Sure, but the politicization is all on one side: Republicans; and the big money is all on one side: oil companies. There is no such thing as “big environment”.
Smart. One question I would ask is to describe a clear hypothesis to support this claim.
Clarity is something you are capable of neither recognizing nor producing. What claim? How do hypotheses support claims? Who would you ask a question of?
Here’s a question: why is there such an apparently strong correlation between creationism and climate change denial?
Your ad hominem attack is duly noted. Can you state a clear hypothesis?
Here’s a question: why is there such an apparently strong correlation between creationism and climate change denial?
What is climate change denial? Denial is a word used to shame those in disagreement.
I think the answer is that creationists are sensitive to theories which are being sold to the public which have exaggerated claims. Evolution and Climate change are in this category. Thats why they need a marketing organization like the NCSE.
Yep. Evolution is a fact. Those who don’t believe in evolution are either stupid, ignorant or wicked.
You are wrong… do you have any idea how many trillions of dollars are going to be invested in the next decade on the following-
- Renewable energy.
- Electric vehicles.
- Sustainable land development
A large percentage of this money is going to be spent directly by governments as payment to private contractors. A lot of private enterprises are going to be subsidised to the hilt.
Climate science has a huge impact on all the decisions concerning investments in th above. Oil companies are small fry.
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It wasn’t ad hominem, and it wasn’t an attack. It was a question.
Is this a sincere question?
Yeah, I think that’s a self-serving and nonsensical explanation. But thanks for trying.
Do you know of any other private concerns that are spending money on propaganda, lobbying, and other sorts of attempts to influence climate policy or public opinion on it? I see no signs of anybody trying to subvert or downplay science on this subject, other than the oil industry and groups subsidized by them. Do you have anything specific in mind here?
I see a lot of money has been and is going to be spent by governments because of climate change. I also see that there is practically no discussion of the policy initiatives which will be taken.
Many private players are going to benefit from government contracts and a lot of stuff will be subsidised.
However I also know all of the money for this will come from taxes. This process is not democratic. This is justified by a language of crisis, yet it’s also making a lot of money for some people (including Scientists and think tanks).
In such a scenario, I prefer not being lied to using examples of walruses jumping off cliffs.
As to funding, US government funding for climate change research increased from 2.4 billion in 1993 to 11.6 billion in 2016. That’s a lot of money… and it will dry up if there is no crisis.
I am all for renewable energy, conservation of resources etc purely on the basis of common sense. However, it’s a fact that Government’s are spending a lot of money without consulting their voters and getting little to no benefit in terms of impact on climate.
I see you have spent a lot of words failing to respond to my questions.
I don’t claim it is. I’ve taken no stand on the question, in itself. I have objected to the way the question is argued about.
First, you don’t settle a theoretical question by counting the number of hands of scientists who say X is true, counting the number of hands of scientists who say X is not true, seeing that more scientists are in the first group, and then declaring X must be true, because the majority of scientists wouldn’t be wrong. And that’s how 95% of the people in our society who endorse AGW have decided that AGW is true and leaves no room at all for rational doubt. They follow the prevailing winds, accept the majority view on authority, because actually taking the time to learn the scientific arguments on both sides (which may require resurrecting math and physics they learned 20 or more years ago in high school, and learning much more beyond) is way too hard, and they want a shortcut to truth.
I wouldn’t mind if most of the AGW converts were intellectually honest, and said, “The math and science in these models is way above my pay grade, and I don’t have the time to learn it and read all the professional literature. So as a citizen voting on the political options regarding global warming, I have to rely on imperfect knowledge, secondhand knowledge; I have to decide which group of scientists is correct, without having the training to do so. It seems to me more likely that a large majority of scientists are right than that they are wrong, so pragmatically, it makes sense for me to support the majority.” I could live with that. Politicians and lay people have to make choices like that.
What I can’t live with is the pompous statements many of these people make, as if they think they are really capable of saying yes or no to the arguments of either side, arrogantly declaring “The science is in!” or the like. How would they know? Most of them couldn’t understand the primary literature in the field, and many of them have trouble fully understanding even a Scientific American summary of the science involved. They are simply puppets, mouthing the words they’ve been told to mouth by the majority of experts – or by journalists who without scientific understanding swallow the words of those experts.
We have a guy on this site, for example, who is not only not a climatologist, but not a scientist of any kind at all, and doesn’t even have a university degree of any kind. But he’s certain the majority of climatologists are right, and exerts loud-mouth aggression against anyone who doubts the “consensus,” telling them they are ignorant of science. Why does his no-degree, no-training, no-accomplishment aggression add anything to the case for AGW? Intellectually, his opinions are completely negligible. And there’s another guy here whose undergrad degree was in Psychology, and whose graduate work was in Business Management, who thinks he has offered “killer” technical arguments on why AGW science is correct. When did it become the case that the truth about difficult technical questions in mathematical modelling could be settled by bar-room quarreling of autodidacts on internet blog sites? Or by science journalists in the mainstream media, who, if they have any science degree at all, it’s usually no more than a Bachelor’s, and almost never in any field related to climate change? Or by politicians like Al Gore, whose list of peer-reviewed publications in science is a blank page?
That’s one thing that irritates me. The other thing is the use of ad hominem arguments. In the educational system I was raised in, if you didn’t know a field, you took one of two approaches. You either said you didn’t know enough about it to have a worthwhile opinion, and you remained neutral on the question; or you said you would have a go at trying to understand the material, and read the arguments on both sides made by those with training, not the arguments as slanted, biased, and parodied by journalists and bloggers and left-wing politicians (or right-wing politicians, for that matter) with an axe to grind. And you would completely ignore all ad hominem charges against the people on either side, and focus only on their argument and their evidence.
So if someone said that any scientist who debated AGW was in the pocket of the oil companies, you would ignore that charge and try to evaluate the argument on its merits, as distinct from any alleged motive the person had for offering it.
In philosophy, if a student tried to “refute” an argument for slavery found in Aristotle by saying, “Oh, well, Aristotle was an ancient Greek, and he was prejudiced by the fact that Greece was a slave society” so we can discount his argument," that “rebuttal” would be rejected by the professor and by fellow students as irrelevant. In philosophy, the question of Aristotle’s motives is irrelevant. The only thing that is assessed is his argument. And that’s the way it should be on the global warming question as well. But again, people want shortcuts to truth. It would be hard work for them to have to understand the technical reasons why Judith Curry disagrees with Michael Mann, and all that work could be saved if they could believe that Judith Curry is willfully lying and distorting evidence; then they could just listen to one side and ignore the other, and their brains would be less strained. So they eagerly buy the “Judith Curry has sold her scientific soul for money” line (though they’ve never read a paragraph of her writing, and haven’t even checked the facts regarding the alleged monies she has received).
Again, the problem is not that AGW is wrong (it might well be correct); the problem is that the epistemology of the debate is all wrong. We have a public, even a generally educated public, who may be well trained in particular fields (math, medicine, law, economics, etc.) but who are babes in the woods when it comes to epistemology – how we know what we know, how to tell logically valid arguments from fallacies, etc. Some of the stupidest arguments for AGW (and a whole bunch of other issues) come not from farmers who never completed high school, but from people with university degrees. They know lots of “stuff” in some field, and therefore have gained the conceit (amplified if they went to an Ivy League school) that their reasoning is infallible, but their epistemological training is close to zero. They are thus ripe for being suckered by arguments from authority, ad hominem arguments, etc. And they fall for arguments, and repeat such arguments, every day, in newspaper columns, in blog columns, and elsewhere.
Properly taught, philosophy would be the greatest boon to public discourse we could hope for. But of course, it’s held in low regard by most people, and even by most educated people. So our own worst intellectual tendencies remain uncorrected.
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Why not? Isn’t it a very important issue that should, for example, inform your voting?
Then why don’t you do that? How would you form an opinion?
Which one have you done?
Would you evaluate the issue of tobacco and lung cancer in the same way? Do you think that cigarette company spokesmen are as likely to present valid arguments as anyone on that subject?
How would you try to determine whether it’s correct or not? Have you done so? If not, why not?
Are you suggesting that, if I genuinely think the arguments on both sides are inconclusive, I should just throw darts at a board blindfolded, and vote on that basis?
I do do that. You have never seen me object to anyone, on this site or any other, who says, “I don’t know enough science to be sure who’s right, so I think the safest thing for me to do is side with the majority, on trust.” You have seen me argue only against those with no expertise in any field anywhere near close to climate change modeling who arrogantly say “the science is in” (attempting to cut off all further discussion) and that anyone who doesn’t accept the majority view is scientifically ignorant, motivated by payoffs from oil companies, etc. Check my past statements, if you doubt this.
I wouldn’t form an opinion, if I didn’t think the evidence on either side was clear enough. There is nothing wrong with anyone, scientist, or philosopher, or citizen, saying, “I don’t know which view is right.” It shows intellectual humility. On the other hand, there is something about middle-class, university-educated people, something about their culture, that impels them always to have an opinion on everything. And so they constantly look to opinion leaders (columnists, etc.) to help them decide how to think. For this reason, it’s often much easier to brainwash middle-class, college-educated people than it is to brainwash an old-fashioned farmer from the sticks, or an old-fashioned self-employed carpenter, etc. You can count on the desperate need that middle-class, socially climbing people have for peer esteem to push them to adopt a prevailing opinion.
Both, at different times, and in different contexts. You will notice that I did not enter into the technical genetics dispute between Venema, Buggs, Gauger, Swamidass, etc. I did not think I could acquire enough knowledge of genetics in a short time to make any useful contribution, so I stayed out of it and listened and learned. But on other questions, where I have done considerable reading of what major figures have to say, I sometimes venture an opinion. And even then, I usually focus more on establishing what people said rather than on whether or not they were correct. So if someone says that “evolutionary theory” says X, I will point out that there exist bona fide evolutionary theorists who do not say X, and that the generalization is unsound. But I don’t generally argue that one is right and the other wrong. For example, I haven’t argued that Shapiro’s view that organisms can self-engineer their genomes is right; I’ve merely said that if he is right, then that leaves room for a “Lamarckian” (speaking loosely) vision of evolution within the wider spectrum of evolutionary theory today. What I object to is people who would simply sweep away the views of a well-trained, well-published molecular biologist at a major world university as not worth listening to. That’s not the same as claiming I have the expertise to settle the dispute myself.
I wouldn’t get into speculation about motives. I would just look at the evidence, as far I could understand it as a layman. I saw photos of lungs of smokers vs. lungs of non-smokers, and it looked as if the lungs of the smokers were in bad condition enough of the time to warrant a strong suspicion (if other possible factors were controlled for in the selection of photos) that cigarette smoking could hurt your lungs. So I would tend to support the position that won out, not because I have any inherent distrust of tobacco companies, but because the evidence looked strong to my lay eyes.
But in the case of anthropogenic global warming the “evidence” is mathematical models the untrained layman can’t adjudicate. There nothing the equivalent of an x-ray of a dirty lung. We can show the climate has warmed over 150 years, but it is much harder to prove exactly the percentage of the warming caused by CO2 emissions, given that the experts in this kind of modeling come up with different figures. The question “how much is caused by CO2” isn’t data a layman can see, but comes from number-crunching by mathematical tools that the layman can’t grasp. So when two advanced scientists disagree over the number they come up with, what is the layman to do?
Also, there are considerations that have nothing to do with science, but with economics. For example, suppose that CO2 emissions could be proved to account for 90% of the warming. Well, then, the economist might ask whether it would be better for a country to lose thousands of jobs by instituting stringent emissions standards which India and China will not implement, and thus suffer a huge loss in standard of living, or pump out the CO2, keeping people in jobs and the economy afloat, but use the tax revenue from the profits of the companies to build walls, levees, etc. to deal with projected ocean level rises. The economist would also ask whether the prospect of an ice-free Arctic ocean might open vast new economic opportunities that would more than offset the losses elsewhere.
In other words, it’s complicated, and climatologists don’t get the final say when it comes to policy decisions. The public has to be asked what tradeoffs it is willing to make in order to address global warming. Nothing in the training of a scientist makes scientists any better at making such tradeoffs than the intelligent layman.
I have two options. I can drop everything I am doing, including the work I have to do to pay for my food and shelter, and go back to school full-time to do a Ph.D. in climatology, so that I will become competent to evaluate the complex mathematical models in detail, or I can try to make sense of what is offered based on the general knowledge of science that I have now. The first option is not available to me, for economic reasons.
And as for the second option, since I refuse to agree with something just because nine out of ten scientists say so, all I can do is go by my instincts. I note that the behavior of many of the AGW defenders is not consistent with that of those who really have irrefutable evidence for their theory. Plotting to stop journals from publishing contrary research, for example (Climategate emails), is not the honest scientific way. Privately putting pressure on other scientists not to note possible weaknesses in the models, because any theoretical doubts, no matter how well-founded, might interfere with the desired public policy agenda, is not the scientific way. (I can dig up a website where this pressure is documented, if you don’t already know about this.) Using emotioinally loaded terms like “denier” (a below-the-belt attempt to subliminally link AGW skepticism with Holocaust denial), when “skeptic” would be adequate, is not the scientific way. Saying that no skeptics of AGW have any qualifications in climatology, when that is quite obviously false (Judith Curry has 160 published papers in the field), is not the scientific way. The fact that the “pro” side is willing to embrace or condone these tactics, and others like them, gives me reason to doubt that the “pro” side is entirely emotionally detached on the subject.
So what is my conclusion? My conclusion is that the AGW camp may be completely correct, but that they have not provided me with any way of verifying that they are correct. (“Just trust that our models are better than the skeptics’ models, because we’re smarter” is not sufficient.) Further, their culture-war behavior suggests strongly that non-scientific motives may be operating. So I withhold assent to their claims. That is not the same as saying they are false.
You would like me to do more. You would like me to “take a side.” But that is the attitude of the political man, not of the theoretical man. The theoretical man is willing to withhold assent forever, if need be, if the case for a theory is insufficiently strong. Oddly enough, you, the professional scientist, who should be a theoretical man, are urging me to make a decision about what is true about nature based on imagined political or social urgency, rather than on theoretical and empirical grounds alone, whereas I, the non-scientist, am recommending resisting political and social pressures and concentrating on further research and reasoning to learn more about the climatic system. A strange inversion, don’t you think, that the “science” guy would be more political, and the “arts” guy more theoretical in his approach?
Last I looked, Al Gore wasn’t a Republican, but a Democrat.
And there is “big money” in grants to academics to research climate change, often coming from governments. (Americans perhaps don’t tend to realize this as much as people from other advanced countries, where by far the biggest contribution to university funding comes from the state, not from private companies.) And when governments in countries like Western Europe, New Zealand, Canada, etc. fund things, they are generally guided by recommendations from their academics who should get funding, and in those countries academics are overwhelmingly left-wing and “socially progressive.” So research into global warming motivated by alarmism tends to get state funding in those countries, whereas global warming skeptics get very little or none. And governments can pump millions or even tens of millions of dollars into such research, which is not chicken feed, even in relation to what oil companies in the US supposedly donate. It is possible for an academic scientist to have a lucrative career in global warming research, if he/she holds to the current politically correct view. The idea that corporations are inherently selfish and biased, while academics funded by government are inherently altruistic and scrupulously fair, is part of modern mythology which no one who has seen the dirty underbelly of a state-funded university can believe for five minutes.
No. Why would you imagine that I’m suggesting any such thing? So, are you saying that you have no opinion on the subject and stand exactly between two piles of hay?
The rest of your post seems to be elaborate verbiage with the purpose of avoiding any opinion on the question. You’re OK with other people having opinions, as long as they come by them in ways you find acceptable, but you are unwilling to apply any of those ways yourself.
Oh, but here’s a place where you actually do come down on, or rather against one side:
And yet your instincts lead you only to think that AGW proponents haven’t made a case because they sometimes do things you disapprove of. But what about the opponents of AGW? Don’t they do things at least as open to disapproval? What about Darryl Issa bringing a snowball into the House? What about the Trump administration censoring scientists? You seem “neutral” only in an oddly biased way.
And really, you don’t see the smugness and sanctimony in that post?
Correct. But he didn’t politicize anything.
Compared to oil money, that’s not big. Your conspiracy theory is absurd, and doubly strange since you reject the idea that oil and tobacco companies try to bias research and policy. Only academics do that sort of thing, apparently.
I’m glad I wasn’t drinking hot coffee when I read that; it would have spilled all over, maybe wrecking my keyboard and burning me.
I wrote a calm, measured response to your questions. I took them seriously and answered them generously and honestly, and without personal polemics against you. In response, you lash back at me, accusing me of smugness and sanctimony. It’s clear you are interested only in quarreling, not in having a civilized dialogue.
And you are only doing your own cause harm with this belligerent attitude. Readers on these blog sites are no doubt noticing that the most active anti-ID folks tend to be bad-tempered and make personal accusations about people’s motives. This will only confirm any suspicion or dislike of science and scientists that they already have, and make populist anti-science all that much stronger. Your aggression and unwillingness to give and take in discussion is hurting your own cause.
The implicit thrust of your original post, if it had any purpose at all (which based on this new response of yours, I’m beginning to doubt), was that I had no right to remain neutral on the AGW question, but had a social duty to make up my mind and vote accordingly. That was what clearly came across, whether you intended it or not. I made clear that I did not see sufficient data or argument to make up my mind, and therefore that on the theoretical question, all I could do was reserve judgment. That was an honest statement. So my original question, I pose again:
Given that I think that the theoretical truth has not been established, are you asking me to arbitrarily choose one side or the other, just for the sake of “taking a stand”? And if not, what non-arbitrary method are you advising (or ordering?) me to employ as a tie-breaking device?
I never made any such assertion. I merely pointed out:
1-- That even if such charges of bias are true, they are irrelevant to the truth or falsehood of any scientific claim. If the corporations underwrite bad scientific arguments on global warming, it should be easy to show they are bad, without any reference to their motives. Motives are irrelevant in determining scientific truth.
2-- That private business interests are not the only group on the planet that has biases that affect how they research and discuss things. Academics, including scientists, are not without their biases. Labor unions, governments, feminists – everyone has leanings, biases, prejudices. Money is not the only motive that might cause people to lie, exaggerate, suppress dissenting views. People have other motives, such as political agendas, e.g., achieving a world-wide socialist society with heavy governmental regulation. It’s one-sided to suggest that only the anti-AGW people could possibly have non-scientific motives. I was just balancing the scales, not denying possible wrongdoing on one side.
No, I only express my perceptions. So when and where did Al Gore politicize AGW?
I doubt they are.
Yes, that’s my claim. Why don’t you agree? If it’s actually true that AGW is a major threat to our future, wouldn’t you agree that it’s important to get governments to take action? If it isn’t, on the other hand, governments shouldn’t do anything about it. And isn’t it therefore important for you to figure out whether it is such a threat, so you can support the appropriate action or inaction?
That results in inaction, by default. It’s as much a decision as favoring action is. Have you actually looked for the data, or are other people responsible for showing it to you?
No. I’m asking you to pursue the facts. You have agreed already that “97% of climate scientists agree” would be a valid reason for someone else to believe AGW is happening. Why isn’t it a valid reason for you?
What exactly to they agree on?
Perceptions (of smugness, sanctimony, etc.) which you now know are not shared by all others, as Michael Callen’s remarks about the style of my previous post indicated.
You don’t think his film was politically motivated?
First of all, it’s not about data, but about mathematical models for handling the data.
I’m quite competent to look at raw temperature data. The raw data, even according to those who favor AGW, has indicated zero to very little global warming overall during the past 10 years or so. If you are asking me to decide whether or not there is a global crisis based on raw data, I’d say not only that there is no warming crisis, there’s hardly any warming.
It is the models, not the raw data, on which all the alarmism is based. Those who admit that the temperature has hardly risen in recent years still maintain that we are in a global temperature crisis, not because of what the thermometers say but because of what their models predict. And most people aren’t competent to evaluate those models. And “most people” includes avian phylogeneticists, molecular biologists, and everybody else here. It’s a very specialized area of science, and nobody here works in that field.
So in essence you are asking me either to become a climatologist myself, so that I can make a good judgment – but then why haven’t you done that? – or you are asking me to read technical mathematical literature I don’t fully understand and make a poor judgment, or you are asking me to go with the majority on faith.
Which of those three do you want me to do? Master climate science to the professional level, dabble in it and claim my judgments are sound, or not even pretend to judgment and just go with the majority?
Remember, whatever you advise me to do applies to you as well. So while you are telling me what I should do, tell me which of the above three you have done.
That’s pure unadulterated bullshit. Please provide references to back up your claim.
According to NASA GISS the average global temperature has risen +0.265 deg. C since 2010, the largest delta of any decade in the last century and we still have a year to go.
Wiki summary with link to NASA raw data
Interesting how so many Evolution deniers are also anthropogenic climate change deniers. I suppose their scientific illiteracy covers lots of fields.
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