My hope is that the people most responsible for spreading doubt (e.g. fossil fuel lobbyists) live long enough to see the consequences, but this is unlikely. The most likely scenario is that the brunt of this problem will be borne by future generations, assuming we don't get really unlucky and trigger an extinction event. :-(
God damn, what a fucked world we live in. I wish I had the comfort of disbelief these people have.
To be fair it's not disbelief in climate change, it's a healthy skepticism of man made climate change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_th...
What's more, the vast majority of their statements doubting an aspect of climate change are not even part the peer reviewed scientific literature. They are simply opinion statements. And they only found a couple dozen people to put on the list? Not a very strong showing..
All of this is found in the linked Wikipedia article itself.
And that seems to be part of the problem: You just made a statement that is quickly proven false[0], which leads to further skepticism from these people.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_th...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_...
I count eight people who seem to have worked in (broadly) related fields:
Timothy Ball, historical climatologist, and retired professor of geography at the University of Winnipeg
William Kininmonth, meteorologist, former Australian delegate to World Meteorological Organization Commission for Climatology
Anthony Lupo, professor of atmospheric science at the University of Missouri
Tim Patterson, paleoclimatologist and professor of geology at Carleton University in Canada.
Murry Salby, atmospheric scientist, former professor at Macquarie University and University of Colorado
Nir Shaviv, professor of physics focusing on astrophysics and climate science at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Roy Spencer, meteorologist; principal research scientist, University of Alabama in Huntsville
George H. Taylor, retired director of the Oregon Climate Service at Oregon State University
This is the equivalent of saying "Zoologist X Somebody in University of North Carolina said there's no link between smoking and lung cancer!", and keeping smoking while having a lung cancer while ignoring mountains of research, except that it's not your own lung this time.
I guess you don't know that in the 70's it wasn't global warming that was a serious issue but global cooling? Funny how that works.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OWXoRSIxyIU
In short, during the 70s, there were some papers on global cooling. But even then, there was still 6 times more papers on global warming. Science overall has been looking in the correct direction for a long time now. The narrative isn't changing.
Let's be honest about why conservatives have this "healthy skepticism": because the fossil-fuel industry has successfully linked belief in anthropogenic global warming with liberalism. It's a correct association to some degree in that part of the solution would mean more regulation of business, but the value of such an association is that it becomes an us-versus-them situation. You don't have to understand it to disagree with it. And to be quite frank, that's the case - the majority of people who hold a disbelief in climate change are ignorant of the basic premise. In fairness, the majority of people who hold a belief in climate change are also ignorant of the basic premise. This is because, as mentioned above, it's no longer a scientific issue in the mainstream view, it's a political one.
Anecdotally, every "skeptic" I've ever met has used arguments to justify their disbelief such as:
- "scientists are not always right"
- "the climate changes all the time"
- "the Earth is so big, how could we have any effect"
- "if global warming is happening then how come it's so cold"
- "CO2 rises and falls regularly"
I will treat an informed dissent respectfully, but let's not shit ourselves about how many opinions meet that bar.
- The climate isn't changing in any meaningful way
- The climate is changing, but not because of people
- Sure the climate is changing because of people's actions, but changing our ways is too expensive, we'll just have to adapt
- Of course everyone always believed we should have done something about climate change, but liberals stood in the way of the solutions we suggested (something invented about public vs private solutions)
The perfect is the enemy of the good.
If it's sarcasm, you probably consider my thinking sloppy and I'd like to know why.
If it's just a joke, then hah hah and forget I replied.
Text can be such an ambiguous medium!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_th...
> It's ludicrous to think that I could hold a "healthy skepticism" on the efficacy of heart transplants when I don't know the first thing about human anatomy, biology or medicine, but this is exactly what is happening with an equally complex scientific issue.
I also find it interesting you speak of the complex nature of the study of climate change yet make the blanket statement that anyone who disagrees is an ignorant person. I would be correct in assuming you are a scientist that has studied climate change?
> I will treat an informed dissent respectfully
And therein lies the problem. You assume every person who 1) disagrees with any part of climate change and 2) holds politically conservative views are too ignorant to form their own opinions based on their own self study. You assume they are a bunch of low IQ ignorant hicks that can't think for themselves and must rely on big evil corporations to feed them their climate change arguments.
Yes, that's very respectful :)
What I was trying to say in the previous message is that the majority of people, conservative or liberal, are ignorant of the basic premise. Liberals happen to be largely ignorant of the issue in a way that leads them to vote the way I like, but they hold the same majority ignorance. We aren't having liberal versus conservative fights over the efficacy of various surgical procedures, airplane designs or pharmaceutical drugs because most people are ignorant of these things (myself included) - again, because these are scientific issues and should not be political. Climate change has been politicized, the majority of people hold a strong opinion in spite of being ignorant of the basic premise. Individuals, regardless of political leaning, may do enough research on their own to develop an informed opinion, but the majority (from both sides) do not.
You having done your own research that leads you to the conclusion that AGW is not happening doesn't make you ignorant. I disagree with you, but I am not insulting you. So hopefully I made my point clearer: I am not making the blanket statement that anyone who disagrees is an ignorant, low IQ hick. I _am_ making the claim that, much like the economy, a complex issue which most people don't really understand has been boiled down to simple, tribal arguments by both sides with the unfortunate consequence of stalling urgent, badly needed action.
My point is, from the viewpoint of conservatives, most liberals think conservatives are dumb hicks who don't know anything and are just brainwashed by big oil and the GOP. This viewpoint is perpetuated by statements similar to those you, with no malintent, made. You lament about the politicization of climate change yet you yourself initially related conservatives to those who use ignorant excuses to ignore or reject climate change. For the most part, when someone disagrees with climate change, they are instantly labelled as an ignorant science denier who has done no research on their own. That's not a good way to have a fruitful conversation with someone and it will never help solve any problems related to climate change.
Your point that conservatives can't dissent without being piled on is valid, and it's one of the reasons I apologized and tried to frame my point more tactfully (the other being that I felt bad for being nasty). The inability to have tactful conversations where we really listen to the viewpoints of one another troubles me deeply (I regret contributing), and is no doubt a major contributor to the intense polarization we are currently experiencing.
We are all, myself included, prone to uncritically accepting peer views and refusing to accept facts which contradict our narrative. Science, though imperfect, attempts to temper our irrationality with reproducible results and critical, fact-based consensus. The fossil fuel industry is responsible for dragging the issue of climate change from science into politics. I'm not saying they brainwashed a bunch of idiot rubes, but they did successfully muddy the water on a complex issue and connect it to identity. This is why I reacted so strongly to the phrase "healthy skepticism"; thoughtful individuals may be displaying this, but broadly I see it as the fossil fuel industry having exploited the instinct to draw more closely into one's tribe to guard against outsiders.
It's not that people are acting stupid and should know better, a lot of people are just incapable of understanding the implications of a complex situation like this.
The solution to climate change is not simple. Yes, emit less CO2 and other greenhouse gasses. But the amount of things you can supposedly do to achieve that are numerous and the effects are maybe not even visible in your lifetime.
Slashing energy usage means slashing many of the benefits of living in a post-industrial society. Think living in one-room houses (no cheap heating), eating bread and potatoes in winter (no imported food), working locally with little career progression (no easy commuting) and many people returning to manual labour (no cheap machinery). All this to prevent 60cm-1m of sea level rise by 2100 - something we can manage, if we maintain the civilisation we have worked so hard to build.
Your argument is equivalent to saying, in the 60s, "These guys believe the future is in toy computers that fit under your desk. If they succeed, the majority of people will have to turn to abacuses to do their taxes."
Your summary of my argument is completely off-the-mark.
A combination of insulation, thoughtful design (south-facing glass, adjustable awnings, solar water heating, heat pumps vs. resistive electrical heat, etc.) and renewably sourced electricity go a long ways towards the heating issue. I live in a cold-ish city in a 2 bed apt with only electric storage heaters (which are awful) and pay for supposedly 100% renewable (wind/solar/geothermal) energy and my bill peaks at €65 a month in the winter.
Commuting:
There are also thousands of businesses within a 30 minute walk from my home. Not turning cities into parking lots and skidpads with a building dropped here and there helps. If I cycle, the number of businesses in that range increases by about a factor of 9. (I cycle around 3 times as fast as I walk, so can cover a distance roughly three times as far, or area ~9 times as great). If I don't like pedaling, an e-bike or 50-150cc scooter/motorcycle will get me even farther.
Food:
I'm not well informed enough on this to comment. Where I live already has pretty bland food with loads of bread and potatoes. Good burritos, though. I'd miss that. We'd probably eat a lot less meat. I could do with a better supply of soyrizo, anyway.
Effects:
Sea level rise is far from the only concern. Stronger storms, drought, the displacement of peoples and an ensuing refugee crisis as their crops fail and water supplies dwindle, ocean acidification, and changing weather systems from the loss of the Arctic ice cap (and possibly a chunk of Greenland) are just a few of them. Also, I suppose this makes me impossibly impractical but hey, the loss of polar bears would make me sad. Maintaining the civilisation we built at the cost of the natural world we inherited isn't fantastic; watching the forests of my home (California) be completely devastated by drought, heat, and beetles is a bummer, to put it mildly.
As for the effects of climate change, they look intimidating as a whole - when you look at each item individually, they are unpleasant but manageable. Humans have been dealing with the weather for millennia, after all.
> Stronger storms, drought
These happen routinely now. Yes, it would be preferable to have less storms and drought, but we know how to handle them.
> the displacement of peoples
In the last decade the Chinese have built scores of new cities across the third world - it's not that hard for people to move.
> an ensuing refugee crisis as their crops fail and water supplies dwindle
We grow crops in many different climates now. Crop failures happen now in poor countries with bad infrastructure and management. Societies with sufficient capital and technology can adapt to almost any climate. (In extreme climates, with desalination plants and hydroponics - or people could just move).
> Maintaining the civilisation we built at the cost of the natural world we inherited isn't fantastic
This is really the crux of the issue - should the standard of value be maximising human flourishing, or minimising human impact?
If we took the very dramatic changes of switching all energy to nuclear, changed to a mostly vegetarian diet, and replaced as much of transportation usage as possible with electric we would end up with an 80% or greater reduction in emissions and still enjoy plenty of the benefits of a post-industrial society.
The cult leaders have spent their whole lives debating with people and poring over the wording of documents, they then see another group of people threatening to drive the narrative in society in future and react by adopting the debating style of this group and by trying to detect linguistic errors in scientific documents. They miss the point that their skillset just isn't applicable to the problem.
The cult followers were in a clientelist relationship with the leaders before, they have received cargo in the past and would like to continue to receive it in the future so are happy to go along with the cult.
The older American worldview of science is nostalgic for an era of unprecedented modeling accuracy that gave a compact summary of how the near-atomic world worked, consequently fueling a backlash against the rise of disciplines that intend to study far more complex systems albeit with the inability to perform experiments in the fashion of the basic sciences.
Nutrition, psychology, economics, and climate research all tout the banner of at least using some parts of the scientific method, which to those Americans who have been spoiled by the awesome forecasting of more reductive studies, are left to question the legitimacy of fields that fundamentally cannot perform experiments with the same exacting repeatability and direct hypothesis testability that was so blazing branded into the public zeitgeist for what American STEM should be capable of accomplishing.
In addition, given that at least the first three of those disciples mentioned above are notoriously abused in the US by governments and corporations as retroactive justifications for legal, social, and economic policies by paying for expert testimony and directly funding questionable studies on condition of flattering results, it is extremely hard for the American public to trust any hard-to-swallow policy-advocating scientific communities without (ir)rational skepticism.
Americans dealing with science are like romantically-oblivious nerds dealing with a heart-wrenching series of rejections and betrayals. If as a scientist you want to court these delicate creatures, please proceed with gentle and loving care building trust and helping them heal from the toxic relationships that soured their faith in domain experts. Denigrading them that they should just get over the past already and put their faith in the absolute consensus of the world is truly not helpful.
As a variant of that, I'm suggesting only what I've heard from (and grew up with) midwest American Christians, not least of which is language from the Vice President elect, and many other Republican elected officials: that god created the earth for man to use and consume however he wanted, and therefore there's no good reason to believe that humans can even screw up the planet, because that'd sortof be a bait and switch and god wouldn't do that to us. That man has superiority over all the plants and animals (as it says in the bible) means we can do with them as we will, there are no negatives to completely obliterating entire species, there's no meaningful consequence to that, man doesn't have the power to alter the earth in such a negative way that humanity becomes incompatible with the earth.
I think it's dangerous nonsense. However, I know people believe in this. Around 10 years ago the local paper asked readers if hell was real, and sinners go there to burn for eternity, and the majority of readers said yes. And so on.
So, you know, insane but also socially acceptable mythology. But these are also the same people who say they're sick of political correctness, but get all pissy when their dangerous beliefs are questioned. shrug
Many US citizens are furious about the situation. Unfortunately, appealing to the lowest common denominator has become the modus operandi for campaigns here. I suppose the answer is to raise the lower common denominator through education over generations. Given the fight against education reform I don't see it happening anytime soon.
That's not to say that the arctic isn't warming (it is), or that the arctic sea ice isn't melting (it is). I would be more receptive to the data if it were brought to me with all of the considerable uncertainties exposed. I remember the days when scientists had a hard time saying anything definite in the media without a lot of caveats.
I doubt these are specifically American traits. The politicization of both sides of the argument and the us vs. them mentality that pervades all dialogue any more that doesn't allow for non-extreme positions is probably the real problem.
The gold standard of climate science is probably the IPCC AR5 report and if anything it is underestimating climate impacts like the shrinking northern summertime polar ice cap.
The data is also all out there, with all the uncertainties you like, but its not going to be "brought to you", you're going to have to do a bit of work to read the original sources. IPCC AR5 is out there for you to read any time you'd actually like to get educated.
I was just trying to figure out why climate skepticism seems to be a predominantly American thing, though. American media and the great political divide seem to be good candidates. I'm not sure whether "over-alarmism" is an American media-only trait or not, though. It might also have something to do with a historical importance placed in American culture on rugged individualism and an acceptance of alternative viewpoints, but that seems to be fading as the years progress, from what I've seen.
That shouldn't really be any solace at all, though.
I'm not for a moment excusing US behavior but it's clear that all large economies are going to have problems changing their consumption patterns, often for reasons that are unique to each economy in question.
[1] https://www.chinadialogue.net/article/show/single/en/8780-Ch...
http://www.publicfinanceinternational.org/news/2016/03/china...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kenrapoza/2015/08/11/china-to-sp...
http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/articles/2015/11/china-s...
China's growth has forced them to acknowledge that their industrial expansion is not sustainable. The US leadership, meanwhile, has not had the necessary wake-up call.
China's authoritarian system of government means they can be much more quick and heavy-handed about changing direction without as much fear of making unpopular decisions, and they're already doing that. The US is hampered by the fact that its politicians are beholden to constituencies and lobbyists.
China seems to see green energy as being a business opportunity — these days, almost everyone except those with vested interest in the status quo do — and is making enormous investments. This, unfortunately, is probably the key to solving global warming: Make solving it financially desirable, and people, governments and companies will be incentivized by greed alone.
It's not exactly a novel approach, but we seem to have finally reached a tipping point where "green" no longer has the stigma of feeble, touchy-feely liberal environmentalism, which makes all the difference.
care to elaborate?
Time matters...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_t...
The skepticism most commonly found in the US, based on my anecdotal evidence, is not toward whether AGW is happening, but rather why anyone ought to care. Some even consider it a good thing.
I'll take the "glass half full" view on this, but certainly 50% leaves plenty of room for improvement.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/georgemonbiot/2010/f...
If you show evidence contrary to the "consensus", you get labeled as a practitioner of "voodoo science" by the IPCC, such as when Indian researchers reported that the IPCC study on Himalayan glaciers disappearing. Oops turns out the Indians were right after all.
Examining claims made by climate scientists is no different than examining claims made by physicists or chemists. I have seen examples of the "models" being manipulated or wildly inaccurate in climate science. There's a large monetary incentive to produce climate science research, and a large amount of the process (IPCC) is controlled by politicians and their appointees.
It's ripe for abuse and we need to stay vigilant, because every solution that's come out of these groups has been cap-and-trade and carbon taxes, both of which are total garbage solutions that just result in govt. taking more of our money. If we were really serious, we'd be funding the crap out of fusion power research. Fusion is the only way imo, the current renewable energy approach is too slow to advance, too inefficient, and too resource intensive. If we could get that working, we could power the planet on a bathtub of water and we wouldn't have to waste time and massive resources blanketing the planet in solar panels.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cz45fETw078&feature=youtu.be - John Christy Climate Change Denial Testimony Highlights May 13
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=potLQR7-_Tg&feature=youtu.be - Climate Science Debate : Global Warming Alarmist VS. Global Warming Skeptic
Personally I believe that it is a good thing to be critical about everything thats written in the mainstream media. A lot of nonsense is being written and copied by everybody without any critical thinking. It's also happening when it comes to climate change. I'm not denying it, but I do think that there is a lot about its implications that we don't understand very well yet.
Are you critical about how to conduct effective medical trials in your everyday life? Are you critical about the best catalogue hierarchy for books in a public library? Are you critical of the driving techniques of truckers under snow conditions?
You can critique anything in life and there's a hell of a lot of things that are important for which we recognize that we have little knowledge in the domain and that our criticism is mere curiousity but has no relevance whatsoever.
For some reason only a narrow band of Americans think that their knowledge or their credentials on the subject allows them to challenge the topic critically or consider that the the scientific consensus on the matter is wrong.
It's a bullshit argument from bullshit skeptics. Critical thinking comes from having a minimum baseline knowledge of the subject. I have yet to meet a skeptic who does.
The actual, real skeptics are the peers of climate scientists who have domain knowledge and can ask about the modeling techniques in papers, what equations were utilized, what assumptions are taken and so on. Without that it's the same level of intellectual drudgery as anti-vaxxers.
Now to what you are saying. First of all, being critical of what the media writes about some scientific subject, is not the same as being critical of the scientist that did the research. Many times research is wrongly quoted or taken out of context.
Secondly, sometimes some research seems to contradict with other. For instance, as I mentioned already in another reply (and got already downvoted to -4 by now), while research clearly shows that the Arctic ice is melting, the Antarctic ice is growing. I find those seemingly contradicting facts interesting, they show that we apparently do not understand everything about the subjec t yet.
Science makes progress from new facts and experiments that can't be explained by the current theory. If people would refuse to see those facts, progress would never be made.
No, it shows that you haven't been reading the minimum baseline material.
Antartic ice surface is spreading but the volume is decreasing dramatically. The surface spread is due to lower atmospheric temperatures given the transfer of energy from the atmosphere to the ice, leading to the melt in ice shelves that used to be stable.
There is no point of contention there and if you had actually done the research this should have come up easily.
Short summary: the study partly conflicts other results, and the mass loss seen in that study may be more due to the limitations of their measurement technique (radar altimetry) versus other techniques (gravity).
There's more at the link referenced above. (See also: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/20...)
Claimer: while not involved in ice mass quantification, I talk regularly with people who do it full time, publish regularly, are leads on space instruments to measure it, etc.
And, like other commenters nearby, I want to caution you on your approach to "skepticism" and "keeping an open mind".
You seem to be selecting one press release from the hundreds released every year, and using its partial conflict with other information to call the whole hypothesis (significant ice melting caused by global warming) into question. That's not a valid mode of inquiry - especially when you don't have the training and time to keep up with current work.
It's like walking into an IC fab and asking why they are not using EUV lithography (it was in this article in Wired!) when you didn't even take a semiconductor physics class in college.
The right place to start, if you really want to get informed, is the IPCC AR5 report (https://www.ipcc.ch/report/ar5/). Reading press releases only makes sense if you can put it into context.
When you see an apparent contradiction like this, why do you stop there? Do you really think climatologists haven't considered this? Here's one theory: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0034425716...
> As such, the behavior of Antarctic sea ice is not a paradox as some have suggested, but instead is consistent with the geophysical characteristics in the southern polar region that starkly contrast to those in the Arctic.
Of course we don't understand everything, we don't understand everything about any subject. When you see contradictory headlines, dig deeper. Don't stop and think "I knew it, these people don't know what they're doing".
After trying to grok the mammoth amounts of data, I realized that it would take me forever just to come up to speed. I decided to focus on the arguments. What I found was that the climate scientists could answer every objection, and I could trace back to the data itself and validate what they were saying. The "skeptics" would either: repeat their claim without acknowledging the rebuttal, or would switch to arguing something else completely, or would not reply at all only to go somewhere else and repeat their rebutted claim(s) without modification. Being something of a skeptic myself (in an evidence-based way), I recognize this pattern of behavior. It's not skepticism; it's denial. It's a marketing campaign.
When you have a true skeptic of climate change look into it, you end up with the Koch-funded Richard Muller deciding that, yeah, it's real science done well and that climate change is real.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_E._Mann#CRU_email_cont...
And by the looks of the responses your post received, your reaction is justified.
While its roots may be in science, the Climate Change movement has become a church unto itself. And one that does not treat potential Martin Luthers kindly.
Would love to see more pragmatism and less dogma. I think that would help.
Then it doesn't matter what I write, or say, you can divine my true beliefs?
Sounds a little bit like...the clergy! :)
Also clergy don't think they can magically divine people's true beliefs unless you are talking about D&D, so you really need to work on your metaphors.
There are also those that seek to punctuate the discussion and create strawmen, like yourself - that's the dogma side :)
So I don't know what your comment actually tries to communicate, apart of this strawmen thing, which itself is a strawmen.
>The scientific and technological approach to these problem is pragmatic
Which is it?
Constructing climate change deniers as the new civil rights activists. What a fucked up logic.
Were to so eager to flame me that you couldn't be bothered to read my post properly?
I had wondered if my post would have spawned a lengthy discussion in which I would have to properly assemble a series of arguments with supporting links as rebuttals. But to have my point so clearly illustrated right out of the gate...oh, what a gift!
Yes, as well as reflexively downvote. Please enjoy the irony of what you wrote and the subsequent reaction.
(FWIW, I upvoted your comment)
The theory was first proposed in 1820, demonstrated in a lab in 1864, proposed with climate predictions 1894, and studied ever more intensely ever since.
It's about as old as the germ theory of disease.
So the same standard applies: if you attack the germ theory of disease or the global warming theory, you need to show some demand evidence, or else, put up with lots of negative sentiment vented by people who are justly angered that you asked for their attention and didn't show them enough respect to warrant their attention.
I'm not sure what weight that should carry. From my understand a vast majority of Western European countries are opposed to GMOs, another area where the science is settled.
In fact, there is greater scientific consensus around the safety of GMOs than even climate change.
http://www.pewinternet.org/2015/01/29/public-and-scientists-...
That opposition, generally speaking, has nothing do with whether GMOs are safe to eat or not. It has to do partially with the potential long term effects on the ecosystem and partially with skepticism towards the business practices of the main players in the GMO field.
I'm sorry, but that just isn't true. You shouldn't be so quick to speak about the whole western world.
Maybe the debate here on other topics, from technical to political, is also of low quality? Just with the flavor of "quality", like carefully argued (but absurd) mini-essays? Much like politicians and the media which use carefully-manicured gravitas to give the flavor of truth without the nutrients?
Being irrational enough to destroy yourself isn't all that compartmentalized. It's not just about climate change, it's about economics and national ideology. Which certainly includes what we do all day in our jobs.