Global Warmers are Flat Earthers?

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Originally Posted by DarrinS

I agree that the science has become politicized. Who did that?

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Al Gore brought attention to it -- no doubt about it -- but the vast majority of climate scientists didn't seem to take issue with the science of his presentation, so I can't in good faith put it on him for misrepresenting data for political ends. At the same time, Bush 43 did the opposite and had a "What, me worry" position regarding climate issues, so we could put it on him, too.

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Originally Posted by DarrinS

Are you looking at the same data? The 2010 data?

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What explains the evenness of data for people over thirty if you get more suspicious as you get older?

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Originally Posted by admiralsnackbar

Al Gore brought attention to it -- no doubt about it -- but the vast majority of climate scientists didn't seem to take issue with the science of his presentation, so I can't in good faith put it on him for misrepresenting data for political ends. At the same time, Bush 43 did the opposite and had a "What, me worry" position regarding climate issues, so we could put it on him, too.

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Except that a British court identified 11 errors in the film and concluded that the film couldn't be shown in public schools unless it was made clear that:

1. The Film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument.
2. If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination.
3. Eleven inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.



The 11 errors are (according to the ruling):

•The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.

•The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.

•The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.

•The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.

•The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.

•The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.

•The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.

•The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.

•The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.

•The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.

•The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

In the matter of securing research grants, sensitivity to changing political moods is often key: no money, no study.

Bonne chance, science.

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Originally Posted by Winehole23

What explains the evenness of data for people over thirty if you get more suspicious as you get older?

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I never said it was linear.

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Originally Posted by Winehole23

If talking heads previously passed on the exaggerated imminence of the eco-collapse more or less uncritically, why should it surprise anyone now that they wave it away more or less uncritically, more or less according to the changed political mood?

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It doesn't strike me as being remotely ironic that the same media outlets are treating the issue the same way they always have.

It does, however seem ironic (or, more likely, just status-quo misdirection) that we, as a country, have allowed the conversation to be shifted away from policy issues we can all grasp, to scientific intricacies we're conditioned to argue about without knowing whereof we speak.

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Originally Posted by DarrinS

I never said it was linear.

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Well, you didn't say it wasn't either, until now. You just said people get more contrary as they get older. That's only part true.

My point in replying was only to suggest that the data you posted more backed up AS than it did you. The tables were only an apparent riposte: in fact, the data you posted kicked your ass. Again.

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Originally Posted by Winehole23

Well, you didn't say it wasn't either, until now.

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What is the antecedent of your pronoun here?

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Originally Posted by Winehole23

In the matter of securing research grants, sensitivity to changing political moods is often key: no money, no study.

Bonne chance, science.

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Same can be said for petrochemical companies having a vested interest in keeping their product viable, but we don't talk about either of these issues as often as we do about the science.

His would-be thesis. Correlation of skepticism with age, as recently restated.

It's a nonce.

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Originally Posted by Winehole23

His would-be thesis. Correlation of skepticism with age, as recently restated.

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Ah, gotcha -- not running on much sleep today. Too much celebration last night.

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Originally Posted by admiralsnackbar

Same can be said for petrochemical companies having a vested interest in keeping their product viable, but we don't talk about either of these issues as often as we do about the science.

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http://thumbs.dreamstime.com/thumb_1...3150FHh2c6.jpg

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Pincers!

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Originally Posted by admiralsnackbar

we, as a country, have allowed the conversation to be shifted away from policy issues we can all grasp, to scientific intricacies we're conditioned to argue about without knowing whereof we speak

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My candidate for best condensation of the thread so far. :tu

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Originally Posted by Winehole23

Well, you didn't say it wasn't either, until now. You just said people get more contrary as they get older. That's only part true.

My point in replying was only to suggest that the data you posted more backed up AS than it did you. The tables were only an apparent riposte: in fact, the data you posted kicked your ass. Again.

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You're smart.


EDIT> Oh, and here's what I originally stated.

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Originally Posted by DarrinS

I believe that most skeptics also tend to be older.

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Nothing in that graph is inconsistent with this statement.

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Originally Posted by DarrinS

Nothing in that graph is inconsistent with this statement.

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Fair enough. I misunderstood.

I apologize for allowing my whimsy to get the better of me. Srsly.

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Originally Posted by DarrinS

Except that a British court identified 11 errors in the film and concluded that the film couldn't be shown in public schools unless it was made clear that:

1. The Film is a political work and promotes only one side of the argument.
2. If teachers present the Film without making this plain they may be in breach of section 406 of the Education Act 1996 and guilty of political indoctrination.
3. Eleven inaccuracies have to be specifically drawn to the attention of school children.



The 11 errors are (according to the ruling):

•The film claims that melting snows on Mount Kilimanjaro evidence global warming. The Government’s expert was forced to concede that this is not correct.

•The film suggests that evidence from ice cores proves that rising CO2 causes temperature increases over 650,000 years. The Court found that the film was misleading: over that period the rises in CO2 lagged behind the temperature rises by 800-2000 years.

•The film uses emotive images of Hurricane Katrina and suggests that this has been caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that it was “not possible” to attribute one-off events to global warming.

•The film shows the drying up of Lake Chad and claims that this was caused by global warming. The Government’s expert had to accept that this was not the case.

•The film claims that a study showed that polar bears had drowned due to disappearing arctic ice. It turned out that Mr Gore had misread the study: in fact four polar bears drowned and this was because of a particularly violent storm.

•The film threatens that global warming could stop the Gulf Stream throwing Europe into an ice age: the Claimant’s evidence was that this was a scientific impossibility.

•The film blames global warming for species losses including coral reef bleaching. The Government could not find any evidence to support this claim.

•The film suggests that the Greenland ice covering could melt causing sea levels to rise dangerously. The evidence is that Greenland will not melt for millennia.

•The film suggests that the Antarctic ice covering is melting, the evidence was that it is in fact increasing.

•The film suggests that sea levels could rise by 7m causing the displacement of millions of people. In fact the evidence is that sea levels are expected to rise by about 40cm over the next hundred years and that there is no such threat of massive migration.

•The film claims that rising sea levels has caused the evacuation of certain Pacific islands to New Zealand. The Government are unable to substantiate this and the Court observed that this appears to be a false claim.

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Most if not all of those bullets are fair criticisms, but, again, Bush walked out on the Kyoto protocols causing what seemed to me at the time to be a much greater, and obviously political, level of controversy. He even went so far as to plainly explain his motives as being driven purely by economic projections (something to the effect of "if I'd signed that thing it would have ruined the American economy.")

Anyway, although I think Gore's film, on the whole, made a sincere (if narcissistic) effort to scientifically show why Bush's course of action was potentially short-sighted, I guess you're making me a believer that he was the first to make science the forum in which the argument would be had. Why it has remained there is, unfortunately, why health-care and finance reform have been moved into the realm of the ineluctable, I reckon: the harder they make it for us saps to grasp the substance of the issues, the easier it will be to pass things we don't understand.

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Originally Posted by admiralsnackbar

Why it has remained there is, unfortunately, why health-care and finance reform have been moved into the realm of the ineluctable, I reckon: the harder they make it for us saps to grasp the substance of the issues, the easier it will be to pass things we don't understand.

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Ah, the stab of life. Third item, below:

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Proverbs for Paranoids:

1. You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.

2. The innocence of the creatures is in inverse proportion to the immorality of the Master.

3. If they can get you asking the wrong questions, they don't have to worry about answers.

4. You hide, they seek.

5. Paranoids are not paranoid because they're paranoid, but because they keep putting themselves, fucking idiots, deliberately into paranoid situations.

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Left-wing academics tell us global warming is happening, and that it's going to be catastrophic, and that in order to stave it off we must massively centralize the world's developed economies and curtail personal freedoms.

In massively centralized economies, since decisions on resource allocations have to be made at a high level (rather than having large numbers of businessmen making localized decisions in a dispersed market), the decisions fall to state-appointed experts, who invariably end up being the left-wing academics.

I don't know about you, but when a class of people is making the argument that they need to be given unprecedented power and control over the world in order to save it, they better damn well have airtight proof. I'm not going on some fucking "precautionary principle."

Now when I start to find out that some of these scientists have been cooking the books on the data, or corrupting peer review, or whatnot, it starts to look a lot less like disinterested science and more like a class of people lying and cheating in order to take power.

This is straight Marxism! Marx was astounded that the merchant classes pulled off the first true class revolution when they overthrew the nobles. And now, the academics want to do the same, to overthrow the businessmen, convincing themselves they do it on behalf of "the people." Bullshit! They are craven bastards looking out for their own power and wealth, like all tyrants before them.

This is why when right-wing military dictatorships carry out coups d'etat one of the first things they do is imprison or kill off the intellectual classes, and why we should do the same.

Your entire thesis rests on the assumption that alternative energy sources would be state-owned, but do you have any evidence of any such thing?

If anything, wouldn't being less reliant on petroleum and coal and moreso on wind, solar, geothermal, chemical, etc de-centralize power and allow energy to be provided by a much larger pool of entrepreneurs who don't have the natural resources of, say, Texans?

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Originally Posted by admiralsnackbar

I remember getting called out months back for making the observation that it was suspicious that a scientific issue like GW was clearly being fought along partisan lines. People said "no, no, no... this is all about the science!"

And yet Fox News, the conservative blogosphere, and this board repeatedly confirm that the only people who consistently take issue with the theory are the die-hard, according-to-Hoyle right-wingers.

So I guess I'm still wondering: don't you find it at all curious that you guys -- none of whom have ever taken so much as a climatology course -- are constantly shilling cut-and-paste jobs attempting to undercut the theory of GW? Isn't it weird that there are plenty of liberal, centrist, and independent posters on this board who are just as educated and intelligent as you (political inclinations notwithstanding) that do not share your obsession with -- or out-sized skepticism of -- climate change?

Because y'all's comments almost exclusively seem to consist of cutting-and-pasting, making elementary deductions about raw data you've never looked at, and using old saws you learned in physics and statistics classes (much as those who choose to argue with you), I don't think the argument can be made that conservative philosophy better prepares you to be more capable of scientific analysis or critical thought than anybody else, so how do you account for the overwhelming majority of climate change denial coming from your ranks? Why do you think it's become a partisan issue?

Is it just the Al Gore connection? Is it because the theory threatens the petrochemical industry or the status-quo of global industrialization? Is it because investment in alternative energy will be expensive? If so, why not argue about it on those grounds, instead of pretending you have any grasp of the science being used besides the pre-digested cliff's notes versions you glean from other sources? Why politicize science when what you really want to do is talk about the political implications/consequences of scientific findings?

These are all honest questions meant in good faith. I really am curious what you guys make of the disproportionate level of skepticism in your political spectrum and am not trying to demean anybody or start shit, just calling it as I see it.

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I have a BS in Geology... so... I studied climates that ACTUALLY happened... not ones that are PREDICTED to... does that count?

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Originally Posted by Sec24Row7

I have a BS in Geology... so... I studied climates that ACTUALLY happened... not ones that are PREDICTED to... does that count?

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I certainly don't see how it could hurt, and you probably have a jump on most of us with respect to some of the theoretical foundations in the discussion -- but would you also grant that geology and climatology have very different purviews? And that geology is limited, as you say, to what has happened, while most climatologists (be they right or wrong) argue that this strain of GW is unprecedented in the sense that it's cause is human, not geological or celestial or what-have-you?

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Originally Posted by Homeland Security

This is straight Marxism! Marx was astounded that the merchant classes pulled off the first true class revolution when they overthrew the nobles. And now, the academics want to do the same, to overthrow the businessmen, convincing themselves they do it on behalf of "the people." Bullshit! They are craven bastards looking out for their own power and wealth, like all tyrants before them.

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I can see that. There's a definite whiff of New Class self-aggrandizement about it. I doubt global technocrats are very close to toppling political power, but it is a scary notion.

"we must massively centralize the world's developed economies and curtail personal freedoms."

You Lie.

Upping tax on transport fuel up to $7-$9/gal over an multi-year, inflation-indexed schedule allows people freedom of choice about what vehicles to buy, where to live in relation to their workplaces, etc, etc. No authoritarian dictation.

"people lying and cheating in order to take power"

Repugs? yes. Climate scientists from around the world? GMAFB

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Originally Posted by Homeland Security

This is why when right-wing military dictatorships carry out coups d'etat one of the first things they do is imprison or kill off the intellectual classes, and why we should do the same.

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In view of the will to power of pointy-headed academics and other cultural flaneurs, they all ought to be preventively jailed or shot.