap fossil fuels. Gates calls people who want the poor to get wealthier “Luddites”.
That is typically muddled thinking from leftists. They don’t really want to help the people who need it most. They are the true Luddites. No wonder the world is going to hell in a handbasket. Too many crazy people wanting ‘solutions’ like windmills, when cheap fossil fuesl are the answer.
I wonder: does Gates ever consider what the poor would vote for?
No, I don’t really wonder. Gates and his type do not want to give them that choice.
dbstealey,
Money, power, prestige and suitable mating partners. Some things never change.
I cannot fault that argument.
Yeah, because I’m planning on building my nuclear power plants with slave labor. Good one.
Raising the minimum wage is a popular one. Good thing that isn’t a direct vote, or we’d all be poor.
Brandon Gates writes “Raising the minimum wage is a popular one. Good thing that isn’t a direct vote, or we’d all be poor.”
Exactly. If everyone’s wage was at least a million dollars an hour, a hamburger would cost a million dollars.
Just move the decimal point.
Oh, but inflation already does that.
Recommended reading: The “iron law of wages”.
It isn’t the numbers that matter; it is what you can buy with the numbers you’ve got — and if everyone has the same numbers, you cannot buy any more with your new wage than you could with your old wage.
Michael2,
Thanks. If it were not for endless strawman & elenchi arguments, Gates’ comments would be shortened by about 90%. His strawman over Gates calls people who want the poor to get wealthier “Luddites” is a case in point. The poor aren’t voting for nukes. They want cheap energy, and the cheapest energy is fossil fuel energy.
Also, I like Gates’ reference to “causal mechanisms”. Let’s have the main causal mechanism for global warming. Be prepared to support your belief.
Michael 2,
And as it does they lose their purchasing power, effectively rendering minimum wage earners poorer. Pols looking to court the votes of that income bracket — and those ideologically sensitive to their needs — will at some point lobby to raise the wage floor. It’s only sensible to raise minimum wage by about as much as the inflation rate since the last hike as significantly much more than that begins to create inflation (or possibly causes unemployment) in and of itself which defeats the purpose. As you rightfully point out.
dbstealey,
Those who have construction skills, or are willing to learn them, might want to think about that a little harder.
http://www.eia.gov/forecasts/aeo/pdf/electricity_generation.pdf
The hands-down winner for generating electricity is geothermal, followed by natural gas. Conventional coal and advanced nuclear are comparable. On-shore wind and hydro are in between. I’m proposing replacing coal with nuclear. I’d rather see natural gas used more for vehicles than in power plants. You may disagree with these estimates, but I believe them to be reasonable. As such, I do not believe I am advocating for taking cheap energy away from the poor when I call for a coal to nuclear replacement program.
Oh. Right. Geothermal.
Pie in the sky, as poor folks die.
dbstealey, I repeat: “I’m proposing replacing coal with nuclear.” You’re talking about pie in the sky. Why oh why do you lie?
@Gates:
I never lie. I may make an occasional error. But I never lie. I am not an alarmist.
dbstealey,
Then you’re a better man than me. I’ve told worse fibs than, “No honey, that dress doesn’t make you look like a hog.”
What once worked in this country, perhaps? May I remind you it cost more and took longer to build the Visitor’s Center at Hoover Dam than it took to build the damn dam. And the dam was built on time and on budget.
Obama’s failed “shovel ready jobs” initiatives and his admissions about “shovel ready” not being real should be enough to start you rethinking.
The government that you seem to credit for past successes is now the largest obstacle to current and future success.
more soylent green!
I did not know that.
My kneejerk reaction is to not believe that. Well both statements actually. But that’s beside the point.
That the Obama administration has not lived up to promise? That he’s not a very competent leader? That the Democratic party has done almost everything it possibly could over the tenure of his administration to ensure that he would become the victim of his own unpreparedness to lead? Did I miss something?
No need to answer that last one, I’m sure I did.
It’s not the same government. Not even remotely.
As an example, the focus could be on “things like cleaner air, low power consumption, improved public transport, better waste management, efficient agriculture, reforestation … (they) are all in public interest, regardless of position on climate change,” she said …
===================================
I see no public interest in the power consumption of individuals or businesses.
I’d start with foreign policy. See also Ben Franklin, “A penny saved is a penny earned.” Oil is good for a lot of things that don’t have anything to do with internal combustion engines. Would be nice to keep some of the stuff around for those uses.
I know from personal experience that if you remove the oil from an internal combustion engine it won’t run for very long. It is always good to remember that the stone age didn’t end because we ran out of rocks.
Matt, nicely said and good for an excellent chuckle to boot. I do see emerging new energy tech as an investment opportunity. We could use the work. They Keynesian economics I think I understand speak very loudly to me on this topic. We could use the work.
Oh dear, I’m repeating myself. Must be quitting time.
Agreed, it’s good for lots more than just burning in an engine. That said, the solution would be to make it ourselves.
And don’t you dare say that we can’t; yes, we can.
1) We know how it starts (oceanic algae)
2) We know the T-P regime that creates it
3) We know how to capture it (think ‘permeable trap’)
4) We know how to transport it, refine it, and deliver it to market
Once the stuff Nature made for us runs out, we’ll probably get into high gear making our own.
Mark Hladik,
Knowledge of how to do it is probably not the biggest problem. The plausibly viable processes you describe will probably work and eventually yes, we’ll need to to them. But that will require R&D. As yet unknown lead times. Retrofitting industrial infrastructure. Which all takes time and money.
And energy. If we haven’t found a viable alternative energy solution to the petroleum’s other uses we’re attempting to replace across the board, all bets are off.
Set aside CO2 for a moment. We’re going to have to deal with this anyway at some point. The normal course of action is that a resource becomes scarce and therefore expensive. Replacement alternatives are sought which are more abundant, therefore less expensive. The nature of fossil fuel reserves is that, left to market forces alone, the transition has a good chance of being a smooth one. But not guaranteed. We’ve experienced price shocks in the past which were not pleasant. Remember the time Nixon got into a pissing contest with OPEC because we didn’t let the Syrians and Egyptians celebrate Yom Kippur by stomping Israel’s guts out? How much of our collective soul do you think we sold getting out of that bind? Much much more ass-kissing later we’re on reasonably good terms with, oh, the Saudis, but you can’t honestly tell me you like any of those bastards having us by the balls. Can you? How hard do you think they’re going to squeeze when even their stuff starts running low and China, who holds already our purse-strings quite handily in their own right, outbids us?
I’ve got a million of these little reasons which have diddly-squat to do with classic left-leaning liberal environmentalism to begin easing the hell out of the oil business ahead of the curve via the exact sort of knowledge-based innovation you’re appealing to. It would require spending money to do it, but again, we’ll need to do it eventually anyway. This is a time value of money problem, and my argument is that investments early on are worth far more in the future than if the same investment is made later on down the line under potentially more dire, and therefore riskier, straits. So, front-load the risk proactively where it stands more of a chance for a bigger long-term return. And other benefits like the immediate creation of more jobs. The list of good is at least as long as the litany of next years’ 10-K driven complaints that it would be a Bad Idea to mess with the success of what we’re already doing.
Well, Mr. Gates, we seem to be in agreement. Being able to produce and (eventually) make our own synthetic version of the stuff we pull out of the ground is not a bad idea.
Do note that I did not indicate that it would be inexpensive, nor do I believe that we have the technical know-how to do it today. I would hazard a guess that we differ on the best way to go about this eventual transfer from natural petroleum to synthetic petroleum (I would have the free market do it). I also suspect that by the time we are making this eventual transition, we will no longer be using half of each produced barrel of petroleum as an engine fuel.
As for dependence upon foreign sources, we also tend to agree there. I favor the use of our domestic resources, or what we can buy from friendly governments (think Canada). The more petro-dollars we withhold from the mid-East, the better.
It was in the 1950’s that we began learning how to do hydraulic fracturing (so-called ‘fracking’). The fact that the eco-loons suddenly found out about it within the past few years, just shows their lack of a sense of history. We can, and should, move to all forms of energy independence. Cliched as it is, “drill, baby, DRILL” worked. A very wise man once told me, ‘never argue with success’.
You indicate to ‘set aside CO2 for a moment’. I feel no compunction to set it aside. Unlike you, I understand that CO2 does NOT control the temperature of the Earth, and it is a vital plant nutrient. CO2 is good for the environment. I look at some four billion years of Earth history, and know that we have no way of destroying this rock. The Earth has withstood far more than “we” are doing to it, and yet, we are here to discuss what we discuss.
May you live long, and prosper, in good health, Mr. Gates.
Mark H.
At 6:11 AM on 4 February, Mark Hladik comments:
And here again I am reminded of a science column published by Isaac Asimov in the December 1970 edition of The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, titled “The Thalassogens,” in which he discussed planetary astronomy and the fact that on the “junior giants” furthest out in our solar system (Uranus and Neptune), the oceans are made from the very common compound methane (CH4), which is liquid in the prevalent temperature ranges, just as dihydrogen monoxide (H2O) is the solvent of life and copious in occurrence on our own rocky little orb.
Then again, there’s our knowledge of how the planets had aggregated from the detritus “left over” when old Sol had gathered itself into fusion-kindling massiveness, and that the residual planetesimals wandering around the rims of the various planetary gravity wells include a helluva lot of carbonaceous chondrite, indicating that much massive motes of organic matter had come swarming in to add themselves to the proto-Earth long, long before the first microorganisms began to match purines and pyrimidines in the game of genetics.
So how much of those petrochemical fuels and feedstocks are really “fossil” products (i.e., formerly living stuff) and actually abiotic compounds contaminated just a wee little bit by opportunistic microbial infections to leave markers of life therein? Coal is most certainly plant life gone petrified, for we find easily identified fossils therein, but liquid petroleum? Natural gas?
Carbon and hydrogen are so common in our solar system that methane – natural gas, from which it’s known that petroleum fractions like Diesel and gasoline can be efficiently synthesized – form the oceans on planets a bit further out than our own. And oxygen … well, that’s free in our atmosphere courtesy of photosynthesis; broccoli does more than just sit there under melted cheese as a side dish, eh?
I love hearing the alarmists maunder about “peak oil” when the indications rumble underfoot – literally – to intimate that there ain’t peak nothin’ on our planet or otherwise in our solar system yet, and won’t be for some many sundry centuries.
Science fiction fans contend that mundanes are a drag on the human race, but we have at least some hypothetical need for them as breeding stock.
I’ll go with that.
Mark H,
Yes, we do seem to be in general agreement. Our differences are in timing and methods. My setting aside CO2 comment appears to be the main sticking point. In my experience, that’s the one constant point of contention. I’m of the mind that any “bipartisan” emissions mitigation program will only succeed with more up front carrots than sticks. Which will require no small amount of horse trading.
You’ve obviously missed my standard speech about not being able to destroy the planet, which is fine. Basically, that’s not how I approach the argument, and in point of fact, not how most serious climatologists I know of look at it, so I get a little tetchy whenever someone frames the problem in those terms.
Good health to you too, Mr. Hladik.
Thanks; apologies for what I have, or did, miss. I do believe that an honest assessment will indicate that the climate-catastrophe crowd tends to promote the idea of planetary (or just ecological) destruction. If nothing else, it is a standard ‘get-out-the-vote’ technique.
My take is that the climate will continue to change, since that is its norm. I do not prognosticate which direction it will take, but it will change.
Thanks for the stimulating conversation!
Mark H.
the only public interest in the power consumption of the individual is the artificially high cost due to the funding of already failed so called renewable energy schemes. eg the RET in australia subsidising solar pv panels on rich peoples houses while the poor who cant afford the base cost, they rent or whatever, pay for it through the increased electricity prices in general.
there is NO doubt that the provider charges the costs of the RET scheme, they show it clearly in their ledgers, and the government show clearly how much they require the providers to pay them for the RET scheme.
i am sure there will be some money going to research, but it is not through the funding of solar,wind etc. all the subsidising does is STOP research. they have a clear path to government funds to manufacture and no competition to innovate.
This article misses the point. The last thing that the global warming activists want to do is improve the general populations understanding of science. That would be the biggest threat to the gravy chain. They prefer the trust us where the Tax man/ Lawyer/ Climate Scientist line. They never try and explain the science they try and push the fear. They don’t want to fix the relationships and promote reasoned discussion because if they did the public would soon understand that the fear is overblown
It was a Labour politician in , I think Harold Wilson’s Cabinet of the ’60s, who said, referring to public involvement in policy , “at the end of the day , it really is the man in Whitehall who knows best “.
Apart from adding “woman” to the “man in Whitehall” , nothing has changed in the past 50 years .
Ignorant plebs we are and will remain so to the end of time in the eyes of the inhabitants of the Palace of Westminster.
And they’re mostly right, Mike. Ignorant plebs we all. But that’s what is so wonderful about the market. It knows even better than we do what we actually want. A wise hand on the tiller is necessary, sure – I’m not a great fan of anarchy – but the guy who is sure he knows better than us is dangerous, and especially dangerous when we elect him
Um, why not try: “Republicans are skeptics, and Democrats are believers.” Lol. That has got to take an Einstein to figure that out, and a $700,000 grant to study it for 19 months.
“Republicans are skeptics, democrats are believers”. No not completely true. I definitely don’t fit in the Republican base of supporters, but I’m as big a “denier” as they come.
Then the camps should be divided into “thinker” and “non-thinker”. Politics is often a sad substitution for thinking.
Rocky Road,
So are labels like ‘denialist’, ‘contrarian’, etc. Reading some of the inane commentary in the media, it is easy to see that the writer is taking the easy way out by just sitting back and typing “deniers” every time he should be giving a reasoned answer.
There have been so many left of center commenters here over the years who have written what wickedwenchfan wrote above, that climate skepticism cannot be a political label — although many in that arena keep trying to make it political. Across the political spectrum, people are either thinkers or they aren’t. Thinking people who aren’t paid to think that AGW is a problem all seem to come to the same conclusion.
The abstract starts by stating the discredited 97 percent nonsense, which immediately pisses me off. No communication between parties is possible when one side continues to spew lies and disinformation, no matter how much it has been shown to be false.
Exactly. By regurgitating the 97% twaddle the authors merely demonstrate that they don’t even realise the depth of the abyss separating them from skeptics.
97% of scientists that receive funding for Climate Change (TM) believe strongly in climate change. Remove the funding and you remove the belief.
So long as the Democratic Party in the US has Climate Change (TM) as a major political plank, and so long as voters elect Democrats, the funding for Climate Change (TM) will continue, as will the belief.
If the US had instead spent $100 billion on studies to prove that Climate Change (TM) was not a problem, 97% of the scientific reports would show just that. Science delivers what it is paid to deliver and will continue to do so, so long as scientists have mouths to feed and mortgages to pay.
The percentage of scientific reports does not demonstrate the science is correct. Instead it demonstrates what type of scientific reports pay the best.
I have the same pissed off reaction, but I think of the 97% nonsense as stupidityrather than deliberate lying.
Seems I recall seeing a survey on global climate change that 100% of self-discribed climate deniers agreed with the statements that only 97% of the warmists agreed with! All that really tells us is the survey was so bad that no conclusions could be made from it!
It’s really easy! Stop torturing the data and stop lying to me. Call me anything you like, it’s the truth I’m after and given the considerable journey of discovery I have been on I can tell when I’m being bull-shitted!
Keep up the good work Anthony’s!
So in other words stop treating the idiots like idiots and maybe they’ll give up their idiotic resistance to our perfectly proven theory of AGW!
Sorry guys were not idiots and just because you share your Chardonnay with us doesn’t mean we will ever agree that down is up.
Starting the abstract off with the 97-percent meme sets the stage for the author’s mindset – that they’re right, and the 50-percenters, composed of socio-political boors, are so wrong. And they go on to suggest the truth will prevail if only it’s communicated properly. If recent actions are a clue, proper communication is a mix of censorship and suppression of facts that go counter to their “truth”, with a touch of Saul Alinsky’s Rule 12: Destroy the Individual “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Students are taught what to believe, not why to believe it, and contradictory information that might confuse their belief is glossed over or flat out removed from the classroom. I’ve seen all these tactics in action, close up.
The Warmers’ approach to discussing the pros, cons, and evidence reminds me of this encounter between the Klingon Commander Kor and the Federation’s own Captain Kirk:
KOR: You’ve been asking for war!
KIRK: You’re the ones who issued the ultimatum to withdraw from the disputed areas!
KOR: They are not disputed! They’re clearly ours.
And Klingons aren’t known as particularly good communicators.
“This misalignment between scientific and public views has been attributed to a range of factors, including political attitudes, socio-economic status, moral values, levels of scientific understanding, and failure of scientific communication.”
But not the actual primary cause: anti-science propaganda.
“We propose that this division is best explained as a socio-political conflict between these opposing groups. Here we demonstrate that US believers and sceptics have distinct social identities, beliefs and emotional reactions that systematically predict their support for action to advance their respective positions.”
It explains why some people swallow the propaganda and some don’t. But nowhere is there any evidence that “civility” will improve that.
Depressing to see the old canard “97% agree that climate change is caused by humans” prominently wheeled out again. The message still hasn’t got through to them that the thing that makes us sceptical is the observation that 0% of those papers actually show us hard evidence that climate change is caused by humans – no matter how much they “agree”.
When I got to “…97% agree that climate change is caused by humans…” I bailed on reading the article…
That stopped me cold… better communications my foot.
Whatever the rest of the piece says (I’ll read it,) the author now has diminished credibility. If she can’t be bothered to find out the truth of such things, then how can her conclusions be taken seriously?
It’s really easy to persuade a sceptic … and if any government had given me the money to publish the results of the survey … they would know how to persuade sceptics.
And it certainly, most definitely isn’t better communication.
Exactly. “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”.
Pay me big $$ to believe in Climate Change and I too will believe, just so long as the funding continues. The more you pay me, the more I will believe. Pay me hundreds of millions like Big Al to believe, I’m going to believe big time.
However, turn around and tell me I’m going to have to pay. I’m going to be down right skeptical. I’m not going to give up my hard earned cash unless I get rock solid evidence that this isn’t some sort of scam to take money out of my pockets and place it in someone else’s pockets, with the skim going to pay off compliant scientists, politicians and news services to keep the scam going as long as possible.
Because in the end, he who pays the piper calls the tune. It is the public paying the piper, not the scientists or politicians. So, it should be the public calling the tune. We are the ones that dictate how high we want the scientists and politicians to jump when dancing to our jig.
Scientists have absolutely no business telling the public to be less skeptical. If they are paid by governments to produce climate change reports then they have a conflict of interests and need to spell out clearly that they have a conflict.
Of the climate science papers that take a position on the issue, 97% agree that climate change is caused by humans, WRONG , and one way to improve communications with others is not to lie . In reality they consider a ‘select’ of papers not all ‘climate science papers that take a position on the issue,’ When your opening line is BS then starting form a poor position on how to improve communications to others.
Hello climate alarmists, if you wish to communicate with myself, the following rules apply:
1/ Stop lying to me.
2/ Give me the whole story, IE: stop lying to me by omission.
3/ Leave my religion alone, attempting to insult me by attacking my personal moral and ethical beliefs is never a good place to start, especially reading some of the unethical, immoral things you better than me so called scientists have and are doing.
4/ Stop lying to me. Oh did I repeat myself? Have you thought that might be because you did not listen to me the first time and continue to lie to me because you see the end justifies the lies?
5/ Talk to me like a reasonable person, do not talk down to me purely because you THINK I am not as smart as you think you are.
6/ And because you do not listen, STOP LYING TO US!!!!! Is that clear enough for you now?
Try these steps and we might begin to be able to move forward.
+1
At 12:54 AM on 3 February, Neil began his post:
…after which nothing else matters, because if they can’t lie to you, what is there left for them to say?
Except, of course, to call you a “denier.”
With the demise of the Soviet Empire, might we re-task the term “refusenik?”
I mean, the “climate change” hysterics are reliably (almost uniformly) left-“Progressive” mouthpieces or their sputniki, no?