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from the I-don't-want-knowledge-I-want-certainty dept.
Jeremy P. Shapiro, a professor of psychology at Case Western Reserve University, has an article on The Conversation about one of the main cognitive errors at the root of science denial: dichotomous thinking, where entire spectra of possibilities are turned into dichotomies, and the division is usually highly skewed. Either something is perfect or it is a complete failure, either we have perfect knowledge of something or we know nothing.
Currently, there are three important issues on which there is scientific consensus but controversy among laypeople: climate change, biological evolution and childhood vaccination. On all three issues, prominent members of the Trump administration, including the president, have lined up against the conclusions of research.
This widespread rejection of scientific findings presents a perplexing puzzle to those of us who value an evidence-based approach to knowledge and policy.
Yet many science deniers do cite empirical evidence. The problem is that they do so in invalid, misleading ways. Psychological research illuminates these ways.
[...] In my view, science deniers misapply the concept of “proof.”
Proof exists in mathematics and logic but not in science. Research builds knowledge in progressive increments. As empirical evidence accumulates, there are more and more accurate approximations of ultimate truth but no final end point to the process. Deniers exploit the distinction between proof and compelling evidence by categorizing empirically well-supported ideas as “unproven.” Such statements are technically correct but extremely misleading, because there are no proven ideas in science, and evidence-based ideas are the best guides for action we have.
I have observed deniers use a three-step strategy to mislead the scientifically unsophisticated. First, they cite areas of uncertainty or controversy, no matter how minor, within the body of research that invalidates their desired course of action. Second, they categorize the overall scientific status of that body of research as uncertain and controversial. Finally, deniers advocate proceeding as if the research did not exist.
Dr. David "Orac" Gorski has further commentary on the article. Basically, science denialism works by exploiting the very human need for absolute certainty, which science can never truly provide.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Thursday November 14 2019, @01:08AM (81 children)
No, recognizing shitty science is hard and the demarcation problem is for sure real.
Taking a natural experiment result as totally valid in astronomy is sensible and sound, for a host of reasons most which deal with the nature of the evidence collected and the impossibility of doing controlled laboratory experiments on supernovae and the like.
Taking a natural experiment result as a valid reason to reform assumptions in medical research is a terrible idea.
It's not easy, and my experience with pseudoscience is that people who say it's easy are usually the ones with something to sell you.
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 14 2019, @01:36AM (53 children)
You think? I guess it's possible that a lot of folks can't look at a methodology and spot glaringly wrong fuck-ups or intentional deception while I can. Even with a head cold and a belly full of nyquil I'm a shitload smarter than average but I prefer to assume people just make idiotic decisions as opposed to actually being idiots. The latter would necessarily lead to fond thoughts on eugenics.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:07AM (17 children)
I think if you subjected yourself to a game of "spot the retracted paper" you'd find to epistemological humility.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @06:25AM (16 children)
Almost no bad science is retracted.
I don't think people quite realize the scope of the replication crisis. [wikipedia.org] One journal, the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, is quite highly regarded within the field and constantly makes headlines on sites such as the New York Times, or social media - because of its headlines confirming all sorts of rather extreme ideological biases. For instance: 'Why High-Class People Get Away With Incompetence' [nytimes.com], brought to you by the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
That journal has a replication success rate of 23%. In other words, if you took any given study in the article and said it was bunk, you'd be right 77% of the time. All replication efforts across the entire field of social psychology had a replication rate of 25%. In my opinion psychology, and without any doubt social psychology, is modern day astrology. There is absolutely no reason to believe that the interaction of groups of people results in persistent patterns of behavior that can be generalized in any meaningful way. Why do we believe this? Well why did we believe that when you were born had persistent effects on your behaviors and interactions? So long as the things you say don't sound completely wrong and at least occasionally hold true in some situations, it's hard to call them completely wrong. It can't all just be coincidences, can it? Surely, they just need refinement...
Suffice to say that science today is in quite bad shape. This makes this post, written by a psychologist, all quite ironic in so many ways. The first is that it claims the problem of "science denialism" is one of dichotomous thinking while, presumably without intended irony, implies "science denialism" to be dichotomous. Apparently you must "believe in" all science, or no science? One can only imagine why a psychologist might hope to frame the issue as such... He then next appeals to social psychological research to support his argument. Beautiful!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @06:38AM (14 children)
As an addendum to this, this [phys.org] is a list of articles from the esteemed Journal of Personality and Social Psychology that made their way onto phys.org. [soylentnews.org]
- Women CEOs judged more harshly than men for corporate ethical failures
- Researchers confirm that people judge entire groups of people based on the performance of its 'first member'
- White people struggle to perceive emotion on black people's faces
- Love your job? Someone may be taking advantage of you
- Looks matter when it comes to success in STEM
And much much undoubtedly unreplicable [click/race/sex/class]baiting. It's real tough to figure out why people have lost faith in science, isn't it? As an aside most of these articles have comparable articles on the NYTimes or other sensationalizing outlets. Phys.org is quite an excellent resource. I'm only referencing them since they provide the ability to sort publications by journal, which makes it easy to see what the replication looks like, without the necessity of bypassing paywalls.
(Score: 4, Informative) by ikanreed on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:23PM (13 children)
I love it, "because I disagree with what the evidence says, it must be bad evidence" is exactly why I don't trust you dumbfucks to judge a goddamn thing.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by khallow on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:53PM (8 children)
(Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Thursday November 14 2019, @03:10PM (7 children)
Ah yes, more completely untrue things you "know". Exactly what evidence of p-hacking do you find in The first listed paper [apa.org].
Their methodology section for the first experiment has two independent variables, very reasonable for the hypothesis they were testing, and two dependent variables. That's quite reasonable. Especially for a p0.01
They only sample once. With a large population. The effect size for the interaction effect was dramatic, 1 point on a five point scale.
Exactly what evidence do you have that it incorporates p-hacking besides the fact that it challenges your shitty worldview?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 14 2019, @03:24PM (6 children)
No mention of how many questions were asked or the significance of the alleged results.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday November 14 2019, @04:07PM (5 children)
That's quite a large sample size for so few discrete variables, and that's not p-hacking. You said "p-hacking", not "the analysis had subjective inputs, which I find objectionable for reasons vague and unstated reasons".
One is fraud, the other is you objecting to basically sound methodology.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 14 2019, @08:01PM (4 children)
Each question would be at least one discrete variable.
Enough "subjective inputs" and you're get spurious outputs just from random chance.
(Score: 3, Informative) by ikanreed on Thursday November 14 2019, @08:49PM (3 children)
She's done the same 4 fucking measures on every one of her previous research papers, and always used the same one primary outcome measure in all of them: intent to purchase.
It's pure fantasy that you've built your sense of "knowing bad science when you see it" out of. Pure fucking fantasy.
She does subsequent studies in the same paper that affirm the original effect and do factor analysis of its causes. Now I suspect we could repeat this whole fucking for any of the studies the original Anon referenced, but the fact is that it won't matter.
You'll still be the same person tomorrow you are today, and I can't imagine this conversation is going to move you towards some reform where you try to do genuine, thorough analysis of methodologies in papers, rather than working backwards from if you like the conclusion*. It doesn't so much bother me that I've wasted so much time with this conversation, nor is it that you won't even consider for a moment what you'd actually want from analytical social psychology and couldn't even begin to describe what standards you would enforce, nor even that you're not going to acknowledge how far the goalposts have slid in just a couple posts. Those are all bog standard problems for internet argument. No, the problem is that in spite of all that, you think your casual examination instantly tells you problems, like this shit is fucking easy.
Dunning Kruger is an overplayed term, but you don't have anywhere near the meta-cognitive skills needed to tell you why your approach sucks so goddamn bad.
(Score: 3, Informative) by barbara hudson on Thursday November 14 2019, @10:49PM
Testing for trust should not include any questions that directly influence trust; not our problem if they are too stupid to test trust in a way that can be shown not to influence the responses. Studies designed to test for trust need to be better designed so that they don't have an observer effect. Any cop / lawyer / hr droid will tell you that the questions you ask determines the answers you get .
"Ceçi n'est pas la science" (with apologies to Rene Magritte and his picture of a pipe similarly captioned) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Treachery_of_Images. [wikipedia.org]
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 15 2019, @01:22AM
Nonsense. In addition to the alleged measures, we have that the person taking the exam is male or female, and the target product has a male or female CEO. That increases to at least 16 parameters per paper (and probably a lot more than that). And you admitted there are several papers too. So odds are good even in the complete absence of any sort of correlation that we'd see one or more results at the level of 0.01 significance and quite a few at the 0.05 significance - even in the absence of systemic bias.
Further, there are many questions behind those four measures. That greatly increases the actual number of parameters in this study.
Not at all, though the change over the course of a day is usually slight.
It doesn't bother me either that you've wasted time. What bothers me is the less than a quarter of such papers are reproducible. p-hacking is one of the mechanisms for making this happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @09:24AM
Naw. AC here, I benefited from your insight. I may/not be able to bring that improvement in myself back around to bear at soylent, but there's a nonzero chance, in which case you floated all these soyboats a bit higher.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @03:56PM (3 children)
Imagine we were discussing an issue, and I decided to cite something from a site where you knew 77% of what was published on the site was fake or, at the minimum, inaccurately represented. Would you think I was concerned about the legitimacy of what was said, or would you think that I was referencing it because it confirms my biases - truthfulness be damned? How then do you not see the irony in suggesting that declaring most of what is said on a site is fake is a generally more valid position than clinging on the 23% that may be accurate?
And that is a big maybe. The reason is that replication doesn't mean a study is accurate. It simply means that they probably didn't make up or p-hack their data. It says absolutely 0 about the logic or hypothetical validity of what is said. And while such things would ideally be filtered out in peer review, the numerous hoaxes, to which social science journals in particular are especially vulnerable, show that they're happy to publish things that are intentionally nonsensical so long as it seems to confirm the editor and/or reviewers' biases. So the percent of generally reliable and meaningful studies on that site is going to be a subset of the 23% that pass even the most primitive method of testing them.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday November 14 2019, @06:54PM (2 children)
I think 77% fake or inaccurate would be a big deal, and the fact that you're being so fucking bullshit right now is why ignoring you is a good idea.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 15 2019, @01:24AM (1 child)
So is 77% fake or inaccurate a big deal to you?
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday November 15 2019, @01:47AM
It's undeniably the case.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @02:16AM
The three cornerstones of science are
1: Predictability - Makes predictions
2: Repeatability - If I say that if you do A + B + C you get D you should be able to repeat the experiment
3: Falsifiability
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:09AM (28 children)
And very, very humble, as well! If only we could possibly fathom how deeply humble the TMB is! He is so humble, he can slam a revolving door! Lightning comes out his eyes, and Fireballs come out his arze! And boy, does he know science, because he dropped out of community college!
(Score: 3, Touché) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 14 2019, @03:18AM (27 children)
Dude, the lowest I've ever scored on an IQ test given by a shrink was 136 (plenty to qualify for MENSA); I'd got woken up to take it and hadn't had coffee or a cigarette yet. I average in the low 160s. Not going around all the time saying that average people are three times as far below me mentally as they are above retards is plenty humble, especially when they're talking shit.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @03:26AM (11 children)
Ah, he went full "MUH IQ!"
Definitely trolling
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday November 14 2019, @03:38AM (10 children)
Nah, I just really, factually am that much smarter than most folks. If you think it's enjoyable, I have a pretty good idea where you'd fall.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @04:06AM (4 children)
Learn to troll bub, and get that dyslexia looked into.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday November 14 2019, @08:02PM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @12:25AM (2 children)
Or it was a troll, and TMB has been hooked by his IQ. which has got to hurt. khallow, as everyone knows, is very bad at judging these things.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 15 2019, @01:10AM
Nope. When I troll, butthurt spreads far and wide. That shit's just the truth.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday November 15 2019, @01:22AM
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @04:39AM (4 children)
It's apparent that you are a legend in your own mind.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @07:57AM (1 child)
At the same time, the posts of TMB display a constant and troubling lack of awareness of basic concepts. He may be "smart", but he definitely is "stupid". Only such a "brilliant" libertarian could fail to understand the function of society, the need to share risk, and contribute based on ability to do so. Evidently he does so in his personal life, what with the Church conversion, but is unable to make the step to abstract thought, and the notion of Social Justice. Too bad, we will have to tax him all the same, and tax him more for being stupid, in spite of his "High IQ".
[Note, they tested my IQ once. Broke the scale. And I killed everyone in the testing center, so no one would ever know. So I am smarter than you, TMB, just pray you never have to find out.]
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 15 2019, @01:12AM
Sucks to be you then. It's miserable as hell at 160 until you get your zen on.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:19PM
For some reason I am reminded of this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-LTRwZb35A [youtube.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 15 2019, @01:17AM
Not especially. There're plenty of people out there as smart or smarter than I am just by sheer population numbers. NCommander's one of them. Besides which, it doesn't make me a better human being, happier, richer, better hung, or anything else but smarter. It's no different than saying "I'm very tall". That's nice and all but it's mostly just annoying unless it's currently relevant, like when you need to reach something on the top shelf.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 5, Informative) by HiThere on Thursday November 14 2019, @04:18AM (10 children)
Sorry, but I qualified for Mensa too, and I'm not impressed either by your argument or by them. The group I was a member for for awhile had some of the most opinionated idiots I ever met. Of course, calling them idiots is invalid, as they had IQ tests to prove that they weren't, but the arguments they got into showed that they were.
The thing is, if you're opinionated you tend to use your intelligence to prove your opinions correct regardless of the evidence. So, yeah, idiot is the wrong word, but what's the right one. Bigot isn't correct, because it has invalid connotations, and generally these arguments would be about something quite abstruse. I think some of them did it intentionally for the entertainment value they got out of it. But they'd land on an opinion about something and develop proofs that the most inherently absurd positions were correct. You can get the same kind of argument on a less refined level in arguments between true believers in various political systems.
And, no, you can't look at an experiment in an unfamiliar subject and know whether it's correct or not. You *may* be able to tell that it's wrong. Mistakes in arithmetic are pretty obvious, e.g. But usually you can't.
P.S.: Natural experiments in medicine over sufficiently large populations for a sufficient period of time are strongly indicative of valid results, and if you did them on purpose of really shoddy ethics. Quinine for malaria came out of that kind of "experiment".
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @08:51AM
If you're so smart, why did you join Mensa?
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @11:13AM (1 child)
Idiot is a correct word. Ignorant is someone that doesn't know the facts. But an idiot is someone that knows that facts but chooses to ignore the facts because they know better. I've been an idiot many times - I've given good advice to others but then chose to ignore that advice as I'm "smarter than that". And no, I wasn't smarter than that. I only should have listened to my own advice.
You can't divorce yourself from reality. The more you try, the harder the back slap.
The main issue with medicine is that medicine doesn't happen in a vacuum. For example, there is always the double-blind experiment used as a standard where the result can often be "indistinguishable from placebo". The problem is that the placebo-effect is real. You see that in the anti-depressant studies all the time. Medicine doesn't work because effect same as placebo. But the problem is that medicine has ignored that placebo actually works in many situations. Mind over body - it's not just a saying.
Lab experiments on animals, there is just an effect discovered that made last century of pain experiments questionable at best.
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday November 14 2019, @11:04PM
When it comes to Mensa, it disproves the saying that there's a sucker born every minute - if it were true , their world membership would be much much higher . It probably proves that as soon as money is involved people become less stupid in their behaviour . To apply it to the trust study would require following up on people to see if later on their actual purchase behaviour matches their response to the survey with the loaded questions . My bet is people would do more research before spending money, unlike, say, voting.
SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:26PM (4 children)
Mensa IQ tests have very few dimensions as compared to real life.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday November 14 2019, @03:13PM (3 children)
Hey! I'll have you know my ability to rapidly test rearrangements of letters against a substantive, if incomplete, vocabulary is a crucial life skill that is definitely causal with life success and not an correlation with an unrelated shared root cause!
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 14 2019, @03:33PM (2 children)
There are some very real negative correlations between high scores on Mensa-like tests and what would typically be called "real-life success."
Company I worked for did a 2 day offsite psych profile evaluation prior to promoting anyone into management. Like 50 other management hopefuls, I figured: what the hell let 'em pay for it and see what comes out. I came, I saw, I performed above average (for existing management personnel within the company, who - themselves - performed well above general population average) in all areas, and also turned in a score on their logical analysis test consistent with my GRE, highest they had ever seen.
How many of those 50 other management candidates were promoted before me? The world will never know, I left the company a year later - but at least 15 of the other hopefuls were tapped and promoted with 30% raises during that year. Rather than stick around a company run by a dumb frat boy [businessinsider.com] I took a position with a smaller company, 20% salary bump and relocation to somewhere I'd rather live.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday November 14 2019, @04:02PM (1 child)
Anecdotes aside, I'm not a fan of how we use IQ, but the research finding that it has correlation with success in health and career is substantive enough that you cannot really say the opposite like that.
The problem I have with the subjective interpretation of that (i.e. that it's causal and being "smarter" in terms of working memory and visio-spatial skills) is entirely with the number of further assumptions that are made and immediately taken for granted by the mighty buzzard types, especially in light of contradictory evidence and non-confirmatory findings.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Thursday November 14 2019, @04:55PM
I guess it can be a question of: what level of "success" do you aspire to? IQ at 2SD+ above the mean, correlates with "success" above average - matches with my limited ability to directly observe the world (few thousand examples, probably less than 0.1% sample size for US residents.) If you're looking to break into the 1% club, not so much IQ based anymore - no matter how high.
I was just musing about working memory and recall speed this morning - recall speed is at least roughly related to "skill" or at least proficiency/fluency. My recall speed for some things is insanely fast, others well below average, and any attempt to test and quantify this is going to be fraught with Heizenberg-like uncertainty.
Like Socrates, Coach Butterworth is hard to refute: https://encuruj.com/tag/bad-news-bears/ [encuruj.com]
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 15 2019, @01:25AM (1 child)
I gave it a check out too. A bigger bunch of tools I have never met. Even in humanities courses in college.
The word you're looking for is "wrong". There are things intelligence helps with but in philosophy it mostly just opens up a hell of a lot more new and interesting ways to be wrong.
Oh but you absolutely can with as hilariously obvious as many of these guys make it. You might not be able to say whether their methodology was shitty because of bias or because of idiocy but it's been easy as hell to spot cocktacularly bad methodologies in many areas for a good long while.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @07:02PM
You think they're tools?
Must be a really nice group of people.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday November 14 2019, @09:49AM (2 children)
You may be highly intelligent, but that doesn't mean you are smart. It just means you are good at solving logical puzzles.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:30PM (1 child)
Indeed. To be honest I'm amazed anyone still gives any credence to IQ tests, I thought they were debunked years ago as being an inaccurate and incomplete measure of just one aspect of a human intelligence, which is far too broad and complex to be captured in a 2-3 digit number.
But I guess if you've spent a lifetime building your sense of self worth on the foundation of your "high score" then it would be very hard to accept that it is largely meaningless.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 15 2019, @01:27AM
I think you need to look up the word "debunked". It does not mean "a bunch of idiots were incorrectly using this test to measure things it did not test". For what it measures, it's aces.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @09:00AM
136 on the Cattell is under 2 stdev, so, your statement isn't necessarily correct.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @04:25AM (3 children)
Your fabulousness is exceeded only by your modesty, eh? :)
(Score: 4, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 15 2019, @01:27AM (2 children)
And the size of my penis, yes.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Reziac on Friday November 15 2019, @02:47AM (1 child)
As a fellow 160er, I understand. :D
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RCyYuLQ7_Ws [youtube.com]
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 17 2019, @03:33AM
160mm is nothing to be ashamed of, but it isn't that big.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @08:39AM (1 child)
And I suppose you have irrefutable pseudoscientific proof to show that?
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday November 15 2019, @01:28AM
Feel free to perform your own Pepsi Challenge next time I'm under the weather.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @01:44AM (26 children)
I have done enough science to recognize some shitty practices in climate science regardless of whether they can do repeatable experiments:
Altering the data and deleting the original readings.
Suppressing disagreements by personal and career attacks.
Arguments by faith.
Collusion
Treating the results of models as real data.
Not the scientists, but their cheer group:
Total unwillingness to consider remediation strategies that don't involve giving large sums of money to their in-group.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @07:01AM (19 children)
The thing that's caused me to lose any faith in climate science has been the fact that we're still using the same fundamental principles in modeling that continue to show far different results than reality. My go-to example is the 1990 IPCC climate report. [wikipedia.org] That report's self assigned "best" prediction expected a per-decade warming of 0.2 - 0.5 degrees with an expectation of 0.3. Here are the temperature deltas from NASA where you can cross reference what actually happened:
1990 = baseline (all below temperatures in degrees celsius)
2000 = -0.04 change
2010 = +0.3 change
2018 = +0.1 change
Expected = +0.9 change, with a minimum of 0.6 and a maximum of 1.5
Reality = 0.36 change.
While the models have been refined since the 90s, they're still using the exact same fundamental assumptions and still cannot explain why we're falling so far below expected warming. Yet nobody seems to care about this. I mean in literally any other science where your observation was so far outside your prediction you'd be pretty close to discarding your hypothesis as falsified. Far from it, we want to suddenly radically change our entire species based on the next century of predictions from these models?
So on your list, I'd add 'handwaving away past failures'. This is not how science works. But apparently it's how climate politics works.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @10:24AM (8 children)
The IPCC predictions are highly contingent on the level of CO2 emissions. (No surprise, since this is what drives climate change.) The actual emissions after 1990 were lower than the "business as usual" scenario that you picked from the report, partly because of economic collapse associated with the fall of the Soviet Union. Using actual emissions [skepticalscience.com], the 1990 model predicts 0.2°C per decade as its central value.
The other cheap trick you did was to exploit the noise in year-to-year data, which can be on the order of 0.1°C. it happens that 1990's temperature was a fluctuation above the long-term trend. An honest comparison would average out these fluctuations.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @03:41PM (7 children)
Can we stick to 'first party' sites instead of blog type stuff? There's a lot of disingenuous discussion on this topic, but moreso that page you linked is not only an eye-sore but actually managed to crash Brave. Never had that happen before. I mean of course feel free to reference the data from blogs, but instead link to the sources they link to. Might also help us avoid any arguments not made in good faith.
Let's look at the [brief] IPCC report [archive.ipcc.ch]. In responding the first thing I naturally looked for were the IPCC's CO2 emission expectations under a business as usual strategy. Oddly enough, it seems they chose not to include specific real-world predictions there and instead chose to use an imaginary "example" graph. It's on the final page. Nonetheless we can use this graph by seeing the approximate slope of the graph. Their 1985 emissions look to be about 7, with a doubling happening sometime around And the doubling happens sometime around 2040. Please do let me know if you disagree here - I'm eyeballing it but genuinely trying to engage in good faith. Here [ourworldindata.org] is a site that offers a CSV of global CO2 emissions per year. From 1985 to present global emissions increased by 82%. The doubling should easily happen within the next decade.
So I'm not really seeing the argument that the IPCC assumed greater emissions than we actually have had. I assume this may be incorrect though. Please do correct me if you're seeing something I'm not.
However, in checking out that site on *shudders* Chrome, I saw they instead focused on the "radiative forcing", dodging the emissions question altogether. That, used in the context on the site, is needlessly obfuscating. They're referencing atmopsheric CO2 concentrations. And this one we can hit on with complete certainty. Check out figure 4 of the IPCC report. In that graph we can see another rather example of how wrong our modeling and predictions are. They thought that maintaining emissions at 1990 levels would result in somewhere around 410ppm today. Emissions since 1990 are up more than 60%, yet our atmospheric CO2 levels are currently at around 407!
So your site is fundamentally claiming that since the models dramatically overstated the atmospheric impact of our emissions, we should adjust and use a model designed not for lower impact emissions but actually lower emissions. That is not an argument made in good faith! And even then, going to the IPCC low (which does not describe our reality), they are still overstating the expected heating!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @08:09PM (6 children)
Rather than try to read the plot, why not look at the full 1990 report, chapter 1 [www.ipcc.ch]. On page 7, they report the current CO2 concentration as 353 ppm with an annual increase of 1.8 ppm. (The scan is surely missing the decimal point.) A unchanged linear trend would result in 389 ppm in 2020.
Also: a full treatment should consider all greenhouse gases. The article I referenced specifically cited methane emissions as being different from the default 1990 scenario.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @06:13AM (5 children)
Thanks for the data! I think this section from the paper is critical (leaving the white space for legibility) :
And it doesn't stop there. They also chose to also try to use a similar 'trick' as the site you linked to, to argue for using a reduced emissions model, in spite of the fact that emissions have increased dramatically since 1990! So let's get back to that 'trick.' The graph you mentioned is using not using the same data. The graph I mentioned, table 4 (page XVII/17) in the paper [archive.ipcc.ch], specifically assumes constant emissions, not increasing emissions. It was used to demonstrate their assumptions of how even emissions fixed at 1990 levels would result in an increasing trend of atmospheric CO2 levels. The caption for their graph states:
The IPCC undoubtedly believed that a certain level of emissions would result in much higher levels of atmospheric CO2 than it actually did in reality.
Ultimately it's self evident that after extensive "massaging" and arbitrary widening of ranges you can manage to manage to squeeze reality into pretty much any prediction. I'd wrap up here with one interesting thing emphasizing how much that paper distorted the values. After all of their 'modifications', they observe that "if anthropogenic forcings had been held at 1989 levels over the past two decades the resulting [trend would be] 0.10–0.48C". So the bottom end of their trend would be 0.05C/decade. This poses a major red flag. The IPCC paper notes (page XII/12) "mean surface air temperature has increased by 0.3C to 0.6C over the last 100 years". Notably 0.05C/decade results in less than a 0.6C change/century. In other words, the paper "tweaked" the predictions so hard, that fixed 1989 emission levels would predict warming within the range of of the 1800s with their new adjusted model, in spite of a hundred years of sharply increasing emissions in the interim. Doesn't that strike you as dodgy?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @09:30AM (4 children)
Furthermore, the article I gave you specifically cites methane and not CO2. Have you tried comparing the methane scenarios (page 13/xix of the policymaker's summary) with what actually happened (page 20/232 of this article [springer.com])?
Note: science is hard. Fully understanding a prediction from 1990 would require understanding everything that goes into it. However, it sometimes takes less than fifteen minutes to verify specific claims. To reiterate, this is the one (from the article assessing the 1990 predictions) I checked:
About the reassessment article: I should emphasize the key points:
It would be interesting to repeat this analysis up to 2020, but I have neither the time nor the expertise.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @02:40PM (3 children)
UNIFICATION! :)
We should definitely make sure to double check each others math. In double checking both graphs (as you reasonably proposed), I just noticed a mistake you made. You stated that,
The base date was 1990, but you accidentally set it as 2000. The actual atmospheric concentration it would give if we continued at 1990 levels is almost exactly what I ballparked: 353 + (2019-1990) * 1.8 = 405.2ppm!
So I think this should resolve the 'unification' of our two different graphs! I think it also clarifies beyond doubt that the IPCC was indeed substantially overestimating what increasing emissions would do to the atmospheric concentration of CO2! As we dramatically increased our emissions since 1990, yet our atmospheric CO2 is only about 407ppm. The net result here is that they, now I think without doubt, substantially underestimated our CO2 emissions under the "business as usual" scenario. However, they also simultaneously substantially overestimated the negative impact of increasing CO2 emissions believing that a much smaller amount of CO2 would result in a much higher level of atmospheric CO2. So apparently two wrongs do make a right sometimes!
So yeah, now to methane. I suppose the question is should we even start? In particular would us having higher/lower methane emissions justify swapping to a more carbon friendly model (than the business as usual one), given the above conclusion (which I think/hope we can now agree on)?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @07:01PM (2 children)
But I think you're still making considerable logical leaps, inferring properties of the modelling that could be instead checked. And I think you're assuming that one thing being large implies other things must be large without properly establishing the connection. For instance, suppose we take the crude model that increases in atmospheric CO2 concentrations are proportional to total human emissions. This implies that a significant increase in emissions will produce a significant increase in the growth rate of CO2 concentration. But it takes time for this increased growth rate to be visible in the CO2 level itself. One can see curvature in the Keeling curve [wikipedia.org], but the effect over thirty years is not huge. (Of course, the extrapolation can be scary.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @08:45PM (1 child)
It's all good. In the process of this all I feel I've learned a great amount and isn't that what this is all about? Though I have to say I don't think I'm making any meaningfully complex inferences here. Let me bring things down to the most fundamental to see if/where we disagree:
1) Our current atmospheric CO2 levels are around 407ppm.
2) We have increased atmospheric emissions by around 60% since 1990
3) The IPCC offered data predicting what atmospheric CO2 levels would like if CO2 emissions remained permanently at 1990 levels
4) This resulted in an atmospheric CO2 level of 405
Assertion A) The IPCC substantially overestimated the impact of human emissions on overall atmospheric CO2 levels. That a 60% increase would have nearly no relative difference is only explained by human error.
5) The example emissions in the business as usual scenario indicated a doubling in CO2 emissions from ~1985 to ~2040
6) Our actual CO2 emissions have already increased more than 82% since 1985
7) Our emissions will double (relative to 1985 levels) long before 2040
Assertion B) The IPCC underestimated the amount of CO2 we would produce under the business as usual scenario.
---
Writing things out like this makes this all so much more clear. Makes one wonder if longform language is really the right way to present research! Formalize it enough and you could even have automated logical validation of papers.
Getting back to the point (and longform...), my one and only argument here is that the 1990 IPCC predictions do not match reality. The way we got into the more complex discussion is in discussing whether or not it would be appropriate to change their predictions to make them more closely fit reality. The primary justification given for this suggestion is the claim that actual emission levels were lower than predicted by the IPCC, and so it would be appropriate to use a lower emission scenario. However that claim does not seem to be valid (Assertion B). The other, more refined claim, is that because the result of our emissions had a smaller atmospheric impact than expected, we should use a lower emissions tier. This argument may be more refined but is, in my opinion, even less well supported. That is trying to take advantage of a major error in the predictions (Assertion A) and spin it into a positive. The emissions scenarios were clearly defined in terms of emissions and not atmospheric concentrations in any case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 17 2019, @06:01PM
This concerned a discrepancy between an observed 30-year warming of 0.36°C — which you then accepted would be better represented by the difference of decadal averages (being less affected by year-to-year fluctuations), 0.54°C — and the predicted range of 0.6–1.5°C. I agree that this is slightly outside the predicted range, but I pointed you to an article from a few years ago where a researcher did care about this and investigated the reasons for the discrepancy. This was attributed in part to different-than-predicted levels of forcing from greenhouse gases. As the IPCC can't predict things like economic crashes or attempts to control emissions, their predictions about warming surely must be contingent on the level of anthropogenic emissions. In addition, on short timescales there can be significant effects from unpredictable natural events such as the eruption of Mount Pinatubo.
Now, if one wants to go rejecting a particular hypothesis, it is usually best to have an alternative. I think the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis is holding up much better than the null hypothesis of random temperature fluctuations. Furthermore, science is an iterative process. The IPCC has issued several reports, and a proper analysis of whether they are junk science would test, for instance, whether their predictions are improving (which would happen as a result of better understanding and better data) or not (which could happen if the report were purely politically motivated).
Coming back to the issue of emissions: if you accept that measured CO2 concentrations have been below the 1990 business-as-usual scenario, then this supports the explanation that the prediction of warming was too high because it assumed higher atmospheric levels of greenhouse gases than actually occurred. Now, perhaps the predicted relationship between CO2 concentrations and CO2 emissions was off. But it appears this is an area of active research: in particular, ocean uptake of CO2 is a significant effect and and there is a significant effort (e.g. this team [noaa.gov]) to understand it. I think it's a bit hyperbolic to say "nobody seems to care about this". Unfortunately I don't have the time, but it would be interesting to see how the IPCC description of the carbon cycle has evolved since the first report.
Finally, I want to emphasize that climate scientists do serious work and it's a bit ugly to poke and prod at their data at a very superficial level. I would never reject an entire field without hearing the response from scientists in that field. And they've had to deal with an enormous level of politicization, thanks to the trillions of dollars' worth of assets whose value is threatened by the notion that using those assets is harmful and should be eliminated. (It's been pointed out [thenation.com] that this could be compared in scale to abolitionists asking the U.S. South to give up its slaves, which led to the U.S. Civil War.) Despite the enormously wealthy interests working against climate scientists, I think mainstream climate science has held up and the critiques seem either obviously wrong or concern relatively minor details. Actually, that's the subject of the article we are supposed to be discussing:
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @01:55PM (3 children)
I should point out, that while there is a single (slight) negative, in the data you point out, the trend is still quite firmly positive.
So while the quantitative approach might leave something to be desired, you cannot really deny the qualitative result, that of increasing temperature.
That is, you have fallen squarely into the trap described in the article, where because something was slightly wrong the whole thing should be disregarded.
Bravo good sir for illustrating the article so perfectly!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:37PM (2 children)
Imagine I claim to have developed an AI that can predict the stock market. All I really did was look at past gains of the market and adjust them forward in an adjusted linear fashion. Any predictions this model would provide would be completely useless. But, by the standard of "well the market went up" it would almost certainly also be correct. Until it wasn't. So can I now claim any doubt towards the veracity of my model is simple "science denialism" so long as the market goes up? And when it does finally go down... well I hope I've earned enough money peddling my model by then!
Nobody with even the most basic understanding of our earth's climatic history would deny that we're in a warming phase. Similarly, but more controversially somehow, the Earth would also be warming even if humans did not exist. Of course we are almost certainly exasperating the warming rate, but what matters is precisely to what degree and to precisely what climatic end. The IPCC model was not just a little wrong. We're not saying 'well they missed the bulls-eye' so it must be wrong. It was so far off the mark that the question we're debating is whether it was even in the vicinity of the board itself. You have to adjust the data somewhat substantially to argue that it was.
Wanting to restructure all of society in a way that would undoubtedly be horrifically damaging to economic progress and development of the world, based on these models, is insane. This may not always be the case and indeed should the models start to prove themselves to be consistently accurate then it would be something to consider. But for now all we have are extremely inaccurate models paired with sensationalism and hyperbole.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday November 14 2019, @04:24PM (1 child)
Citation needed. There's no evidence that a green economy is "horrifically damaging" to anything other than the profits of certain fossil fuel companies.
"Even as some commentators insist that nothing short of a total rethink of free-market economics and corporate structures is required to stave off global catastrophe, the Danish capital’s carbon transformation has happened alongside a 25% growth in its economy over two decades. Copenhagen’s experience will be a model for other world cities."
https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/oct/11/inside-copenhagens-race-to-be-the-first-carbon-neutral-city [theguardian.com]
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @04:56PM
Denmark is a modern, tiny, rich, and extremely well developed nation with favorable geographic features. I completely agree that such nations transitioning to a much smaller, or even 0, footprint is entirely possible (and desirable). Though as the article mentions, many claims are currently still fudged a bit. For instance Copenhagen has chosen not to count the Copenhagen airport in their emission measurements. But the real catch is sitting right in front of you, if you're at your desk. Or in your kitchen or living room. Look at all of your nice little products and niceties. Where were they made? Certainly not Denmark. It's actually quite remarkable how high our (developed world as a whole) carbon footprints are given we've gone very much post-industrial and outsource much if not the majority of our pollution.
To the point though places like China, East Europe, India, and even Africa are still in their infancy. As these regions develop you're going to see both an increase in industrialization and an increase in a middle class consuming all the things they now disproportionately ship out to us. To say they have to do this while maintaining 0 or near 0 emissions is equally unfair and unrealistic. It's just not going to happen. And similarly these nations are huge relative to the US, let alone when we went through mass-industrialization. And so because of this even low emissions from them has a huge footprint. For instance our CO2 emissions/capita are well over 200% of China's, yet of course China is ends up responsible for well over twice our total emissions - simply because they have 1.4 billion people using energy compared to our 330 million. And over in Africa you're looking at 1.3 billion and then another 1.4 billion in India. And these nations are going to grow, industrialized, consume, and pollute.
Even a 'green funding' system would never work. Even if we could domestically agree to offer such (which is highly questionable), these developing nations would not accept it (with strict constraints) because it would create a relationship of dependency. And we absolutely would abuse that dependency, sooner or later. Imagine if e.g. China's power industry today was dependent on US handouts.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:46PM (5 children)
So, to everyone who stuck around long enough, this person lied to you. No, not by huge er... degrees, but enough to be called a liar who should shut the fuck up.
Let's start with the cherrypicking. 1990 was the second hottest year in the 90s look at the ACTUAL average temperature per decade [wikipedia.org] that the kind folks at wikipedia put together for us. Look at those numbers, then look at the steaming mound of shit he left on your front stoop.
Bearing in mind that the report explicitly makes it clear that temperature anomalies would accelerate and get bigger every decade(as they very clearly fucking have) and that under that scenario you'd expect the beginning of the 21st century to be slower than the end.
If he read the report, he'd fucking know that so either he's lying about having read it, or lying about the content. Either way, stop listening to fucking liars. For god's sake.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @04:27PM (3 children)
Alternatively, you've assumed your own worldwide and just react to anything with overt hostility instead of having any intellectual curiosity whatsoever on what facts substantiate those values and which facts contradict them. In particular I'm certain you've read the IPCC report inside out, but simply forgotten what it said. So as a refresher here is a quote from the paper [archive.ipcc.ch] itself (page XXII/22):
(2025-1990) / 10 * 0.3 = 1.05 or "about 1C". If you don't understand why I'm dividing by 10 it's because the 0.3/decade prediction is a decadal, per decade, measurement.
You might notice, that's not accelerating. As you have presumably just briefly forgotten, the fundamental belief in climate science is that there is a linear relationship between emissions and temperature. You don't see exponential gains in temperature without exponential increases in emissions. Also just so you know, on your always authoritative Wiki graph - you should be looking at the right-side table. I'm currently looking to compare and contrast the figures provided their versus the figures NASA provides on their main page. Do you get anything when you click on the source [nasa.gov] Wiki references for those numbers? It's a dead link for me which is quite curious.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @05:18PM (2 children)
Okay, I found the NASA GISS data page. Here [nasa.gov] is a link to it. I have no idea where the Wiki page got their numbers from. The dataset I am referencing here is "GISTEMP Seasonal Cycle since 1880" -> "Global Annual Mean Surface Air temperature Change". Results:
1990: 0.45 (baseline)
2000: -0.05
2010: +0.32
2018: +0.13
That shows an aggregate +0.4 degree change instead of the other NASA source which showed an increase of 0.36. It's not substantively different.
If you can find a source on NASA's page with numbers that you think are more relevant please do share. Even better if you can explain why you think they're more relevant. No idea whether you'll believe me, but I genuinely have no preconceptions here. Well I mean I obviously think I'm correct, but I'm more than happy to change my view if you can simply provide meaningful and clear evidence. Indeed 2 decades ago I was just as vehement, except on the other side of the fence. The thing that really changed my view was the repeated failure of prediction and arguments I found to be quite disingenuous (as the above poster I engaged with) on why this was.
And as one little aside. I assume you feel strongly about this topic. Should you ever hope to persuade anybody of anything on this topic (rather than just preaching to a choir) it's probably not a hot idea to run straight out of the gate with slurs and various personal attacks. I tend to be abnormally thick skinned, so I'm happy to carry on. But in general you end up persuading nobody of anything. Same reason I'm engaging with you like a human instead of calling you whatever nastiness I can think up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @09:22PM (1 child)
Averaging over a few years will reduce the influence of random fluctuations. This is what the Wikipedia page does by taking decadal averages; you should be able to see that the trend is much steadier, with the last three decades showing increases of 0.137, 0.200, and 0.265°C. This means that the incomplete decade from 2010-2019 was 0.557 or 0.602°C warmer than the decade from 1980-1989. (There's a discrepancy between the value and the delta for the latest decade on the Wikipedia page. My guess is that one of the numbers includes some kind of extrapolation to account for the incomplete data for this decade.) Doing the same averaging exercise with NASA GISS yields a difference of 0.540°C.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 15 2019, @06:55AM
Very fair point! Yeah, I think the argument for using averages is certainly logical with such a small sample of decade points. I just downloaded the CSV for the aforementioned data set here [nasa.gov].
I created 4 sets of averages:
1980-1989 = 0.246
1990-1999 = 0.385
2000-2009 = 0.59
2010-2018 = 0.785
For your convenience if you'd like to double check my work the cell codes I used were:
=AVERAGE(B103:B112)
=AVERAGE(B113:B122)
=AVERAGE(B123:B132)
=AVERAGE(B133:B141)
And so we get:
2000 = +.139
2010 = +.205
2018 = +.195
Total = 0.539
And that definitely is a much bigger number. The problem is that it again falls *far* outside the prediction expectation (0.9) and even outside their entire range (0.6 - 1.5). So we still end up having to get back into the 'adjustment' arguments as per above.
And yeah no idea what's going on with Wiki's 2010-2019 range. It's extremely wrong. Kind of expect as much from that site though. Just checked the history. Looks like IP 50.66.163.181 randomly changed the table back February, and nobody bothered to verify it. Thanks, Canada. Wikipedia: the idea that doesn't work in theory only in practice. Until the internet gets stupid. And then it simply becomes the idea that doesn't work.
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Friday November 15 2019, @02:57AM
The problem with using "anomaly" rather than "data" is that what's anomalous depends on your baseline.
Using data, you would see 1936 as a drastic high temperature spike, rather than as a dot on the curve.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Unixnut on Thursday November 14 2019, @11:41AM (3 children)
One big problem I have is that from what I can see, "climate science" is more like "economic science" than what you would consider proper scientists. Its a game of statistics and probability, with divination thrown in. They try to develop models of complex systems (be it the economy or the climate) in order to predict the future.
However at their core it is just a wild guess based on a horribly incomplete data set, and should be treated as such. Especially as the problem with these "statistics based sciences" is that statistics are easy to manipulate to say you want. This makes the field really easy to corrupt.
You see, scientists are not gods, they are humans, and like most humans they can be corrupted. They have to consider their careers and family. They desire funding, they chase patrons, they write papers for money/grants, or to please someone who has the influence they need, etc...
There is a lot of money sloshing around in "climate science", because there is a lot of vested interests on both sides who stand to gain a lot by things going their way. It is a highly politicised field, where saying the wrong thing can get you fired, or your grants not renewed, or being taken off prestigious projects that could help your career. What the "wrong thing" is depends on who your benefactor is, so many will not rock the boat for fear of their financial well being.
The bigger problem to me at least, is not the field of climate science, but the environmentalists. They are the ones who have elevated climate science to a religion. My arguments for calling it a religion are as follows:
* It is faith based. Very rarely do environmentalists appeal to logic, they mostly appeal to emotions and melodramatic exaggerations. Also, the use of terms of "climate believer" and "climate denier" have religious overtones, similar to the "believers" and "deniers" of god used by other religions.
* They have their clergy: That would be climate scientists, and even then, usually only the climate scientists that reinforce their beliefs. Those that go against the prevailing narrative, or are not supportive enough of it, get pilloried as "deniers" or "paid shills", and ostracized. Its a self reinforcing echo chamber, as scientists don't want their careers ruined by being ostracized, they are more likely to support the narrative out of a desire of their own self preservation.
* They change the narrative to fit the prevailing situation. Originally it was to be global ice age, then it was to be global warming, then cooling again, then when it was warming, after they decided to just change it to "climate change" because it was becoming clear they had no idea what will actually happen, except that there will be change.
* Preaching the "end of times"/apocalypse: Quite common in all religions. "Do as I say or the world will end in $x years". It seems the "climate doomsday" is almost as old as the second industrial revolution. There being reports of the world ending "in 20 years" since the 1900s. None of the predictions came true, but it doesn't stop them just saying they got the timing wrong, adjusting the model, and trying again.
* They seem to have their symbol/representative to rally around now, in the form of Greta.
* The concept of indulgences for eco sins (e.g. in the form of paying for carbon credits to offset your existence)
* Likewise the concept of penance, and public shaming those who do not repent.
* They preach a lot to the unconverted, spreading their gospel. They get increasingly aggressive and irate towards those who "do not see the light", or who challenge them, or who quite frankly are not interested in their religion. As a result, a lot of people will agree to be "believers", but only in the superficial sense (mostly to get the preachers off their back). They believe in climate change insofar as it does not affect the way they live or demands any sacrifices from them. If it does, then you start to see protests and objections.
* They have their own opinions on how others should live, how many kids to have, what to eat, and how the world should be ruled and run. Concepts of population control, control of free movement, control of available food, etc... like most religions, generally a very strong authoritarian mindset.
* Once they gain power, they use it to force others to conform to their beliefs against their will, "for the greater good".
Interestingly a lot of the rules above don't seem to apply to those at the top, who are known for jetting in private planes to climate conferences. Greta at least tries to sail to them, but that ignores the emissions required to build and maintain the $1,000,000+ yacht in the first place. I guess this is the idea behind the "indulgences" in the form of climate credits. The rich can carry on enjoying modern life, while the rest of us have to return to the days of feudal peasants.
It seems to me that a lot of humans have a deep seated psychological need for religion, and with the old religions withering away in the western world due to secularism/atheism, new ones are springing up, religions in all but name in my opinion. Environmentalism is one such example.
I would go as far to say as "techno fetisists" is another (the belief that computers/technology/AI will solve all of mankinds problems and usher in some post-singularity immortality for the faithful) is another, but they are not today's topic.
Problem with religions is, eventually they get subverted by those who crave power. Who will then form political structures to enforce their power (under the banner of the religion), and then try spread the religion far and wide in order to gain more power. It usually doesn't end well for the masses.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:44PM
Greta did sail to the conference but... https://apnews.com/be12be49011743daaa3646edb0de0b61/ [apnews.com]
They had to fly a crew over to bring their multi-million dollar yacht back.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @05:04PM
The future is indeed hard to predict. However, the trend of the actual (now and past) CO2 increase and temperature increase strongly suggests the future will stay pretty much on that course.
It's not rational to not do anything about it UNLESS we have 100% proof first. The rational thing is to assume the trend is likely to continue at roughly the same rate since the forces causing it are not going away.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @05:45PM
Jefferson in his famous, 'Notes on the State of Virginia' [wikipedia.org] also referenced climate change:
The changes Jefferson mentioned mostly predated the industrial revolution, yet were quite rapid and severe in presentation. And there's 0 reason to doubt the accuracy of what he said. Yet were a person of the 'climate religion' to observe such changes today they would immediately begin to become frantic fearing it's finally happening with Virginia on track to become a desolate desert in but a matter of decades. No doubt the media would be certain to repeat such a message 24/7.
I find it difficult to imagine it's only a coincidence that as we've abandoned our religions of the past, so many new views and values have emerged that are very much taking the exact same form as religions. It's probably something inherent in humans to want to worship an unquestionable ideology. Perhaps it works as a cornerstone from which one can find comfort and sanctity, even if (like religions of the past) it's busy telling you you were going to go the metaphorical hell if you didn't spend every waking moment freaking out in the name of said ideology.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Thursday November 14 2019, @02:38PM (1 child)
Are you still spouting nonsense from the so-called "climategate"?
You've been duped. Here: https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2019/nov/09/climategate-10-years-on-what-lessons-have-we-learned [theguardian.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday November 18 2019, @04:03PM
Notice the game played here. For a reason that has yet to be explained, tree ring data goes off the rails around 1960. So Mann "hid the decline" by simply not using tree ring data after 1960. This has led incidentally to some clever burying [justfacts.com] of the tree ring curve under other curves that conveniently hide that it stops at 1960. While it is true that reality isn't going to care what sort of shenanigans scientists do, the rest of us, who are trying to interpret reality through this filter do need to care.