Climate Change denial vs History

There are so many examples in history about clashes between science deniers and Science. They all have one thing in common: Science, facts and rational thought always prevail in the end. Whether it's the scientific finding that smoking is bad for you, or that football players experience high risk of CTE... there have always been deniers that stick to their pseudo-science. We've been seeing this since Galileo.

Climate Change is not a scientific question anymore. Science settled the matter years ago. Now it's just a political issue.

I wonder if deniers understand that they will follow the same fate as their counterparts in history:. those who bought into the Tobacco industry's follies, or the NFL's, or who wouldn't let go of the religious dogmas in the past.

Countless examples of science deniers in History. And climate change deniers are just the current example. But there will always be some newly discovered scientific fact that a powerful entity will consider inconvenient to their interests. And science deniers will once again fall in line.

 

No, the deniers are easily duped, and extremely gullible.
I can't understand it, but there are people who listen to the wrong people and believe them - look at the people who followed Jim Jones in Jonestown and committed suicide. Unbelievable, but true. I think that is Darwin at work - people with minds that are that mushy get eliminated from the gene pool, but global warming impacts us all, and I, for one, would rather see my children have a world not in a climate crisis.

The really scary part to me is some of the deniers are in positions of power - look at the Fossil-fuel-flunky now in charge of the EPA!!!!!

I prefer to think some of the deniers aren't really that stupid, that they are merely saying that they don't believe science because :
1) they are trolling
2) they think smart people will figure a way out of this mess
3) they think their macho, jacked-up pickup truck is endangered
4) they get benefits from the fossil fuel industry - either a mining or fracking job, etc., or for elected officials, campaign "donations".

 

So does this mean we can ignore all that science stuff that scientists prattle on about, and spend our money on more important things like booze and hookers?

 

This is exactly what it means! Smart people will save us from ourselves!

 

Well no, it doesn't mean that. They need our approval before saving us. They don't have that, so I guess they can go back to their clipboards, stop watches, rats, and mazes, while we open another cold one during the half time show.

 

Don't worry I'll give them permission right before I kill myself. Or at least I think I will.

 

You either ignore it all, or you don't. There is no middle ground. it's absurd to cherry-pick science based on convenience.

 

Here's your settled science captured in models --- because that's all they have besides measurements. Note that the settled science models don't agree with one another or the measured data. Explain that, Sherlock:

 

Crickets. No surprise. Here is a post from Dr. Judith Curry. An alarmist turned me on to Dr. Curry, not realizing that she was excommunicated from the community of scientists when she expressed the correct opinion that we don't know enough about a monstrous scientific problem to state for sure the degree of impact CO2 has on the climate. I'm on her email list ,,, she went from a great scientist to a 'denier' overnight as many with self-esteem have:

Scott Pruitt’s statement on climate change
Posted on March 11, 2017 | 86 Comments
by Judith Curry

My analysis of EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt’s recent statements on climate change, and the response to his statements.


Last week, there was a controversial interview of Scott Pruitt on CNBC. A sampling of the headlines reporting on his interview:

New Yorker: Scott Pruitt rejects climate change reality. A relatively thorough summary of the interview with Scott Pruitt.

Washington Post: On climate change, Scott Pruitt causes an uproar — and contradicts the EPA’s own website.

CNBC: Scott Pruitt’s climate denial is dangerous and out of step.

Guardian: EPA head Scott Pruitt denies that carbon dioxide causes global warming. Subtitle: Trump adviser shocks scientists and environmental advocates with statement that negates EPA policy and ‘overwhelmingly clear’ evidence on climate change

David Robert at Vox: Scott Pruitt denies basic climate science. But most of the outrage is missing the point. Subtitle: It’s not about Pruitt and it’s not about facts. Excerpt: The right’s refusal to accept the authority of climate science is of a piece with its rejection of mainstream media, academia, and government, the shared institutions and norms that bind us together and contain our political disputes.

A number of scientists have responded in various venues regarding their opinion on Scott Pruitt’s statements. Here I include the ‘official’ statement from the AGU:

AGU Responds to Statements from EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt on Climate Change. Excerpt: The position statement of the American Geophysical Union regarding climate change leaves no doubt that increasing atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide resulting from human activity is the dominant source of climate change during the last several decades.

You may recall my concerns about the AGU policy statement on climate change [link]

What Scott Pruitt actually said

Listen to what Scott Pruitt actually said on CNBC and then compare it to the portrayal in the media. Here is the key text:

I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact, so no, I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. But we don’t know that yet. We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.

Can you square what Pruitt actually said with the distorted quotes and headlines about this? I can’t.

I think that these two statements made by Pruitt are absolutely correct:

I think that measuring with precision human activity on the climate is something very challenging to do and there’s tremendous disagreement about the degree of impact

We need to continue the debate and continue the review and the analysis.

The other two statements give slightly conflicting messages:

I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see. But we don’t know that yet.

The main statement of controversy is:

I would not agree that it’s a primary contributor to the global warming that we see.

You can interpret this in two ways:

1.Pruitt is denying that CO2 is a primary contributor to recent global warming

OR

2.Pruitt is saying that he does not accept as a ‘fact’ that CO2 is a primary contributor because we simply don’t know.

Since his subsequent statement is “But we don’t know that yet”, #2 is obviously the correct interpretation.

I think he is saying that he is not convinced that we know with certainty that humans have caused 100% of the recent warming (which is what some climate modelers are saying, see recent tweets from Gavin Schmidt), or that humans have caused ‘more than half’ of the recent warming (which was the conclusion from the IPCC AR5.

JC reflections

If I am interpreting Pruitt’s statements correctly, I do not find anything to disagree with in what he said: we don’t know how much of recent warming can be attributed to humans. In my opinion, this is correct and is a healthy position for both the science and policy debates.

Exactly what the Trump administration intends to do regarding funding climate science, energy policy and the Paris climate agreement presumably remain as subjects of debate within the administration. Looking at every little leak and quote out of context as a rationale for hysteria simply isn’t rational or useful.

The most interest reaction to all this is David Robert’s vox article:

The right’s refusal to accept the authority of climate science is of a piece with its rejection of mainstream media, academia, and government, the shared institutions and norms that bind us together and contain our political disputes.

The ‘problem’: a change of administration and party after 8 years, mainstream media no longer has a lock on the media’s message (given all of the new news sources on the internet), academia’s profoundly liberal bias is being challenged, and the consensus that has been negotiated and enforced by certain elite scientists is being challenged.

Three cheers for democracy, the internet and the scientific process.

https://judithcurry.com/2017/03/11/scott-pruitts-statement-on-climate-change/#more-22891

 

You appear to not know much about the issue or science.

 

I like it when science snobs talk down to ordinary people. You know like when they say if you don't buy 100% into the global warming scenario and agree to be taxed for your carbon emissions you're an idiot.

 

I wouldn't say "an idiot". Just very uninformed.

 

I guess appearances can be deceiving. I do have formal studies in epistemology. As well as a bit of practical professional experience.

 

Then you should be able to discern belief from fiction. For one, climate science is a very immature science with many known unknowns and unknown unknowns. The only 'known' science in AGW are first principles. Everything after that, how they work in a non-linear chaotic system, is all hypothesis and that is where the disagreements come from. The alarmist scenarios are based on computer models, specifically RCP 8.5 which is the most unlikely sceanario. The average of models are over predicting troposphere temperature by 3 times observed science. The warming is supposed to show there first according to the hypothesis. Much in the system cannot be modeled due to limitations in computing so parameters are substituted. There is much more to learn about this than how the media and only a few scientists represent this.

 

Climate change? Sure if you're talking about a naturally occurring phenomena. Man made, carbon dioxide a pollutant now you're talking crazy stuff. There is no credible evidence that there is any relation between the two. Think about the folks who started this nonsense and what their motives might be. It's just not all that hard to figure out that the end of that road would be a permanent tax on the very air you breath. Only some corrupt and avaricious individual could conceive such an evil. Breathing is a basic human right that must not be in any way be tampered with. It wasn't all that long ago that some "genius" convinced the world that we should be buying bottled water that we should pay for something that is a basic requirement of living. We should all be stewards of our environment and there's lot's that we as individuals can do but supporting quack science in the name of profit is just plain stupidity. Just an aside but a woman who was nominated for a Nobel prize for risking life and limb to rescue over 2500 jewish children from the Warsaw Ghetto during Nazi occupation has passed away. She was edged out of the award that year by Al Gore who made a fallacious film.

 

Uninformed sometimes is better. Especially when socialist idealogues are in control of the media.

 

This is not the first time that experts in some narrow field of expertise were sincerely left to believe that their field of expertise is the most important thing in the world and that life on earth as we know it depends upon their contributions. I have personally heard politicians and preachers make the same claim.

Atmospheric CO2 is 4% of 1%. Over 90% of that comes from geothermal activity. Of the 10% of 4% of 1% that is contributed by living organisms, human activity contributes less than 10%. To summarize, human activity contributes less than 10% of 10% of 4% of 1% of CO2 to the atmosphere.
Put another way, human activity contributes .000005 CO2 to our atmosphere. To put it into perspective, one medium sized volcanic eruption contributes more CO2 to our atmosphere than all record human activity.

 

Climate Science is a study of theoretical opportunism. If you don't have that on your resume you'll be ill equipped to explain the pause in warming ,,, except, of course, that scientists forgot to substitute the highly accurate buoy temperatures with the wildly inaccurate ship intake manifold temperatures.

Me, I developed computational models used to license nuclear plants per 10CFR50.46 --- demonstrating they would withstand the worst postulated accident --- a double ended guillotine break of the largest pipe in the system and subsequent blowdown from over 2000 psi to atmospheric. Aside from the absence of violence in Climate Studies, my development experience took into account all of the physics warmunistas claim they know about and then some. The part of the science I was not experienced in was the study of the vitriol flung at researchers whose results were at odds with the nasty Progressive narrative.

 

LOL. After seeing what Gore had presented to Congress, his inconvenient lie, claiming that over hundreds of thousands of years temperature followed CO2 concentrations ,,, I did a little calculation --- determining that if all of the CO2 in the oceans were released into the atmosphere, the concentration of atmospheric CO2 would be something like 30,000ppm. A little later, the Gore lie was plotted with a smaller scale showing that CO2 followed temperature. Why? Because the solubility of CO2 in water decreases with increasing temperature.

 

Yes. I can discern. The consensus position regarding Global Warming is very simple: the surface of the earth is warming. And this warming is due to human activity. That's it! A status of "very high confidence" is placed on this premise. If expressed numerically, epistemologists would say that there is a 95% certainty that the consensus position is correct. That is equivalent to the certainty in Gravitational Theory, Quantum Mechanics, Cell Theory, Relativity, .... In other words, it's the highest level of certainty that science can provide. There is no discussion about this. Which is what, I guess, is what you call "first principle"

On the other hand, there are varying positions about the consequences of Global Warming. These range from "temporary increase in certain diseases and violent weather patterns with incremental loss of life" to "hundreds of millions of people displaced, irreversible climate change and great loss of life, as well as the extinction of many vulnerable species (and the consequences of that)". And everything in between.

None of these positions enjoy the level of confidence that the consensus position does. However, we have been seeing that the predictions that have been observed in the last 20 years correspond to those made by those who expect a bleaker outcome. To the point where the "lighter" position about the outcome of Global Warming has been abandoned, for the most part.

But, even so, they are all in fact hypothesis produced by computer models (mostly). The main problem now is that the senseless debate about the part that is now established science, is taking away the time and resources we should be using in figuring out what the consequences of Global Warming will be, and how to deal with them.

I don't know what scientists you are referring to, but this is how ALL the Science Academies in the world approach this. The struggle is against irresponsible politicians (backed by the ignorance of a number of people). Not against other scientists.

 

The "consensus", you're going with the consensus? The vast majority of the best and brightest that ever lived wasted their lives on mumbo jumbo.
That's the consensus. So few were those who were right that we can actually know their names. Historically, if you're in the "consensus", you're wrong.

 

There is no discussion for the true believers but science doesn't work like that. The continued disparity between the model driven alarm to observed science should give you pause, in this case the difference in the troposphere where warming is supposed to show first.

 

Remember when Dr. Shukla led a bunch of warmunistas demanding RICO prosecutions of people/companies in disagreement with their climate dogma?

This explains everything:
https://climateaudit.org/2015/09/28/shuklas-gold/

Even as they were saying the science was settled, they were just finding out the effect of cosmic rays on cloud formation. To this day, they are mapping the bottom of the Pacific. How do you know anything about ENSO without knowing the details of the convection of energy in the South Pacific or anywhere. Their 1D models are ill equipped to tell them anything about the current Climate or the future.

 

Good for you! Now all you need is to get a few thousand of your peers to independently replicate your findings, and manage to get their studies published in peer-reviewed publications, to be par with the epistemological requirements that Global Warming proponents have already met

Whining about how hard it is to elevate your personal experience to the status of established science will probably not get you very far. ALL groundbreaking researchers (notably: early Global Warming proponents) can explain to you why the vitriol that you complain about is very important within the Scientific Method as they have all experienced it.

 

I'm sorry, but that's exactly how science works. If you know of any unique findings that contradict the consensus position, don't publish them here. By all means, publish them in a peer-reviewed magazine. It is not that difficult (I can assure you) IF your methodology is sound. Heck! Even studies where methodology is not that sound have managed to get published. Though, of course, they did get debunked in the end.

The only thing that we can do here is, precisely, to discuss how science works.