global warming real? or hoax

[shapenaji]

Here's my major question for deniers:

Given the enormous effect we've had on our earth (with changes to the chemistry of the atmosphere, landscape, ecosystems, and oceans):

If you are going to say that these changes had no effect on our climate... don't you think the burden of proof is on YOU to prove that?

Even if you find a single study which disagrees with a paper supporting climate change, it's not enough.

It's not enough because even if you succeed in arguing that their particular prediction of climate change is flawed, you still are left with major, human-driven changes to our earth which you have not ascribed effects.

Until you give a counterpoint for what the effects are, I'm afraid you're trying to keep a dam stoppered by poking your finger in it.

[Dusk Eagle]

For a long time, I was a Young Earth Creationist. In my head I was convinced that scientists were mainly lying, and some were seriously confused. Due to this I refused to actually look at any of the evidence for evolution and only read from young earth creationists sites for my evidence. I had blinders on where I would refuse to look at any evidence that might make me even question my beliefs. Worse, I wasn't even consciously aware of how biased I was being, despite the fact that on other issues where people would act identically to me it was easy to spot how flawed their thinking was.

Citing a few articles in news sites is not the same as citing actual scientific journals or data. I could equally cite this New York Times article as proof of Bigfoot, but I'm sure we can all see the flaws with that.

[Bill Spight]

Therefore with 15 minutes of research I have overturned the last three decades of global warming advocates.

Why do you think that scientific consensus has not changed?

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/peter-h-g ... 94164.html
"We're very embarrassed," said Dr. Melissa Tonnennsen, a climate scientist with NASA, "but we must admit that sign errors do occasionally occur. We normally discover them, but this one slipped by us for over a century. The climate is still changing -- we got that right -- it's just that everything is going in the other direction."

Because scientists thought they were right about global warming using climate changes as evidence for warming. This scientist proves that this assumption was wrong.

Climate change is occurring, but it is not warming as indicated by the scientist.

They should not have used climate change evidence to co-indicate a global warming affect.

This is what she is saying.

Thanks for the April Fool's joke.

[Uzziel]

Thanks for the April Fool's joke.

Whoops! Guess that goes to show that you should fully read through your evidence.

Boy oh Boy if this were a debate I could clip/tag and abuse the hell out of that source though.

Anyway... This isn't an April fools joke.
Climate Change: UN Official Says World Leaders Failing, Climate Experts Admit Wrong Global Warming Predictions
http://au.ibtimes.com/articles/506884/20130918/global-warming-climate-change-carbon-emissions-greenhouse.htm

Also just want to clarify... that I was not going to repost but the April Fools prank was funny as I was completely fooled. (Speed research isn't a good strategy )

As far as my position... I never said I did not believe in climate change. I just do not buy into the *dump your carbon before its too late and tax everyone for breathing!* groups out there. I do believe we are cooling and not warming though, or that Global warming is cyclical and not related to the release of carbon.

So we basically go global warming, global cooling, global warming global cooling.

Now I think this is due to the cycles of the sun. While chemical release may affect this it is obvious the sun does have a part in how out climates are shaped.

Pretty odd everybody is afraid of carbon while our biggest natural carbon offset (TREES) are being eliminated for use at a very high rate.

But the Green Carbon Tax (Agenda 21 UN Bogus crap) Taxing everyone's pocket is fitting really nice into someones bank account with no real goal or ability to help the environment in any way.

Well anyway...
Peace

[Bill Spight]

Pretty odd everybody is afraid of carbon while our biggest natural carbon offset (TREES) are being eliminated for use at a very high rate.

Plant trees.

[hyperpape]

*dump your carbon before its too late and tax everyone for breathing!* groups out there. I do believe we are cooling and not warming though, or that Global warming is cyclical and not related to the release of carbon.

There is a good idea out there, called the ideological turing test: the better you are able to state your opponent's ideas, in a way that he would find comprehensible and perhaps compelling, the more likely you are to be right.

Now, do you think it's accurate that people who believe in global warming typically "want to tax people for breathing"? I guess you'd say it was hyperbole.

Pretty odd everybody is afraid of carbon while our biggest natural carbon offset (TREES) are being eliminated for use at a very high rate.

Most environmentalists who are worried about global warming think deforestation is a big problem and we should be trying to stop it. So it does seem like you're grasp of your opponents' positions are a little shaky. I think you would benefit from reading more about why scientists think that man made global warming is real. I think you might find it compelling, but regardless, I think that it would be helpful for you.

[Darrell]

... I thought that more than 50% ppl shared my belief ...

From this I can deduce that you listen to Rush and Fox News all day and nothing else.

Here is a fact: the last 3 REPUBLICAN Presidential nominees all agree that the climate is warming
Mitt Romney
John McCain
George W. Bush

If BOTH nominees for the past 3 elections agree on something, that is a clear sign that the vast majority of Americans also agree. If you thought that it was anywhere close to 50/50, then you are getting very skewed information.

[gogameguru]

I thought that more than 50% ppl shared my belief but i was mildly surprised on the reaction i got on other thread.

This may be because of a phenomenon called astroturfing, where certain organizations pay for many 'fake' comments (and blog posts etc) to be posted around the internet in order to manufacture the appearance of consensus or a grass roots campaign - or to perpetuate certain ideas.

This tactic seems to be being employed across the business and political spectrum these days. That is; both the 'left' and the 'right' are manipulating people's opinions through astroturfing (though left and right are simplistic labels, which are fairly corrosive to our democracy in the way that they force people into opposing teams - but that's getting too far off topic). I've read about astroturfing happening on large scales in China and Russia too (as well as the West). My guess is that it's happening in most advanced countries. It's been claimed that China has hundreds of thousands of astroturfers who get paid about 50 cents a pop to post pro government blog posts (I can't say whether that number is accurate though).

At this point - in my opinion - it's almost a total waste of time to read the comments on most big news sites, because of the number of paid hacks (from all sides) interfering with the conversations of genuine readers. If you think it often seems like people don't even read the article before commenting, it's because they don't. They're not paid to. They just read the headlines. Topics like climate change are like a magnet for this sort of thing.

Fortunately, Go is enough of a niche topic that we don't see really see that happening on L19 or other Go sites yet. The response you got here was probably more representative of the views of real people, with the caveat that the sample here may be heavily biased in terms of type and amount of education.

On an average day at gogameguru.com we'll receive between 50-100 spam comments on articles (99% of which we manage to automatically block, thankfully, so they don't appear on the site). Most of them are to promote some random commercial product (handbags, pharmaceuticals, shoes, get rich quick etc) but a handful of them are political, so the tentacles have a long reach and I expect this to keep getting worse. I don't have time to read that rubbish, but every week or so I scan through them to catch legitimate reader comments that somehow got caught in the spam filter. I've sometimes seen spam comments ranting on about global warming being a hoax, among other things. The significance of this is that if that's happening, someone's paying to make it happen, because it costs money. You wouldn't spam people about political stuff instead of something like viagra unless you were paid more to do so.

The majority of spam comments are left by botnet spammers (e.g. computers that have a virus which allows them to be remotely controlled by someone else - to do your bidding, for a fee). There's also a component of human submitted spam which is more expensive, but also more successful in (temporarily) getting past the antispam measures. A lot of the political stuff seems to come from humans, even when the relevance to the article they comment on is incredibly tenuous (I assume they have to meet some sort of daily quota).

What does this tell you? I guess nothing that we shouldn't already know: that you can't believe everything you read and that "follow the money" is still a good adage for people with a genuinely skeptical* mind.

Who stands to gain (or lose) the most here Magicwand? Who would pay to spread this sort of political message and what's the payoff for them?

* = in the true sense of the word 'skeptic'.

[TheBigH]

This is a forum for go players. It wouldn't be too much of a stretch to suggest that go is a hobby for educated people with the capacity to think critically. That could explain why we are so heavily slanted away from science denialism.

[Bill Spight]

... I thought that more than 50% ppl shared my belief ...

From this I can deduce that you listen to Rush and Fox News all day and nothing else.

Here is a fact: the last 3 REPUBLICAN Presidential nominees all agree that the climate is warming
Mitt Romney
John McCain
George W. Bush

Don't forget Bush I.

[crux]

Look at all you defenders of "science"...

Science is about comparing observations to theories. Climate science predicted a rapid rise in global temperature, and we're now at a point where we've gone more than a decade during which that simply hasn't happened. Just how long depends on which dataset you look at and how you define "significant", but temperature trends are practically zero since 1997 and falling since 2002, all in a time period with record emissions of CO2. This is verifiable and not a position of contention, climate scientists are admitting it - more or less openly - although they will try to explain it away. Here's one article in a scientific journal discussing the problem: http://www.nature.com/news/hidden-heat-1.13608. They discuss some of the attempts at explaining the pause, but at the end of the day the fact is this: the folks on the skeptical side of the argument expected the rise in the late 20th century to level off, and that is exactly what happened in the real world. Shouldn't we assign them a higher credibility than mainstream climate scientists who essentially said that CO2 is the only driver of climate and will cause steadily rising temperatures?

So guys, if science isn't about believing (as p2501 said in the other thread), how much more will observations have to contradict climate science predictions before you stop believing? You need to have an answer for this question if you want to call your viewpoint a scientific one. Or will you continue to believe in global warming as long as there is a consensus of "scientists", regardless of what happens in the real world?

[TheBigH]

All else being equal, I am more inclined to believe those with no financial incentive to lie over those that do have such an incentive, which means I am more likely to trust climate scientists than climate science deniers (i.e., the fossil fuel industry and the politicians they purchase). Particularly since the scientific predictions have been broadly correct more often than not. Note that what the scientists themselves say is often very different to what the deniers say the scientists have claimed, because the deniers tell lies. Continually and shamelessly. You would do well to read the scientific literature itself, rather than receiving it second-hand from morons like Fox News, who have neither the integrity nor the intelligence to report it accurately.

[p2501]

Here's one article in a scientific journal discussing the problem: http://www.nature.com/news/hidden-heat-1.13608. They discuss some of the attempts at explaining the pause, but at the end of the day the fact is this: the folks on the skeptical side of the argument expected the rise in the late 20th century to level off, and that is exactly what happened in the real world. Shouldn't we assign them a higher credibility than mainstream climate scientists who essentially said that CO2 is the only driver of climate and will cause steadily rising temperatures?

The article talks about different propable causes for global warming and that the climate seems not as sensitive to it as previously expected.
I don't see a problem with that. All you do is paint all scientist that support the global warming/climate change cause in one colour with baseless claims.

[crux]

All else being equal, I am more inclined to believe those with no financial incentive to lie over those that do have such an incentive, which means I am more likely to trust climate scientists than climate science deniers (i.e., the fossil fuel industry and the politicians they purchase).

This particular meme is really tiresome. It is a tactic to shut down debate by simply claiming that people who disagree with a viewpoint must be evil and therefore not worth listening to. The sad thing is, it is typically the first resort of the defenders of global warming orthodoxy.

We went over this in the other thread, but look up how much money is spent on climate research and on industries like solar and wind farms, then reconsider "no financial incentive".

Particularly since the scientific predictions have been broadly correct more often than not.

Vague handwaving. Disagrees with observable reality (no warming for more than 10 years contrary to predictions).

Note that what the scientists themselves say is often very different to what the deniers say the scientists have claimed, because the deniers tell lies.

More ad-hominem rather than honest debate. Also typical of climate consensus defenders and one of the things that really turned me off once I started investigating the issue.

You would do well to read the scientific literature itself, rather than receiving it second-hand from morons like Fox News, who have neither the integrity nor the intelligence to report it accurately.

I don't actually get Fox News. I'm from Germany, so genetically I'm inclined to believe the meme that US Republicans are evil and stupid. My point of view used to match yours; I voted Green the first time I went to an election. It's just that over the years it's become painfully obvious that in this particular case, reality has a conservative bias.

But you (and everyone else here, apparently) would do well to read some skeptical websites every now and then, as an antidote for the garbage you're fed at your preferred news source. Just allow yourself to question, every now and then, how much we really know. I can understand if you don't want to go to WUWT, but to start out maybe try http://judithcurry.com/ for a scientist who's placed herself outside the consensus.

[TheBigH]

We went over this in the other thread, but look up how much money is spent on climate research and on industries like solar and wind farms, then reconsider "no financial incentive".

If I were a climate scientist willing to lie for money, I would make more by lying for the fossil fuel industry than by lying for the solar power mob.