By Larry Kummer. From the Fabius Maximus website.
Summary: Slowly scientists’ investigations produce insights about the psychological and social dynamics that create our dysfunctional politics. Here is a new study about one of drivers of political polarization, that which keeps us divided (despite our common interests), ignorant (despite the internet), and easily ruled. The specific subject is one of the central political issues of our time, and among the most contentious: climate change.
The essential accessory for the modern politically-active fashionista…
Here is a provocative new study (not peer-reviewed) by blue-chip authors. It’s well worth reading, and reveals much about the polarization that is a defining characteristic of modern politics.
“How People Update Beliefs about Climate Change: Good News and Bad News“
By Cass R. Sunstein, Sebastian Bobadilla-Suarez, Stephanie C. Lazzaro, Tali Sharot.
Excerpt from the preliminary draft posted at the Social Science Research Network.
“People are exposed to a great deal of variable information with respect to climate change. {The footnote cites an example: “Developing a Social Cost of Carbon” (ungated copy) — whose complex and assumption-laden calculations are certainly “variable information”.} …We aim here to investigate two simple questions:
- How do people update their beliefs when they receive new information about likely warming?
- How do people’s prior attitudes affect their response to such information?
“…We find that people who are doubtful that man‐made climate change is occurring, and unenthusiastic about an international agreement, show a form of asymmetrical updating: They change their beliefs far more in response to unexpected good news, suggesting that average temperature rises likely to be (even) smaller than previously thought, than in response to unexpected badness, suggesting that average temperature rises likely to be larger than previously thought. In fact, we do not find a statistically significant change in their views in response to bad news at all.
“By contrast, people who strongly believe that man-‐made climate change is occurring, and who strongly favor an international agreement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, show the opposite asymmetry: They change their beliefs far more in response to unexpected bad news, suggesting that average temperature rises likely to be even greater than previously thought, than in response to unexpected good news, suggesting that average temperature rises likely to be smaller than previously thought. People with moderate beliefs about climate change show no asymmetry.
“…The findings have implications for how people will update their beliefs about climate change in particular, and also for beliefs about science, politics, and law more generally. If people receive new information about climate change (as is inevitable), and if it is highly variable (as is predictable), we should expect to see greater polarization. Those most concerned about climate change will be more likely to revise their estimates upwards upon receiving bad news than those who are least concerned. Those who are least concerned about climate change will be more likely to revise their estimates downwards upon receiving good news than those who are most concerned.
“This asymmetry undoubtedly contributes to polarization with respect to climate change, as both alarming and less alarming news comes to people’s attention.”
——————————————-
The New York Times explains why we don’t understand this
Emanuel Derman.
Two of the study’s four authors ran an op-ed in the NYT with this provocative title: “Why Facts Don’t Unify Us” (titles are often written by the NYT staff, not the authors). Here’s an insight about the title by Emanuael Derman (Ph.D. in theoretical physics and a prof of industrial engineering at Columbia; Wikipedia bio)…
“{The} new “information” about climate change is prediction, not fact.”
As Professor Derman said, what the NYT headline calls new “facts” in the study are actually expert opinions (or model outputs) — accurately described by the authors as “news” or “information”. These are expressions of theory, not “facts” in the usual sense of the word.
The NYT staff is not alone in this confusion of fact with theory; it has become quite common in the peer-reviewed literature — with models’ output often treated as empirical evidence. It’s a category error that can lead even the best research to absurd conclusions.
Essential reading to understand use of quantitative models
For more about our misuse of quantitative models see Emanuel Derman’s Models Behaving Badly: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life
. He’s leading the counter-revolution, fighting the misuse of these powerful tools. After years of model output being regarded as reality, Derman points out that they are metaphors or abstractions; expressions of theory not observations of reality.
Derman explains what models are, debunks the exaggerations claimed for them, and what they can and cannot do. He contrasts models in the physical and social sciences; many of his insights apply to both — and especially so for public policy.
“Models try to squeeze the blooming, buzzing, confusion into a miniature Joseph Cornell box, and then, if it more or less fits, assume that the box is the world itself. In a nutshell, theories tell you what something is; models tell you merely what something is like. “
For More Information
Please like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. For more information see The keys to understanding climate change, My posts about climate change, and especially these…
- Is our certain fate a coal-burning climate apocalypse? No!
- Manufacturing climate nightmares: misusing science to create horrific predictions.
- Despair about the fate of Earth: a win for the doomsters.
- Nassim Nicholas Taleb looks at the risks threatening humanity.
- Ignoring science to convince the public that we’re doomed by climate change.
Another perspective on “theory”
The last of the West’s scientist-artists reminds us that there are different routes to knowledge — different epistemologies — other than the reductionism of our scientific method.
“The highest is to understand that all fact is really theory. The blue of the sky reveals to us the basic law of color. Search nothing beyond the phenomena. They themselves are the theory.”
— By Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in his “Theory of Colours![clip_image004[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2016/09/clip_image0041.gif "clip_image004[1]"){kind=small}
” (1810), his rebuttal to Newton’s theory of color.
“We find that people who are doubtful that man‐made climate change is occurring, and unenthusiastic about an international agreement, show a form of asymmetrical updating: They change their beliefs far more in response to unexpected good news, suggesting that average temperature rises likely to be (even) smaller than previously thought, than in response to unexpected badness, suggesting that average temperature rises likely to be larger than previously thought. In fact, we do not find a statistically significant change in their views in response to bad news at all.”
Well if the lukewarmers are correct, there simply were no such bad news (provided all “questionable science” was filtered).. I dont see the asymetrical updating.. it’s just being skeptic about questionable results
Most intelligent, rational, logical people do NOT form their opinions based upon “suggestions”. They form them based on facts, verifiable data, actual measurements, evidence. If you have examined the data and found it unconvincing when it comes to gloom and doom scenarios, then why would more “suggestions” that it really is gloomier and doomier change your mind at all? IT SHOULD NOT. Only EVIDENCE that “proves” a contrary can and will change the mind that is logical, rational and well educated. SO the result that they “did not find a statistically significant change in views in response to “bad news” or “suggestions of badness” is NOT surprising to anyone rational or logical.
The question that needs to be asked-How are the study authors defining “good news” and “bad news”. Did they ask ALL participants to define how THEY (individually) defined “good news” and “bad news” to be sure that all of them define those terms the exact same way? Because I don’t define “news” or “suggestions” as “facts” or “evidence” at all.
In fact, we do not find a statistically significant change in their views in response to bad news at all.
What utter rubbish. Unless they dug into WHY any given respondent has a given response, they have shown precisely nothing of value. Some people take bad news at face value, some people have existing expertise which allows them to evaluate the importance of bad news on the fly, some people respond by researching the issue themselves, some people respond by ignoring it because they have issues of more immediate importance that they have to deal with, some people are depressed, some people are high, some people are dumber than a bag of rocks and some people are geniuses, some people just drift along with the crowd and some people… I have more but that should be sufficient to make my point.
Painting with such a broad brush is for barns, not science.
Cialdini (ht Scott Adams) says it best. “Good personal consistency is highly valued in our culture. And well it should be. . . Without it our lives would be difficult, erratic, and disjointed.” “The drive to be (and look) consistent constitutes a highly potent weapon of social influence, often causing us to act in ways that are clearly contrary to our own best interests.” (from Influence: The psychology of persuasion).
There are two things you can try on yourself to see if you are suffering from confirmation bias. First, do you have a gut feeling that your belief may not be valid? Second, if you try to step back and ask yourself Knowing what I know now, would I have believed then what I believe now? In both cases, I remain a skeptic. It is, in my opinion, why it is much easier to find former true believers than former skeptics. It is the question we should be asking our true believer friends. Put the seed into their minds and let it grow.
The authors of the study make the assumption on behalf of participants regarding the definition of bad & good news, throwing their own biases into their work.
Yes, and it’s not the first time for some of them.
In fact we’ve come to expect nothing more from them. At least those of us who have read more than ten minutes of their “research”. 🙂
What we learn from this study: People on the “Other Side” are (mostly) no liars. But deceived by their own expectations. Self-deception is a part of the human nature. Possibly this may gvie some understanding why someone has a certain position, even if it is obviously wrong. And it may help us to find way how to show others a bit of our perspective.
Calling others liars and shouting at them is certainly not the way. (Produces outpouring of certain hormones who prepare us for fight or flight.)
When I assess the claims of those who demand that I accept the position that human activity is inducing the climate to change in a way that harms the biosphere, I is very clear that the weight of their research, their complaints and their demands for action are not honest. They are liars. Their claims are not honest. Neither are their demands. And neither is their teleology.
How can I make this assertion in good conscience? For one, the net effect of their claims and demands consistently converge on post-modernist reshaping of humanity through increasing government power and reducing human prosperity and liberty. Even when they tell the truth about an aspect of climate science, it is only in order to advance this broader lie: that humanity will be better when we all live a “sustainable” organic life in a socialist society. This is the same Utopian reasoning that allowed the Khmer Rouge to force city-dwellers into the countryside to be “purified” of bourgeois thinking by living the peasant lifestyle. We even have the same spirit of murder, for more than once I have read on this very blog news that someone wanted to have armed government agents arrest me (which implies the will to use deadly force) in order to punish me for my opinion.
As a point of fact, even the etymology of the term “climate change” is fraudulent propaganda. At first it was “global warming”, but when that paused for too many years, it was re-imagined into a term that was more salable. Only a fool would deny that the climate was always changing. Otherwise we would not have people making money by selling recently-thawed mammoth tusk ivory from Siberia and we would not have quaint tourist attractions in the American southwest left by tribes of cliff dwellers. Nor would we have had crop farming in Greenland. Nor would I be farming soil that was made by a receding glacier.
Climate Change is but a cause to impose socialism and thereby purify humanity. That is the truth about “climate change”.
Let’s not get dragged into the strawman question of whether climate change exists. No one says it doesn’t. The debate is about the alarmist agenda, which says: (1) Climate change will or may be catastrophic; (2) Human activity is mostly to blame; (3) We can solve the problem by such means as reducing our energy use; and most especially (4) There are no easier, cheaper, and faster means we can use to solve the problem (for instance, https://reason.com/archives/1997/11/01/climate-controls ).
Sorry, there is so much wrong with this that it’s not even wrong. Stopped reading after the firs sentence. Psychology and sociology are NOT sciences. However, if you replace
dysfunctional politics with
dysfunctional politics, you might have a place to start.
Apply Ancient wisdom: Always cross examine. Proverbs 18:17
Scientific method:
Richard Feynmann
CS Lewis
Regarding the pro-AGW crowd “They change their beliefs far more in response to unexpected bad news”.
What happens if the “bad news” is mini-ice age or at least a decade of statistically significant falling temperatures? CO2 use would go up as more fossil fuels are used to heat yet the temperatures fall.
I for one would be very interested in just how long it would take with rising CO2 and falling temperatures for them to change their minds. We had almost 2 decades of flat temperatures with rising CO2 which did change some scientists and regular folks minds but the vast majority of the pro-AGW crowd didn’t change their position.
In fact their happiness at a massive el-nino breaking that flat line trend was completely at odds with the fact that el-nino is not influenced by CO2. Never underestimate the true believers ability to rationalize away reality.
“I for one would be very interested in just how long it would take with rising CO2 and falling temperatures for them to change their minds. We had almost 2 decades of flat temperatures with rising CO2 which did change some scientists and regular folks minds but the vast majority of the pro-AGW crowd didn’t change their position.”
We are still in a flatline temperature profile, which means it could go up or down from here, so those thinking it could/should go up, are still in the ballgame. If we go into a downtrend from here, then I believe a lot of people will have to rethink their position.
I for one wonder just how long it would take with rising carbon dioxide and rising temperatures for the sceptics to change their minds. Maybe three consecutive record-breaking (during the instrumental era) hot years would do it? Maybe not. Never underestimate the true believer’s ability to rationalise away reality.
seaice1 wrote “I for one wonder just how long it would take with rising carbon dioxide and rising temperatures for the sceptics to change their minds.”
The “and” part is important. Over the past 20 years CO2 has definitely risen but temperatures are not well correlated. Obviously there’s more to the story.
Then, once you change my mind that it’s happening, comes the hard part: What, if anything, to do about it. But that’s like persuading an atheist that God exists. That’s hard enough but it is still the easy part. Then comes: What to do about it.
I know climate changes; it has been changing all my long life. Whether I should give up life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness in a probably futile attempt to stop what cannot be stopped remains not much of a question.
“ignorant (despite the internet)” One could easily concluded, ignorant (because of the internet)!
Facts are difficult things. I really cannot give you any of mine; they become mere words in the attempt. You’ll have to get your own.
Seems that even the climate screechers at NYT agree that d@n1@r$ and wamists are equally irrational in their mental functioning, reaction asymmetrically in a divergent (chaotic) manner to information. Only the skeptic / lukewarmers process information rationally – as Keynes said, changing their opinions as facts change, without anchoring.
I haven’t interviewed all 1billion of us, but I know that I have a climate model on my laptop, regularly assessing both HadCRUT4 and RSS in a rigorous statistical manner.
“The last of the West’s scientist-artists reminds us that there are different routes to knowledge — different epistemologies — other than the reductionism of our scientific method …”.
=======================
Yeah, anyone who has mucked around with paints knows that if you run out of white pigment you won’t get it by mixing red, blue and yellow together and anyone who has done secondary school physics knows that white light is made up of different wave lengths split by a prism — one a subtractive process of reflected white light the other additive, they are not two ways of understanding the same phenomenon.
Nonetheless, the interaction of light of different wavelengths with matter is one way to explain both observations. If you want to know about the world the scientific method is the best we have by far. If you want to argue about morals, ethics, aesthetics, God and other things outside the physical world then science may not be your go-to answer. The is-ought dichotomy. Science answers the is part, it cannot on its own answer the ought part.
So in context, is the world warming? Is carbon dioxide responsible? Will it cost more to stop emissions than to respond to the changes? These are questions to which we may turn to science for the answers.
Should we tax carbon? How much should we care about future generations? Should past emitters be held to account for their emissions? How much should we apply the precautionary principle? Should we follow the economically optimum route? These are questions outside of science.
“seaice1 September 8, 2016 at 3:52 pm
Should we tax carbon?”
It is carbon dioxide NOT carbon. FAIL!
‘seaice1’ says:
If you want to know about the world the scientific method is the best we have by far.
And:
How much should we apply the precautionary principle?
Textbook cases of psychological ‘projection’: imputing the faults of the alarmist crowd onto scientific skeptics.
The Scientific Method is the best method we have to arrive at scientific understanding. But the alarmist crowd has yet to use the Scientific Method. Instead, they constantly use logical fallacies like the Precautionary Principle: “But what if…? And so on.
To answer questions seaice1 asked:
Should we tax carbon?
Absolutely not! Carbon (dioxide) is as beneficial to life on earth as H2O. TPTB would tax water if they could; don’t give them any ideas.
Adding one ten-thousandth more CO2, over more than a century, has not done anything measurable to global temperatures. There is no indication that the rise in CO2, along with the concomitant rise in global T, is anything other than a coincidental occurrence.
Next:
How much should we care about future generations?
Climate alarmists could not care less about future generations or even about the current generation. Skeptics care far more about humanity than the alarmist crowd ever did, so that’s just more alarmist ‘projection’.
The rise in harmless, beneficial CO2 is the cause of a measurable rise in agricultural productivity, which in turn keeps a lid on rising food prices. That combats malnutrition and starvation — human suffering that the alarmist crowd simply doesn’t care about. They only pretend to care, because their ‘holier-than-thou preaching takes the place of what they lack: verifiable evidence showing that CO2=CAGW.
And:
Should past emitters be held to account for their emissions?
Yeah, and while we’re at it, let’s make the current generation pay reparations for slavery. That would make about as much sense as taxing “carbon”.
How about this instead: the climate alarmist crowd must pay reparations for all the people malnourished and starved due to their misguided, self-serving demonization of “carbon”. That’s only fair, since demonizing CO2 is 100% the fault of the alarmist crowd. Please include your name and billing address to get the reparations started…
And:
…is the world warming?
Yes! For the umpteenth time: the planet is recovering from the Little Ice Age; one of the coldest episodes of the entire Holocene. But there is no measurable evidence that CO2 is the primary cause of global warming. If you want to be honest about it, there is no empirical evidence whatever proving that CO2 causes any global warming (but as I’ve stated repeatedly, I personally think that CO2 has a small effect, but it is too small to measure).
Next:
Will it cost more to stop emissions than to respond to the changes?
Whoa there, Nelly. First off, the onus is on you to produce reliable, verifiable, data-based evidence showing that any gloobal temperature changes are caused by ’emissions’. You’ve failed at that. You’re not even close. Wake the skeptic intelligentsia here if/when you’ve produced verifiable, testable evidence that supports your eco-belief.
As usual, conflating religion and science is just more projection — something the alarmist crowd constantly does. Their religious belief in the ‘carbon’ scare trumps science, and the Scientific Method, and Occam’s Razor — and basic common sense.
Questions answered. Skeptics have no problem answering questions, or admitting it when we don’t have the answers. The alarmist crowd could learn a lesson there; a big lesson.
People tend to hear news that backs their case and not notice news that throws doubt on it. That is simply why it is so polarised. This is further reinforced by the attitude that the science is beyond question. To believers this means what it says. To those who do not believe, this is interpreted as the science is not up to even the lowest level of questioning so any questioning at all must be ruthlessly suppressed.
The worst aspect is when they changed the name from global warming to climate change. To those who believed this was no matter. To others who did not, this failed to explain how a mechanism that is supposedly triggered by the CO2 blanket retaining heat and increasing the temperature does not still have to have clear cut warming significantly above the random fluctuations to trigger positive feedback which does not happen on a day to day basis. This does not occur in every other feedback system without exception so why is climate so different and the one exception?
The inferred ‘asymmetry’ is an illusion created by looking t the trees instead of the forest. Both groups are influenced by the same phenomenon, which may be described as ‘mental inertia.’ Both groups find it easier to accept that which reinforces their existing mental models than to accept that which contradicts them.
The only way around this conundrum of mental laziness is strict adherence to the scientific method. Forecasts/predictions must be held accountable to raw, real-world data. When there is a discrepancy between the data and the expectation, the data must always win. Any mental model that leads consistently to failed predictions of the phenomena of the measurable world may be properly called ‘religion.’
The overwhelming temptation of some self-described scientists to tweak the data to comfortably reinforce their preconceptions is not only intellectually dishonest, it delays the advancement of the science as visiting a quack doctor would delay the proper treatment of a serious disease.
As Professor Derman said, what the NYT headline calls new “facts” in the study are actually expert opinions (or model outputs) — accurately described by the authors as “news” or “information”. These are expressions of theory, not “facts” in the usual sense of the word.
___________________________________
Were dealing with green belivers and pseudo climate experts, not with people of the real world. You’re telling me!
___________________________________
And the ‘study autors’:
How People Update Beliefs about Climate Change: Good News and Bad News
Cass R. Sunstein
Harvard Law School
Sebastian Bobadilla-Suarez
Affective Brain Lab, Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London
Stephanie C. Lazzaro
University College London – Institute of
Cognitive Neuroscience
___________________________________
Tali Sharot
University College London – Affective Brain Lab, Department of Experimental Psychology
– Law School, Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental Psychologie –
… same as it ever was …
@Toby Smit, perhaps I can explain. I’m a lecturer in Computer Science. I spent about an hour today telling students to tackle a problem by quickly making the simplest program that could possibly work SO THAT THEY CAN TEST THAT THEY HAVE UNDERSTOOD IT, and that they shouldn’t bother trying to make a fast program until they know what the right answers are for some simple cases, SO THAT THEY CAN FIND MISTAKES. In the same way, I understand “you shouldn’t do a calculation until you know what the answer should be” to be saying “BECAUSE WE MAKE MISTAKES, you should know how to check the result of a calculation before you carry it out SO THAT YOU CAN CHECK IT.”
For example, we know that the Earth’s climate has varied a lot in the past, but has undergone runaway heating to Venusian levels. So any model that predicts a stable climate, or runaway heating, MUST be wrong.
Not entirely true. The model must predict runaway heating when subject to the condition on Venus.
Run away heating on Venus? Massive FAIL!
“The highest is to understand that all fact is really theory. The blue of the sky reveals to us the basic law of color. Search nothing beyond the phenomena. They themselves are the theory.”
And that is why we need more than ever, with science under attack from many vested interests, to go back and review the philosophy and understand what exactly constitutes a fact, and how one fact is related to another.
And then realise that there are no facts, just model outputs. And the only way to qualify them, is that some outputs accord with experience, and some do not.
And that is the sole justification for Natural Philosophy,or as we now term it, Science.
Science has only itself to blame. IN the rush to claim that it has uncovered ‘truth’ rather than ‘models that work’ and in its tendency to throw phrases like ‘scientific fact’ around, when there has never been such a thing, it has laid itself open to a very successful series of attacks, by those who would seek to peddle theories that either dont work, or are orthogonal to external experience (e.g. god theories. Belief in a God changes precisely nothing outside of the individuals psyche) on an equal basis with those that do.
The subjectively experienced phenomenal world is the output of a model of underlying experience. It generates what we call facts, but they are always relative to the modelling we do of the world to render it comprehensible.
That modelling, subconsciously done, is what makes the so called physical world, be the way it appears.
And that modelling is susceptible to modification, at the conscious and the subconcious level. And psychological techniques of brainwashing, constant exposure to propaganda, peer group pressure and the like can actually make the sky appear purple.
None of this is radical or new. 2000 years of belief in a particular sort of sky fairy has gone unchallenged by and large. Because its truth was in-decidable, but its utility to society was indisputable.
My plea is this: stop thinking in terms of truth or lies, and look solely at utility.
Is climate change theory useful at predicting future climate?
The answer is, no. Its failed dismally. Ergo it is a refuted hypothesis as it stands. It is not true science.
Is belief in Climate Change beneficial to society’s survival?
Again, the answer is no.
Belief in false man made climate change is being used by a narrow elite to strip wealth from people and accumulate it in corporations and governments they control. Again, this is in historical context, not remarkable. The Church and the Monarchy did similar. But Christian monarchies have survived. The people that comprised them did not die from mismanagement, too much.
And that is why Climate Change Belief is so dangerous. Its not that it erodes to power of the plebeian – that has always been under threat, it’s that it threatens the very structures and systems that support the narrow elite that benefits from it.
That is, my accusation is not that we have an elite, nor yet that that elite is as usual selling snake oil to the great unwashed. T’was ever thus. No my accusation is that the elite is incompetent, so incompetent than not only are they wrecking a century of technological infrastructure in which the plebeians’ lives depend, but they have utterly failed to grasp the fact that their lives, too, depend upon it.
This suggests a pragmatic line of attack. WE merely need show that belief in climate change, and the concomitant insistence on useless renewable energy, is in fact a threat to the ruling elites.
Oh. The post. Well the answer to that is of course people who have fundamentally different beliefs, will respond to information in fundamentally different ways.
“If you were, say,. to experience a blinding light on the road to Tulsa, and hear a voice declaring that you should rise up and forsake your sinful life, what would you do”
“I’d take half a dozen aspirin and go see a quack”..
Ho hum.
Beliefs shape the very perception of the world. Without a belief in causality, there can be no science. Causality seems to make sense of our experience. It works. Belief in Climate Change also makes sense of our experience. However it doesn’t work. It is a False God in the sense that it will lure those who believe in it to destruction, and thereby eliminate itself from human consciousness.
Its such a pity that the rest of us will get dragged along too.
If I set out to discover from comments on this blog what sort of person is a climate skeptic, I’d have to conclude it was someone with right wing conservative views, whose objection to AGW is primarily political – i.e. they reject it not primarily on scientific grounds, but because they suppose it to be a belief held by people of a ‘left’ or ‘progressive’ political inclination only…
I am a skeptic (And I could tell my teacher what a solar CME was when I was 8) not because of politics, right wing nor belief (In AGW). You want to prove AGW via the ~3% human CO2 contribution to ~400ppm/v CO2 *IS* changing climate (The 30yr avg of weather that the IPCC says so) then please present your evidence. Otherwise go away!
Please explain the 3% contribution to 400ppm carbon dioxide. It appears that you are rejecting the idea that the increase in carbon dioxide is due to the massive quantities of same that have been put into the atmosphere by humans burning fossil fuels.
Massive? One tenth of one percent is massive ? It took over 150 years to do that. And that’s if CAGW is right about the carbon cycle being in equilibrium before anthropogenic burning. I might think otherwise.
“seaice1 September 8, 2016 at 4:02 pm
Please explain the 3% contribution to 400ppm carbon dioxide.”
Google IPCC, EPA etc and human contribution to CO2. I don’t need to explain, it is fact.
Nice projection Griff…
stevekeohane is right: Griff is projecting his own faults regarding the ‘climate’ scare onto skeptics.
And Griff’s side—not those skeptical of it—has turned a science question into a question of politics.
Skeptics don’t reject climate alarmism, as Griff claims, “because they suppose it to be a belief held by people of a ‘left’ or ‘progressive’ political inclination…”
No, skeptics reject climate alarmism for a solid scientific reason: because every wild-eyed, scary prediction ever made by Griff’s alarmist pals has failed to come true. No exceptions—the alarming predictions were wrong. All of them.
That’s a very good reason to reject the “dangerous AGW” scare, no? When every scary prediction ever made turns out to be contradicted by observations, then the basic premise must be wrong.
What’s really strange is that presumably rational folks like Griff always disregard the abject failure to predict the results of ‘DAGW’.
What’s up with that, Griff?
I keep seeing the word ‘left’ used to label people on a certain side of the climate debate though…
The evidence on temperature, sea ice, glaciers clearly shows that there is an observable physical effect operating in the world.
So, Griff, no answer as usual.
That is merely what you need to believe, Griff, in order to avoid an acute case of cognitive dissonance.
Well naturally I think the skeptic side is the one with the dissonance…!
arctic sea ice at second lowest in the record at present and apparently that’s not happening/an issue
Griff says “arctic sea ice at second lowest in the record at present and apparently that’s not happening/an issue”
I look out the window and I see no arctic sea ice so not much of an issue. Back in my Navy days I once flew on an ice edge recon flight right up between Alaska and Siberia. I saw rather a lot of desolation and the polar bears are welcome to it.
If you HONESTLY/ scientifically wanted to know what sort of person a climate skeptic is, you’d have to DEFINE exactly what you mean by that term, seek out people who agree with and identify THEMSELVES with your definition, and then collect evidence to support the idea that ALL climate skeptics are exactly the same.
Instead, you observed some comments, made unscientific assumptions, and came to an erroneous conclusion that you pretend you’d “have” to come to.
I could cite the number of people who have called me a lefty/leftist/commie or similar without any idea of my voting preference
Griff writes: “If I set out to discover from comments on this blog what sort of person is a climate skeptic…”
You put the cart before the horse. If you came to this blog and read the comments you ought to conclude that people here are generally opposed (not skeptical) to left wing politics, but how exactly did that become “climate skeptic”? What does that mean?
I am not a climate skeptic. Climate exists! I’m sure of it.
The phrase “climate skeptic” is a product of the gentle left (same spectrum as “climate denier”), so yes, if you notice people judging you to be of the left, it is because you blew a dog whistle that everyone here recognizes.
I do not know anyone that denies climate or is even skeptical of climate and neither do you.
But your conclusion more or less agrees with mine that the principle opposition and concern is not about sea ice and polar bears but the American values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
By the way Griff, you’ve just IDed yourself as a lefty. Learn from that.
Griff says:
If I set out to discover from comments on this blog what sort of person is a climate skeptic, I’d have to conclude it was someone with right wing conservative views, whose objection to AGW is primarily political…
Another ^classic case^ of psychological ‘projection’.
Griff, your side lost the science debate. The onus was on you to produce solid evidence to support your CAGW hypothesis. But you’ve got zilch. Zero. You’ve got nothin’. You failed.
So yeah, it’s political now. But that’s because you couldn’t support your conjecture — and now your stupid ego gets in the way of admitting that your hypothesis failed.
That’s just immature. At least crooked scientists are getting some loot out of their scam. What are you getting out of it?
On Goethe:
– Please give a precise source (work:edition:page) for your Goethe ‘quotation’ from an original (German) text. If you cannot do this please admit that you do not know what you are talking about.
– Each sentence of the ‘quotation’ is incomprehensible to me.
– Have you actually studied Goethe’s works on colour (there are quite a lot of them)? If you had you would know that Goethe’s colour ‘theory’ is bonkers. It is unscientific claptrap and brings no one any further.
Name me a subsequent theory or instrument that derives from anything in Goethe’s work.
In contrast, Newton’s work has been involved in the development of thousands of optical devices and laid the ground for our modern understanding of QED.
Marketing 101—everyone who ever sold products understands this idea. You sell to those most likely to believe whatever you say, lie or truth. All you have to do is watch an hour of network television with commercials to see this in action. You don’t market to people who think—that’s a waste. So both sides market to the believers, the gullible who want to believe, where it’s effective.
If you market to nonbelievers, you have to use either vilification of the other side or try to educate people to the reality of your product. Nowadays, vilification is most effective.
Of course, none of this has anything whatsoever to do with global warming science and its accuracy. That’s irrelevent. All this is is a marketing strategy.
You can fool some of the people all of the time.
You can fool all of the people some of the time.
You can not fool all of the people all of the time.
There is a never ending line of people who will try all of the time.
The lust for power is powerful and seductive.
H. L. Menken was right.
Comfort zones rule the day. People will always retreat to their comfort zone. Now, not all comfort zones are comfortable. It is simply a description of where a person feels they need to be because that’s where they have been most of their lives. To some, peace and tranquility are uncomfortable and they prefer to be in a state of worry.
Perhaps the questions which should be asked are these:
1. Based on the adversarial system being prevalent in Western media and internet searches, what is the likelihood that a forum displaying a genuinely dispassionate nature to climate change being easily accessible and funded for the medium-to-long term?
For what it’s worth, my view of WUWT is that it is not dispassionate, even though it tries hard to be. It is written with a distinctly American bias, an utterly pro-oil bias (not that that is a bad thing necessarily) and an implacably Republican bias.
2. Given the never-ending bombardment of partisan information into people’s lives, what is the likelihood that this information is satisfactorily processed by the majority of people and as a result, what percentage of blog contributors actually write their contributions from a position of serene calmness as opposed to having a welter of unresolved frustrations to get off their chests?
My judgement there is that the evidence across the blogosphere is clear: well over 50% of contributors are channeling huge amounts of pent up frustration, aggression and pugnacious energy into the blogosphere, which makes more sensitive people withdraw due to the overload of strong emotions into their more sensitive souls.
There are those who think that pugnacious debate is the way forward. They are usually the less sensitive types (nothing wrong with those, it’s just the way you are wired, after all). I don’t actually find that that method works very well. You end up with screaming matches chasing ‘share of voice’ instead of actually examining the issues critically. Who wins is more important than what the truth is and all that…….
rtj1211 wrote “Perhaps the questions which should be asked are these…”
There is no “should”. Do, or do not.