From Technology Review, a case of desperation. “Let the robot handle it”. I have to chuckle though, since the article cites John Cook’s “Skeptical Science” as an “appropriate scientific source”. Also amusing is “the rejoinders are culled from a university source whom Leck says he isn’t at liberty to divulge.” Well since he is in New South Wales, I’m thinking this just might be another Tim Lambert aka Deltoid production. Hacker News sums it up pretty well:
> In a way, what Leck has created is a pro-active search engine: it answers twitter users who aren’t even aware of their own ignorance.
On the one hand the idea of a reverse search engine is somewhat appealing, on the other hand; it’s Clippy for the internet.
– Anthony
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Nigel Leck, a software developer by day, was tired of arguing with anti-science crackpots on Twitter. So, like any good programmer, he wrote a script to do it for him.
The result is the Twitter chatbot @AI_AGW. Its operation is fairly simple: Every five minutes, it searches twitter for several hundred set phrases that tend to correspond to any of the usual tired arguments about how global warming isn’t happening or humans aren’t responsible for it.
It then spits back at the twitterer who made that argument a canned response culled from a database of hundreds. The responses are matched to the argument in question — tweets about how Neptune is warming just like the earth, for example, are met with the appropriate links to scientific sources explaining why that hardly constitutes evidence that the source of global warming on earth is a warming sun.
The database began as a simple collection of responses written by Leck himself, but these days quite a few of the rejoinders are culled from a university source whom Leck says he isn’t at liberty to divulge.
Like other chatbots, lots of people on the receiving end of its tweets have no idea they’re not conversing with a real human being. Some of them have arguments with the chatbot spanning dozens of tweets and many days, says Leck. That’s in part because AI_AGW is smart enough to run through a list of different canned responses when an interlocutor continues to throw the same arguments at it. Leck has even programmed it to debate such esoteric topics as religion – which is where the debates humans have with the bot often wind up.
The whole story is at Technology Review
===========================================================
Here’s Leck’s Twitter feed:
His bio on Twitter says:
“given sufficient evidence I’ll accept a claim as provisionally true.It’s a balance of probabilities,atheist,greenie & a bit of a nerd but mostly harmless:-)”
Seems like a nice enough fellow, just a bit misguided perhaps.
h/t to WUWT reader Don Penim
======================================================
UPDATE: Borepatch writes in with some news that is well worth sharing.
He writes:
I created the Clippy almost a year ago:
http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2009/11/what-happens-when-you-run-climate.html
There’s also a ClimateGate Blue Screen Of Death there, too.
I post fairly regularly on AGW issues, and am afraid that I’m one of those “deniers”. My probably two best posts on the subject are here:
http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2009/12/should-you-be-global-warming-skeptic.html (for a non-technical audience)
http://borepatch.blogspot.com/2010/02/canals-of-mars-climate-research-unit.html
If you could point attribution my way, this would be some pretty big bragging rights for me here in my little corner of the ‘net.
Thanks.
– Borepatch
Happy to do so! Sometimes humor spreads like wildfire without proper attribution because people are so focused on the funny, they forget the source. Your Clippy parody has been a source of humor for thousands, and we thank you. – Anthony
I should point out once again that skeptics are immune from Festinger’s cognitive dissonance, because skeptics are simply questioning the assertions of those promoting the CAGW conjecture. That makes eadler’s claim nothing but psychological projection: projecting his own faults onto others; a common delusion typical of the alarmist crowd.
Adler says, “Computer models are the only way to understand and project the future of climate. They are a great tool and the only way to study weather and climate.”
Funny. Climate models are extremely inaccurate. Out of 32 model runs cited here, exactly one was accurate, while 27 were wrong, and 4 are questionable.
Models are not evidence, they are only tools. And they are not very good tools, because they cannot predict the future climate. Gravy train scientists have resorted to models, because the real world gives them answers inconsistent with their lucrative scare story. Models are their crutch, enabling them to avoid the scientific method.
Believing in models when the real world gives contrary results is a fool’s game. No credible person accepts the output of a GCM over the real world, as “skeptical” science does. It is an unintentional admission of failure.
This is the big problem. Engineers design a bridge using computer models, and when it is built, some unforeseen behaviour manifests itself under certain conditions. The bridge cost £18 million, and after its encounter with reality, another £5 million to fix. The bridge’s engineers are one of the biggest and best and most prestigious engineering companies in the world.
So yes, the very best people use models. And, they are still only models. You will never know beforehand if your model is right, approximate, or useless. Their methods worked for a lot of other stuff they built — but it didn’t work for this one.
You don’t know until you test. How do you test a climate model prediction for the year 2050? You wait until 2050. That’s how you test it. Not 2010, nor hindcast back to 1990, you test a 2050 prediction in 2050. You build the bridge you designed. Not some similar bridge, not some other thing you did before that was a bit different. This one is the one you test. The 2050 prediction; that you test in 2050.
Now it is fine that climatologists use computer models. You can never claim though that, using computer models, the debate is “settled” and “irrefutable”. You just can’t.
No matter how good and expert ARUP’s model was for that bridge — remember they had the confidence to build it at the cost of millions in a high profile project in the nation’s capital — reality itself refuted it.
And we’re only talking a bridge here. How’s that supposed to compare to global climate??
You cannot claim that climate predictions are irrefutable. AGW is a prediction (or wait, a set of scenarios… which we treat as as if they will most likely happen… ie. a prediction.) That is easy to refute. All you say is, they don’t know that it is most likely to happen.
In a previous post, I wrote:
“Variations in Cosmic rays have been eliminated as a factor, since they have simply oscillated, and could not be causing an increase in global warming. In addition, if cosmic rays impacted cloudiness, this would show up more in the high latitudes than in the low latitudes. This is not observed.
Anthony Watts replied,
“REPLY: Why not put some effort into this instead of link-regurgitating the SS? That site has a strong bias, if you want to be effective, reference studies. – Anthony”
If you had clicked on the first link, you would see 17 references to published literature. In the case of the second link, it constitutes a back and forth discussion between Shaviv a scientist who published articles which promote a cosmic ray theory of global warming, and Terry Sloan who published an article which shows that cosmic rays do not appear to be a contributor to cloudiness, which varies with solar cycles.
Even if you choose to label the site biased, rather than accurate, which is a characterization I prefer, the level of scientific discussion there is on an elevated plane, with plenty of graphs and references to scientific literature on both sides of the issues that are being discussed.
I don’t see a need to reproduce what is done so well in my post with a copy and paste, when anyone can click on the link and read it.
If there is a glaring error, omission or a distortion on the links that I have supplied, I would like to know what they are. I am above all interested in finding the truth about whether it is likely that cosmic rays are a factor in creating clouds. I am willing to listen to anyone who has something substantive to say, but I don’t credit a dismissal of the site as “biased” as substantive scientific argument.
Sounds like this guy put the TWIT in Twitter.
Smokey says:
November 6, 2010 at 10:06 am
“I should point out once again that skeptics are immune from Festinger’s cognitive dissonance, because skeptics are simply questioning the assertions of those promoting the CAGW conjecture. That makes eadler’s claim nothing but psychological projection: projecting his own faults onto others; a common delusion typical of the alarmist crowd.”
Smokey,
Skeptics are not immune from the problem of Cognitive Dissonance. The low level of fallacious arguments they use show that they are suffering from this.
In this case, the argument that models are no good in general, is an example. You used a single instance of human error in the design of a bridge as a claim that somehow the problem was the use of a computer program. Then you claim that an instance of an error is somehow proof that no computer is trustworthy.
In fact, all of human society is based on a certain level of trust. It would fall apart if we believed that every statement by anyone we met was in error because someone made a mistake once, or that everyone is a liar and leave it at that.
“Adler says, “Computer models are the only way to understand and project the future of climate. They are a great tool and the only way to study weather and climate.”
Funny. Climate models are extremely inaccurate. Out of 32 model runs cited here, exactly one was accurate, while 27 were wrong, and 4 are questionable.”\
Here is an answer from the skeptical science web page on models:
A common argument heard is “scientists can’t even predict the weather next week – how can they predict the climate years from now”. This betrays a misunderstanding of the difference between weather, which is chaotic and unpredictable, and climate which is weather averaged out over time. While you can’t predict with certainty whether a coin will land heads or tails, you can predict the statistical results of a large number of coin tosses. In weather terms, you can’t predict the exact route a storm will take but the average temperature and precipitation over the whole region is the same regardless of the route.
“Models are not evidence, they are only tools. And they are not very good tools, because they cannot predict the future climate. Gravy train scientists have resorted to models, because the real world gives them answers inconsistent with their lucrative scare story. Models are their crutch, enabling them to avoid the scientific method.
Believing in models when the real world gives contrary results is a fool’s game. No credible person accepts the output of a GCM over the real world, as “skeptical” science does. It is an unintentional admission of failure.”
This argument is nonsense. There is no way to test the various influences on climate without using models. The real world cannot show anything about causes of climate change without models. To claim that the scientific method is avoided by the use of model is total nonsense to anyone who understands science.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_modelling
Model
“A scientific model seeks to represent empirical objects, phenomena, and physical processes in a logical and objective way. All models are in simulacra, that is, simplified reflections of reality, but despite their inherent falsity, they are nevertheless extremely useful [1]. Building and disputing models is fundamental to the scientific enterprise. Complete and true representation may be impossible (see non-representational theory), but scientific debate often concerns which is the better model for a given task, such as the most accurate climate model for seasonal forecasting[2].'”
I predict that cognitive dissonance will impel you to question the source I have used on scientific modelling. However you will not present any authoritative source to dispute it, just produce more invective.
From what you have written above, it seems to me you believe that any action to fight global warming is going to hurt the profitibability of your business. You will use any argument no matter how ridden with logical fallacies, and factual errors, which absolves you of the need to discuss specifics.
Stefan says:
November 6, 2010 at 10:51 am
” eadler says:
Computer models are the only way to understand and project the future of climate.
This is the big problem. Engineers design a bridge using computer models, and when it is built, some unforeseen behaviour manifests itself under certain conditions. The bridge cost £18 million, and after its encounter with reality, another £5 million to fix. The bridge’s engineers are one of the biggest and best and most prestigious engineering companies in the world.
So yes, the very best people use models. And, they are still only models. You will never know beforehand if your model is right, approximate, or useless. Their methods worked for a lot of other stuff they built — but it didn’t work for this one.”
This is not an appropriate analogy. The climate is not analogous to a new type of bridge. We are not designing a new climate. The elements of climate and the forces that dominate it have always been in existence and even the newest human modifications of the earth have been in existence for long enough to have been studied.
“You don’t know until you test. How do you test a climate model prediction for the year 2050? You wait until 2050. That’s how you test it. Not 2010, nor hindcast back to 1990, you test a 2050 prediction in 2050. You build the bridge you designed. Not some similar bridge, not some other thing you did before that was a bit different. This one is the one you test. The 2050 prediction; that you test in 2050.”
This is not correct. Hindcasts are a valid method of testing models and our understanding of how the forces in existence in the past have affected climate. What we will see in 2050 is not an essentially untested new type of bridge.
“Now it is fine that climatologists use computer models. You can never claim though that, using computer models, the debate is “settled” and “irrefutable”. You just can’t.
No matter how good and expert ARUP’s model was for that bridge — remember they had the confidence to build it at the cost of millions in a high profile project in the nation’s capital — reality itself refuted it.
And we’re only talking a bridge here. How’s that supposed to compare to global climate??
You cannot claim that climate predictions are irrefutable. AGW is a prediction (or wait, a set of scenarios… which we treat as as if they will most likely happen… ie. a prediction.) That is easy to refute. All you say is, they don’t know that it is most likely to happen.”
I don’t claim the predictions are irrefutable. I do claim that the models, since they have done a good job on hindcasts are a reasonable guide. We are not building a totally unprecedented model of bridge. The future climate is a modification of what we have already seen in the past.
eadler says:
November 6, 2010 at 9:29 am
“Why are computers, and correction of errors in temperature data a no-no? Computer models are the only way to understand and project the future of climate. They are a great tool and the only way to study weather and climate. ”
The current computer models can’t even get the average distribution of cloudiness by latitude right. They model something, but not the climate of planet Earth. They are not a great tool but an expensive way of fantasizing.
They might become useful (still not great, but useful) when they manage to bring down the raster size to sub km ranges and model the physics right instead of guessing (They call this guessing “parameterizing” but it’s still guessing; for instance, the aerosol forcing is a guess; tuned in such a way that the temperature curve matches the past observations. Which is still guessing and curve-fitting and nothing more.)
The current computer models are in no way better than a casino.
eadler says:
November 6, 2010 at 1:29 pm
” The elements of climate and the forces that dominate it have always been in existence and even the newest human modifications of the earth have been in existence for long enough to have been studied. ”
Are you the twitterbot? If you were human, you might have been paying attention – the climatologists still don’t know whether aerosols have a net positive or negative forcing. And that’s one of many holes in the billion-dollar travesty called climate science.
Tell your master that you need an upgrade of your database. Now off you go, bot.
DirkH says:
November 6, 2010 at 1:54 pm
“eadler says:
November 6, 2010 at 9:29 am
“Why are computers, and correction of errors in temperature data a no-no? Computer models are the only way to understand and project the future of climate. They are a great tool and the only way to study weather and climate. ”
The current computer models can’t even get the average distribution of cloudiness by latitude right. They model something, but not the climate of planet Earth. They are not a great tool but an expensive way of fantasizing.
They might become useful (still not great, but useful) when they manage to bring down the raster size to sub km ranges and model the physics right instead of guessing (They call this guessing “parameterizing” but it’s still guessing; for instance, the aerosol forcing is a guess; tuned in such a way that the temperature curve matches the past observations. Which is still guessing and curve-fitting and nothing more.)
The current computer models are in no way better than a casino.”
There is no way to model clouds exactly from first principles of physics. It is the primary source of uncertainty in climate models depending on the magnitude and sign of the effective feedback. This is known and recognized by climate scientists. Uncertainty is no excuse for totally ignoring the results of climate models. We have to look at the range of the estimates and act accordingly. If the feedback from clouds is positive, global warming will be worse than thought.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/rind_02/
“NASA has launched several satellites such as CloudSat and Calipso with the goal of better understanding cloud formulations. This year also represents the International Polar Year (IPY) organized through the International Council for Science and the World Meteorological Organization; it is aimed at improving our understanding of polar processes in both the Arctic and Antarctic. The hope is that efforts such as these will lead to gradual improvement in our understanding of climate sensitivity at low and high latitudes, and therefore a better ability to predict the likely consequences of climate warming. Until this is achieved, it will be hard to be specific about the societal impacts of future greenhouse gas emissions, an uncertainty that, it can be argued, should make us even more cautious about disturbing the system. ”
In addition to cloud feedbacks there are other phenomena that cause positive feedback that has not be included in the models, such as release of methane:
http://climateprogress.org/2010/03/04/science-nsf-tundra-permafrost-methane-east-siberian-arctic-shelf-venting/
Oh, that’s rich… are you seriously saying wattsupwiththat is impartial ? LOL
[Reply – all reasonable views are welcome here and debate is encouraged; references back up views and enhance debate that is what you are being encouraged to provide ~jove, mod]
We can’t get round this by simply characterising the bridge as “novel, new, untested” and meanwhile the climate as “always been in existence” with its “forces understood” as “evidenced by hindcasts”.
What do you think those engineers were doing? Inventing fantasies? The bridge is a suspension bridge, which failed due to positive feedback resonance. Is this new?? No! Everyone has heard of the Tacoma Narrows bridge disaster. So, watch out for feedbacks which you don’t understand! Since 1940 engineers KNOW to watch out for this stuff. And in London one of the best firms built a suspension bridge that resonated in a way they didn’t anticipate. EVEN WHEN THEY KNOW FROM LONG EXPERIENCE TO WATCH OUT FOR THIS. And what do you think they were using to model it? Magic? No, real physics!
But that’s the problem with modelling systems which may be at the effect of feedbacks. Look, I’m just a layman. It is obvious to me. What am I missing? Look, A hundred and eighty years since the invention of the suspension bridge, over forty five years since a spectacular suspension bridge disaster involving feedbacks, the best engineers in the world build a bridge that fails due to … feedbacks. And the particular vibration mode, in this case laterally, was also experienced in bridges back in the seventies. So even the failure mode is not unknown. Even if you claim the design was “new” and “novel”, why would any engineer BUILD it if they DIDN’T BELIEVE THAT THEY UNDERSTOOD IT?
Naturally, they thought they understood it, or they wouldn’t have built the thing. Engineers know about feedbacks on bridges: wind, people walking, vehicles. They know about this stuff. The problem here was, the source of the feedback was something very small and unnoticed. As a person walks, taking steps left, right, left, right, their centre of gravity of their body mass sways slightly from side to side. That was the source of the “forcing” that became a positive feedback. Remember, it is still a suspension bridge, with people waking on it. Is that so “novel” ? And even if you claim it is so novel as to be highly risky, why then would they have built it if they didn’t believe that they understood it???
How is this not a sobering lesson for climate models? You claim there is only “one climate”, but people are still arguing about the magnitude and extent of the MWP, they are still arguing about the role of clouds, they are still arguing about all this stuff because there just isn’t a lot of data. There isn’t “one climate” because the data is sparse and fragmented and covers different cycles operating at small and huge timescales. We have a tiny amount of data about a huge system.
To figure out what had gone wrong, ARUP had to run tests with different numbers of people walking over the bridge, doing things like walking and then turning back and so on. “We wrote the equivalent of three or four PhDs in a few weeks,” one Arup engineer said.
“there was no alternative: they had to get a lot of people to walk over it, all at once, and watch very carefully”
There’s no alternative to reality.
You’ve simply chosen to believe that you understand the modified future climate.
And incidentally, you’ve introduced two climates: the past non man influenced one, and the future man influenced one (which is an “entirely new design”), and you claim to understand them both. The fact is you don’t have multiple Earths to test with.
Medical Researchers, in the end they have to test on real people. Years ago a medical trial went wrong and the drug, which had tested fine in animals, caused an immediate, grotesque, painful, terminal reaction in people. The doctors, who must have felt terrible, said, “nobody could have known before we tested”. Animal experiments are supposed to be a reasonable guide, that’s why they do them.
You don’t have multiple Earths to test with. That’s why they do computer models. But they are not even animal tests. And when they do run tests on humans, they don’t know if a reaction is because of the drug or because of something else. It takes a lot of comparisons across many patients to figure that out. But we only have one Earth. The temperature went up a little, and everyone claims they know why. Really? That’s what we’re supposed to believe, when multiple examples from all other areas of life show from real experience that things are not so easy?
Anthony, as you correctly worked out my list of arguments and answers have been sourced from skeptical science.
Which of these arguments are in dispute and do you have the peer reviewed research which refusing these answers ?
[Reply – if you can demonstrate you are genuinely interested in why so many of us are skeptical and you want to get a more balanced view of the science, I am sure some of the commenters would be only too happy to point to some of the references you are asking for and discuss them. Be aware there is no quick answer to your question due to the volume of material that counters the arguments. If you are simply seeking to waste time here and score points, you will be ignored. Try asking one question for starters – don’t just refer to the whole list ~ jove, mod]
Ok, Jove please tell me which if any of the arguments from skeptical science are invalid and do you have the peer reviewed research to back that up ?
Jove: I would be extremely interested if some or any of these arguments could be shown to be false. I mean you’ll need to do a little better than “Leck is also an atheist..” but seriously if the current best scientific understanding is counter to any of these arguments then I would disable those arguments and if enough were shown to be false I would disable the bot and publicly apologize. There’s a challenge for you or anyone who is up to it.
PS. Anomalies a rule does not make. So if ten peer-reviewed papers say one thing and one says the opposite, sorry I’m going with the ten unless you can give good cause.
[Reply – for a start define ‘shown to be false’; define what you will accept as ‘current best scientific understanding’ ~ jove, mod]
You seem to be saying that, because we don’t understand well the feedbacks, the possible outcomes are much more dramatic, and therefore we should take the models more seriously!
By that reasoning, there is an incentive to REMOVE knowledge from models, and make the models more vague, because then they can provide an even wider range of possible outcomes, more dramatic outcomes, an ice age by Tuesday or boiling by Wednesday, and thus, faced with such cataclysms, we’ll need to really take the models even more seriously. (And actually this would be a safeguard against over confidence in assuming that we know what we know. The models should reach into the extremes and not be constrained by what modellers think is “reasonable”).
If we think the climate is very sensitive, then the only course of action is adaptation and building backup systems into existing society. There is no point trying to limit CO2 emissions because, in a sensitive climate, something else could trigger a cataclysm anyway.
(And there is no point arguing that we have to act on CO2 because we “know” about CO2, for in a sensitive climate, the unknown unknowns become of much greater importance. Do you see what I mean? If the system is sensitive, then it is very vulnerable to random unknown effects. And as these are everywhere, the system will change in response to them. A sensitive climate means the only recourse is adaptation. We need working cheap backups for society and infrastructure.)
Nigel Leck says:
November 7, 2010 at 3:58 am
“Jove: I would be extremely interested if some or any of these arguments could be shown to be false. […]”
Just curious – are you the botmeister or are you one of his creations? You enarly sound like a human.
That’s just your own judgement where you treat preferentially the group rather than the individual. I’ve often wondered why some people tend to do this, whilst others tend to prefer individuals. Maybe it is some mythical belief about “lone hero” or “the goodness of people coming together”. These are just opposites. There are no guarantees, nor likelyhoods, of one being more right than the other. People just have a bias. It may be die to life experience. If your experience of groups is good, you might learn to trust groups. If your experience of them is that, the whole nation was full of bright people who were all nonetheless defenders of racism, like Apartheid, then perhaps you grow up believing not to trust groups inherently. I’m just saying, you’ve made a personal and biased assumption. Just be aware you’ve made it.
eadler says:
“There is no way to model clouds exactly from first principles of physics. ”
Oh, thanks.
One AGW-bot out, two to go.
Nigel Leck says:
November 7, 2010 at 3:58 am
The point of the debate about climate is that we have evidence for and evidence against.
The skeptic argument is that the ‘consensus view’ (IPCC) overplays the certainty of the science that is ‘for’. Also consider that you are asking for skeptics to prove that the warming arguements are false when equally they cannot be ‘proven’ as true.
I fervently believed the warmist view and trusted the science untill I started to look at the science myself. Once I looked at the (warming) arguement and (skeptic) counter argument myself, I found I could no longer believe in the certainty of warming or the projected magnitude. That makes me a skeptic. I am still open to reading science that supports both ‘sides’ of the argument.
The ‘problem’ I have with your bot is that it pushes one viewpoint; if climate change is so serious people need to look at the arguements and make up their own minds.
eadler says:
November 6, 2010 at 8:26 am
“Your personal opinion is not based on fact. Climate models can detect the CO2 warming signal very clearly. Look at the three graphs on this web page.”
*MY* personal opinion is not based on fact but the hardwired ASSUMPTIONS in the current creed of models are? Bot, you are becoming uppity now.
DirkH says:
November 7, 2010 at 7:11 am
“eadler says:
November 6, 2010 at 8:26 am
“Your personal opinion is not based on fact. Climate models can detect the CO2 warming signal very clearly. Look at the three graphs on this web page.”
*MY* personal opinion is not based on fact but the hardwired ASSUMPTIONS in the current creed of models are? Bot, you are becoming uppity now.”
Pondering this exchange some more. Let’s parse it:
“Your personal opinion is not based on fact.”
“Climate models can detect the CO2 warming signal very clearly.”
“Look at the three graphs on this web page.”
Sounds exactly like a machine talking. A human would have said “You’re wrong” or “You’re one of Delingpole’s acolytes”. But this one says “Your personal opinion is not based on fact.” Machine? Check.
The next statement.
“Climate models can detect the CO2 warming signal very clearly.”
Now – a human wouldn’t be gullible enough to confuse the output of a computer program – a climate model – with a fact. After all, human is shorthand for homo sapiens, so we can assume him to be sapient. This one confuses the output of a computer program with facts. Machine? You betcha.
“Look at the three graphs on this web page.”
Well, that’s exactly the Leckbot approach; give a short blurb and a link to a “resource”.
I’d say: Busted.
And that shall be my last word in this mock discussion.
I’d suggest that the “epiphany” came first. AGW is just a story that fits and appeals to a certain group of people. The “management”, if you will, is well aware of this, and this is why politicians “care” about AGW.
It is no accident that the “moderns” find themselves pitted against the “cultural creatives”. The cultural creatives tend to characterise the height of modernity as “a giant oil slick”, whilst the moderns tend to wonder why the cultural creatives keep banging on about saving the world, when they don’t seem to take much care over hard science, rigour, truth, and scepticism. How can you save the world if you’re not interested in truly understanding it? How did “scepticism” become a negative label? Surely scepticism is good, a modern would think.
So, AGW appeals to cultural creatives, and they don’t need it to be true, and even if it isn’t that doesn’t negate their values, the values of cultural creatives. What cultural creatives want is more of their own values to spread around the world — they believe this will make for a better world. Meanwhile the moderns feel that somehow this is undermining modern values, the pursuit of truth, of science, of understanding.
Cultural creatives are in a difficult position. They are the first to wake up in the morning worried about the planet, but they don’t have the knowledge to fix it. We don’t understand the climate, the ecosystems, the nature of it all. But for the sake of spreading the values of the cultural creatives, they will keep making out that we’re faced with global issues that everybody has to respond to, and not in a “bioengineering” sort of way (that would be too modern), but in a cultural creative values way — become more spiritual, seek community, let go of consumerism, etc.
Many people who are exiting the modern stage, and slowly becoming cultural creatives, don’t realise themselves that they are shifting. But they do suddenly find AGW an incredibly fascinating and “real” issue.
Individuals can’t spot the pattern themselves because they are embedded inside the pattern. The culture is just absorbing them into it. They as people personally change, their values change. It is one world in balance, one united spiritual natural whole, they feel. So the AGW story sells very well.
The moderns are trying to figure out whether AGW is real or not objectively. But that’s irrelevant. What most matters to cultural creatives is that the cultural creative values should spread. The world is a whole!! We must act together!! And the people who don’t think that way, the moderns, they are just selfish and old and have their money and egos invested in dirty ways of life.
So, the epiphany literally comes first. People become cultural creatives. Then they become ardent AGW campaigners.
The only dissonance is that the moderns still believe this is a debate about science and truth. But it is actually a movement towards different values.
Thanks for that Stefan. That was fascinating.
Verity Jones: “The ‘problem’ I have with your bot is that it pushes one viewpoint” Should it give both sides to the earth is flat debate ?
The bot tries to avoid areas of “actual” debate but “no warming since 1998” is factually wrong same with “sun is causing the warming” list of the main arguments are here http://www.skepticalscience.com/argument.php
Stefan: Yes, large institutions are more conservative than single individuals. They tend to have a moderating effect on extreme views, so it works both ways. “Nothing to worry about” and “OMG we’re all going to die” are extreme outliers in the bell curve of possible outcomes.