From what I can see, good faith skepticism makes science sturdier, but in bad faith it seduces the less knowledgable and burns the time of the more knowledgeable.
On the flipside, most flat earthers don't seem to be arguing in bad faith.
I live near glacier national park. In the 1990s, some climate model predicted the eponymous glacier would be gone by 2020. Signs around the parks' entrances were erected boldly stating this claim. In January of 2020, the signs were removed because the glaciers hadn't even shrunk.
If there were real scientific interest in climate change, there'd be some interest and funding in ascertaining why that prediction was proven incorrect. But there is no such study, no funding for it, no interest whatsoever.
The climate change alarmists have zero opposition in all major institutions. Anyone who says their models are bullshit, or who says maybe the Sun is having a larger impact on the climate than are GHGs, is ridiculed without their arguments even entertained. You belie this with your statement that any such skepticism is "bad faith".
When it comes to climate change in particular, a field that seeks to study an incredibly complex collection of phenomena, whose leading experts have raised blood-chilling alarmist calls for action for decades and many of whose forecasts have proven totally bunk, who study a system far more complex than even the economy (are economics skeptics bad-faith too?)... Well, if you think YOU have a lock on what's true, and everyone with varying opinions is an obvious quack or a shill, then I think it's you who doesn't understand science.
"Between 1966 and 2005, Agassiz Glacier lost a third of its surface area. ... Between 1966 and 2005, Ahern Glacier lost 13 percent of its surface area." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_glaciers_in_Glacier_Na....))
Blackfoot and Jackson Glaciers (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackfoot_Glacier#/media/File:...)?
Chaney Glacier (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaney_Glacier)?
Dixon Glacier (45%)? Whitecrow Glacier (47%)?
Anyway, here's the USGS on Glacier National Park: https://web.archive.org/web/20120511154502/http://www.nrmsc....
You may be interested in knowing that work on climate models has progressed significantly since the 1990s. Also that Glacier National Park does not have an eponymous glacier.
I really didn't, and I feel that you did not attempt to engage with a charitable interpretation of my argument.
I used climate change denial as an example, because there clearly are people that make those arguments in bad faith, for monetary compensation. The same was true during cigarette legislation. I made no all statement at any point.
> Well, if you think YOU have a lock on what's true, and everyone with varying opinions is an obvious quack or a shill, then I think it's you who doesn't understand science.
Dude are you arguing with me or a million other people?
I'd love to have a look at the original publication that the USGS used when it decided to create those signs, but its buried so deep under partisan schadenfreude that I can't find it to even analyze it.
With respect to Greenhouse Gases: what's hard to understand about conservation of matter?
GHGs cause some warming; you can do lab experiments on flux and gas mixtures in identical glass containers to prove this.
The Biosphere (that is, the surface of the earth and all its organisms) has some essentially fixed amount of carbon distributed between critters, plants, soil, air, and dissolved in water. It's a closed system. When something dies and decomposes, it releases its carbon into the soil and atmosphere where it is endlessly recycled. Only in rare (and extremely slow) circumstances does the carbon get removed from the biosphere and put deep into the earth as coal, oil, or natural gas.
When you dig up carbon that is currently out of that cycle and put into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels you are adding additional carbon to the system. It has to go somewhere. Some of it will temporarily become plants (until they die, rot and release the carbon again), some of it will dissolve into the ocean and raise the acidity, and some of it will stay in the atmosphere and cause some warming.
This part of "climate change" is very simple to understand. The earth previously did just fine with a higher fixed amount of carbon in the biosphere, but it was a lot warmer, wetter, and humans weren't around.
Seriously? How hard did you look? https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/08/us/glaciers-national-park-202...
Also, if you want a science source, Google scholar is your friend. This doesn't look like the original source, since it's from 2003, but it makes similar predictions. https://academic.oup.com/bioscience/article/53/2/131/254976?...
> In the 1990s, some climate model predicted the eponymous glacier would be gone by 2020. Signs around the parks' entrances were erected boldly stating this claim. In January of 2020, the signs were removed because the glaciers hadn't even shrunk. [GP]
No, the source backed up the GP, because the prediction was that the glacier would be gone. Whether or not it shrank is secondary.
Except the same article explains how the glaciers have shrunk. It's not secondary, it's core to the FUD argument made.
A critical examination of the theory which produced the incorrect prediction seems to be missing. That's the point.
It's not reasonable to point to partial fulfillment of the claim; if that was the standard of evidence, a perpetual motion enthusiast could reasonably point out that they almost broke even.
From what I've understood, the reasonable arguments on either side boil down (heh) to the rate of change, because climate varies so much naturally and we seem to be accelerating it. If the rate is not what was predicted, that's a big deal and makes this failed prediction all the more relevant.
This is also why it's important to clarify what we mean by "global warming skeptic." Are we talking about someone that denies that human behavior creates greenhouse gases that warms the climate? Or are we talking about someone who views predictions about the specific effects of that warming on our environment on a particular time scale with great skepticism? These are two very different positions to take.
Yes, we can create an ideal lab "climate" and demonstrate some GHGs cause warming.
The global climate is much, much more complicated. What is the impact of GHG-caused warming on cloud formation? What is the impact of same on jetstreams? Chaos Theory was started as a result of the complexity of weather prediction, which is simply short-term climate forecasting. The two variables I mentioned are just two, and they are dizzingly complex to model. It is not as simple as "GHG++ == HEAT++".
Further, taking a step back: If we could agree on exactly how GHGs impact the global climate, then can we get a number on how much humans impact the climate at all? The way climate change alarmists seem to think, the climate would be absolutely static were it not for our industrial revolution. So what is it? If humans got GHGs to zero, how much less would the climate change? Are we responsible for 1% of overall change? 50%? 100%?
Pretending these are simple or obvious questions is absurd. I've read hundreds of papers on climate change. These topics never seem to come up. Rarely do climate scientists mention the sun, which seems to be treated like a static heat bulb in the sky that gives off an steady, constant flow of energy, which couldn't be further from the truth!
Even the name of the topic, Climate Change, describing it as some kind of problem in itself--if the climate were static it'd be a HUGE alarm! The climate has always changed.
Then a step back even further: The climate has changed throughout civilization and it appears that large-scale civilizations grow in population during periods of warming, and shrink (sometimes drastically), during periods of cooling. So how much warming is acceptable? It seems the goal is to get to zero change (lol) or to cooling. Why is that the necessarily best way?
The entire field is super-complex, and because of the political environment, even asking questions such as the above make it impossible to actually do science--only one view is acceptable.
I didn't tell you what I believe. I was trying to communicate how y'all might be talking past one another.
If anything, teasing apart these positions (and the positions inbetween) is exactly the opposite of a spherical cow. Which seems to be exactly what you're saying. So it seems like you've completely misinterpreted my comment.
These statements are contradictory.
"Modelling the impact of solar variability on climate" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S13646...)
"Climate change and solar variability: What's new under the sun?" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00128...)
"Significant impact of forcing uncertainty in a large ensemble of climate model simulations" (https://www.pnas.org/content/118/23/e2016549118.short)
"Has solar variability caused climate change that affected human culture?" (https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S02731...)
"Do Models Underestimate the Solar Contribution to Recent Climate Change?" (https://journals.ametsoc.org/view/journals/clim/16/24/1520-0...)
Hell, Roy Spencer has made much of his career off blaming what climate change he admits exists on solar variability.
The Climate is extremely complex, and will not be entirely understood in our lifetimes; but I’m not interested in litigating my way to a perfect climate model. I’ll leave that to climatologists or whatever.
I’ll state my policy position (the end result of whatever one’s understanding of the problem is anyway) and leave it at that:
My position is that mankind ought to follow what I was taught in scouts: “leave no trace”.
Return GHGs to preindustrial levels, control all other pollutants in a similarly strict sense. Work towards solving the problems we have with deforestation and destruction of habitats, etc. All while maintaining freedom of reproduction for everyone, and continuing to improve quality of life for humans everywhere. Not exactly an easy feat.
That world (the preindustrial world) changed according to its own whims and patterns, but it was beautiful and humans thrived in it.
Knowing that a much warmer planet would look different and likely be less hospitable makes me want to avoid that outcome; however I’ve made my peace with the high likelihood that I wont see “garden earth”. We’re working with a system we don’t understand against a timetable we can’t see while people make money every time they slow us down.
This position isn't really coherent on its own, because with enough time, it doesn't matter what we do: there won't be a trace of us left. So really, you need to say what you mean by "trace" and on what time scale. Your time scale can't be zero, because then we couldn't build anything. But it can't be arbitrarily long either, because then it ceases to be any kind of restraint at all.
In the very long term it would be awesome if our industrial systems emitted only manageable waste heat and the produced good, with all waste streams recycled or otherwise kept from contaminating the environment; but this is pure sci-fi utopian optimism on my part.
Don't you and the guy you responded to want the same thing: answers from the scientific community? You can criticize the right wing news sources all you want... the existence of the signs saying the glaciers were going to disappear is pretty indisputable. Clearly, someone at some point had enough belief in that prophesy that they made a sign.
[0] https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/08/us/glaciers-national-park...
[1] https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2019/09/fact-check-no-the...
[2] https://doi.org/10.1641/0006-3568(2003)053[0131:MCIGCI]2.0.C...
Bad faith actors exist but the bad faith label appears to be an overused and a lazy way of shutting down debate. Not everyone who was skeptical about the link between smoking and cancer worked for the tobacco companies or were addicted to smoking. How often are medicines we're told are safe taken off the market because it turns out they're not? Are people who were skeptical of that safety bad faith actors until they were proven correct?
Why are there "scientific" subjects for which skepticism automatically bad faith? What is the criteria for being able to question the mainstream dogma and still be considered arguing in good faith? The people who proposed the possibility of a lab leak were not long ago considered to be arguing in bad faith. How did those arguments one day suddenly stop being bad faith arguments?
I know you're asking this to demonstrate, but I'll answer anyways, because it's obvious: The elite who have very effectively captured the press, big tech, and the scientific institutions used their leverage to ensure that all such skepticism was "bad faith", even though it very clearly was not.
I would even say that the vast majority of people who argue that climate change is not real do not argue in bad faith, they really believe it. But in both of my examples there _are_ bad faith shills, and they poison the discourse.
Bad faith is when your external motives supersede your opinion on the topic. Good faith is engaging directly with the topic.
Another example:
If someone is arguing that abortion should be illegal because it is dangerous for the woman, and they believe this because a friend of theirs was injured in an abortion, or because they heard it on Fox news, they are making an argument in good faith. For whatever reason, they really believe in the risk to the health of the woman.
If someone is making the same argument, after understanding the statistics on abortion and childbirth, because they care about the life of the unborn child, they are making an argument in bad faith. Their feelings about the effects of abortion are motivating an argument about the safety of abortion.
I never said it was easy to distinguish - but clearly bad-faith skepticism exists. If you leave it be it will poison discourse. Engaging with and understanding the worldviews of people you are discussing with is expensive and it is painful if the person on the other side has no intention of engaging with your or even their own arguments.
You can tell when someone is arguing in bad faith by the fact that he disagrees with The Science. Duh.
(I'm being sarcastic here, but that's what a frightening fraction of the population actually thinks.)
There's malicious "I know what I'm saying is a lie / broken argument, but I'm willing to make it because my righteousness / beliefs justify winning." (Fixable with... nothing?)
But there's also ignorant "I don't understand the foundations of this information, and so arrive at an erroneous conclusion." (Fixable with education)
One of the failures of scientific proponents (especially pop scientific proponents) has been to treat the second group as synonymous with the first.