Guest logic by David Middleton
From Real Clear Science…
There Is No Middle Ground for Disagreements About Facts
By Klemens Kappel
Consider how one should respond to a simple case of disagreement. Frank sees a bird in the garden and believes it’s a finch. Standing beside him, Gita sees the same bird, but she’s confident it’s a sparrow. What response should we expect from Frank and Gita? If Frank’s response were: ‘Well, I saw it was a finch, so you must be wrong,’ then that would be irrationally stubborn – and annoying – of him. (The same goes for Gita, of course.) Instead, both should become less confident in their judgment. The reason such a conciliatory response to a disagreement is often desired is reflected in ideals about open-mindedness and intellectual humility: when learning of our differences with fellow citizens, the open-minded and intellectually humble person is willing to consider changing his or her mind.
Our disagreements on a societal level are much more complex, and can require a different response. One particularly pernicious form of disagreement arises when we not only disagree about individuals facts, as in Frank and Gita’s case, but also disagree about how best to form beliefs about those facts, that is, about how to gather and assess evidence in proper ways. This is deep disagreement, and it’s the form that most societal disagreements take. Understanding these disagreements will not inspire optimism about our ability to find consensus.
[…]
Some of our most worrying societal disagreements are deep disagreements, or at least they share certain features of deep disagreements. Those who sincerely deny climate change also dismiss the relevant methods and evidence, and question the authority of the scientific institutions telling us that the climate is changing. Climate skeptics have insulated themselves from any evidence that would otherwise be rationally compelling. One can find similar patterns of selective distrust in scientific evidence and institutions in social disagreements over the safety of vaccines and genetically modified crops, as well as in conspiracy theories, which are extreme cases of deep disagreements.
[…]
As the political philosopher John Rawls noted in Political Liberalism (1993), a liberal society largely rescinds from attempting to control the flow of information and the minds of its citizens. Therefore disagreements are bound to be pervasive (though Rawls had religious, moral and metaphysical disagreements in mind, not factual disagreements). What is particularly troubling about some societal disagreements is that they concern factual matters that tend to be almost impossible to resolve since there is no agreed-upon method to do so, all while relating to important policy decisions. Generally, theorising about liberal democracy has focused largely on moral and political disagreements, while tacitly assuming that there would be no important factual disagreements to consider. It has been taken for granted that we would eventually agree about the facts, and the democratic processes would concern how we should adjudicate our differences in values and preferences. But this assumption is no longer adequate, if it ever was.
This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.
Key passage…
Some of our most worrying societal disagreements are deep disagreements, or at least they share certain features of deep disagreements. Those who sincerely deny climate change also dismiss the relevant methods and evidence, and question the authority of the scientific institutions telling us that the climate is changing. Climate skeptics have insulated themselves from any evidence that would otherwise be rationally compelling.
Show of hands… How many of my fellow AGW skeptics have ever denied that the climate has changed, is changing and/or will continue to change?
Anyone? Anyone? No one? Straw man torched.
OK… So, we can actually agree on the fact that the climate changes. Are there any other “facts” that are seriously disputed?
Well, these “facts” are not universally accepted.
- Carbon dioxide is a so-called greenhouse gas. All other factors held equal, an increase in the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases will raise the bulk temperature of the troposphere.
- The average surface temperature of the Earth has been generally rising since at least 1850, probably since the 1600’s.
- A majority (52-67%) of relevant scientists think that anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions are responsible for more than half of the observed warming over the past 60-150 years.
While the three statements above are “facts,” their significance is equivocal.
- Estimates of the climate sensitivity (TCR & ECS) to carbon dioxide range from insignificant to catastrophic.
- Estimates of the magnitude and rate of recent warming relative to the past 2,000 years are highly variable.
- This only serves to highlight the bald-face lie of a 97% consensus.
Where do the real disagreements lie?
- How modern climate change relates the natural variability of the rest of the Holocene Epoch.
- The degree to which human activities have contributed, are contributing and will contribute to climate change.
- The sensitivity of the climate to increasing concentrations of greenhouse gases.
- Whether or not any negative climatic effects due to fossil fuel consumption are outweighed by the economic benefits of fossil fuel consumption.
- The most effective ways to mitigate and/or adapt to climate change.
I’m certain that there are more areas of disagreement. However, these are all disagreements about interpretations and opinions. They are not disagreements about facts.
About the author of the Real Clear Science red herring
Klemens Kappel
Position: Director, Associate Professor
Department: Department of Media Cognition and Communication, University of Copenhagen.
Research: Klemens Kappel has a broad research profile in analytical philosophy and has contributed to research at an international level in epistemology, ethics, bioethics, meta-ethics and political philosophy. In ethics he has published work on consequentialism and egalitarianism, and issues in political philosophy. For several years his research interests have focused on epistemology, in particular externalist theories of knowledge and justification and problems in moral epistemology. He has published work on epistemological naturalism, skepticism, transcendental anti-skeptical arguments, moral intuitionism, moral coherentism and the generality problem. Klemens Kappel’s current research interests are within social epistemology broadly construed, and he is currently working on questions concerning the value of knowledge, the social function of knowledge and knowledge attribution, the semantics of knowledge ascriptions, disagreement, testimony and the political philosophy of knowledge production.
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Addendum
Consider how one should respond to a simple case of disagreement. Frank sees a bird in the garden and believes it’s a finch. Standing beside him, Gita sees the same bird, but she’s confident it’s a sparrow. What response should we expect from Frank and Gita? If Frank’s response were: ‘Well, I saw it was a finch, so you must be wrong,’ then that would be irrationally stubborn – and annoying – of him. (The same goes for Gita, of course.) Instead, both should become less confident in their judgment.
How could I have possibly missed this opportunity?
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It doesn’t matter what “Scientists” believe, especially so-called “Climate Scientists.” What matters is what they can prove or disprove.
Null hypothesis: all the extremely poorly documented change in Global Average Surface Temperature since (insert year here, 1850, 1880, 1600, 1950, etc…) is due to natural variability, not CO2.
Prove otherwise, gain entrance to the CAGW Hall of Fame…
Until the so called climate scientists can prove that whatever caused previous warm periods is not responsible for the modern warm period, the claim that CO2 done it, doesn’t have a leg to stand on.
What facts?
The cult of CAGW shutdown all open scientific discussion at all scientific sites and on all news channels.
The facts do not support CAGW.
The facts do not support AGW.
The recent warming is not exceptional. There are cycles of warming and cooling in the paleo record.
The pattern of recent warming (last 40 years) verses CO2 changes does not support the assertion that the recent CO2 rise caused the warming. This assertion is supported by the pause in temperature rise.
Atmospheric CO2 changes do not correlate to temperature changes in the deep paleo record.
http://www.mdpi.com/2225-1154/5/4/76
This study demonstrates that changes in atmospheric CO2 concentration did not cause temperature change in the ancient climate.
Ditto for the recent climate – unless future CO2 controls past temperature, AGW isn’t plausible:
Warmists defend AGW against this fact by illogically rationalizing with a ‘carbon budget’.
The climate controls CO2, not the other way around.
Bob Weber,
Interesting idea. But carbon isotope ratios make it possible to identify whether the CO2 in the atmosphere (and ocean, and carbon in plants) comes from fossil fuels.
Besides,
“If heating oceans were the source of the CO2 in today’s atmosphere, we could expect a historical trend of dropping CO2 concentrations in the oceans, yet we see the exact opposite – CO2 concentrations in the ocean have increased even as their temperature has risen, driving down ocean pH (making it more acidic) and will continue to do so (source: Impacts of Anthropogenic CO2 on Ocean Chemistry and Biology, NOAA). In addition, if a hotter ocean were the source of CO2, oxygen would be coming out of solution as well, yet the concentration of oxygen in the atmosphere is actually decreasing, not increasing”
https://scholarsandrogues.com/2007/07/23/anti-global-heating-claims-a-reasonably-thorough-debunking/#m2
You might want to peruse the page. Some interesting arguments.
William Astley,
Well, that’s one paper.
Another paper takes a different approach, looking at the various proxies in more detail, and developing an association between glaciation and CO2 levels.
Conclusions reached:
“1. Proxy estimates of paleo-CO2 agree, within modeling errors,
with GEOCARB model results.
2. There is a good correlation between low levels of atmospheric
CO2 and the presence of well-documented, long-lived,
and aerially extensive continental glaciations
3. The uncorrected Veizer temperature curve predicts long
periods of intense global cooling that do not agree with independent
observations of paleoclimate, especially during the
Mesozoic. When corrected for pH effects, however, the temperature
curve matches the glacial record much better. [This is relevant to the study you cited, but only briefly mentioned.]
4. The global temperatures inferred from the cosmic ray
flux model of Shaviv and Veizer (2003) do not correlate in amplitude
with the temperatures recorded by Veizer et al. (2000)
when corrected for past changes in oceanic pH. Additional
problems with this correction have been shown by Rahmstaff
et al.(2004). Changes in cosmic ray flux may affect climate but
they are not the dominant climate driver on a multimillionyear
time scale.”
It seems to me that looking for simple, direct correlations between CO2 and temperature over the time period of 100s of millions of years is bound to have problems. Even with several thousand proxy records, looking directly at temperature over that time frame runs into problems of lack of data; doing linear interpolations from one data point to the next could be hiding much important information or including data that are not representative of the time as a whole. Aerial glacier extent, on the other hand, might tend to “average” short-term temperature changes, eliminating noise in the record that would tend to obscure correlations.
I don’t really know, this is simply hypothesizing. At any rate, I don’t think it’s reasonable to conclude from a study finding no correlation between CO2 and temperature in the Phanerozoic that the association does not exist today.
You suggest, “Atmospheric CO2 changes do not correlate to temperature changes in the deep paleo record.”
There are many possible reasons why a null hypothesis might not be rejected; failure to do so does not confirm that the association doesn’t exist.
“The pattern of recent warming (last 40 years) verses CO2 changes does not support the assertion that the recent CO2 rise caused the warming. This assertion is supported by the pause in temperature rise.”
I don’t think this is good reasoning. The fact that CO2 and temperature are not perfectly correlated only suggests that there are other factors besides CO2 that influence climate, which no one denies. They are still correlated, especially when other factors (e.g., aerosols, volcanic eruptions, the 11 year solar cycle, el Nino events) are also taken into consideration. The combination of observational data and underlying theory are strong support for the idea that CO2 is a driver in most (but not all) the climate change of the last 50+ years.
Warmunists excel in calling a spade a watermelon, and if you disagree, you’re a fruit and vegetable denayer.
The birds example seems to be a case of the Dunning–Kruger effect. Either one is competent at identifying birds or one is not. If one is competent that one can be confident in the identification and should not question it because someone disagrees. If one is not competent then one should not be confident in the identification. But in his example there are 2 people who are both confident, but at least one of them is wrong. The one(s) who are wrong are illustrating the Dunning–Kruger effect.
What I would do is ask the other person to describe the bird, if their description does not match what I am seeing, then we are looking at different birds. If it does, then I can point out that the species they say it is does not have the features they have just described.
If he is right then the way to tell who has baffled themselves would be to look at if they are willing to debate with their opponents.
The True Believers refuse to debate on the science. They say it wouldn’t help them but it would help the Sceptics .
(They are right. The Sceptics always win on the science.)
The Sceptics are eager to debate. So he is actually arguing against his own position.
and the ones who understand the game don’t touch the tarbaby.
When they tell me that the finch just killed and ate a housecat because they saw the finch sitting on a dead housecat, I must conclude “You keep using that word (fact). I do not think it means what you think it means.”
What exactly is wrong with these facts:
http://notrickszone.com/2018/03/23/uncertainty-mounts-global-temperature-data-presentation-flat-wrong-new-danish-findings-show/
The plot of 1930’s and early 1940’s temperatures shows that there has been zero global warming due to our added CO2.
Why is this paper being ignored?
‘Those who sincerely deny climate change also dismiss the relevant methods and evidence, and question the authority”[…]
s/climate change/$1/g
communism, veganism, evangelism, *slam, little endianism – whatever your ideology, others are just wrong and question the right authorities. So? How do you base your finchism for real? Hint. If it’s an ideology, you don’t.
“little endianism” !! Love it, haven’t seen that term in ages. Thanks for a good laugh.
Climate skeptics have insulated themselves from any evidence that would otherwise be rationally compelling.
I’d say the ones insulating themselves from any evidence would be the ones who refuse to debate. Since Skeptics are eager to debate where as the alarmists insist that the “science is settled” at that there is nothing to gain from debating skeptics, it’s the alarmist, not the skeptics that are insulating themselves.
+10 :<)
‘Well, I saw it was a finch, so you must be wrong,’
Then the ‘finch’ picks up the cat and flies off.
Still think it’s finch says Gita.
I have just written a computer program to prove that it was says Frank.
This fellow’s credentials proclaims that he is an expert on “media cognition”. Based on the article, such authorities appear to base their understanding of reality on strawmen that have been constructed to reinforce their prejudices, while obscuring evidence that might be the source of some dissonance if properly understood. One must wonder what benefit can accrue from mastering “media cognition”, if this a representative sample of its work product.
Disciple of Lewandowsky
Dreamer: I support all policy vehicles which would reduce climate related disasters.
Denier: How much will it cost?
Dreamer: I’m not sure but probably quite a lot.
Denier: How are you going to know the positive effects of each policy?
Dreamer: There will be less climate related disasters.
Denier: How are you going to measure that?
Dreamer:
Denier: How long will it take to know this?
Dreamer:
Dreamer: I support all policy vehicles which would reduce climate related disasters.
Denier: How much will it cost?
Dreamer: I’m not sure but probably quite a lot.
Denier: How are you going to know the positive effects of each policy?
Dreamer: There will be less climate related disasters.
Denier: How are you going to measure that?
Dreamer: IT’S FOR THE CHILDREN!!!
Denier: How long will it take to know this?
Dreamer: WHY DO YOU HATE THE ENVIRONMENT, WANT TO DESTROY THE PLANET AND POISON THE POOR AND PEOPLE OF COLOR?!?!?!?
David, When they start spouting slogans in response, that’s when you know the Dreamer is really an NPC.
if you take the letters of MOB and shift right one you get NPC
cool, eh?
MOB is what happens when NPC moves to the left.
oh- much better!!
i will use that to probe for signs of hostility on another forum.
There Is No Middle Ground for Disagreements About Facts
This assumes that said facts ARE, in fact, facts. Otherwise, disagreement begins PRECISELY when a false fact is stated.
HOW … is a fact a fact ?
WHO … says a fact is a fact ?
One must question the sources and methods of establishing what others might call “facts”. One must consider counter arguments to facts. One must use common sense and individual intelligence to assess the logical consistency of a fact.
There is ALWAYS middle ground to question facts. And when enough middle ground is claimed, then it becomes the higher ground of reason that separates fake facts from legitimate facts.
There are facts, and then there are interpretations about those facts. Alarmists tend to confuse the two and insist the later is the former.
For example, ‘likely between 1.5K and 4.5K’ does not mean a ‘renewable’ mandate is 1) needed 2) effective 3) most efficient solution. Ideology makes people buy expensive non-solutions.
Or Paris treaty did not mean there ever was anything efficient set up from Obama’s half.
Fact is, world emissions per capita are growing, US emissions are going down. Germany has messed up. Now you may disagree based on your ideology, but … these are still facts.
Fact is Paris was not a Treaty, never signed off by the Senate. It was also not 1/2 or a 1/3 of a Treaty, nor a Treaty in an asymtotic limit (we’re kinda gettin’ there logic). Trump is not fooled by maths.
Declining U.S. student aptitude in science and math supports more strawman tactics by Greens and associated media and politicos.
https://www.al.com/news/2018/10/act-results-stagnant-at-state-national-levels.html
Never seen a SJW interested in arithmetics. Take an average thesis mentioning ‘white supremacy’ and note the algebra is not really at the level science majors do.
Then they start educating me, a science denier for telling them a Chinese solar panel will not dent their emissions. They’re saving the children and ‘doing something’.
Show of hands ….
How many of our fellow AGW skeptics have actually been asked by Kappel why they are skeptic?
Occam’s razor tells me: probably none. Because if he had asked only one, he would have realised that on this matter he is out of his depth. Making bold assertions on hearsay is not good for your CV.
I’m a skeptic because I have 30 years experience as a statistician (health data), and:
1) I recognize weak data when I see it
2) I recognize careerist ass-covering by self-proclaimed experts using 1) when I see it
3) I recognize politically-motivated decisions based on 1) and 2) when I see it
I have been involved in the collection of data that led to incredibly expensive systems being created that never worked and never COULD have worked.
Many times, the people who decided to move forward despite all feedback to the contrary were often rewarded with contracts to “fix” the “unforeseen” problem.
Thankfully, someone is watching (unrelated to my work, but related to climate):
https://www.ourwindsor.ca/news-story/8969318-top-staff-and-directors-at-ontario-electricity-agencies-given-legal-protection-for-implementing-hydro-rate-cut-committee-told/
Hey there,
how come the nurse needs to know how many guns if I own …?
I’m pretty sure that she didn’t pass the specific number on to the doctor.
DonM,
The appropriate response to the question is “Somewhere between zero and one hundred.”
“Somewhere between not enough and more than enough.”
Thanks for the Monty Python clip.
Where has that type of skepticism gone ??
Thrown into the memory hole and its originators sent to the re-education camps.
…. Well, if a million dollar grant subsidy hung on whether the bird was a sparrow….. Then it would be bluddy sparrow even if it were a raven. 😉
….. and that is pretty much the thinking of the entire Scientific Political Complex at the moment.
It is difficult to get a man to
understand somethingrecognize it’s a finch, when his salary depends on hisnot understanding itinsisting it’s a sparrow.Consider how one should respond to a simple case of disagreement. Frank sees a bird in the garden and believes it’s a finch. Standing beside him, Gita sees the same bird, but she’s confident it’s a sparrow. What response should we expect from Frank and Gita? If Frank’s response were: ‘Well, I saw it was a finch, so you must be wrong,’ then that would be irrationally stubborn – and annoying – of him. (The same goes for Gita, of course.) Instead, both should become less confident in their judgment.
no they shouldn’t. What they should do is attempt to methodically ascertain which it is. For example, get out their smartphones and take a picture so that they can compare it with pictures of finches and sparrows (and other birds, in case it turns out it was neither of those two types of birds) to determine which it is.
The choices are: one is right and the other is wrong, or both were wrong and it was some other type of bird (an unladen African swallow perhaps – cue Monty Python sketch) and which the case maybe can be determined by looking at facts rather than their opinions about the facts. And that’s what this article boils down to, the author is confusing facts with opinions about the facts.
Consider how one should respond to a simple case of disagreement.
Klemens sees his elbow in the mirror and believes it’s his ass. Standing beside him, Gita also sees his elbow, but she’s confident it’s his elbow.
What response should we expect from Klemens and Gita? If Klemens response were: ‘Well, I know it’s my ass, so you must be wrong, then that would be irrationally stubborn – and annoying – of him.
The same does not hold true for Gita, of course. Instead, Gita (and everyone that comes into contact with Klemens) should let him know that he does not know his ass from his elbow; And as such they should become less confident in all aspects of Klemens’ judgment.
David, an important factor not listed by you, but possibly inferred in your “all other factors held equal”, is the earth climate system’s reactions to heating that are countered by several agents. For example, a high climate sensitivity (which certainly isn’t in evidence) could be possible, yet show no effect because of factors resisting warming, like modulation by clouds, strong convection/thunderstorms that send warm air “up the chimney” by-passing CO2 in the lower atmosphere and exposing heat in the air to more ready radiation to space, plus the enthalpy changes of state to water, endothermic sequestration of “heat” in new greenery of the “Great Greening^TM” (BTW a better case for a new epoch in the making with expansion of habitat, diversity, blah blah).
That’s exactly what I meant by “all other factors held equal”… Nature doesn’t work that way.
I think Mr. Middleton totally misses the point. It is IMPOSSIBLE to have a genuine debate with a pathological liar. The AGW ‘debate’ is not between two sides that disagree, it’s a battle between seekers of truth and masters of deception, with the highest stakes – literally the lives of all humanity. And the ‘useful idiots’ who Truly Believe and fight many of the battles, have a bottomless capacity for denial of facts and logic and the full support of a Scientific Establishment that supplies them with endless reams of baffling bulls^it. AGW debate is FUTILE and too many skeptics are as much in denial as True Believers, refusing to see the Monster puppeteer pulling the strings. “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing” and futile debate amounts to NOTHING.
So now what ?
boot to the head!
They’re either pathological liars or logically inept… I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt… 😉
Linda,
Your ideology is showing.
My Master’s is in ecology and evolution, not deception. You may wish to think I (for instance) am a liar, but your wishes do not make it so. There can be no debate if one side thinks the other is lying, for the first side (yours) will never ever able to discern what is fact and what is lies; you have decided beforehand.
One can never approach truth with a closed mind and without the humility to admit one might be wrong. You see a sparrow, and the other person is lying about what she sees, even if she’s an ornithologist with binoculars who has written 34 papers about finch anatomy and taxonomy.
There is no Monster puppeteer pulling strings, there are many people pulling strings on both sides of the debate. If you can’t see that, you could see a turkey and be certain it’s a sparrow.
To me it looks like a finch, but I am not an ornithologist and my vision isn’t perfect.
It’s hard to tell if you are a liar, or merely seriously deluded.
The data doesn’t show what you want it to show. Never has.
The data shows that there has been a very mild warming of about 0.7C since the end of the little ice age.
The data shows that the modern warm period is still cooler than the medieval warm period, which was cooler than the Roman warm period, with was cooler than the Minoan warm period and so on.
In fact the data shows that the current temperatures are cooler than about 90% of the last 10K years.
CO2 caused none of this previous warmth, so why are you so convinced that CO2 is causing most of the current warming?
A review of the climate network (ground based sensors found the system to be seriously flawed, contaminated by both micro and macro issues, not to mention undocumented station moves and equipment changes.
Beyond that, prior to the early 70’s, data was recorded by thermometers that were marked in 1 degree increments, and had to be read by eye (meaning if the head wasn’t positioned properly, parallax would occur. Bet you have to look that up.) Also only the high and low for the day was recorded. Anyone who thinks you can figure out what the average was to within a tenth of a degree using that data is seriously deluded, but that is what the so called climate scientists claim?
Beyond that, prior to the use of satellites, less than 5% of the planet’s surface was adequately sensored. The rest of the planet was virtually unmeasured.
So Kristi, which is it. The claim to be able to tell the temperature of the earth 100 years ago to an accuracy of 0.1C is nonsensical.
So are your precious climate scientists totally incompetent, or merely bad liars?
@MarkW,
Seems you are being really hard on Kristi.
Kristi didn’t say any of the things you said were said.
Care to try again ?
u.k.(us),
Oh, I’m used to MarkW’s fantasies. He has his own ideology, which for some reason includes me.
Thanks for the comment, though. I appreciate it.
My Master’s is in ecology and evolution, not deception.
what your degree is in is irrelevant to whether or not you practice deception (or are merely deluded). You don’t need a master’s degree to be a very skilled at (IE “a master of”) deception. Either you already knew that (and thus proving that you are a deceiver) or you didn’t (and thus proving you are ignorant). Which is it?
One’s degrees are also irrelevant, or should be.
Either one practices the scientific method, or one doesn’t. Either one can defend one’s position with data, ie valid observations of nature, ie factual evidence and proper inductive or deductive reasoning therefrom, or one can’t.
Both Johns,
“Master’s” – Simple play on words.
Hi Linda!
i know that you know that what you say will not be useful for anything except finding out if somebody else gets it.
Yatta!
come trolling on liveleak! the NPCs are good for the lulz!
it’s target rich- easy pickins- just say TRUMP and they dance like burning spastics.
you get to see the latest pathetic attempts at propaganda and demoralize the novices before they go pro.
here’s the truth, linda-
a normal human has no concept of evil until he has see it openly acting.
but the creatures don’t do their work in the open.
so mr middleton is too innocently generous to grasp the nature of the beast.
markw also has no clue.
if you want to see what it really takes for somebody to come to grips with the nature of evil- watch the dan pearl beheading. he started out convinced he could hug and cumbaya. the character development in the vid is breathtaking. he finally got a frightening glimpse of his own stupidity.
then he tried appeasement. those delusions fell. finally reality set in.
Linda G,
I disagree that “futile debate amounts to nothing.”
If it’s an endurance contest between rationality and stupidity, then so be it. Every stupid claim needs to be met with a rational claim, … over and over, and over again. Now that we accept what the situation is, then let us proceed to dig in and meet every single stupid claim with its opposite. At worst, we might maintain a balance.
There is not a group of words that will change someone’s mind. But there might be a level of dogged persistence in using words that makes an unchanged mind take greater notice of the fact that his/her perspective will NEVER be fully established.
https://rulesofscience.wordpress.com
contribute to the user manual?
This claim is made in the main article:
“The average surface temperature of the Earth has been generally rising since at least 1850, probably since the 1600’s.”
I agree with the first half, but the second half is suspect.
Glaciers (primarily N. Hemisphere) most definitely grew until approx. 1850 (recognized as the peak glacial extent of the Little Ice Age). From 1600-1850, from what I’ve seen, the decadal temperature trend was falling, not rising. Most certainly, most Alpine Glaciers of Switzerland, France, Austria and Italy were growing considerably. Perhaps there is a 10-15 y lag between surface temperature anomaly changes and glacier growth / shrinking, but not 2.5 centuries.
Of course, the mass trend of glaciers depends both on winter snowfall and on summer insolation. The first needs to be positive and the second negative (compared with previous trends) to incite growth, whereas the opposite needs to transpire (overall) for shrinkage.
But the 20th & 21st centuries are not bucking the long-term trend of glacier retreat, though we still have a ways to go before matching the glacier retreat of the early- to mid-Holocene.
Entrenched Climate Scientists know this, yet they are rather quiet about these facts when “selling” their Climate Pitch to the general public. This is sleight of hand, pure and simple.
Kurt,
The coldest decade of the LIA was the 1690s, during the depths of the Maunder Minimum, at least in western Europe.
As you know, alpine glaciers advanced scarily in the 17th century, to which the cold contributed. Glacial advance and retreat isn’t entirely controlled by ambient air temperature, however.
Coming out of the Maunder Minimum in the early 18th century, Earth warmed rapidly for decades, then suffered another cold cycle, followed by mild warming, followed by the Dalton Minimum around the turn of the 18th to 19th century.
It varies from different reconstructions; but pretty-well all of the non-hockey stick reconstructions put the coldest phase of the LIA in the 1600’s.
Neoglaciation definitely continued beyond the coldest phase of the Little Ice Age (ca 1650-1690). I don’t think it warmed up enough before ca 1850 to reverse the trend of increasing glacial mass balance.
Give me a photo of that finch/sparrow, and I will finesse the data to prove (97% confidence) it is a chickadee.
Poppycock! It’s an Oriole!
With double stuff!
“Frank sees a finch, Gita sees a sparrow.”
Try “Frank sees a finch. Gita doubts it’s a finch.”
To cast skeptics as deniers is deny their doubt. That’s why atheists are also called deniers. To cast atheists as “denying the existence of God” is to assert the existence of “god” as a fact.
Alarmists have a belief. Deniers have a belief. Skeptics lack belief.
“Never had a doubt
In the beginning
Never a doubt…”
Try “Frank sees what he wants to see. Gita is aware of Frank’s character & intellectual honesty and believes that the likelihood that Frank is being completely honest or competent is very low.
Gita sees a bird … and once it starts flying Gita knows, without a doubt, that it is likely a sparrow by the way it moves. Frank gets either an emotional or monetary boost when he sees finches, and even if it flies 80 mph he will still believe that it is reasonable to claim he saw a finch.
Alarmists have some sort of a belief.
Deniers react to the Alarmist.
Skeptics think, learn, & then react.
“Alarmists have a belief. Deniers have a belief. Skeptics lack belief.”
This^
Seriously, its like religion: believers have a believe (duh!). Atheists have a belief. Agnostics lack belief.
Oddly enough, many atheists claim to lack belief.
I think skeptics can have provisional beliefs after going through the process of learning and questioning – but they will always allow for the fact that their beliefs might be wrong, if more or better evidence is offered to show this is the case. This is the underpinnings of the scientific philosophy.
Skepticism does not simply dismiss those ideas that seem disagreeable.
Again you are deceptive by doing the very thing you project on to others: dismiss those ideas you disagree with. Skeptics do not “simply dismiss those ideas that seem disagreeable.” They’re disagreeing with an idea that the evidence does not support. we’ve had 30+ years of failed predictions for your fellow travelers, yet you defend the failed and falsified nonsense and dismiss those that disagree as not being true skeptics because they don’t drink your kool-aid. you are fooling no one.
John Endicott,
Again you are not reading well. I didn’t say “skeptics,” I said “skepticism.” Not very good grammar, but it’s a very different thing to talk about skepticism in a general sense versus “(C)AGW skeptics.”
It’s also different to dismiss ideas that seem disagreeable vs. dismissing ideas one disagrees with. The first depends on something “seeming” to be disagreeable (i.e., reacting to it with emotion), the second could mean evaluating something, disagreeing with it, then dismissing the idea.
You haven’t had 30+ years to evaluate many of the “predictions” unless you dismiss all the science that has happened since. Nor do you seem to understand that climate scientists evaluate model projections differently from you and that there are varying degrees of confidence and likelihood associated with the projections. Furthermore, it is no surprise to modelers that the models are not completely accurate; that doesn’t mean they are failures overall. They are works in progress, and some of the projections have been reasonably good considering the difficulty of trying to project future climate trends. Just the fact that they can run a simulation that shows cyclones as emergent properties (not programmed, not a part of the data, but appearing as a function of the simulation) suggests they are doing something quite remarkable, in my opinion.
If in your opinion they are failures, fine. You have a right to your opinion, and I have a right to disagree.
I’m not trying to fool anyone, but if you jump to conclusions about what I mean without even trying to understand it, you are only fooling yourself.
You might as well give up trying to insult me. If others want to see what you do, they will anyway. I really don’t care about your opinion of me; you have given me no reason to value it.
I saw an endangered finch. No you didn’t, it was a sparrow, which is common around here.
No, it was definitely something endangered, so you have to stop using your land and convert it into a bird sanctuary, for which you get payed nothing. Oh, and you have to pay me very large consulting fees on how to stop using your land for productive purposes.
It’s almost impossible to convince someone of something when their income is on the line to prove the opposite.