Climate Change skeptic

[moda0306]

Moda,

1.  I doubt the 97% (aside from 97% of all NY times staffers, scientists, etc) but it is simpler to point out that either way it is irrelevant.

2.  "If we're talking about models, please list your sources. "

Seriously?  If there were any model that could predict temp with accuracy, there would be no need for all these discussions.  As a skeptic the onus is not on me, the onus is on the chicken littles to prove that any of their models is accurate.

3.  and one of the problems i.e. conformational bias is better described by Jryan on another board:

It used to be that in all scientific studies the theorists, data collectors and data interpreters were all different people.  This was done because it is well known that a statistician, when given an expected answer, has a 75% chance of proving for that expectation.  It's simple conformational bias.

The problem with the fledgling Climate sciences is that we have a bunch of jack-of-all trades people who do all steps of the process personally and have managed to prove their own hypothesis, and groups of scientists who have become tied to these conformation biases in the existing data.

Michael Mann is only one, but makes a great case in point.  Following his career shows that his work is horribly corrupted by confirmation bias.  In the late 90s he made his name by "proving" catastrophic climate chance through his "hockey stick" graph that showed global climate remaining unchanging for the last 2000 years and "disproving" the existence of the global  Medieval Warm period.  Fast forward through all of his subsequent studies and resulting reconstructions and you see, as the scientific "consensus" starts to reconsider their abandoning of the MWP (as historical and scientific data re-proves what was already known), that mysteriously Mann's reconstructions have started showing the MWP again.

You simply can't trust a theorist who does their own statistics.

http://forum.dansimmons.com/ubbthreads/ ... art=7      scroll down to post #159468

To hit on this... "I doubt the 97%."

Why?  Confirmation bias?  Some other source? Why do you doubt the 97%?  I guess I would if I had a sound reason to... but I assumed when you said it was a "myth," you had more than just a hunch to go on.

And if it isn't important, I'd ask you how you form conclusions about other scientific topics that have massive consensus?  There's far less economic consensus that conservative economic policies bring about high prosperity.... but you seem to trust those, in spite (I assume) of not having parsed through every little bit of economic data.

Do you assume we are made up of atoms?  Do you assume we can't go faster than the speed of light?  Why or why not?

[Benko]

Moda,

Best I know, newton's theories work within some small range of error (for which you need more recent theories). if climate theories worked as well as newton's. no one would be having these conversations.

"Which is why, much like you and everyone else in the world, eventually I rely on scientific consensus."

You see how well that worked out for cholesterol.

As far as the theories being proven, either you can plug in the conditions from 1800, 1900, 1950, etc and come up with today's conditions, or you can't.  You have far too much faith in this sort of thing, which I would argue is one of the main things that distinguishes you and the left from people like Mountaineer and I. 

When doom prediction after doom prediction (and no doubt there will continue to be more) all end will "so you must impose the progressive agenda" one can conclude these are not disinterested observers with an open mind.

--------------------
Do you assume we are made up of atoms? 
 
Ugh.  You mean the protons, neutrons and electrons as ping pong balls theory of atoms?  I remember studying clouds of possible positions of the electrons and there may be more recent theories. 

Do you assume we can't go faster than the speed of light?  Why or why not?

I know that a number of scientists who believe that you cannot actually propel yourself faster than light, believe there are ways around this i.e. you can bend space time and appear at a distance instantly, thus effectively traveling faster than light.  And who knows if even the you cannot propel yourself faster than light will be found wrong.

Why do I doubt the 97%?
For starters, because it is difficult to get 97% of scientists to believe in anything.  The cholesterol theory was king for a long time, but there were probably more doubters than 3%.

[Benko]

There are few scientific truths which will stand the test of time and you can't know which is which prospectively. 

"You never let a serious crisis go to waste. And what I mean by that it's an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before." - Rahm Emanuel

[Mountaineer]

My primary point is that I don't think man can do much of anything significant to "deflect" whatever is going on with the atmosphere, sea levels, and the like; the climate has always changed, or so science says.  It is not that I dispute science, it is that I think it is the lost opportunity of what else could be done with the money we are wasting (my opinion) on projects with a very low probablity of a successful outcome - defined as stopping the rise or fall of the sea level, stopping the atmosphere from becoming unbreathable, or stopping the energy of the sun from doing what it does.  I feel we (primarily wasteful, political, self-serving, irrational governments) are arguing about the best way to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic without realizing we could be spending our time and talent on figuring out how to help the people in need over the next 10 or 100 years, not a pipe dream thinking about the next several thousand years (yes, I realize that is extreme and perhaps unrealistic but it is only to make my point clear).  As an long time engineer (with an IQ sufficient to significantly exceed MENSA requirements) I detest sub-optimization processes and projects and in my opinion our "stop climate change" obsession is clearly one of those. 

... Mountaineer

[WildAboutHarry]

[quote=moda0306]Yes... over BILLIONS of years, the earth has changed dramatically.[/quote]

20,000 (that is THOUSAND) years ago the sea level was about 400' - four hundred feet - lower than it is today.  The location where is sit typing was under a thick glacier at that time.

A geologic blink of an eye ago.

[Benko]

I have no reason to doubt the conclusions of one legitimate area of scientific research over another.

THE BELOW ARE COMMENTS THAT APPLY TO ALL RESEARCH IN ALL FIELDS

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/

Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.

So perhaps you are right. 

[Benko]

I have no reason to doubt the conclusions of one legitimate area of scientific research over another.

THE BELOW ARE COMMENTS THAT APPLY TO ALL RESEARCH IN ALL FIELDS

Why Most Published Research Findings Are False
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1182327/

Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.

So perhaps you are right.

I'm curious... how far does this go?

For example, the company I work for has a massive internal technical report database, built up over 60+ years.  Are the majority of the claims in these reports false?  Because that is what you seem to be claiming.  OTOH, my colleagues and I sure don't behave as if they are.  Have we been brainwashed?

I work in the same industry as Mountaineer did, and his former employer was (and still is) a Fortune 50 company and one of the top science companies in the U.S.  I'm sure they have many times more internal technical reports than my employer.  Are these false too?  And, again, I'm very confident that his former colleagues don't behave as if they are false.

"Are the majority of the claims in these reports false?  Because that is what you seem to be claiming. "

No that it not what I'm claiming.  You really can't understand the difference between a research report in some journal and a technical report? (Not sure but I assume a technical report has something to do with the behavior of your particular system).

A pool table with one or a coupla balls is a simple system.  The systems that you work with at work are (compared to the human body and the earth's ecosystem) relatively simple systems. 

When you move from behavior of a coupla balls on a pool table to predicting the behavior of every atom in the universe (to pick an insanely opposite example to make a point) you can't even begin to understand it the way you do the balls on the pool table.  You don't even know what you don't know e.g. factors that could influence things.  Your chemical system at work is closer to the few balls on a pool table than to every atom in the universe.

A farmer taking notes on optimal use of farm instruments, or a person working in a plant has a very practical mindset and gets feedback quickly if they are wrong.   

AND BACK TO JOURNAL ARTICLES: Even in major e.g. medical journals it has been said that the majority of articles are shit e.g. faulty experimental design, results that don't justify conclusions, bias, and occasionally made up results.  I doubt this shocks you.

Whether it is the human body or the earth's ecosystem, or other areas of science, things are usually a lot less certain then the few pool balls or your chemical system.  And as the quote says:

"claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias."

This history of medicine and of docs to clinging to outdated beliefs will support this. 

AS A SIDE ISSUE:

And if the farmer screws up, his crops don't do so well.  If the guy in the plant screws up, a batch of something or other doesn't come out as expected.  And if the professor publishes a paper with a theory which does not match reality.  WHat happens?  Nothing.  In fact if his paper is wrong but matches current political trends he is probably applauded.

[Mountaineer]

One humorous situation by those involved in making our laws:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z7Ym-kk ... e=youtu.be

I wonder what the next "save the planet" thrust will be from the technical expertise exhibited here.    I know this is probably not representative (pun intended), but I thought it was funny.

... Mountaineer

[Pointedstick]

If I had to guess, I'd say that there are a lot of people out there who have a very, very hard time with the line of reasoning that goes something like this:

"Climate change is clearly happening (as it always has), and human activities may be affecting its magnitude. However, it is unlikely to impossible that humans will be convinced to moderate or stop these activities, so it's mostly academic."

The reason, I think, may be because if you take the step of admiting that human activities might be increasing or decreasing the magnitude of the natural background climate trends, then this opens you up to the possibility that the left may have been right about this all along, which means that all their ideas that you think are terrible may not be so terrible, which is impossible, because you already know they're terrible ideas, therefore they can't be right, therefore they also have to be wrong about human activities having an effect on the climate.

But IMHO there is absolutely no reason why admitting that human activity may be affecting the climate on a macro scale requires that you acquiesce to a bunch of leftist nonsense. Leftist ideas about how to stop climate change remain ineffective and laughably utopian even if you're willing to admit that human activities are having a macro-scale effect on the climate. Even if it turns out that they were right about our impact, what does that means their ideas have to be right too? Because clearly all of these ideas of theirs that have been implemented have failed, and the reason they trot out is the same reason they always do: that not enough people were forced to get on board with it. Same old, same old.

[hoost]

If I had to guess, I'd say that there are a lot of people out there who have a very, very hard time with the line of reasoning that goes something like this:

"Climate change is clearly happening (as it always has), and human activities may be affecting its magnitude. However, it is unlikely to impossible that humans will be convinced to moderate or stop these activities, so it's mostly academic."

The reason, I think, may be because if you take the step of admiting that human activities might be increasing or decreasing the magnitude of the natural background climate trends, then this opens you up to the possibility that the left may have been right about this all along, which means that all their ideas that you think are terrible may not be so terrible, which is impossible, because you already know they're terrible ideas, therefore they can't be right, therefore they also have to be wrong about human activities having an effect on the climate.

But IMHO there is absolutely no reason why admitting that human activity may be affecting the climate on a macro scale requires that you acquiesce to a bunch of leftist nonsense. Leftist ideas about how to stop climate change remain ineffective and laughably utopian even if you're willing to admit that human activities are having a macro-scale effect on the climate. Even if it turns out that they were right about our impact, what does that means their ideas have to be right too? Because clearly all of these ideas of theirs that have been implemented have failed, and the reason they trot out is the same reason they always do: that not enough people were forced to get on board with it. Same old, same old.

Good point and well stated.

However, saying human activity MAY be is not necessarily accepting unequivocally that it IS, and I think a lot of the debate is focused on that point.

At the end of the day, there's no way to prove definitively that global climate fluctuation is or isn't caused by man's activities.  This requires faith/belief. 

The problem is that those who believe this to be true are trying to argue about what to do about it, and those who believe it's not true are arguing that there is no problem in the first place so why should we try to fix a non-existent problem?

And then there are those that say, I don't really know, but even if it were true that man is affecting the weather, is it worth trying to do anything about?  Is it an actual problem?

I'm in the, wait and see camp, personally.  Nothing wrong with being smart with resources and living efficiently without wasting too much, but at the same time I'm not moving to the rain forest to live in a hut.

[MachineGhost]

Anyone who doesn't believe in global warming simply hasn't been living in reality.

Now whether man causes global warming, there's no evidence of that.

Now whether man is exacerbating global warming, there's some evidence of that.

It is what it is.

Politicalizing it on either side just makes you plant goalposts in your own head.

I was only a skeptic (first of warming, then the arthropogenic cause) because I never looked at the actual science; instead relying on interpretations from so-called skeptics (who selectively skew the available data to make their case) which was a natural fit for a rebel like me.  Big mistake, although the cost was extremely minimal other than to my pride.

I am still definitely a skeptic of top down solutions to the problem, at least in the USA where we just don't have a culture of government working efficiently anywhere other than the military.  That's just not going to work.  What will work is conservation through commercialization.  But for that to work, you need the liberal loonies to continue to scare everyone and the conservative loonies to continue to look like comical ostriches with their heads in the sand.  Useful idiots.

[Benko]

TennPA,

My assumption is that a technical report is not something published in a peer reviewed journal but something internal to your company.  Was I wrong?

[moda0306]

TennPA,

My assumption is that a technical report is not something published in a peer reviewed journal but something internal to your company.  Was I wrong?

What does it matter?  They use well-organized but imperfect inductive data tracking to try to determine a cause/effect relationship... Science can do this, and post results in journals, with varying degrees of accuracy and reliability due to the natural constraints around experiments on climate, astronomy, quantum physics, etc...

Society (or management) then takes a look at those findings and decides what the most prudent move going forward is, considering the upside/downside risks of any courses of action, as well as opportunity cost.

Certainty, and often even NEAR certainty, is rarely achieved in business or government.  We take action based on limited information, downside/upside measurements, and people smarter than us hashing through the information.

Unlike in areas of diet, where anti-grain and pro-sat-fat arguments are wiping the floor with the traditional theories on dieting, it is not, from what I can tell, the scientific establishment that is cooking the books, here.  Every time a "skeptic" tries to make a rebuttal, someone who understands AGW disassembles it quickly, from what I've seen.

The amount of certainty AGW skeptics are asking for when you get past their "it's a total scam" arguments into their "there's still disagreement arguments" gets pretty ridiculous.  I saw one guy asking for 100% model accuracy going forward before we allow any sort of discussion of risk mitigation. (obviously this is anecdotal, and not evidence that the entire branch of skeptics is loony... but I see a lot of that, and it usually just wreaks of their political/consumption preferences).

[MachineGhost]

Fantastico!

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government ... ostitutes/