Is It Me, Or Is It Getting Hot In Here?
I take climate change very seriously, which make the tone-deaf arguments its supporters put forth when they're not talking about science only more embarrassing.
At The New Yorker website, we get the promise of an article by Elizabeth Kolbert with this come-on:
No one has ever offered a plausible account of why thousands of scientists in dozens of countries would bother to engineer a climate hoax…
If you want to talk about science, that's one thing, but if you want to talk about the politics of global warming, this is just silly. I don't think anyone is saying that thousands of scientists had nothing better to do than cook up a hoax. Rather, they're claiming that history of full of instances, even in the hard sciences, where certain theories take hold (for whatever reason--often because they fit the prejudices of the time, but it doesn't matter) and then groupthink takes over. Only a few people do serious investigation or research that could significantly question the main theory, while everyone else either accepts it, only looks for evidence that confirms the theory, or ignores or explains away anything that doesn't fit preconceived notions. (And in the modern age, the grant money tends to go toward reifying the generally accepted explanation.) This is how human psychology works. People like Kolbert should admit this, and then explain why that isn't happening with climate change, not merely sneer at anyone who disagrees.
posted by LAGuy @ 12:11 AM
8 Comments:
All right, you might be the only guy I'd listen to on climate change. Why isn't it obvious nonsense? Or, what is the actual evidence that it's either happening at all, or if it is happening, that it is either any different than has happened necessarily many times before or that it is actually man made?
If the shoe were on the other foot and we decided it was crucial to our survival to warm the planet by 1 degree farenheit, I can't imagine we'd be capable of doing it. I mean, what are the options? "Paint" the outer atmosphere blackish and rely on reduced reflection and convection? Mount a giant lense outside the natural view of already existing sun rays and try to shift them into our projection? These things are being talked about as means of cooling (space screens, atmospheric shields), but I see next to nothing that would suggest that any of it is anything other than exactly political group think. So what has you so convinced, or if not convinced, interested? What have you done, buy low lying coastal property? Maybe you should spend more time worrying about earthquakes.
Well, I'm not the one guy you'd listen to, but I'd still suggest you start here. Whether it is man-made is essentially irrelevant. The evidence that it is happening, whether it would benefit humanity to do something about it, and if so what is cost-effective to do, are the questions that matter. But you don't get to the latter two questions until you've reached a conclusion on the first one, and conflating foolish answers to the third with the evidence for the first is "exactly political group think" as you put it.
"I see next to nothing that would suggest that any of it is anything other than exactly political group think."
"Why isn't it obvious nonsense?"
Two comments applicable to almost every single post and comment on this and every other blog.
Hey, QueensGuy, that was quite a CO2 graph. You'd think that would conclusively prove the case. Must be why it was right at the top.
Plus there were footnotes. And it's from a government agency.
So here's what I'll listen to you on: This recent snafu with the ClimateGate emailers. Wholly irrelevant? False implication? Is, indeed, the debate over?
"Almost"? Where's the courage of your convictions, man? And plus, does it apply to your post? Is it like that Star Trek thing, I always lie?
From what I've read, the ClimateGate emails were a wonderful example of folks who are willing to lie to the public, but not an example of academic fraud or a significant refutation of the case for climate change. Their data has been subsequently independently verified by other labs. Is it possible the verifying labs are lying too? Sure, but quite unlikely. Taking that set of emails as a serious refutation of the data is wishful thinking. To answer your broader question, no, the debate is far from over. I think the debate over whether something is happening to generally raise global temperatures is over. But the magnitude of the effect, the likely progression, whether anything should be done about it, and if so what can be done cost-effectively are all still wide open. The "likely progression" part is particularly wide open -- NONE of the existing models have proven even slightly accurate at predicting future temperatures. That's where I think the real work has to be done in the next couple of years. And I believe it can be accomplished in only a couple of years, if properly funded. Otherwise, any actions we take will be shots in the dark.
So, they only intended to lie, they didn't actually succeed?
They succeeded in lying to folks who were making repeated FOIA requests about whether they had responsive materials. They did not succeed (nor even attempt, apparently) to hide actual data. Here's the best summary I've seen of what was and wasn't done wrong. As convenient as that would be, an email using the words "trick" and the phrase "hide the decline" is not sufficient to show that the work of thousands of scientists is a huge exercise in political group think and self-deception.
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