Would you like to react to this message? Create an account in a few clicks or log in to continue.

I, Global Warming Skeptic

4 posters

 :: General :: Science

Go down

I, Global Warming Skeptic Empty I, Global Warming Skeptic

Post by TexasBlue Sun Jun 26, 2011 8:03 pm

I, Global Warming Skeptic

Craig Good
Skeptoid.com
June 15, 2011


I am a global warming skeptic. Politically, I land somewhere in the libertarian/conservative camp. If liberal still meant what it did sixty years ago I’d probably be one of those. Whatever my label, I am not a progressive/socialist kind of guy. I wrote on my own blog a long time ago that I needed to be convinced that warming was happening at all, then that people were causing it, and then that it was actually a bad thing.

I have many good reasons to be skeptical about AGW (anthropogenic global warming).


  • I’m old enough to remember “Global Cooling”, the population bomb, the hole in the ozone, and any number of other tidings of doom. The Chicken Littles have a track record indistinguishable from that of Harold Camping.
  • The issue is massively politicized. The Left has seized on it as an opportunity to dismantle free markets and grow government. They have entangled it with their beliefs the way creationists entangle evolution with religion.
  • That amount of politicization brings corrupting quantities of money.
  • The IPCC was formed by the United Nations. The UN is a systemically-corrupt, left-wing political organization. Any organization that coddles dictators and thugs should not be trusted even if it claims the sky is blue.
  • Anybody who didn’t just fall off the turnip truck can see “cap and trade” and carbon credit markets for the bald-faced scams they are.
  • Climate science is very complicated, and there are any number of legitimate questions having to do with the accuracy of our models, the true effect of CO2 as a forcing agent, the reliability of temperature data, the effect of solar cycles, etc.


There is, in short, more heat than light in the AGW debate, and plenty of reason to be skeptical. It’s pointless to even begin to talk about policy until the science is solid and well-understood. Which is why I’m so grateful to a particular scientist by the name of Dr. Peter Gleick.

A skeptic isn’t someone who merely holds doubts. A skeptic, as my daughter points out, is the one with the truly open mind. A skeptic will believe anything as long as it is supported by data, sound science and a logically consistent argument.

When I heard Dr. Gleick speak at the recent SkeptiCal, I was all braced for the typical alarmist assault. I was about to be called a “denier”, and told why Kyoto must be signed.

Except that’s not what happened.

Dr. Gleick started by pointing out that good policy without good science is unlikely. I had to agree. He then carefully teased out the science from the politics and talked about the fallacies that commonly appear around the science of global warming. Especially illuminating was the part about cherry-picking data. It was refreshing.

Since his talk I have spent a lot of time on a site he recommended, skepticalscience.com. There they have taken each of the most common science questions, numbered them, and carefully addressed them with the current science. The answers are even presented in basic, intermediate, and advanced formats so that there’s likely to be one matching the reader’s level of scientific knowledge.

With the caveat that a few of the questions don’t belong on their list (42, 63, 105 and 165, at least) because they are economic and/or political rather than scientific, I highly recommend the site.

So, yes, I am now persuaded that anthropogenic global warming is real. That’s because I’m a skeptic.

To my friends on the Left: Do you want to convince more skeptics? I mean really? Is the truth more important than your politics? Great. I have some suggestions.

Stop calling people “deniers”. That’s very clearly a slap in the face, designed to link skeptics to holocaust deniers. Maybe it plays well with the base, but you’ll make no friends nor influence people with that kind of disrespect. Don’t poison the well.

Stop calling it “climate change”. That’s a weasel-worded political phrase that dances around the real issue. It looks stupid. Of course the climate is changing. It always has! If the problem isn’t human-caused warming, there isn’t a problem. So call it what it is: anthropogenic global warming.

Stop blaming every unusual weather event on global warming. “We blame global warming” has become a joke on the Right, and for good reason. Scientists need to do a better job explaining why a global average temperature change so small that nobody could feel the difference (how about I warm your room up a half a degree and see if you can tell?) can change weather patterns in a way that some places might actually get colder and some weather may get more intense – sometimes. But blaming every heat wave, hurricane, tornado and earthquake on global warming only confuses the issue. It’s hard enough for most people to understand the difference between climate and weather.

Dump Al Gore. Even if you don’t think the man is a buffoon (I do, and I’m far from alone) you have to admit that he’s hyper-political. He’s clearly looking to ride global warming to greater wealth and power. A spokesman with his carbon footprint isn’t an ambassador, he’s a hypocritical liability.

Enough with the “green”. Linking AGW to the watermelons of the environmental movement is counterproductive. The environmentalist left is so infected with woo and socialism that it taints your argument. CO2 could technically be called a “pollutant” but don’t try to equate what I exhale with toxic waste. This is a different problem than most “good for nature” issues. Besides, CO2 is the “greenest” gas I can think of. Plants love it, and a warmer world is going to get a lot greener. If anything, the campaign should be to un-green the world.

Hug a nuke. If you really follow the science, really believe that lowering CO2 is important, and truly follow safety statistics then you’ll become a nuclear energy booster. Technophobes who reflexively oppose nuclear power are every bit as fallacious as your friends who don’t buy global warming. If not more so. So far nuclear power has proven a lot safer than organic farming.

Stick with the science. Unlink it from your politics. The fact that human activity is raising the average temperature of the planet does not necessarily imply the “and therefore” that you want it to. Don’t conflate it with your political agenda. The politics comes later.

Scientists: Go Independent. How much do you mistrust a report funded, even in part, by Exxon? Multiply that by ten and that’s how much we mistrust the UN. If you’re a climate scientist with a talent for speaking or writing, follow Dr. Gleick’s example and provide politics-free, all-science talks and articles. The IPCC consensus may be correct but, as a body, its credibility is tainted. It looks too much like political consensus. You’ll be much more effective without them.




To my friends on the Right: Are you willing to follow the data? Good, because if nothing can convince you to change your mind, your mind is closed.

Look at the data. That skepticalscience.com site is a good resource. Forgive them for including four economic/political questions (which can’t be addressed by science) and look at the other 160 or so. What you’ll find is that there are multiple lines of data all converging on one conclusion: The net effect of our increased CO2 output is accelerated warming of the planet. It would be beyond the scope of this blog post to address every one of your very legitimate questions. Let them do it.

If it isn’t AGW, come up with a better theory. Remember, it will have to both fit and explain the data. Good luck with that. AGW has reached the status of scientific theory because of the converging lines of evidence, and because it not only fits the data but is able to make correct predictions. Stephen Jay Gould said, “Science is all those things which are confirmed to such a degree that it would be unreasonable to withhold one’s provisional consent.” Is AGW as solid a theory as, say, evolution, the germ theory of disease, and gravity? Not quite. But it’s getting really close.

Don’t confuse consensus with consensus. This one had me confused for a long time. Like the word theory, which has a drastically different meaning in science than it does in the vernacular, consensus can mean two very different things. In politics a consensus is an aggregate expression of opinion. It’s only as valid as the majority agrees it is. In science it is a description of where the science has led. As Dr. Gleick put it, the consensus is not what gives power to the conclusion, the science leads to the conclusion.

Just because AGW is real doesn’t mean you are wrong politically. We both know that freedom works, and socialism and other forms of totalitarianism don’t. Recognizing a scientific reality is not the same thing as handing a political victory to the Left. High taxes, giant government, and scams like cap and trade are extremely unlikely to actually help. What will? I don’t know. The whole point of a pro-market, pro-freedom agenda is that all of us are smarter than any of us. Thinking that government knows the answers requires kilotons of hubris and a near total ignorance of history.

Oh, and by the way, the United States Navy is counting on it. (update) Serious people charged with protecting the country have come to this same conclusion. For what it’s worth.

The bottom line for all of us: Get on the same page. Once enough of us agree on what the problem is, then we can talk about how to fix it. Until then, at least separate your proposals from the science. Science does not tell you that it’s time to raise taxes. The more people understand and agree on what the problem is the more likely an actual solution can be found.

I’ll get off my soap box now. I got political in this post for very specific reasons. My goal is not, however, to prompt a political discussion. (I predict that many commenters will not read the entire post, but will react to my bait at the top of the jump.) It’s to persuade people to just follow the science and save the politics for later. If you are, or know, a global warming skeptic I hope my conversion story proves useful.

Update:
I am gratified by the attention and thoughtful responses this post has attracted. I feel compelled to agree with many commenters and add that scientists need to be totally transparent with the data and extremely scrupulous. There should be no barriers to the raw data, and the very appearance of impropriety has to be avoided unless this is the desired sort of reaction.
TexasBlue
TexasBlue

I, Global Warming Skeptic Admin210


Back to top Go down

I, Global Warming Skeptic Empty Re: I, Global Warming Skeptic

Post by The_Amber_Spyglass Mon Jun 27, 2011 5:58 am

I think it is great that people are willing to educate themselves and can be convinced but I take issue with some of the things he has said. I hope you will indulge me.

I’m old enough to remember “Global Cooling”,
A media scare perpetuated by Time Magazine and National Geographic. As I stated in my main thread, there was very few academic papers on global cooling, most of them were written by the same man who always had serious reservations about his own conclusions.

the population bomb,
It is a problem with impending food shortages and staple crops being affected by climate change.

the hole in the ozone,
Was a problem but banning CFCs before it was too late solved that... The is why we need action now. Governments banned it, we could not wait for a 'free market solution' because none would have been forthcoming given the time frame required.

and any number of other tidings of doom. The Chicken Littles have a track record indistinguishable from that of Harold Camping.
And he has a problem distinguishing media storms from genuine science.

The issue is massively politicized. The Left has seized on it as an opportunity to dismantle free markets and grow government.
I've yet so see any evidence for this...

That amount of politicization brings corrupting quantities of money.
Yet the big money is being spun by Exxon-Mobil undermining the science. Is recklessness acceptable so long as it is being done for the greater glory of the capitalist system?

The IPCC was formed by the United Nations. The UN is a systemically-corrupt, left-wing political organization. Any organization that coddles dictators and thugs should not be trusted even if it claims the sky is blue.
Mistrust of the UN proves nothing of the science. I hear a lot of noise from the right on this issue but never any evidence. Despite popular belief, the IPCC simply produces a report every few years based on a wide range of climate data and disseminates its reports to the UN and governments. That is it. So this bullshit that it "isn't peer reviewed" and is hell bent on "destroying American freedoms" in the name of some global "liberal agenda" that ultimately has no ulterior goal, I'm afraid is worth little more than a tin foil hat for anybody that believes it.

Anybody who didn’t just fall off the turnip truck can see “cap and trade” and carbon credit markets for the bald-faced scams they are.
Irrelevant to the science.

Climate science is very complicated, and there are any number of legitimate questions having to do with the accuracy of our models, the true effect of CO2 as a forcing agent, the reliability of temperature data, the effect of solar cycles, etc.
All of which have been investigated and discounted. The fact remains that there is no credible alternate theory.

There is, in short, more heat than light in the AGW debate, and plenty of reason to be skeptical.
No there isn't, at least not in the way he means it.

It’s pointless to even begin to talk about policy until the science is solid and well-understood.
It is. But we are not getting on with it because of Exxon-Mobil bottomless pit of funds for political pressure groups.

Dr. Gleick started by pointing out that good policy without good science is unlikely. I had to agree. He then carefully teased out the science from the politics and talked about the fallacies that commonly appear around the science of global warming. Especially illuminating was the part about cherry-picking data. It was refreshing.
Amazing, isn't it, what happens when you get your information from scientific sources that are part of the peer review process rather than blogs and the anti-intellectual like Beck and Limbaugh.

Since his talk I have spent a lot of time on a site he recommended, skepticalscience.com. There they have taken each of the most common science questions, numbered them, and carefully addressed them with the current science. The answers are even presented in basic, intermediate, and advanced formats so that there’s likely to be one matching the reader’s level of scientific knowledge.
Even more pertinent is the volume of direct links to the papers so you can read them for yourself.

With the caveat that a few of the questions don’t belong on their list (42, 63, 105 and 165, at least) because they are economic and/or political rather than scientific, I highly recommend the site.
Going forward I doubt it will deal with political or economic issues as a new site in partnership has been set up to discuss those issues.

Stop calling people “deniers”. That’s very clearly a slap in the face, designed to link skeptics to holocaust deniers.
Well, no. He noted earlier that there are people who will never be convinced regardless of evidence. I personally make that distinction that such people are deniers, not sceptics.

Maybe it plays well with the base, but you’ll make no friends nor influence people with that kind of disrespect. Don’t poison the well.
Yet nothing of the disrespect by the likes of Limbaugh, Beck, Palin, Monckton and the thousands of people who receive money from Exxon-Mobil to do nothing more than spread muck against genuine scientists.

Stop calling it “climate change”. That’s a weasel-worded political phrase that dances around the real issue.
No it isn't. One model predicts that increasing temperatures will melt the ice caps, dilute the salinity of the North Atlantic, shut down the Gulf Stream and send us into an Ice Age. We call it climate change because we are changing the climate and it will affect different areas in different ways. It isn't inevitably going to lead to a scorched Earth; the net result is bad globally.

It looks stupid. Of course the climate is changing. It always has! If the problem isn’t human-caused warming, there isn’t a problem. So call it what it is: anthropogenic global warming.
He is putting the cart before the horse. How about anthropogenic climate change? Very Happy

Stop blaming every unusual weather event on global warming. “We blame global warming” has become a joke on the Right, and for good reason.
That's the media, not the scientific community. Those scientists, and those of us amateurs who understand the science recognise all too well the damage being done by the media on both sides of the debate.

Scientists need to do a better job explaining why a global average temperature change so small that nobody could feel the difference (how about I warm your room up a half a degree and see if you can tell?) can change weather patterns in a way that some places might actually get colder and some weather may get more intense – sometimes.
Two issues here. Firstly, he needs to take a longer look at skepticalscience.com to see that they have conveyed it quite eloquently around the community otherwise we wouldn't have 97% consensus.

Secondly, I agree that they need to do a better job at conveying that information to the general public but the media also need to do their bit. They need to stop giving unequal voice to fringe theorists, fanciful stories and they need to accurately convey what is in press releases. Sometimes the content of a newspaper article doesn't resemble the University press release it came from. Watch the video I posted the other day to see what I mean.

But blaming every heat wave, hurricane, tornado and earthquake on global warming only confuses the issue. It’s hard enough for most people to understand the difference between climate and weather.
This is not something that we can accuse scientists of; they don't without just cause and several studies have indicated an increase in some extreme weather events but as far as I recall, no single event has ever been put down to climate change.

Dump Al Gore.
Scientists are unconcerned with him. Again, this is a media issue.

Enough with the “green”. Linking AGW to the watermelons of the environmental movement is counterproductive. The environmentalist left is so infected with woo and socialism that it taints your argument.
And the denialist movement is so infected with big business and reckless greed. Irrelevant to the science.

CO2 could technically be called a “pollutant” but don’t try to equate what I exhale with toxic waste. This is a different problem than most “good for nature” issues. Besides, CO2 is the “greenest” gas I can think of. Plants love it, and a warmer world is going to get a lot greener. If anything, the campaign should be to un-green the world.
Food crops are producing lower yields. Ocean acidification is affecting fish stock. How can continually pumping CO2, which is damaging our food supply, be good for nature?

Hug a nuke.
Most scientists do. Again, he is equating scientists engaging in research with a political movement such as Greenpeace.

If you really follow the science, really believe that lowering CO2 is important, and truly follow safety statistics then you’ll become a nuclear energy booster.
Which most scientists are.

Stick with the science.
Which actual scientists are not doing this please?

Scientists: Go Independent. How much do you mistrust a report funded, even in part, by Exxon? Multiply that by ten and that’s how much we mistrust the UN.
The issue is never about the source of funding but about how the research is conducted. Peer review in proper academic journals is independent. University funding is always a joint funding venture. Problems arise when elements attempt to influence results and bury bad results. This is prevalent in the pharmaceutical industry and Exxon-Mobil, being unsuccesful in attempting the same tactic, has given up and is by-passing the best system of scientific investigation we have.

If you’re a climate scientist with a talent for speaking or writing, follow Dr. Gleick’s example and provide politics-free, all-science talks and articles.
They do. Clearly this was the first conference he went to or this would not have been such a revelation to him.

The most tragic thing about this is that he is ignoring the fact that the Republican Party takes so much funding from oil. If he is calling on scientists to be apolitical, shouldn't he also be calling on big oil to go through the proper channels? Should he not be telling the GOP and other right wing parties not to bow to corporate pressure?

The IPCC consensus may be correct but, as a body, its credibility is tainted. It looks too much like political consensus. You’ll be much more effective without them.
All he is doing is playing on political prejudices... Something he accuses scientists of doing, and he does it without explanation or example.

To my friends on the Right: Are you willing to follow the data? Good, because if nothing can convince you to change your mind, your mind is closed.
Hence why 'denialist' is apt for somebody who, well, just denies.

Is AGW as solid a theory as, say, evolution, the germ theory of disease, and gravity? Not quite. But it’s getting really close.
Sorry, but yes it is.

As Dr. Gleick put it, the consensus is not what gives power to the conclusion, the science leads to the conclusion.
An excellent quote.

Just because AGW is real doesn’t mean you are wrong politically. We both know that freedom works, and socialism and other forms of totalitarianism don’t.
Hang on, why does he call on scientists to sever a political link that doesn't actually exist all the while assuming that they all must be not just lefties but extreme lefties? That is very hypocritical.

Thinking that government knows the answers requires kilotons of hubris and a near total ignorance of history.
The scale of thr problem requires governments to take action. Is not one of the ultimate jobs of government to protect us from external threats? If a country, or a terrorist group had the ability to damage our food supply, poison our waters and increase extreme weather events we would do something about it wouldn't we? So why are we so reticent to stop doing it to ourselves? Why are we so happy to let the enemy within (in this case the oil industry) spread propaganda for their selfish means? Is the greater glory of the capitalist system.so important that we will risk everything just for oil shareholders? Isn't then capitalism being promoted in religious terms 'I believe what I believe and that is that'?

I hope the more he reads the more he will come to identify the errors he continues to make. He has a long way to go on this one...
The_Amber_Spyglass
The_Amber_Spyglass

I, Global Warming Skeptic Senmem10


http://sweattearsanddigitalink.wordpress.com/

Back to top Go down

I, Global Warming Skeptic Empty Re: I, Global Warming Skeptic

Post by dblboggie Mon Jun 27, 2011 10:36 pm

So basically Craig Good is full of crap.

Nice Matt.

So much for the olive branch.

You've just zeroed out this attempt to bridge the gap.

You are clearly as partisan as the so-called "deniers."

So no, I will not "indulge" you. Just on the UN thing alone you have discredited yourself.

And peer review is not without its warts. You hold it up as inviolable, but anyone in the know knows that peer review is not free of corruption.

But hey, you've already made up your mind and you've determined that human nature could not possibly play any role in this issue. History is against you on that, but clearly you don't care. Peer review reigns supreme and is pristine - despite the heavy government funding that AGW research relies on.

dblboggie
dblboggie

I, Global Warming Skeptic Senmem10


Back to top Go down

I, Global Warming Skeptic Empty Re: I, Global Warming Skeptic

Post by The_Amber_Spyglass Tue Jun 28, 2011 1:19 am

Woah! Did I hit a raw nerve? How about addressing some points on this issue instead of slinging mud? How about providing some sources for your conspiracy theories for a change? How about reading my post properly?

No you won't, you've already decided that I'm a big player in "The Great Liberal Conspiracy to Destroy American Freedoms". You are so wrapped up in right wing propaganda that you will never accept that the denialist crowd (because we are talking about denialists, not genuine sceptics who are actually difficult to find) are lying and receiving great wads of cash from oil companies despite the fact that the evidence of this is everywhere and that most are happy to admit it.

All I said was that he is wrong about a lot of things and that I hope he will come to see that he has been duped by the media. His inability to separate science from media, the scientific community from Greenpeace is the major stumbling block around which his lack of understanding centres. He is wrong and your own arrogance means that you will never give me one iota of credit for anything I say on the issue.

Once again you make claims you do not back up. Once again we are back to the vague "I'm a student of history who understands human nature". That claim is now and always was meaningless. You have nothing, you've always had nothing and until you stop lapping up conspiracy websites and read papers such as skepticalscience.com provides, you will always have nothing.
The_Amber_Spyglass
The_Amber_Spyglass

I, Global Warming Skeptic Senmem10


http://sweattearsanddigitalink.wordpress.com/

Back to top Go down

I, Global Warming Skeptic Empty Re: I, Global Warming Skeptic

Post by kronos Tue Jun 28, 2011 12:20 pm

I have to echo Matt's "woah!" Dbl, your reaction to Matt's post seems needlessly hostile and defensive. You seem to perceive some sort of personal attack in Matt's post that I just don't see at all.

dblboggie wrote:So basically Craig Good is full of crap.

To characterize a substantive, point-by-point rebuttal this way is rude.

dblboggie wrote:So much for the olive branch.

You've just zeroed out this attempt to bridge the gap.

Pretend for a minute that this happened the other way round. Some pro-AGW guy decides one day AGW is bullshit. He becomes an AGW denier. He writes an article giving advice to other deniers on how to better reach people. In so doing, he says a number of things about AGW deniers and skeptics, and about climate science, that are false. In fact, despite his newfound anti-AGW stance, the majority of his article is given over to these falsehoods. Do you let this stand? Or is he just beyond criticism now that he's joined your team?

More to the point, though: I just don't see the hostility you seem to see (in this particular post) in saying someone is wrong, and explaining why. Hell, we do that all the time on this board, don't we?

Now, this applies to both of you: if this debate is to go on, I ask both of you to refrain from making any comments whatsoever about your opponent--how blinkered, brainwashed, or whatever they are. Focus on substantive arguments only. Your opponent is irrelevant. I will have to shut the thread down if I see to much personal baggage and history drifting in.

kronos

I, Global Warming Skeptic Junmem10


Back to top Go down

I, Global Warming Skeptic Empty Re: I, Global Warming Skeptic

Post by The_Amber_Spyglass Fri Jul 01, 2011 4:39 am

An interesting companion piece her for you Tex. This article addresses most of the issues raised in the original post, especially claims of conspiracy.

The plausibility gap in the denial of climate change science

For climate change 'sceptics', denialists, contrarians or what Barry Jones recently called 'confusionists' to be right about the science of climate change, an alternative reality must be both plausible and logical.

Firstly, the consensus amongst climate change scientists that human activity is a significant contributing factor to climate change must be misguided at best. The 97 per cent of active publishing climate scientists surveyed in 2009 or the 97 to 98 per cent of climate experts who support the consensus, as evidenced by a 2010 study, must all be wrong.

In addition, the Joint Science Academies from the G8+5 countries statement on climate change must also be misguided, as must be the large number of scientific bodies from around the world which support the consensus on anthropogenic climate change (just part of the long list includes NAASA, American Institute of Physics, in Australia - the CSIRO and Bureau of Meteorology, in Europe the European Federation of Geologists, and the Royal Society of the UK). 

In this alternative reality, climate scientists exhibit impressive worldwide powers of persuasion to be able to mislead their scientific peers so decisively.

In this alternative reality, consensus on climate science is anyway irrelevant in the case of climate science - "the language of consensus is the language of politics not science" - but curiously only half the time: consensus in this alternative reality is important when lists are compiled to demonstrate the ostensibly large number of "scientists" who do not support the consensus. 

The expertise of those "scientists" is not important when it comes to demonstrating an opposition to the scientific consensus – geologists with links to the mining and fossil fuel industries are just as valid as climate scientists here. Those inhabiting this alternative reality, who cannot help but notice that the actual scientific consensus is quite compelling, procure another explanation: the consensus only exists because of malpractice, a stifling of critics and a misuse of the peer review process.

The argument appears to be: the vast majority of publishing climate scientists agree with the basic hypothesis of anthropogenic climate change, therefore it demonstrates that climate scientists are just 'following the pack', primarily because they want to keep their funding grants.  Those scientists with views contrary to the consensus therefore cannot get funding or cannot be published in the peer-reviewed literature. This is where the narrative of this alternative reality becomes extremely illogical.

Somewhere in the process of doing science around the world, this alternative reality presumes that there must be an inherent bias towards the confirmation of anthropogenic climate change.  That is, some people, somewhere (in government perhaps, or the public funding institutions such as the Australian Research Council) only want to see research that confirms the human causes of climate change, and somehow those people monopolise the funding process to secure that outcome.

Given that climate research is mostly conducted by universities or research institutes funded out of the public purse, this means that in this alternative reality, governments right around the world, regardless of their ideology, have funded scientists for decades and, for reasons unknown, only to affirm anthropogenic climate change.

This is despite the fact that the outcomes of this research are in conflict with the same governments' status-quo economic interests, energy systems and transport systems. In this alternative reality, governments around the world have conspired to fund the creation of a problem that they prove incapable of solving. Why the public research funding bodies of countries such as the US and Australia, whose governments were so opposed to action on climate change in the early to mid 2000s, would at the same time be perverting the independence of the scientific process and directing the science towards enshrining anthropogenic climate change defies a plausible explanation – except in this alternative reality.

In the real world, one could argue that it speaks volumes of the relative independence of the scientific process that important research on climate change could continue to be published in the US and Australia during the early to mid-2000s when the governments in both countries refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol and actively undermined the global policy making efforts. Additionally, in the case of the US, the federal government was shown to have significant political influence in preventing the communication of the current climate science.  In Australia, the self-styled greenhouse mafia consisting of key figures from the fossil fuel industry was shown by whistleblower Guy Pearse to be responsible for much of the Federal Government’s policy on climate change at the time.

Back to the alternative reality, where the bias surrounding climate research is ensuring that only outcomes supportive of anthropogenic climate change are produced. Given the global spread of climate research institutes, this must be happening in every country with a major scientific research program, and in just about every university with a climate research program. In the alternative reality, there is some kind of globally orchestrated program to influence the public funders of science in every country, to in turn influence all the universities and other scientists, to ‘toe the line’ on climate change and keep developing this apparently fundamentally flawed body of science.

Pause for a moment and consider the plausibility of this scenario in the real world. Is there any group of people clever enough to be able to sustain this level of deception for three decades or more?  This would require the orchestration of a staggering number of people, funding processes and scientists right across the world.  Where are the whistleblowers?  Where are the exposés?  Where are the investigative journalists uncovering this conspiracy? Where are the Auditor-General departments (or their equivalents) monitoring such a blatant and indefensible misallocation of public funds?

The explanation, in the alternative reality, that there must be implicit vested interests behind the scientific consensus on anthropogenic climate change is one way of explaining away yet another striking anomaly - the demonstrated links between the fossil fuel industry and the manufacture of doubt about the validity of climate science.  The logic here seems to be if there are demonstrated vested interests on one side of the so-called debate, then there must be vested interests on the other side to explain the scientific consensus on climate change.

In 2006, BBC journalist Richard Black invited so-called sceptics to send in documentation or other firm evidence of bias, undertaking to look into any concrete claims. Expecting a deluge, he received only "one first-hand claim of bias in scientific journals, which was not backed up by documentary evidence; and three second-hand claims, two well-known and one that the scientist in question does not consider evidence of anti-sceptic feeling".

So far the sum total of published explanations of this alternative reality seems to be Michael Crichton’s fictional State of Fear. The underlying motivation for this scale of scientific fraud is even more difficult to fathom. Most people who subscribe to this alternative reality rely on some creative conspiracy theory, ranging from neo-fascism or Communism (often in the same breath), or the creation of a new world order, to a plot by environmentalists who have a secret agenda to bring down industrial society.    

Yet, this bizarre alternative reality is what many in the Australian community are (implicitly) choosing to accept in escalating numbers when they dismiss the science of climate change.  It is no real surprise that many people would not want to accept the existence of anthropogenic climate change.  The full implications of the process we've set underway are daunting. Taking meaningful action on climate change will require an economic and energy revolution in societies who appear paralysed by the status quo. 

For those with conservative political views, in an increasingly ideologically polarised debate, the prospect of action that requires some level of government intervention is fundamentally at odds with their neo-liberal views.

Yet it is time that we started to recognise this alternative reality for what it is – an elaborate, illogical and implausible work of fiction.

Nicole Hodgson lectures in sustainability at Murdoch University

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/2778378.html
The_Amber_Spyglass
The_Amber_Spyglass

I, Global Warming Skeptic Senmem10


http://sweattearsanddigitalink.wordpress.com/

Back to top Go down

I, Global Warming Skeptic Empty Re: I, Global Warming Skeptic

Post by Sponsored content


Sponsored content


Back to top Go down

Back to top

- Similar topics

 :: General :: Science

 
Permissions in this forum:
You cannot reply to topics in this forum