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.
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” @ 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!
@ 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.
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
It’s even worse than you thought. Not only is much of the “science” wrong, when really good science comes along that doesn’t fit the mainstream chronic-care-medicine narrative, it is ignored or otherwise sabotaged. Good examples are the recent studies validating the Auto-immune Paleo Protocol (Alt et al), the reversibility of dementia (Bredesen), very low carb diets for diabetes (Halberg et al) and many others. There are also a lot of studies that are designed to create a desired outcome such as the Harvard/Willet “low carb” studies that are not sufficiently low carb to create the metabolic characteristics of true low carb, to give one of many examples. Overall, the poor quality of medical “research” is actually a strong argument to be suspicious of climate “science” since the immediate stakes are so much higher in medicine. Doctoring Data is a good book for people interested in this topic.
They are pushing “conversion therapy”; I thought this was a no-no!
Absurd!
The study is so idiotic I don’t know where to begin.
1. The presentation started with the premise that “skeptics” were wrong, with an objective of teaching “educators” how to change their erroneous thinking.
2. The example comparing climate science to medical science is silly. One accepts a lot medical “science” because their cause and effect hypothesis has been proven with hard data and experience. e.g. “How credible is the medical data that germs are a primary cause of disease?”
In contrast the question “How certain are you that global warming explains many of the new weather patterns we are seeing today?” avoids the whole issue of cause and effect and even data; relying entirely on “belief”.
The weird thing is the authors of this session are not aware that they are instructing “educators” in the skill of propaganda. Edwin Bernays would be proud!
TRUST has no place in science.
BELIEF has no place in science.
CONSENSUS has no place in science.
NULLIUS IN VERBUM – loosely translated as:
In GOD we trust, all others bring data.
That’s funny because it was my love of science and intelligence that allowed me to earn a PhD in chemistry. I was initially biased toward AGW but it was my science training that led me to the enlightened camp.
The “science’ of psychology is a good example of a science that has never proven anything of value.
Notice that the psychologist who examined Epstein certified that he was “not suicidal.” Psychologists are absurdly inaccurate in their evaluations of patients. Psychology qualifies as a junk science – every criminal trial produces two sets of psychologists – one (the prosecution) declaring the defendant to be normal, the other (for the defense) claiming the defendant crazy as a loon.
That’s Anderson’s Law: for every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. 🙂
Typical leftist projection, they are incorrigible.
Only a fool would say the climate doesn’t change. So why the trick name? The millstone they hung around their own collective necks, clearly has global warming chiseled into it. It is that very same collective who attaches the catostrophic alarmism to every new crystal ball gazing and palm reading that I rail against.
For near on thirty years I’ve had put up with this rubbish (and pay for it)with every new year telling me our end is nigh…..unless you give us more money to build more windmills to save you from what we are not exactly sure of but will be in a hundred years or was it eighty or fifty or…. .
Whats the latest tipping point or end of days? Is it 12 years, according to the socialiat congresswoman or is it 10 years according to the child that they now have fronting the scam to shame us into accepting it? I really am over it.
You said it, brother, or sister!
Yeah, just wait for the next “man-made” catastrophe.
My guess:
The changing Axial tilt of the planet, due to water use in India…
It’s like these people never read anything about Plate Tectonics, rotational mass balance, moments of inertia….
It took me three sittings to read through that BS. It is still making me nauseated. They committed the ultimate sins in science. Preconceived answers, experiments constructed to regurgitate their preconceived answers. Not to mention unethical and immoral techniques on how to manipulate people.
Or 18 months…That one has also been making the rounds
Bryan, have you got an exact date? I’ve missed so many, I just want to mark it in my diary. I’ve missed so many I’m starting to feel a little guilty.
Psychologists need to learn that not all science is created equal. The science that can predict the time of the next high tide or eclipse to the minute is not the same as the science that tries to predict the weather or climate.
How to know more about science than a psychologist in 59 seconds!
Nonsense. Psychology is an exact science, making many proven predictions, like … I can’t remember any, my memory is failing.
One of the biggest false equivalence problems is the word expert. There are two types of expert and all they share is the name.
There are engineers, airline pilots, concert musicians, chess masters, and others who have very trustworthy skills. We call them experts because they can reliably do certain complex tasks very well. When an engineer says a bridge won’t collapse, she’s right 99.999% of the time. That’s the first kind of expert.
The other type of expert is so called because she knows a lot about a particular subject. When she says something will or will not happen, she is correct only by accident. Tetlock points out that expert predictions are no more accurate than those produced by a dart-throwing monkey.
Climate scientists are predominantly the second type of expert.
I have heard it said that, if we don’t trust experts, we shouldn’t climb aboard commercial aircraft. That’s false equivalence in spades.
CB, there is third type of expert that you left out that has an exquisite skill that infuriates the scientific alarmist.
One that can smell bill tish a mile off.
In the purest sense, an expert is someone with expertise. Knowledge, even thorough knowledge, is NOT the same as expertise. Expertise involves the internalization of knowledge, theory, practice, and a few schools of hard knocks, simmered long and slow in a broth of experience. You can teach knowledge. You can teach theory. You can teach best practice. You CAN’T teach expertise.
The true expert will just be right, but will be hard-pressed to explain why. The fake expert can write a book (and often does) on how he or she must be right because INOSTUF, before being found out wrong. Unfortunately, the bloviations of fake experts are what get all the media coverage.
“How certain are you that global warming explains many of the new weather patterns we are seeing today?”
Loaded question. First you need to show that there are any new weather patterns today.
It is clear that psychologists will never get the hang of basic physics.
Now that would be an interesting study!
Why do you think they studied psychology and not physics?
It’s almost like they had these conclusions in mind when they started this study.
I’d like them to explain the Nobel Prize of Robin Warren and Barry Marshall, who were referred to as crazy by the scientific consensus and kept out of scientific meetings.
I started out as a “true believer”, it kind of intuitively made sense, but now I am a confirmed skeptic due to my belief in real science- you know the kind that isn’t settled – ever.
Not awkward at all. It is BECAUSE I believe in science (should be ‘the scientific method’) that I do not believe much of ‘climate’
seancescience and the purveyors of same.I have been looking for real, empirical climate science for two decades now and have not seen any.
If anyone has some I would be glad to see it. All I can see are studies that say may, might or should.
From what I have seen it is a field of study that has yet to produce any real science.
“From what I have seen it is a field of study that has yet to produce any real science.”
You obviously are a very perceptive fellow, Billy. 🙂
Modern Climate Science is 100 percent speculation. There is no solid foundation to this CAGW “science”.
“and many liberals cannot fathom that any rational human can doubt the scientific consensus on the issue”
Rational humans know that science is not “consensus” but rejection of hypotheses that are shown to be wrong.
For example, the fact that it is easy to demonstrate that urbanized areas(where most of the thermometers are) are warmer than low population areas completely disproves the hypothesis that a temperature based on all locations will accurately present the true temperature.
Rational humans also don’t believe that averaging temperatures means anything other than mixing oranges and apples make an orple.
Did it ever occur to them that “Belief” and “Science” are incompatible? You do not “believe in science”. You follow the predictions and see it they happen.
Someone send the one minute clip of Dr Feynman explaining the scientific method to them, and quickly.
There is real science and there is agenda science. Perhaps the designated pseudoscience handlers can be educated on that.
@tfa
Increasing reliance on authority to instill ‘scientific’ beliefs strongly suggests that Climatism is indeed a religion.
What was the science behind electro-shock aversion therapies ?
Happens, in USSR, mental institutions were tasked to re-educate dissidents.
I dare here any PSY related science pit “mind debugger” to come and disclose the source code (or anything alike) of the human brain.
Until then the whole “science of the soul” shall remain nothing but a scam.
Climate Science is much like Military Intelligence. It is neither. There is no Science in Climate Science, and for most intents and purposes, it isn’t about Climate either. It is about control.
“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.”
If they can try it, so can I, ie, find an intervention to change the current situation.
Psychobable won’t change the fact that climate change was, is, and always will be 100% natural.
They don’t even have the main source of atmospheric CO2 right, which is the ocean, not man.
They don’t know that the sun is the driver of ocean warming/cooling, extreme events, and CO2.
These psychologists promote the brainwashing of everyone else into submission so liberals can win.
“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. ”
My life experience in perseverance and resilience in the face of difficulties keeps me going against these manipulative warmists. Some people [warmists?] need training for this? It’s too late now for that kind of training, as these characteristics are not generally quickly acquired via osmosis by keyboard warriors. The people running this SCAM usually don’t have such experience, as they are pampered beneficiaries of society’s largesse, and to them, persevering and being resilient means ignoring skeptical contra-evidence while demeaning and dismissing skeptics, working under a complicit media’s blessing and cover, until we relent or no longer have enough power to stop them.
If they ever prevail, psychologists will clamour for even more ‘scientific’ behaviour modification.
The absolutely most profound thing has occurred here that proves brainwashing works.
The old adage is, ‘brainwashed people don’t know they’re brainwashed.’
These psychologists don’t realize they themselves are among the brainwashed!
Future symposium themes for all these mal-adapted psycho-babblers could be ‘How could we be so stupid and how did we go so wrong?’, ‘Are we doomed to being climate-stupid group-thinkers forever?’, and ‘The economic, political, and societal mental health benefits of warmist scientists admitting to being a group a self-deceived self-glorifying band of propagandizing charlatans with an entitlement complex.’
Psychobabblers: I can answer your climate questions – will you ask or listen? If not, why?
From the article: “he 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.”
What facts? All the CAGW alarmists have to present are endless speculation.
What would make a difference to skeptics is if you actually had some facts.
…and make them more open to the facts being presented by the other side.
On top of their speculations, the obvious display of their core hypocrisy. The flip side is what will make warmists more open to the facts and ideas presented by skeptics? They think fairness means skeptics must do all the listening and obeying.
They clearly expect to impose an explicitly one-sided relationship onto skeptics: receive and accept their gospel, repent and submit to their ‘authority’, and certainly don’t have any unauthorized ideas of your own.
I think there is a good analogy here. I understand medicine has many benefits. I guess you could say I believe in it. But I am very skeptical of many recommendations concerning medicine. I don’t “believe” in every prescription every doctor makes. There are many overprescribed medicines where lifestyle changes would be far more beneficial. There are prescriptions that engender far worse side effects than they address in many applications. Many drugs are of extremely high cost with limited to paltry benefits. The argument that we should listen to climate scientist like we listen to doctors is very flawed as climate scientists have no special understanding of their proposed remedies (solar, wind, batteries). But also do they really place so much blind faith in their doctors?
Planning Engineer
It is my personal opinion that physicians are generally more skilled at repairing trauma or removing diseased tissue than they are at identifying and curing debilitating maladies such as viral infections, dementia, heart disease, arthritis, and ALS. My personal physician, in one of his more candid moments, told me that they can measure blood pressure, but often don’t know why it is elevated or irregular. All of that speaks to medicine being more of an art than science.
I have worked in the Pharmaceutical industry for a long time. In that time I have learned we do not actually know how most the drugs function. Read a pharmacology report with with the drug or drugs you are taking. There is a great chance that you will see the phrase “while the specific function of the drug in unknown…” somewhere in the pharma-kinetics section.
The only time I want a physician near my body is if I have had a structural failure. This is an engineering problem not a medical issue.
Physicians are not trained in healthcare. They are trained to only manage acute and chronic diseased states, physical trauma related maladies. Again one is an engineering issue with engineering solutions available. The other two are disease states, that if we were honest are more likely to be self-inflicted. Physicians are powerless to prevent self-inflicted behavior.
I became a sceptic, when once I believed. Explain that.
I know what turned my mind around, Friends of the Earth lied about something physical, the location of a place, that I knew the opposite was true. They said it was in the open Countryside and was a valuable natural asset, and I knew it was between the sewage works and factories and urban sprawl and was worthless as a natural asset.
I then checked a lot of what they said and found it nearly all lies. I paerhaps should not assume all green stuff is lies, but a lot of it is questionable.
for instance, PET plastic is an organic compound made from the remains of plants (oil), cellophane and paper are organic compounds made from the remains of plants. I know both are bio degradeable but the green blob tells me plastic is different, well go figure!
Plastic just takes longer because its polymer construction, by design, resists most common forms of degradation. If biodegrading paper was demolishing a single building, biodegrading plastic would be demolishing all of downtown Chicago, with the same size demo team.
From the article: ““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”
There is no consensus on CAGW. The 97 percent consensus alarmists cite constantly is just a Big Lie. Another thing this professor thinks qualifies as “fact”. She thinks a lot of things are true for which there is either no evidence or there is evidence of just the opposite. There is no evidence for CAGW, and there *is* evidence that the “97 percent” consensus is a Big Lie.
Back to the drawingboard, Professor.
“Leveraging Cognitive Consistency to Nudge Conservative Climate Change Beliefs,” is available on Research Gate…
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329899480_Leveraging_cognitive_consistency_to_nudge_conservative_climate_change_beliefs
The survey is on pages 16-18 and it it totally fracking retarded.
Survey questions
It’s a good thing Einstein, being skeptical of Newton’s law of gravity, didn’t conform to such “logic”.
Just one example among thousands (millions?) of how science advances more from the skeptics than from the conformists.
From the article: “and “How certain are you that global warming explains many of the new weather patterns we are seeing today?”
What new weather patterns? These CAGW True Believers are delusional. We haven’t seen any weather patterns today that haven’t been seen in the past.
“How certain are you that global warming explains many of the new weather patterns we are seeing today?
We aren’t seeing any new weather patterns. I stopped reading at that point.
Well, I am pretty skeptical and I can be convinced to believe in “science” quite easily. All they have to do is present something that is logically consistent, reflects the state of the art, and meets the publishing requirements of science journals.
Remember, a publication being accepted does not mean that what it contains “is true”. Journal articles are a conversation. It is a way of disciplining the interactions between highly opinionated investigators. Publication does not mean “truth”, it means “supposedly checked against other publications that have also been checked against other publications before them”.
If an important aspect of a previous publication was not noticed by the new author, the reviewer will point to it and ask that it be considered before proceeding with the publication.
A reviewer does not have a veto on publication, only a strong opinion position. One of our students recently had a strong push back from a reviewer who was insisting that words be added that were not scientifically sound. We cannot do that. Just because a reviewer is not fully competent doesn’t mean we dilute our quality to suit them. The author can appeal to the Editor to ignore such a request. One can also ask for a different reviewer(s) where there is evident hostility or gate-keeping.
Obviously there is room for corruption because the Editor can conspire with the reviewers to block certain people or opinions. That is why there are multiple journals for everything under the sun. Yes, whole sectors can be captured by a mob (as is the case with Science and Nature on Climate Science). Tough buns – publish where you can and make your contributions as relevant as possible.
The truth will out. The bias exerted by Science and Nature will one day come back to bite them hard. They are anti-science in the broadest sense, because they have permitted such manipulations to take precedence of the valid conversations.
This was merely a session in how to spread propaganda. No science is needed.
From the article: ““We were pleasantly surprised that a brief, two-minute survey changed skeptics’ views on climate change,” said Robinson.”
Don’t get too excited. To win over skeptics you have to have facts, which you don’t have. If you win someone over to your side, you are not doing it by producing facts, you are doing it by convincing someone that everyone else believes in CAGW and they should, too. You are manipulating their emotions. In some circles it is called brainwashing.
The problem for the CAGW Alarmists is they cannot provide any evidence for what they claim. That’s the skeptic perspective you must deal with if you are to understand your problem. And since she obviously believes there is evidence, she won’t listen to me, and therefore, will continue to be confused about the issue.
The examples given here are related to whether the temperatures have warmed, omitting the detail of it being warming following the Little Ice Age. They also do not address whether there is scientific proof that humans have caused all of the warming through carbon dioxide emissions.
The take away from this is, psychologists have very little understanding of science or of scientific method.
They are probably well versed in how to influence the uneducated though….
False dichotomy, it is the climateskeptics who believe strongly in the scientific method in this post-scientific era.
“How credible is the medical data that germs are a primary cause of disease?“
Straw man. What kind of disease are we speaking of? Most cardiac disease is not caused by ‘germs ‘. Cancer is not caused by ‘germs’. Garbage in garbage out.
I agree that most people who become skeptics can be taught to be good scientists – if fact many are already there. They have the key trait of a good scientist – some skepticism.
Teaching members of the American Psychological Association to be scientists is a lost cause. It seems that any field that deals with people only attracts at best pseudo-scientists (with likely a few exceptions), and at worse a bunch of quacks. These people should go back to their healing crystals and safe-places to reflect on the imbalance of their Yin and Yang, and leave science to people who can understand it.
I’ve always said that if I had a dim, lazy child I’d push them towards a career in journalism. After reading this, I’m adding psychologist to the list of career options for such a child.
Took a course in Psychology while earning my engineering degree as it was an acceptable elective. Got an “A”and decided to take another easy “A.” Got another”A” but what I really learned was that none of the theories taught used proper scientific principals in verifying their conclusion. This conclusion has been affirmed by recent postings here on WUWT.
Userbrain
My first ‘Easy A’ in college was a psych’ class also!
Exploiting the halo effect?
Just a quick comment…
The initial Post, and all subsequent comments, Gave Robinson a promotion, from MEd (Master of Education) to Doctor.
I don’t think anyone doubts that climate is changing, and has been ever since the Earth has existed. The great ice age has been melting for some time, with heat waves and mini ice-ages in between. The question is whether we (humanity) can do much about it and what, if anything we should seek to achieve… and that, no science has answered yet.
I am sure 97%+ of skeptics DO believe in climate science, what they are more skeptical about is whether that which the Climate Taleban present as ‘science’ stands up to the rigours of data reproducibility, deductive reasoning and legitimate attempts to refute conclusions postulated.
I am exactly the same where medicine is concerned. I am well aware that antibiotics do what they say on the tin, having been treated successfuly by them once for a severe throat infection. I am well aware of the transformative effects of joint replacements, my elderly parents both having enjoyed many years of normal mobility as a result. I am sometimes more skeptical that certain antidepressants have a benefit:side-effect ratio to justify using them. I am also aware of small populations having severe reactions to certain medicines and vaccines that makes their blanket prescription controversial and occasionally ill-advised.
Even then, I know from personal experience that 95%+ of head colds need no more than a cocktail of hot lemon and honey to break symptoms, with a shot of whisky added for the more extreme ones.
I am well aware that a healthy diet is a better prescription than chronic medication and clinical trials have shown that paying depressed people to have a dog is more cost-effective than prescribing antidepressants. Evidence-based medicine does not lead ineluctably to pills being prescribed.
The first rule of personal scientific evaluation: do not believe what you are told uncritically and unquestioningly.
Science isnt a belief system. You don’t “believe” in science. Science is a method. It is used to examine and document the world around us. Religions and cults are belief systems.
> Difficult for Both Skeptics, Environmentalists…
What in the world made them assume a skeptic cannot be an environmentalist? I’m both and there are lots of others like me at the meetings.
Starting with a false assumption or assuming a dichotomy not in evidence and you are guaranteed a false conclusion. Even the pseudoscience of psychology knows that.
I think they have it backwards. We are skeptics because we looked at the science or lack of it.
Now the CAGW types should look at science.
I wonder if there’s a psychological path that would convince close-minded academic progressive warmists that skeptics are correct?
So this M.Ed. is going to undo my 20+ years of study with a two-minute survey, eh? Good luck with that, bottom-feeder.
“MEd”?
MEd is an abbreviation for “Master of Education”>/b>
Now there is a surprise…
An educator with a minimum of understanding claims to be able to convince sceptics by “asking questions”.
One would think Psychologists would understand that when pressured by teachers with religious attitudes, people would not be comfortable and would minimize confrontations.
“many liberals cannot fathom that any rational human can doubt the scientific consensus on the issue”; of which Carly D. Robinson is clearly a member.
teach the topic and encourage conversation while emphasizing authority and consensus…
Soft science prevails when liberal teachers are truly mental.
Stalinism at it’s finest.
They keep using that word “facts”. I don’t think it means what they think it means.
I honestly wish everyone would stop conflating climate change with liberal politics. I understand that it is a cause of the left; however, the facts and the science are politically neutral. I am a liberal democrat, and highly skeptical of the catastrophic climate change narrative on many fronts, all relating to the underlying science. I am a physicist, so I have some bona fides when it comes to questioning the science. I am not an expert in any of the relevant specialties, but adequately versed in the fundamentals to know there is much we do not know about natural variability, climate feedback mechanisms, and other important aspects.
Obviously, and unfortunately, you are a tiny minority of those with your “party” affiliation, and your “party” can’t seem to field a single candidate who has the slightest sense of reason on this subject. It is therefore difficult at best not to conflate climate change with liberal politics.
It would be interesting to do a mirror image study where you took surveyed participants certainty of AGW, provide them information regarding medical “truths”, that have been reversed by science (dietary cholesterol correlates with blood serum cholesterol, stress causes ulcers, any amount of salt is bad for you, etc.) and see if their AGW certainty changes.
@ Eric Worrall
In 26 September 2015 New Scientist ran an article ‘Morality 2.0’ ” Can we hack our outdated psychology to save the world”.
It talked about various ways to bring about change of thinking in people,with suspect morals such as ‘climate skeptics’ such as shaming but also this on page 39 there is this:
“…philosophers Ingmar Persson of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and Julian Savulescu of the University of Oxford argue that our moral brains are so compromised that the only way we can avoid catastrophe is to enhance them through biomedical means”
“In the past few years, researchers have shown it might be possible to alter moral thinking with drugs and brain stimulation”.
Obviously the individuals here and the APA have not read Hans Rosling’s ‘Factfullnes’ and how our knowledge and morality has reduced deaths from natural causes and improved the lives of billions even while the human population grows.
Give the liberals a survey asking them if they were aware of the controversies in climate science.
Like “Did you know much of the raw temperature data has been altered without explanation?
Then see if they more skeptical.
What do Liberal and Conservative have to do with science anyway?
“What do Liberal and Conservative have to do with science anyway?”
The left (“liberal” is the wrong word here) has seized upon climate change (not science but made to seem like science) as a means of reaching their global, government control goals.
Present them with this fact: July 2019 was supposedly the hottest month ever recorded. I wandered over to the NOAA GHCN data sets and updated my database with the daily TMAX, TMIN, and TAVG for the GSN data set. NOAA identifies the GSN as “The GCOS Surface Network (GSN) is a global network of over 1000 stations selected from the network of many thousands of existing meteorological stations. The GSN is intended to comprise the best possible set of land stations with a spacing of 2.5 to 5 degrees of latitude, thereby allowing coarse-mesh horizontal analyses for some basic parameters (primarily Temperature and Precipitation).”
So a pretty good data set, amirite? I wrote a PL/SQL block for my database to calculate the warmest July averages of both TMAX and TAVG for each of the 991 stations in the data set.
Forty-two out of 991 stations listed the July 2019 TAVG monthly average as its warmest ever. None of the stations in France did — the best July 2019 did was 2nd place at two stations, and one of the stations had it way down around 8th place.
Fifty-two stations showed the July 2019 TMAX average as the warmest ever. Fifty-two out of 991; that’s 5% of the stations. I have to look at the data some more, to see how much manipulation is required to have 5% of the world’s stations push the average up to the #1 spot.
Climate Skeptics Can be Convinced to Believe in Science
What about enthusiasts and fanatics for reducing anthropogenic CO2? Can they be convinced to believe in science?
I hope it was noted that the APA apparently doesn’t mind being affiliated with the Stalinist practice of presuming insanity at the questioning of political opinions. The also seem quite confident that people trust “medical science” (most assuredly a stinging oxymoron). So called “medical science” is of course completely co-opted by the poor studies conducted by major pharmaceutical concerns which literally _govern_ those truths that the public is permitted to hear, along with the medical treatments permitted to be offered by physicians. The AMA, hand-maiden to these pharmaceuticals orchestrates all truth and in para-military fashion provides doctors with the treatment regimens that they may offer. Their “studies” are often flawed to the bone (no pun intended), featuring: non-statistically representative populations (insufficient sample sizes), among other critical study flaws. Alongside this total corruption of scientific values, they maintain a bevvy of marketeers who search for “anti” information on the Internet and immediately counter it with their own “truth” – which is only “truth” in the Orwellian sense. Thus here we are – welcome to the USSR.
I’m sorry but to date I haven’t met any climate change proponent that was interested in convincing me (a skeptic) to their point of view. Instead they expect me to believe them without question.
Are crystal balls really made of crystals ??
Who says they dont believe in science. To be sceptical of climate science is a good sign, that they believe in science.
I highly suspect every single utterance that’s coming out of all the social sciences and much of so-called medical science, these days. You know how to fix it, APA. Make non-vague predictions that can be tested. Then test. Then accept when things are falsified by tests. Then wait for replication by the thousands, and study patient populations with double blind tests, control populations, the whole nine yards. Any person demanding that I be alarmed by some dicey statistical variation in a noisy stream of data ought to just save their wrists from carpal tunnel syndrome and spare me their tendentious bullshit.
Oddly Psychology , unlike climate ‘science ‘ , accepts the idea of critical review and understand that consensus alone does not offer validity . Its seems these authors have forgotten their own basic training . Although if they are chasing the ‘climate doom’ funding trail , it is the right action to take .
What kind of serious paper starts with the phrase, “Climate change conversations can be difficult…?”
What reason is there to read on?
I believe the “scientific method” is a good method of understanding the world around us.
But since the “climate crisis” bullshit has nothing to do with the scientific method, I will never “believe in” what laughingly passes for the “climate science” of which these psychobabble propaganda merchants are speaking.
How did the old Soviet Union deal with skeptics that would have been too inconvenient to kill?
They sent them to insane asylums.
When it is my time, I’ll have both my jacket, and my Macallan …. straight.
or work camps in Siberia
That serial killer, child molester is a master chef.
For your young daughter’s birthday, therefore, you should hire him to prepare the celebratory meal.
After all, any master chef represents the standard for ALL master chefs, right?
And if you don’t believe that the serial killer, child molester master chef is the man for the job, then you must not believe that any master chef is right for the job. Serial killer child molester master chefs are like any other master chef, right? So, submit to their expertise, you deniers!
Could we agree to exempt rhe illustrious Dr. Jordan Peterson from the plethora of insults rightly hurled at the Psychologists ?
Climate Alarmism and Global Warming are a religion and have almost nothing to do with Science. There s nothing scientific about Climate Alarmism and Global Warming.
“believe” in science?
Since when did science require *belief*?
Stalin, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Un…..? Whatever their Fearless Leader says it is I suppose if I know leftys. Still you can’t blame them for the Groupthink and toeing the Party line under the circumstances as individual thought and questioning is a very bad career move.
Al Gore said we know the oceans are rising and there is nothing we can do about it but if we don’t do something soon the oceans will rise more. Not a direct quote but close from what I got. Maybe Gore has been convinced by a psychiatrist or his pocket book.
Unfathomable ignorance coupled with incredible arrogance describes the average liberal academician today.
Held in high regard only by other like minded ivory tower bigots. Just a big circle of government funded clowns…slapping each other’s backs.
Academia has become an effective and lucrative form of organized crime. Join us and we’ll hand you a pile of (other people’s) money. Resist, and we’ll (attempt to) ruin you.
So that the APA is aware.
If the APA were to show me the actual mathematical equations or system of equations with which we have both observational and empirical evidence and the GCM models were to match what the atmosphere is doing or has done that would go a long way. However, it would not be enough by itself as it would only be a single data point in the grand scheme.
Let me also correct the APA’s base supposition: the physical universe does not require my belief nor would my belief change the physical universe to my thought processes. Belief or believing is not a scientific process. If you math to both qualify and quantify belief and believing I might be persuaded to at least read that paper.
F=ma –> does not require belief
j*=σT^4 –> does not require belief
Asking, “Do you believe in Climate Change?”, is NOT a scientific question. It is anti-scientific; has a preconceived bias of thought that climate should not change through any means. Even worse they are asking this about a planet that is still both geologically and biologically active. Of course the climate changes. Full stop. Period. No Belief required. Now show me a place on planet Earth where the climate has actually changed and is this change global or local. Ask me a rigorously constructed scientifically disciplined interrogatory so we can have an honest discussion. I can tell you honestly that your intentions to manipulate me will fail.
Most medical and, I will throw in nutritional, science is just as borked as climate science. The reasons are the same. We have to use either proxies, analogs, approximations, thought experiments or worse models. For examples, I give you bomb calorimeters and the BMI charts. The charts are mostly still based on the work done in the 1830’s and 1840’s for a version human beings that may not even currently exist on the planet.
I do not trust the analytical platforms from which the data is collected, I do not trust the validation and maintenance protocols of said instruments, do not trust the statistical processing and treatment of the data, I do not trust that the operators of the platforms have been certified validated training and not adding bias. Even if the data has a modicum of trustworthiness they are at best “about numbers” with dubious actionable scientific value. Now who I am say these things. I have FDA GMP, GLP instrument and method validation training. I have been an operator, analyst and, service engineer/technician for nearly every known analytical platform for more then 25 years. Analytical instruments that the human species uses to understand our world and universe. I have designed and implemented a number of LIMS and MES over the years.
Furthermore, where does all the energy from a hurricane originated(rhetorical)? Very little, if any, of it has to do with humans.
http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/tcfaq/D7.html
Given this how much/used electricity(thermal) our species makes in a year versus a thermal output a day for a hurricane.
Fairly current eia.gov information.
https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/data/browser/#/?pa=004000001000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000fu&c=4100000002000060000000000000g000200000000000000001&vs=INTL.44-1-AFRC-QBTU.A&vo=0&v=H&start=1980&end=2016
And again some of these data are “about data” and a thought experience and purely a mathematical model. However, the amount energy stored in the oceans, beamed in from the sun makes ours like less than a drop of water.
And to the APA — I am skeptic for specific scientific, methodological and, data collection and data reduction reasons. And not for the preconceived and idiotic notations of this paper.
None of the above means we should not think on things, not be better stewards, and strive to construct more harmonious technology. We can and have cause local environmental damage. To our credit we have recognized this and have implemented remediation plans. Being a skeptic is not mutually exclusive for caring about the environment or being a conservationist.
Being a skeptic is about protecting humanity’s freedoms and to ensure a high standard of living to every human being on the planet.
“American Psychological Association: Climate Skeptics Can be Convinced to Believe in Science”
Translation:
“Our Climate ‘Science’ ads need for bells and whistles.”
“How certain are you that physicists’ theory of gravity accurately explains why objects fall when dropped?”
Whatttttttttttttttttttttttttt? Main stream scientists don’t know what gravity is. The electric universe scientists at least have a plausible explanation for it, but main stream scientists are clueless.
Gravity is one of those things where we know “how” it works, to the point we can mathematically simulate it to a reasonable degree of accuracy, but the “what” and “why” are still very much up in the air.
@drednicolson
‘ “what” and “why” are still very much up in the air. ‘
Pun intended?
or
Happy coincidence?
Has it crossed the minds of that busted-ass “American Psychological Association”, that most of the “skeptics” they are referring actually have science degrees and that the psychologist twerps positing upon their false-premise don’t even have a science degree?
Clowns! Sad clowns too.
“””….How certain are you that global warming explains many of the new weather patterns we are seeing today?…”).
So total acceptance that there are “new weather patterns…”.
That is opinion not science!!
Also Psychs have been responsible for totally f……g up peoples live with their “science” and it looks like that will continue with the Transgender/ Dysphoria debates IN MY OPINION!
Let’s have a little survey of our own. Perhaps we can start with:
“In 1970, 97% of nutritionists believed strongly in the scientific consensus that dietary fat caused obesity. How strongly do you believe that same scientific consensus?”
Yes! And we could also add questions that make past, but diametrically opposed, claims, like
“How strongly to you believe the scientific assertion that eggs are unhealthy?
“How strongly to you believe the scientific assertion that eggs are healthy?
“How strongly do you believe the science that indicates that butter is unhealthy, and that it should be replaced with healthier margarine?”
“How strongly do you believe the science that indicates that margarine is unhealthy, and that it should be replaced with healthier butter?”
Good additions! Other mentioned the scientific consensus on miasma theory, that disease is caused by “bad air.”
O’Sullivan’s Law applies: the APA turned hard Left decades ago.
I’ve come across this. Apparently I’m cherry picking what I consider robust science and what is not.
In God we trust, others must show their data.
And computational models aren’t data….
And computational simulations aren’t data…