Global Warming guy's response:> "realclimate", I've been on their website before. I'd prefer you make your
> own arguments instead of just link dropping as if I have never read
anything
> about the topic. I also refuse to accept the label of 'denier' which is
> clearly a reference to holocaust denier, which I find stupid and offensive.
I'm honestly sorry you find it offensive. It's certainly not meant to be.
I find it perfectly appropriate, since the science is clear, and the deniers
continue their denial in the face of overwhelming contrary evidence. The
denial consists mainly of obfuscation, cherrypicked and tortured data, and
plain lies.
Some might prefer the term "contrarian," but I would certainly be offended if
if someone applied it to me since it includes all kinds of loonies, such as
people who claim vaccinations don't work, or that the 9/11 attacks were
planned by the US government; so I won't use that term.
"Denier" is based on *denial*, and the resonance with holocaust deniers is
entirely accidental and irrelevant. It's also become a conventional term
among professional scientists for those who refuse to accept the science of
global warming. I'll continue using the term, and hope you will not be
offended.
> Science is ABOUT disagreement, the foundation of modern science is built on
> something called falsification,
Popper wanted you to think so. This is an extreme oversimplification.
(I should point out that your sarcastic phrase, "something called," *is*
subtly but deliberately offensive.)
> and evidence. Scientists do not prove
> things by popular vote, scientists don't come together and go, "hey, most
of
> us agree with this, therefore it must be right."
Yes, they do. By 1900 most physicists considered atoms to be real entities.
Ernst Mach, one of the greatest physicists, refused to accept atomic theory,
right up to his death in 1916.
In the 1950s and early 1960s, there were two strongly competing cosmological
theories: the big bang, and the steady state. The big bang had somewhat more
followers, but the steady state had many too; and the question was considered
open until the detection of the cosmic microwave background radiation
(predicted by big bang physics) changed most physicists' and astronomers'
minds. A very few scientists still push steady-state cosmology even now, but
the majority rule: the big bang is standard physics.
Einstein published his paper on special relativity. The world did not
instantly convert to special relativity; it took a year or two, while
scientists read the paper and absorbed it. Then it became standard science.
Whatever they may SAY about it, science is in fact what the majority of
scientists believe it is. Science is a human activity, not some absolute un-
human thing outside us.
Light moved at 300,000 km/sec before anyone measured it -- but nobody *knew*
that until it was measured AND the measurements disseminated, AND replicated,
AND generally agreed on. The things we observe are what they are, but our
*scientific understanding* of them is purely a human invention.
And the climate scientists have done this on anthropogenic global warming.
This is now indisputable. 97 or 98 percent of climate scientists agree that
human action is causing significant global warming. 1 or 2 percent are
unsure. 1 percent or less disagree.
The great majority of the deniers are NOT climate scientists.
And anyway, I prefer to accept what climate scientists say about climate, just
like I prefer to accept what physicists say about physics.
> No, I will not be
> convinced by appeal to authority or popularity which are both logical
> fallacies.
Then when you first mentioned it in conversation, you shouldn't have made your
first point the fact that a few scientists disagree.
And appeal to authority is quite acceptable as evidence that someone knows
what they're talking about (not about the validity of their argument, but
about the likelihood of the person knowing their subject well). A physicist
who speaks about neutrino mass very likely knows something about it. An
economist or a lawyer very likely does not. This of course doesn't mean
they're wrong; just that they're *probably* not worth listening to.
And science is NOT about logic. It's about discovery. Logic only rearranges
things you already know, in some order that makes what you know clearer.
Logic CANNOT tell you anything new.
> When did disagreements in science turn into attacks of being a 'denier'.
> For example, if I had a disagreement with a friend about whether or not
> there was life on mars, I would not think to call them a denier just
because
> they disagreed with me or the majority of scientists (who believe there is
> no life on mars),
Life on Mars is still very much an open question. If most scientists, as you
claim, believed there is no life on Mars, then they wouldn't be wasting
resources by loading every Mars probe with life-seeking experiments.
And recently far-from-equilibrium methane was discovered in the Martian
atmosphere. For decades before this, it was thought that such a discovery
would be a very strong indication of the presence of some form of life; no
abiotic mechanism is known which would generate a large far-from-equilibrium
methane content.
I personally suspect Mars is sterile; though I wouldn't bet on it, since no
instruments exist or are in planning which are capable of unequivocally
detecting even life on Earth from the distance of Mars -- so really we have
zero data on the presence or absence of life on Mars.
But I digress.
> I'd ask them to give me the evidence and I'd mull it over
> for a while and come to my own conclusion. This is what a discourse is
> supposed to be about. I'm extremely sick and tired of the accusations that
> the scientists who doubt global warming have some sort of vested interest
in
> doing so, I assure you, I don't get a cent from anyone for holding the
> opinion I do.
Oh, come on. You *do* know better than to generalize from yourself to some
population.
And you don't make any money from US politics, either; which does nothing to
prove the US government is not grotesquely corrupt.
And not all scientists who deny global warming profit from it. Many do,
though, and some of the loudest certainly do.
All the oil companies, energy companies, and so on pour hundreds of millions
of dollars into creating the impression that there is a controversy. Same as
the tobacco companies did in the 1960s and 70s. Same as the churches are
doing now against evolution. It's propaganda; and it often gets to smart
people like you, who should know better.
> And when you claim that the 'deniers' have a strong political
> motive for being that way, then I must remind you the sword cuts both ways.
> Environmentalists have a blatant political agenda for the results of this
> particular science. They WANT to regulate industry more, so they have an
> incentive to support this doomsday scenario, to scare us into agreeing with
> their point of view. I'm not scared of global warming, and I'm extremely
> leery of their fear tactics. The world is not ending.
Is it not?
1,000,000 species have gone extinct in the last century due to human activity.
That's by far the fastest extinction rate in the entire history of the planet.
There's no evidence that the rate is declining, and substantial evidence it's
increasing.
And there's substantial evidence that in fact we *have* caused a major change
in the entire global ecology. We have no idea what this may lead to, none at
all. It may be trivial, it be the greatest extinction event ever. Do you
think the chance of a major, serious event is ZERO? Really?
Your lists of deniers: I've seen lots of such lists before; most of them are
spurious, just like the lists of evolution-deniers the Discovery Institute
likes to circulate. Many of the names in the global warming denier lists are
people only peripherally associated with the science involved; many only claim
to be scientists, roughly like Deepak Chopra claims to be a scientist.
I'll only bother refuting one of them. The Heartland Institute, which you
cited, claims to have lists of "hundreds of scientists" who doubt global
warming. In fact, many of the people on their lists are outraged that their
names are there, because they explicitly do not believe what the list imputed
to them. Others on the list aren't even scientists, in any sense.
A typical reaction from one of the scientists on that list: "Please remove my
name. What you have done is totally unethical!!" Dr. Svante Bjorck, Geo
Biosphere Science Centre, Lund University.
http://www.desmogblog.com/500-scientist ... about-the-heartland-institute
Most of the other lists I've seen before, and are of the same ilk: spurious,
irrelevant, or fabricated.
Okay, I lied. I'll whack one more: your Nobel winner who claims to be a
"skeptic:"
http://www.canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/37841) The guy knows nothing at all about climate science, as his babblings make
embarrassingly obvious. He googled around a little, and that's all he knows.
He even admits it.
2) Who gives a shit if he won a physics Nobel for superconductivity? You're
just piling on the name to create an aura of authoritativeness.
3) A sample of the blunt ignorance of the reporter presenting the story can be
seen in the article just below the Nobel guy article; in which the reporter
says, "If you allow me to summarize, the LHC will recreate the Big Bang."
This is plain horseshit; the Big Bang was thousands of orders of magnitude
more energetic than can possibly be created in any earth-based particle
accelerator, ever. Period. The reporter understands nothing about physics.
Or climate science, either.
> "The science is
> unmistakeably clear."
>
> That's completely dogma, especially for something like climate prediction.
Bullshit.
Dogma is a stated belief without supporting evidence, and completely resistant
to contrary evidence. Show how the IPCC report is dogma. Do they burn
incense and chant prayers to Saint Svante Arrhenius? Do they have sacred
texts they force their kids to memorize? Bullshit.
You might as well say Einsteinian relativity is dogma.
It is in fact the conclusion drawn by VIRTUALLY ALL CLIMATE SCIENTISTS, as I
keep pointing out.
> Meteorologists can't even predict the weather from week to week,
Weather is not climate. You're confusing the issue.
What you said is exactly like claiming that since you can't predict any
particular coin toss, there's no way to know the probability is 0.5 of
flipping heads or tails.
> and you're
> declaring complete certainty for trends that last up to 100 years.
Don't put words in my mouth. That's offensive. At no time have I ever said
anything about complete certainty about anything, nor would I.
(On the other hand, some things are close enough to certainty that it's not
worth fussing about them. The world is not flat, it's round. Bjorn Lomborg
is a proven liar.)
> 1. Back in 2007, I noticed that the discourse around global warming was
> heading in way I could not support:
>
http://corner.nationalreview.com/> post/?q=NDRhZWFjYTc5ODcxMWZmOTYyMzY5ZmIwMmQ5MDg5M2M=
> "....Marlo. It is my intention to destroy your career as a liar. If you
> produce one more editorial against climate change, I will launch a campaign
> against your professional integrity. I will call you a liar and charlatan
to
> the Harvard community of which you and I are members...." - Letter from:
> Michael T. Eckhart (President of American Council On Renewable Energy
> (ACORE)
So what? Why bother mentioning this one whacko? There are whackos supporting
every opinion. That has nothing to do with the validity of the opinion the
whacko supports.
Come on, you're only bringing this up for dramatic effect, which has nothing
to do with the science.
And I'll bet you an ice cream cone that, as a percentage of talkers, talk like
your example is much more common among deniers than among people who accept
global warming.
> 5. I froze my ass off in the winter and looked around and wondered wtf was
> happening with the warming. It's been the coldest march in 7 years for
> Canada:
http://www.newstalk980.com/story/20090401/14335>
> -I noticed it snowed here recently (april), which is weird.
Oh, come on. This is just cherry picking. You *know* better than that.
> I realize that you don't even know what my claims are,
I know perfectly well what your claims are, since I've seen them all many
times before; and have seen all of them quite thoroughly refuted.
> and I don't even know what your claims are.
Sure you do. Climate science shows the earth is rapidly warming, that it's
caused almost entirely by humans, and that it's potentially disastrous for
nearly everyone.
> I do not know how much of the party line you tow.
That's "toe." Comes from 18th-century boxing: before the fight began,
contestants stood toe to toe at a line, or scratchmark. Or possibly from the
Royal Navy: a ship's crew would stand on deck for inspection, all behind a
given line.
I have no party line. I have no party.
> The following are a list of claims:
> 1. CO2 is a greenhouse gas that increases the amount of heat trapped on the
> Earth
> -anonymous support, nobody is against that idea, I am not against that idea
> 2. Humans contribute enough CO2 to increase the amount of heat trapped on
> the earth
> -some dispute this, and it is true that more CO2 is produced naturally than
> humans have contributed
This makes me angry, because it's a gross abuse of the facts.
Although more CO2 is naturally produced...
"...all of the recent CO2 increase in the atmosphere is due to human
activities...."
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/ar ... he-recent-cosub2sub-increase-is-due-to-human-activities/
And:
"We know exactly where the added CO2 is coming from, and it most certainly is
from human activity (mostly the burning of fossil fuels, but some is from
industry and slash-and-burn deforestation for agriculture). Carbon has two
stable isotopes (atomic weights), C12 and C13. Plants prefer to use C12 over
C13 (it takes slightly less energy to bond to C12 than to C13), so the
naturally occurring ratio of the two isotopes is skewed toward C12 in plants.
All fossil fuels were originally plants, and so if the C12/C13 ratio in the
atmosphere is changing toward increased concentrations of C12, then the source
of the new CO2 must be plants. In addition, since animal respiration isn’t
enough to skew the C12/C13 ratio and simultaneously affect the concentration
of CO2 and oxygen in the atmosphere, the source must be fossil fuels."
http://scholarsandrogues.wordpress.com/ ... ng-claims-a-reasonably-thorough-debunking/#m3
Some people claim the CO2 comes from volcanoes, but that's just more bullshit,
since vulcanism can't possibly account for more than about one percent of the
recent CO2 increase at most, and probably accounts for none of it. There are
other nonsensical claims, too, but I couldn't be bothered.
> Side note: CO2 is NOT a pollutant, and that it's idiotic to claim it is.
Nonsense.
Pollution is the excessive presence of waste material.
ANYTHING is a pollutant if there's too much of it.
And this point is silly and irrelevant. No scientist claims that CO2 is a
"pollutant," like lead or mercury.
> It's necessary for life
So is oxygen. Breathe pure oxygen at just two atmospheres pressure, and it
will kill you.
And this point is irrelevant, too. So what if CO2 is necessary for life? It
can still cause serious climate problems if there's too much of it.
> 3. The temperature of the earth will increase cataclysmically and we must
DO
> something to stop it
There's a nonzero probability that the temperature of the earth will increase
catastrophically, causing severe ecological damage to the entire planet.
How low does that probability have to be, for total inaction on such a massive
potential disaster to be culpable?
The worst-case scenario: The entire global ecology is wrecked, billions of
people die, and the large majority of species go extinct, in the worst
extinction event in the history of the planet.
What's the chance of that happening? 1 in 1000? 1 in 100? 1 in 10? Nobody
knows. I'd *guess* that it's 1 in 100. Is 1 in 100, or even 1 in 1000, a
reasonable gamble with most of the life on earth? Is it?
And that's only the worst-case scenario. More moderate scenarios, involving
only a few hundred million dead and only a few million square miles
permanently converted to desert, are more probable.
And we have the example of Venus. Earth and Venus began very similarly; now
Venus has an atmosphere of mostly CO2 at 100 earth-atmospheres surface
pressure, with clouds of strong sulphuric acid completely blanketing the
planet. We have no idea how it got that way, or why Earth didn't. And we
have no idea if what's happening now might turn Earth into another Venus. No
idea at all.
The central point is this: For the last century and apparently for the
foreseeable future -- if you have your way -- we are conducting an experiment
with the entire climate and ecology of the earth. Is such an experiment
justifiable? I say it certainly is not.
> 4. CO2 is the main driver of temperature
>
> I believe 3&4 are completely unsupported. #3 is bullshit because the
> earth's been warmer before (definitely in the last 12 thousands years).
The earth has been warmer before, but it has never warmed so FAST before,
ever.
A natural change of 100ppm CO2 takes roughly 10,000 years. The recent 100ppm
increase has taken just 120 years.
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Im ... ux_Rev_pngAtmospheric CO2 is at the highest it's been for 800,000 years. And we did it.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 53291a.pdf> And
> more controversially during the medieval warm period and we were fine and
> the polar bears survived that.
That's been comprehensively refuted, too.
I'm tired of digging out references.
I've had enough. This is taking me hours that I don't have right now. All
the points you've made (and many more, besides) are long-familiar to me from
many other sources, and they've all been thoroughly crushed in the
conservative peer-reviewed professional scientific literature. All of the
claims you've made are based on tortured or cherry-picked data, or plain lies
(*not* by you, but by other people that you've tacitly accepted).
A list back at you, for all your lists of deniers. Professional scientists,
as you know, gather in professional bodies, which among other things,
represent the interests of their members. Here are some professional science
organizations which *explicitly endorse* anthropogenic global warming as
described by the IPCC:
US National Academy of Sciences
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
The Royal Society of the UK
National Center for Atmospheric Research
American Meteorological Society
American Association for the Advancement of Science
NASA's Goddard Institute of Space Studies
American Geophysical Union
American Institute of Physics
State of the Canadian Cryosphere
Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society
Academia Brasiliera de Ciencias (Brazil)
Environmental Protection Agency
Royal Society of Canada
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Academie des Sciences (France)
Deutsche Akademie der Naturforscher Leopoldina (Germany)
Indian National Science Academy
Accademia dei Lincei (Italy)
Science Council of Japan
Russian Academy of Sciences
Australian Academy of Sciences
Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts
Caribbean Academy of Sciences
Indonesian Academy of Sciences
Royal Irish Academy
Academy of Sciences Malaysia
Academy Council of the Royal Society of New Zealand
Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences
There are NO professional scientific organizations, anywhere, that deny global
warming.
And Naomi Oreskes: "The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change: How Do We
Know We’re Not Wrong?"
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/resources/gl ... s-chapter-4.pdf
And a review published in Science magazine, of *all* peer-reviewed articles on
the subject "global climate change" published between 1993 and 2003, shows
that not a single paper rejected the consensus that global warming is human-
caused. Not one.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/f ... 5702/1686#If all that's just not enough, what *would* you in principle accept as
adequate evidence of anthropogenic global warming?
And if ALL THAT is STILL not enough:
"I say the debate is over. We know the science. We see the threat, and we know
the time for action is now."
-- Arnold Schwarzenegger, San Francisco, June 2, 2005
He also sent me this later:Documentation, from the Union of Concerned Scientists.
"This report documents ExxonMobil’s central
role in the current disinformation campaign
about climate science, identifying the campaign’s
rationale, who’s behind it, and how it has been
able — so far — to successfully mislead the public,
influence government policies, and forestall federal
action to reduce global warming emissions.
ExxonMobil’s cynical strategy is built around
the notion that public opinion can be easily
manipulated because climate science is complex,
because people tend not to notice where their
information comes from, and because the effects
of global warming are just beginning to become
visible. But ExxonMobil may well have underestimated
the public. The company’s strategy quickly
unravels when people understand it for what it
is: an active campaign of disinformation."
http://docs.google.com/gview?a=v&attid= ... tion%2FpdfMy initial response:My finals are coming up, and after that I have to move out of residence, and after that I am going on a mandatory field trip to geology field school (mapping salt spring island).
Once again, I have absolutely no interest in going through 50 pages of this stuff. If you believe one of my sources was funded by exxon mobile, by all means, point it out. But I did not use any 'dubious' sources for my raw information. I quickly glanced at the paper, and it has a list of 'disinformation sources', well, I do not believe I did use any of those sources. Most of my sources are from NASA and I use raw data from weather satellites and I use my geology background to come up with my own ideas.
I also have half a reply written to your previous email, but I am a perfectionist and will not send a reply until I believe it is good enough.
You stated that not all the scientists who disagree with anthropogenic global warming were bought. You believe many of them may be. I believe that some of them probably are being paid by exxon mobile or whatever, but I also have a strong distrust of the government. Anything they are intent on shoving down our throats is to disarm us, in order to strip more money off us. Scientists who research global warming are given many grants too, government money. There is much money to prove global warming is happening. As far as I am concerned, the money argument goes both ways, and I am not swayed by such arguments unless one can directly relate one of my sources to that sort of business, but I do not believe you will have any luck with that (with the exception of heartland perhaps, but I didn't really use that data for my conclusions at all, and I am not concerned with 'consensus' or any of that bull, I am only concerned with the science, if you are not interested in talking about the science, then I am not interested in talking about it.)
