Guest essay by Eric Worrall
From the “if you don’t believe in climate science how can you believe in medicine?” department; According to an American Psychological Association press release, climate skeptics are more likely to believe climate claims if they are first reminded of fields of science which they trust.
Climate Change Conversations Can Be Difficult for Both Skeptics, Environmentalists
Reinforcing trust in science, focusing on perseverance may shift views, inspire action, according to studiesCHICAGO — Having productive conversations about climate change isn’t only challenging when dealing with skeptics, it can also be difficult for environmentalists, according to two studies presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association.
The first of the studies found that reinforcing belief and trust in science may be a strategy to help shift the views of climate change skeptics and make them more open to the facts being presented by the other side.
“Within the United States, bipartisan progress on climate change has essentially come to a standstill because many conservatives doubt the findings of climate science and many liberals cannot fathom that any rational human can doubt the scientific consensus on the issue,” said Carly D. Robinson, MEd, of Harvard University, who presented the research. “These opposing perspectives do not create a starting point for productive conversations to help our country address climate change. Our goal was to find an intervention that might change the current situation.”
Though previous research has shown that social pressure to disbelieve in climate change stems from the political right and that conservatives’ trust in science has eroded, Robinson and her colleagues theorized that most people would find at least some branches of science credible. Leveraging those beliefs could lead climate skeptics to shift their views, they said.
“When people are faced with two or more opposing beliefs, ideas and values, it tends to create discomfort, which can lead people to becoming more open-minded about a particular issue,” said Christine Vriesema, PhD, of the University of California, Santa Barbara and a co-author of the study.
The researchers surveyed nearly 700 participants from the U.S. Half were given surveys about their belief in science (e.g., “How credible is the medical data that germs are a primary cause of disease?” and “How certain are you that physicists’ theory of gravity accurately explains why objects fall when dropped?”) and their belief in climate science (e.g., “How credible is the climate science data that ocean temperatures are rising?” and “How certain are you that global warming explains many of the new weather patterns we are seeing today?”). The other half was only surveyed about their belief in climate science. All participants reported if they considered themselves politically liberal, moderate or conservative.
“As we predicted in our pre-registration, conservatives reported a greater belief in climate science if they were asked questions first about their belief in other areas of science,” said Robinson. “For climate skeptics, it likely became awkward to report on our survey that they believed in science while at the same time, denying the findings of climate science. That dissonance led many to adjust their beliefs to show greater support for the existence of climate change.”
The findings showed that beliefs in climate science are malleable and not fixed, said Robinson.
“We were pleasantly surprised that a brief, two-minute survey changed skeptics’ views on climate change,” said Robinson. “It is exciting to know that in real-world settings, we might be able to have more productive climate conversations by starting from a place of common belief.”
The second study showed that igniting a sense of resilience and perseverance can increase action and engagement around climate change for people who work in aquariums, national parks and zoos.“Many educators working at these institutions reported wanting to talk about climate change and visitors reported wanting to hear about it, yet many educators still felt uncomfortable bringing the topic into their conversations because they were worried about being able to communicate effectively,” said Nathaniel Geiger, PhD, of Indiana University who presented the research.
The study included 203 science educators from zoos, aquariums and national parks who were part of a yearlong communication training program from the National Network of Ocean and Climate Change Interpretation designed to build participants’ confidence in talking about climate change. The training consisted of study groups, group assignments, readings, discussions and weekend retreats. During the last six months of the program, participants worked to integrate what they had learned into their jobs.
Survey data were collected one month before and one month after the training program and again six to nine months later.
Geiger and his colleagues examined two components of hopeful thinking to see which one might lead to the success of the training program: agency (e.g., enthusiasm, a sense of determination) and pathways (e.g., resilience and perseverance strategies) and how those influenced participants’ reports of engagement about climate change.
Participants rated their “agency thinking” (e.g., “I energetically do all I can do to discuss climate change” and “I anticipate that efforts to discuss climate change will be pretty successful”) and their “pathways thinking” (e.g., “I can think of many ways to discuss climate change”) in each survey. The science educators also reported the frequency with which they discussed climate change with the general public and visitors to their institutions, ranging from never to daily.
Geiger and his team found that pathways thinking was more successful at inspiring conversations about climate change than agency.
“Our findings suggested that portions of the training that taught how to persevere and be resilient in the face of difficult climate change conversations may have been the most effective at promoting discussion,” Geiger said.
The training program also increased the frequency with which the science educators spoke about climate change with visitors, from less than once per month prior to the training to more than two or three times per month afterward, he said.
“We found it uplifting that the training program showed such a robust effect at promoting these difficult discussions,” said Geiger. “We believe that climate change advocates and educators will find this work helpful toward meeting their goal of crafting more effective training programs to boost climate change engagement.”
Session 3169: “Leveraging Cognitive Consistency to Nudge Conservative Climate Change Beliefs,” Saturday, Aug. 10, 4 p.m. CDT, Room 176c, Level One-West Building, McCormick Place Convention Center, 2301 S. King Drive, Chicago.Session 3127: “Hope-Based Interventions and Climate Change Engagement,” Saturday, Aug. 10, 11 a.m. CDT, Room W186b, Level One-West Building, McCormick Place Convention Center, 2301 S. King Drive, Chicago.
Presentations are available from the APA Public Affairs Office.
Read more: https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2019/08/climate-change
Carly D. Robinson, MEd, can be contacted via email and Nathaniel Geiger, PhD, can be contacted via email.
Makes you wonder what Dr. Robinson and Dr. Geiger were doing on the day their lecturer discussed the concept of false equivalence.
Suggesting all science and scientific research is equally trustworthy is absurd. Suggesting you can blindly accept the word of climate scientists because scientists in other fields produce good work is more absurd.
Even the claims of comparatively trustworthy scientific fields like medical research and physics should not be blindly accepted without question; they both have their share of problems.
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Skeptics can be convinced to believe in science. Psychologists, on the other hand, are a lost cause. How is it there are psychologists out there who don’t know that skepticism is the first precondition of the scientific method?
I don’t know whether doctors Robinson and Geiger missed their lecture on false equivalence. But they are doctors. It’s their responsibility to educate themselves to fill in the gaps in their education. To weed out logical fallacies from their mindset. PhD candidates really ought to pass exams with 95%+ pass rate on both logical fallacies and scientific method before being awarded their doctorates. The number of idiots out there with doctorates is staggering.
Very true, unfortunately. Objective criteria are increasingly a thing of the past.
There is no “Belief” in Science. Belief falls into the realm of Religion. Science is something completely different from religion so Requiring Belief is AntiScientific. Belief in Climate Science is also Belief in Religion like Scientology which is why those who speak out against Climate Scientology teachings are treated as heretics
Belief in science is belief, not science
Belief in Science is an oxymoron.
Science is the method used to test beliefs.
Not quite off-topic, and apologies Tim for using your post to place high up on the thread, but I think readers should know that a scientist that created a revolution in molecular biology and medicine, Kary Mullis, has passed on:
https://mynewsla.com/education/2019/08/08/nobel-winner-kary-banks-mullis-who-revolutionized-dna-research-dies-in-o-c/
Kary was a noted and notable climate skeptic. I was honored to be his friend around the time of his momentous invention of PCR.
Another giant gone. That should have been front page news.
Years ago when I was in publishing, I wrote a profile of Mullis for one of our books. I remember thinking: I would love to meet this guy.
The brighter you are, the more likely you are to be a climate skeptic. How many (real) Nobel winners does that make who are, were, skeptics?
Throw in Freeman Dyson, a true “Big picture” guy with no PhD
Psychology is just a pretend science. Most of its practitioners are screwed up human beings who start with the assumption that everybody else is just as screwed up as they are. The field is full of garbage papers that reflect the biases of the authors very faithfully. Probably hard to believe but it may be worse than Climate science.
They lack skepticism generally. It’s almost a requirement for their field. They have to believe in several unbelievable thing before lunch every day.
The head of the Psychology Department at the state university where I studied back in the early ’60s once made the statement that all psychology majors were either alcoholics, schizophrenics, sex maniacs or more than one of the above. I always maintained that the courses at that time were specifically designed to trap you into believing you were nuts and needed further study to straighten yourself out.
My freshman Psychology prof in the early ’70s said he went into the field to learn how to get women. He said once he fired a gun (w/ a blank) in class and that totally messed with the student trust for the balance of the quarter.
Psychology is a field hugely affected by the Reproducibility Crisis. A good number of key findings are not reproducible but psychology hasn’t had the guts to admit it yet.
This paper is typical – dreadful methodology, no controls, subjective measures measured subjectively. It’s meaningless.
Correct me if I’m wrong but I believe I read a long time ago that psychologists, and psychiatrists have the highest rates of suicide amongst professions.
Agreed.
Psychology has no proper role in Oceans and Atmospheres Science, which is the proper basis of “climate science”, perhaps with hat tips to Astronomy/Astrophysics, Meteorology, and Planetary Science.
But Psychology is the proper home of the psycho-technology of brainwashing. And that is what Drs. Robinson and Geiger are talking about. It is amusing to see them promote a brainwashing technique as old as the hills, as if they have discovered something new.
In my early 20’s, I was trained to sell vacuum cleaners door-to-door. The trainer taught me the technique the good Drs Robinson and Geiger are promoting in their work. It was unscrupulous then and is unscrupulous still. At least I was only selling vacuum cleaners, not the wholesale disruption of the world’s economy in service to a sophistry.
Mindful of the old J-O-K-E:
Trying to sell a pig in a P-O-K-E.
Connect an ox and an ass with a Y-O-K-E
How do you spell the white of an egg??
T H E W H I T E O F A N E G G
Albumin?
To be even more specific, chemistry and physics are the proper basis of “climate science”, which appears to currently being dominated by statisticians who have little understanding of the fundamental factors affecting the earth’s climate system. Psychology is not a hard science or a physical science but a social science.
I first learned to be skeptical of science while studying Psychology. I first occurrence of 97% was the discovery that 97% of people with doctorates are idiots.
It’s funny because psychology isn’t really science either, but they enjoy telling themselves that.
Skeptics accept science, and in fact glory in science. Science is by its very nature extremely skeptical.
Yes, there is of course a population of right wing ideologues who disparage science and any kind of expert knowledge, being yet another reincarnation of the old “know nothings” of the mid-19th century. Those idiots cannot be taught anything, because ideology is the human being’s greatest shield against learning and knowledge.
But the rest of us who are actually climate alarmist skeptics and not right wingnut ideologues, we’ve vastly more driven by actual science than are any of the climate alarmist ideologues who view this as a religious issue, with the world divided into true believers and infidels.
It is the anti-scientific emotionalism and lack of common sense climate alarmists who need to be taught to believe in science.
Rather than being a group of science and technology deniers, the name “know-nothing” was a result of the semi-secret organization of the party. When a member was asked about his activities, he was supposed to reply, “I know nothing.”
Sounds like a group Sgt. Schultz would have enjoyed. “I know nothing… notheeeeeng!”
They are Doctors? …. of psychology. …. So, why are they asking how to get people to believe in man made climate change? Seems to me, they would be better off trying to solve psychological issues ….. like … maybe bipolar disorder, anxiety, … or why three young adults decided to go shoot up people at malls.
Don’t think belief in the climate hoax really falls under psychology.
As a confirmed climate sceptic (not that I don’t think there is a climate, nor that it is naturally static, you understand) I do not need to be convinced in science, or by science. But it is very difficult, maybe even impossible, to be convinced by the manipulative manipulation of facts that makes up the prostitution of climate science. You’re just going to have to send me to the Gulag for re-education. And after, I will mutter under my breath, as Galileo did, “It still rotates.”
Actual skeptics are generally in fact people with a science Degree and have had a career in science.
Oh, sure, use germs and gravity as examples of where scientists “got it right.”
For centuries, “science” spread lies and misinformation about how disease was spread and controlled human behavior in counterproductive, sometimes bizarre ways. And as far as gravity, they had formulas to describe the “what,” but are only now beginning to understand the “how.” So both really bad examples of why we should believe the broad-brush assumptions of a “science” in its infancy.
Medical science was so sure about the efficacy of bleeding that they killed George Washington practicing what was “consensus”.
Don’t forget the miasma theory. That, too, was consensus. There was even some evidence that it might be true, which forced London to install proper sewers. But it is not true: germs cause disease, not bad air.
@Wade – “Miasmic theory” is a perfect example of correct correlation – incorrect causation. Sounds familiar, somehow…
@Don – One must also be careful to not throw out the baby with the bath water. Thalidomide was a tragedy for parents – but turned out to be a specific for leprosy. Periodic bleeding is also a terrible treatment – unless you are afflicted with hemochromatosis, which approximately 1 in 300 in the US are, requiring a phlebotomy twice a week for some. (Undoubtedly, the “bleeder doctors” saw an improvement in several of their patients, which perpetuated the theory beyond where it should have died.)
Oh, just looked it up to be sure my info was current – thalidomide is now also used in the treatment of multiple myeloma (a skin cancer).
I think multiple myeloma is a bone marrow cancer.
@Ged – gah! You are correct. The eyes read it correctly, and the fingers typed it correctly – but somehow the brain was saying “melanoma.”
Apologies.
Skeptical of medical science? Hmmnn, obviously they have never endured the US Veterans Administration.
It is not just the US Veterans Administration. According to a 2016 study reported by John Hopkins Medicine, medical errors are now the third leading cause of deaths in the US. Maybe the skeptics don’t trust medical science any more that climate science for a good reason. They fear that the climate action errors will overtake medical errors in terms of US deaths. According to Wikipedia, worldwide deaths due to heat and cold are 0.05 million annually. By comparison, road incident deaths are 1.34 million annual – or ~27 times higher.
Well, I know some veterans have a lot of trouble at some VA hospitals, but my personal experiece with VA Healthcare couldn’t be better, so it’s not all bad at the VA, and we should give those who do a good job the praise they deserve, like I’m doing now. 🙂
These psychos also omit to acknowledge that contemporary medical science demands obligatory clinical testing and results confirmation before inflicting any proposed remedies on “at-“risk” populace.
Climate “science” – not so much.
Just once I would like these “researchers” to talk to me. Then I might begin to get some idea of what kind of rationalizations go on in their brains.
Agreed. They still seem to have some ill-informed and strange ideas about what “climate skeptics” tend to be skeptical about.
No doubt, since what I’m skeptical of is the legitimacy of the IPCC to determine what is and what is not climate science based on what they publish in their reports as they fabricate a self serving ‘consensus’ around those reports. While only secondary to my objection, I can apply theory, analysis and data to show that the skeptics are far more correct then the IPCC and that the sensitivity they claim is at least 3 times larger than the laws of physics can support, moreover; the net result from increased CO2 is far more beneficial then harmful.
I’d prefer a face to face with a scientist, preferably a physicist, and who buys into the alarmist meme. The problem is that none of them in a position to make a difference are willing to risk learning the truth. I can guarantee that at the end of that discussion, they will have either changed their mind, cried relentlessly in denial or run away in a temper tantrum because the truth is too disruptive to their political identity.
Exactly.
“the findings of climate science”
Is anyone ever going to tell us what these findings are?
I think part of that must be due to the fact that the Believers never look at the actual data. Why should they, when the priests of climate science interpret the scriptures for them? They never do something crazy like go look at some actual data. If they did, they might see things like that supposedly “hottest month ever recorded” of July 2019 only made 2nd place at best in France.
The GSN stations are described by NOAA as “a baseline network comprising a subset of about 1000 stations chosen mainly to give a fairly uniform spatial coverage from places where there is a good length and quality of data record.”
There are six of them in France, and July 2019 wasn’t at the top of any station’s list of July averages. Neither the TMAX or TAVG averages made the cut.
So what locations drove “the hottest month EVAH” declaration?
The ones they infill with whatever numbers the like, I suppose. >-D
Also known as priming the pump. What would the “studies” have found if we had reminded people before hand of Joseph Rhine’s frauds regarding ESP, any of Irving Langmuir’s examples of pathological science, the Palmdale Bulge, the dangers of groupthink and so forth?
Alternatively known as the bait-and-switch; trading on the reputation of legitimate science to lend credence to politics disguised as science.
So is the APA going to go after “organic agriculture”, anti-GMO activists, alternative medicine advocates, and other anti-science causes beloved by the political left? I would predict it will be after genetic engineering produces flying pigs.
Brainwashing at it’s best, else jail ??
Maybe the “science” we should be questioning is psychology.
Is that really a science?
I have been questioning psychology long before the UN funded the IPCC to cook up this CO2 is causing end of days Hobgoblin.
Adam: Well, as Tom and Bill say, “we” already question psychology. The two “doctors” should question psychology, but don’t. In fact, that they accept the precepts of psychology without question makes them ideal candidates to use their skills and education as CAGW activists. They are exceedingly unlikely to have some epiphany along the way, because they will not question the premise. You don’t want your activist cohort to wake up to the scam being run.
It’s been my experience that ‘Climate Skeptics’ believe in ‘science’ moreso than their counterparts.
Carly D. Robinson, Christine Vriesema and Nathaniel Geigershould all perhaps be sent for counselling. They might find it uplifting.
What “new weather patterns”?
No one can prove that it’s any different now that it was a hundred years ago, except of course the urban heat island effect.
Lot of snow in Australia in regions where it had no snow for decades… 😀
Krishna Gans,
Obviously Global Warming… Man-Made, of course! Natch.
“… for decades…” So, not really new… just not frequent.
Not my idea:
Widespread snow all over the East Coast of Australia – first time in decades
“ … for decades ”
So a pattern recurs.
Interesting.
“Had no snow for decades.”
So, it had snow decades ago, and now does again. Where’s the problem?
One of the best ways to defeat this global warming / climate change alarmism is to learn calculus.
Whooooaaahh there.
These people are befuddled by the “divide by” key on a calculator.
I rarely used a calculator when I was studying calculus.
When I studied Calculus calculators weighed about 50 pounds and had a lot of gears and things.
Also, I don’t recall the school having one.
Why should I learn calculus when all it takes to be a climate scientist is to use a ruler to draw a straight line between two points, and stick an arrow at the end going to infinity? They don’t worry about all those icky curves, and derivatives, and 3D, and logs, and error bars, why should I.
Why should I learn calculus when all it takes to be a climate scientist is to take a ruler and draw a straight line between two points and stick an arrow at the end going up to infinity?
Do they believe there are 57 “genders?” Uh-huh! Thought so . . .
Currently the APA has redefined transsexualism several times. “Transsexual” is in fact now “hate speech”. A few years ago they called the problem “Gender Identity Disorder” which was at least accurately descriptive, but now they have redefined even that as “gender dysphoria”, which is just feeling sad that society doesn’t let you live as your chosen “gender identity” – whatever that means – even though it doesn’t match your body, and it is no longer considered a mental illness at all.
Meanwhile actual medical science, aka doctors, identify a discrete problem with clearly defined symptoms, define an objective and measurable cause – say, a liver disease that can be diagnosed in the liver, an actual bodily organ, through drawing blood and measuring levels of chemicals in the blood and physical symptoms – and then invent medicines that bring the body back to a level of normality. Any shift in the name of said diagnosis must have an objective basis, and is not based on the patient feeling sad or maligned by the name of his diagnosis, or by the general public not believing there is such a thing as a liver or in liver enzymes.
Comments about science, coming from the #1 Post-Modern organization of all time? Where the majority of the findings from studies published in their journals cannot be replicated.
“Suggesting all science and scientific research is equally trustworthy is absurd. Suggesting you can blindly accept the word of climate scientists because scientists in other fields produce good work is more absurd.
Even the claims of comparatively trustworthy scientific fields like medical research and physics should not be blindly accepted without question; they both have their share of problems.”
Ya think? In fact, I trust a lot of medical research, when funded by Big Pharma, less than “climate science”. While the replication crisis is worse in soft sciences, the medical field is notorious for shady goings-on. I’m busy and don’t want to look up references. Maybe somebody else will oblige.
This is one reason I’m disgusted with President Trump. Not only did he cave on his Presidential Commission to re-assess climate science, there’s now even less chance that he’ll address corruption in science, in general. (Let’s not even talk about the fact that he should have convened such a thing his first month in office. Instead he WASTED 2 years, before even pretending to be serious about this plan.) We’ve already seen the stunning results when respectable, well-moderated, on-topic debates on climate are had by qualified individuals. SUPPORT FOR CO2 CATASTROPHISM COLLAPSES ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f-28qNd6ass ) Dr. Patrick Michaels has addressed positive results corruption in many talks (on youtube, e.g.)
CO2 catastrophism isn’t only a lefty priority – it’s a part of the plutocratic agenda. CO2 taxation, even if revenue neutral at first, will easily be converted into a regressive taxation scheme. A recent factoid illustrating this observation – counter intuitive relative to the propaganda – is that Nir Shaviv’s article on forbes.com lasted all of 3 hours before being taken down. See “Forbes censored an interview with me” @ur momisugly http://sciencebits.com/forbes-censored-interview-me
So, I believe Trump is capitulating to globalists and plutocrats that he’s surrounded himself with. Comments by Dr. Tim Ball lead me to believe that this is believe desirable because Trump is a “low information” President and can’t competently speak about real climate science.
Boo, hoo. He could have invited the likes of Nir Shaviv and Tim Ball to the White House, and essentially let THEM explain the basics, and pretend to understand (if he really is that out to lunch).
But NO-O-O! Trump’s rich buddies must be accommodated, not scientific truth. We will have little to no significant reform of climate science, or any other branch of science, while Trump is stumbling through his Presidency.
Perhaps these good doctors need a liberal application of leeches to permit some blood-letting, well known throughout history to be of great benefit to Human beings! I recall it was Robin Warren & Barry J. Marshall who discovered that stomach ulcers were caused by a bacterium, Helicobacter Pylori, brought on in part & aggrevated by stress. They were shunned by the deniers until accepted as being correct!
@ur momisugly Alan Brit
Cute, but wide of the mark. Thanks to Dodgy Geezer, below:
“Prof Ioannidis’ paper clearly shows that MOST medical research is false. Not just some, MOST. And it’s the most cited paper on Pub. Med.
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124“
LOL …. hey meta mars ….. have you ever tried to do any medical research? It’s not near as simple as ur sources would have you believe. In fact, in many cases, it is more difficult than running a climate experiment. …. and we all see how wonderful that is turning out to be …. sarc
“because Trump is a “low information” President”
I don’t see any reason to call Trump “low information”. He’s about the only politician that knows what’s going on in the world.
Trump said CAGW was a hoax. As far as I know, he hasn’t changed his mind on this subject. As for him not doing exactly what you think he should be doing with regar to CAGW, just keep in mind he has a lot on his plate. Give him a little time and maybe you will be pleasantly surprised.
Candidate Trump was asked about his views on climate change. He basically had nothing specific to say (we all know that temperatures go up, and they go down). He hadn’t even bothered to memorize some talking points, which is what the media usually only gives you time for, or reporting on, anyway! Sadly, Pence was also asked, and it was clear he hadn’t bothered memorizing a few talking points, either. (Or else he was pretending. I assume Pence serves the plutocratic class, also.)
As Trump has had talks with Dr. Happer (who was floated as a candidate for leading the Presidential commission), he was doubtless exposed to more facts, as President, than he could muster as a candidate. Ah, but what is the evidence that he actually absorbed any such such facts, to the extent he can repeat them in front of a news reporter? I’m not aware of any such evidence. Furthermore, he wasn’t even bright enough, or caring enough, to delegate climate presentations (to a Ball or Shaviv, e.g.), with him in prominent attendance.
Trump may have a lot on his plate, but that is why a Big Cheese must delegate. He came close to delegating some of the necessary correction to a Happer, or somebody similar, but in the end he just caved. His Presidency is more than half over (barring re-election), and he’s done NOTHING to educate the American public about the sad state of “climate science”. AFAIK, he’s also done NOTHING to reform the practice of any other branch of science, such as medical research, either.
Yeah, he’s withdrawn from the Paris climate agreement, and undone some red tape at the EPA. These can easily be reversed by the next Administration.
One of Candidate Trump’s big selling points was a professed desire to “drain the swamp”. Research by Gilens and Page give us a good idea how ubiquitous the “swamp” is – we live in a de facto plutocracy. Trump has done nothing to clean up the political swamp, and he is also failing to clean the science swamps.
A lot of people who despise Trump are moral voters, in that they will vote against him because, no matter how good the economy may be, they are concerned about the their children’s lives, and how viable they will be in a world of “climate crisis”. My first cousin’s wife is such a person.
Trump had it within his capability (using proxies) to all but destroy CO2 catastrophism as respectable POV in the minds of millions of voters. His slim margin of victory, in 2016, coupled with his incompetence in dealing with the corruption we are drowning in, in climate science and beyond, has left him vulnerable to a loss by the effects of propaganda tools like Greta Thunberg.
If Trump loses in 2016, by a margin less than a moral “climate crisis” vote, he will deserve his political demise. I will shed no tears for him, though probably a few for my fellow citizens.
Tim Ball reports legal debts of over $800,000, so far. If Trump loses in 2016, and the next Tim Ball gets legal bills of $3,000,000 and/or thrown in jail, will that then be sufficient for you to admit that Trump is incompetent at fighting scientific corruption?
“His Presidency is more than half over (barring re-election), and he’s done NOTHING to educate the American public about the sad state of “climate science”.”
Well, I think the American public is going to get educated about Climate Change (CAGW) in the near future because the Democrats are getting ready to have a couple of Climate Change public forums and no doubt Trump will weigh in, and then we’ll get to see what he thinks about the subject in a little more depth maybe. And if that doesn’t do it, then Climate Change will be discussed during the general election, so either way, we’re going to be hearing from Trump on this issue.
My money is on Trump. Every indication I get from him says he sees the situation clearly.
What are these “indications from him”, of which you speak?
Even if “Trump sees the situation clearly”, what good does that do anybody if he doesn’t communicate what he sees to the public? And what do you anticipate as “communication”, anyway? Frankly, even when I thought Trump was going to follow through with a Presidential commission, I assumed he – and his Administration and staff – would utterly fail to constructively and honestly propagandize it’s findings. I assumed that Trump would fail at educating the public, at large. I say this based on he and his Administration’s abysmal record at communication to the public, in general.
So, the most I ever expected from Trump and his incompetent media and communication team was practically nothing. I expected a few tweets from Trump, plus some one liners at his campaign rallies. I did NOT expect him to memorize even a half dozen talking points, to whip out at interviews, e.g.. Gee whiz, that might have required a full half hour of real, mental WORK by the President!
The real benefits, though greatly attenuated, would have come about DESPITE the Trump Administration’s communications’ incompetence – i.e, via alternative media and the likes of Fox news programs, addressing the Presidential Commission findings. Some talking heads exploding, at oppositional mainstream media outlets, would probably also have inadvertently opened the eyes and minds of some viewers.
Alas, even that won’t happen, now. So, if Trump loses due to a Greta Thunberg vote, should anybody feel sorry for him? I won’t.
What do you see Trump doing to clean up corrupted science, in general? I see absolutely NOTHING. I have my doubts that Trump even knows that there’s a general problem.
For that matter, feel free to weigh on what Trump has done to drain the political swamp. He fired Comey, who misused his office for political purposes, which was fine by me. But what has he done to take money out of the political process? I see absolutely NOTHING.
Thanks Tom, well said.
Trump has fulfilled, or is making progress towards fulfilling, a good number of his other campaign goals. Just because he hasn’t made much headway on your pet issue yet, does not mean he’s “capitulating”. You mistake his pragmatism for weakness. Going damn-the-torpedoes-full-speed-ahead is not his style. He’s a businessman first and a politician third. He knows his bombast on Twitter makes the lefties and their media lapdogs squawk in outrage like trained seals, so he uses it to keep them chasing squirrels so he can take his favorite seat at the negotiating table in peace.
And as for stumbling, well, you try navigating the political swamp of DC and see if you can keep your footing any better.
What did Richard Feynman say?
Gosh! Temperatures are cooler than predicted by models. The droughts and flooding predicted by the models has failed to appear. Yep, it’s the skeptics who are the ‘unscientific’ ones.
I disagree with Feynman here. Maybe he meant observation instead of experiment, since experiments are often wrong.
To get pedantic:
Properly, an “experiment” is where as many conditions as possible are controlled and one maybe two or three, are intentionally manipulated, following the presentation of a falsifiable hypothesis. The IV is allowed to have its effect upon the DV. The DV is measured – an observation is made. If the obtained / observed DV agrees with your prediction, the hypothesis cannot yet be assumed to be wrong. If the DV observation does not fit withe the hypothesis, then one of two conclusions are reached: one, your hypothesis is wrong, or two: something in the way you ran your experiment did not match the reality you intended to mirror (such as a proxy measure was used, the measure was biased by any of many recognized biases), and your hypothesis may remain protected – until a better test is done.
The power of the “experiment” is in the control of all possible influences except for the “manipulated” variable. This is done to “rule out” all other plausible explanations.
Merely observing things, such as observing correlations between things happening across time, such as examining rise in CO2 and temperature trends across time, is not an “experiment.” No suspected influential variable is manipulated. Here on earth, we have never intentionally varied CO2 as a manipulated IV, while observing consequent changes in temperature.
In observational science, we can get control in another, second-best, way: including all of the other possible influences as part of the calculation.
This is what is done in climate models. Since the other influences – ocean currents, humidity, cloud cover, sun spots, etc. – cannot be controlled, they are managed by also being included in the analysis.
This observational strategy is the best, given the circumstances, but epistemologically can never be equal in persuasiveness to the experimenter-manipulated experiment. Never.
You would have to run three or more other Earths. I will apply for that grant, if I do not have to pay back the money when I eventually fail to run three Earths, varying CO2 a bit in each.
This is the difference between the usages of “observation.” In manipulated experiments, you observe the DV. In “natural experiments,” we cannot control enough factors to eventually have as sure a logical conclusion as in experimenter-manipulated experiments.
Nicely stated.
You are basically correct. In observational sciences you cannot have completely controlled experiments. But you can’t ” get control” by “including all of the other possible influences”. For one thing you cann never knkw ALL the possible influences. For another, the more vatiables you introduce, tyhe less control you have.
The best you can do is make a calculation (model) based on what you think are the important variables and then observe whether your predictions are accurate. This is an “experiment” in the broad sense of the word.
TheLastDemocrat
I’m a layman. That was fascinating and I pretty well grasped it, I think, other than I’m not sure what IV and DV are.
Something that always puzzles me is that many people have tried to demonstrate by empirical observation that atmospheric CO2 causes the planet to warm. They have so far all failed, as far as I can gather.
I guess, from what you’re saying, it can never be truly demonstrated unless there is, as the alarmists always respond, another Earth to act as (perhaps?) a baseline, or, control group?
But you also seem to be saying that without another planet, the best we can achieve is observation of what we have which will never be ideal.
And I’ll make a silly simplistic analogy here: If a car breaks down and we start searching for a cause, which might simply be a partially blocked carburettor jet, a blighter to find, I know I have done this many times. So we go through all the variables but because it’s only partially blocked, the experiments we run are inconclusive and it takes more work to strip various parts of the engine until we eventually stumble on a tiny grain of sand stuck on the residual gunk we haven’t cleaned in five years, which is affecting the cars performance but not entirely stopping it. The solution might have been easier to establish had we an identical car with no known faults (the control) to compare against?…..silly, sorry.
However, if as some climate alarmists claim, human derived CO2 is responsible for 25% of the earths warming, surely that’s the equivalent of opening the bonnet and finding the carburettor is hanging off the manifold?
Shouldn’t that level of effect on our planet be patently obvious with simple scientific observation, without the need for a second Earth?
Sorry if this is just too dumb to answer.
IV = Independent Variable
DV = Dependent Variable.
I think it’s fair to give the benefit of the doubt to Feynman and say one could have chosen more precise words.
As far as I can tell, the Third Law of Thermodynamics exists primarily to shut up the lawyers who think they’ve found a way to break the second Law of Thermodynamics.
Lawyer: “But if I do everything at zero Kelvin then I can beat the Second Law”
Third law: “But you can’t reach zero Kelvin in a finite number of steps.”
Feynman ALSO said, “science is the belief in the ignorance of experts”.
In other words, check the figures for yourself, Don’t rely on a priestly cult to tell you what to think.
“a brief, two-minute survey changed skeptics’ views on climate change,”
Sorry, but based on the abstract at least, this is not a science-based statement. They did not, it would seem, do before and after measurements. They assumed the two groups were equivalent, then tested each differently. Also, what was the attitude toward science (real science) among the groups? Did most skeptics accept most science, just reject climate science? How about believers and their attitudes toward science?
The only thing positive I can see here is that they called us skeptics and not ‘deniers’.
Climate skeptics already have a more than superficial understanding of the science. That is why they are skeptics.
I’m an AGW sceptic because I’m a scientist.
Spontaneous human conception?
Conflation of sex and gender?
What have the psychos done for us lately?
Incompletely, and, in fact, insufficiently characterized and unwieldy. Liberal assumptions/assertions, and prophecies about time past, present, and progressive. Science is, with cause, a near-domain philosophy and practice.
That said, 10, 20, 100 degree temperature swings are normal. Welcome to planet Earth. Adapt.
“Conflation of sex and gender?”
That one probably irks me the most. Ten years ago, someone undergoing a sex change was called a Transsexual. Now you never hear the word, it’s always Transgender. And filling out a form that says ”
gender: male___ female___”, no those are sexes. Genders are masculine and feminine, and therefore behaviors, not sexes.
Frustrating.
The way I consider it is sex is genotype: male, female. Gender is the set of physical and mental (e.g. behavior) attributes (similar to phenotype) corresponding to sex: masculine, feminine, respectively. There are no transsexuals. There is a transgender spectrum that includes individuals who exhibit transversal physical and/or mental attributes, not through corruption, but through natural processes known and to be determined.
I already believe in science – and the scientific method. I think they need to find a way to make me believe in “stuff” put out by the American Psychological Association…
I’ve been around for a pretty long time now (not geologically speaking, but I’m in my 8th decade) and I have an excellent track record of separating the wheat from the chaff, and for recognizing what comes out of the rear end of a male bovine animal for what it is almost immediately…and it’s amazing how closely it resembles “climate science” as practiced by the warmistas.
This article is a very good example of why those of intelligence have a great mistrust of the purported science which now clutters up the MSM and official pronouncements particularly eminating from the IPCC and the UN .
The politicised nature of climate science and the underlying psychological manipulation of both the data and the presentation techniques has had a grave impact on the the reputation of the scientific community as a whole.
The academic institutions seriously need to address this problem.
We do believe in science that’s why we don’t believe climate “science”.
As for medicine – if I have something wrong with me I will go to people who have a proven record at diagnosing illnesses not a bunch of quacks who can only “diagnose” an illness if they adjust the data to “prove” the patient is ill in the way they say.
I would venture to say that climate science is to real science as homeopathic medicine is to real medicine.
The study of the workings of the brain by observing the ephemeral phenomena arising from its internal, biological processes seems like a worthwhile exercise, but one that can deliver only if it is treated as a pure science as distinct from the applied sciences and the illegitimate pseudo-sciences that proliferate with names like social science, domestic science, political science, climate science etc. Precision and rigorous controls are essential to a discipline that aspires to the status of a science, but most of all, objectivity is a fundamental requirement. The gullible, credulous and easily swayed are naturally excluded by the process of real science, particularly so where human lives and wellbeing are at stake and where only hard-nosed skeptics can perform to the required standard.
The wholly discredited practice of homeopathy is one in a long list of such “disciplines” that operate without reference to fact or other pesky fundamentals of science. And, now, we have the methodology of the American Psychological Association as revealed in its “survey”, which David Middleton has described as “retarded”, and how right he is, if somewhat oversensitive to the feelings of the APA’s members [irony]!
How can one consider with a straight face a claim by the APA to be a professional body when it advertises its deficiencies in the abysmally badly designed survey on which it bases its “professional” conclusions reported here! If I were a practicing member of the APA who took my work seriously, I would rapidly distance myself from an organization that seems determined to validate the observation about the patients of shrinks needing to have their heads examined.
This is absurd. Eco-fascist cancer has infected every organ of power in the west.
Again a group of academics, probably government funded, trying to figure out better propaganda techniques. We have seen studies on how to better indoctrinate our children from earliest days and apparently continuing studies to understand why conservative tend to be science skeptics. It is not that we don’t believe in science, in fact just the opposite. What we are amazed about is how many so called climate scientists reject Scientific Method and lack proper skepticism themselves. Some how, no matter how bad the models, doing work on a supercomputer makes things better that using Scientific Method.
“Again a group of academics, probably government funded, trying to figure out better propaganda techniques.”
That’s exactly what they are doing.
Yeah that’s really poorly worded.
Right…”How credible is the medical data that germs are a primary cause of disease?”
How about “How certain are you that they’ve identified the primary cause of Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, and Lou Gehrig’s disease?”
Or maybe “How certain are you that a handful of weather stations scattered randomly over the whole earth, and very few in the ocean for the past 20-40 years, and maybe 100 years, and data having passed through who knows how many systems and changed who knows how many times, represents the overall climate trend for the past 8000 years?”
Maybe it’s time to turn this around and show how climate change believers can be shown sanity through carefully worded questions.
“How certain are you that physicists’ theory of gravity accurately explains why objects fall when dropped?
It doesn’t “Explain” WHY objects drop. It describes the motion mathematically. Newton didn’t attempt to answer the question why. That was Leibniz’s big criticism.
Einstein took a shot at answering but it’s still a big mystery.
Physics is all about “how”, metaphysics is about “why”.
I would have to answer “Not at all certain”. And the phycologists would label me “science denying hick” and give up on me.
Science is not a belief system but rather a process of inquiry and experimentation to find answers. In this aspect, the so-called skeptics are far more interested in and involved with science than those pushing the CAGW agenda.