Which skeptic do you find the most and least tolerable?

The investigation and reporting on global cooling and global warming became politicized. Extraordinarily powerful economic interests see potential economic gain no matter what the scientific information might be at this time. There is tremendous economic and political potential regardless of what facts are available or what those facts might mean. An issue that attracts the number of zealots on both sides like this issue has attracted, prevents open, honest and professional scientific investigation and reporting.

The problem with any discussion on most issues these days is the lack of civility and respect for other opinions and lack of humility regarding one's own opinion.

Albert Einstein, uniformly accepted as a great contributor to scientific understanding, was not a zealot. He was humble and self-doubting almost to a fault. He knew that scientific understanding is an always limited and defective process subject to revision, explanation, abandonment and reexamination.

Any scientist who states that there is no conflicting data or that the facts are absolutely in hand is a charlatan. Doubt is the essence of the scientific process of human understanding. The charlatan provides the weapons for zealots.

Did you know that Einstein would call up the newspapers when he thought he had discovered a fundamental flaw in quantum mechanics?  The world would get treated to a headline like "Einstein disproves quantum mechanics!"  Then Bohr would calmly point out Einstein was wrong again.  My point being that your recollection of Einstein is a false memory, and that he was as egotistical as the next scientist and actually quite unreasonable in his objections to quantum mechanics, disliking it on philosophical grounds.  So rather than Einstein being a great example for a rational scientist, he is in fact a great example of a climate skeptic.  Like Einstein did, skeptics are willing to ignore mountains of solid data and a sound theoretical interpretation and reject a theory simply because they don't like the implications.  Whenever someone gets their opening argument wrong, I instantly begin to question their entire logical train. 

Even without your rose-colored glasses view of Einstein (who really contributed nothing to physics past the first couple of decades of the 20th century), your analysis of there always being doubt and conflicting data is misguided.  While there might be conflicting data, in a lot of cases there are very strong reasons to suspect the conflicting data is faulty (i.e., if it were true, something is wrong with the physics at so fundamental a level it would call into question a scientific law).  Climate science is like that, and the only reason you think there is conflicting data is because you have been fed a steady unrelenting diet of misinformation specifically designed to make you think there is basis for reasonable doubt. 

I could be wrong in thinking the IPCC is fundamentally correct in their conclusions regarding the possibility of anthropogenic influences on climate.  But if they are it is not for any of the reasons that are being put forth as "reasonable doubt" by climate skeptics. 

Edited by gcnp58 - 6/29/2009 at 08:37 pm GMT

"...the environment is consistently a liberal issue"
-AGW contrarian

This simple statement says so much.  Why is the integrity of the environment a "liberal issue"?  Why do conservatives* feel the need to stop being conservative when it comes to the environment and are satisfied with calling it a liberal issue?

*Not all conservatives!

There's no logic to it.  The USA has become so polarized that conservatives see everything "liberal" as bad.  Preserving the environment is equally important for everyone, and critical for capitalism to work.  Yet these guys just seem to see it as a roadblock in the way of higher profits for businesses.  Sometimes I wish we could just give these guys their own little country and watch them run it into the ground.

I wanted to put this Starbuck comment on the list for future reference.

Or how about this nugget

Some people are just so fascinating in their irony.  From "Jeff M" today:

Hah that's a good one.  You know what?  So am I.  So are all scientists.  But his definition of "skeptic" isn't what a real skeptic is.

No.  I couldn't care less about your religious views, honestly.  Believe in the flying spaghetti monster for all I care.

Nobody wants to control how much you breathe or how much sex you have.  That's a strawman argument.

I don't really buy this religious beliefs excuse either.  If it was your religious belief that you're allowed to shoot anyone in the head that you want to, should we let you do it?  A lot of peoples' religious beliefs include the belief that being gay is unnatural.  So if they start killing homosexuals under the guise of religious beliefs, must we allow that?  After all, that's their religious belief.  Other religions encourage polygamy, but in the USA it's against the law.

When a person's beliefs start to harm other people, they no longer necessarily get to act on them.  And the argument can be made that continuing to increase the overpopulation problem is harming others.  You may not agree, which is your right, but the whole 'infringing on my religious beliefs' argument doesn't hold water.

In fact this is a good example of what I was talking about with people failing to understand what our true freedoms are.  People seem to think "as long as I believe it, then I have a right to do it."  That's not what the freedom of religion is.  Freedom of religion means you're free to believe whatever you want, but you're not free to do whatever you want.

Religion that is only belief and no action is weak and worthless.

Religious views are an excuse?  I think your views on global warming being caused by man are held religiously. 

Care to comment on the following data?  http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/press/proved_no_climate_crisis.html

Sciece isn't religion.

Monckton's paper - for starters, it wasn't peer-reviewed.  It was simply presented in a Forum on Physics and Society newsletter.  Frankly, the paper was extremely amateurish and mathematically flawed, as you would expect from a political and business consultant (Monckton) trying to write a mathematical and scientific paper.

There are many websites which explain the numerous errors in the paper.  Here's one.  Here's another.  Needless to say, this paper's only mathematical proof is that Monckton sucks at mathematics.

The following document really has the denial bunch wound up:

　

Comments on Draft Technical Support Document for Endangerment Analysis for Greenhouse Gas Emissions under the Clean Air Act

By Alan Carlin

NCEE/OPEI

Based on TSD Draft of March 9, 2009
Should be able to find it with a search on bing - found I prefer bing to google for search but chrome is much faster than explorer!

Ugh Carlin's comments are such a non-story that somehow made it big in the blogosphere.

RealClimate discusses it here.

ClimateProgress here.

Me here.

Providing the emails telling him to shut up are real, how his bosses handled it was a real mess and they left themselves wide open. Al McGartland seems to have the finesse of a sumo wrestler.

As soon as he wrote that Carlin was not to have any direct communication with anyone outside of NCEE on endangerment - that there should be no meetings, emails, written statements, phone calls, etc. and that it would have a very negative impact on their office he had created himself a disaster.

One thing I learned in the business world was that you can write an email many ways and most of them can have very negative consequences. An old boss gave me a lecture about that one time and I never forgot it. Didn't necessairly follow his advice everytime but always remembered it.

Now, rather than be productive everyone in Washington will be running around in circles for a while. The right wing bunch will not let go of this - they consider it real as it supports their position.

Maybe all Carlin wanted was just a better job and this mess will probably get him one.

Does anyone else think Starbuck might be Jello? 

I mean I know Starbuck has a different personality but Jello was always kind of reserved and always strove to appear 'civil' and formal. Maybe now that he lost top spot and no longer has any kind of credibility to maintain, he could lose that social front and just be himself? 

I mean they both claim to have doctorate degrees, they both post about the same amount on YA, they're both well known brand names involving food (jello and coffee). I know it's crazy, but....maybe?

Thanks for the links...

Here's some interesting quotes from the first:

<beginning of quotes>

"The next IPCC report should give people the final push that they need to take the action and we can't have people trying to undermine it." -- Royal Society of London, 2006, commenting on ways to stop those people from disagreeing with them.

"There is a clear attempt to establish truth not by scientific methods but by perpetual repetition." - Richard S. Lindzen, Ph.D. Professor of Meteorology, MIT

"When we've finally gotten serous about global warming, when the impacts are really hitting us and we're in full worldwild scramble to minimize the damage, we should have war crimes trials for these bastards -- some sort of climate Nuremberg" -- David Roberts, Grist.

"Lets just say global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future." -- Ellen Goodman, Boston Globe

"Climate change provides the greatest chance to bring about justice and equality in the world. No matter if the science is all phony, there are still collateral environmental benefits to global warming policies" -- Christine Stewart, Canada's former environmental minister

"Some of this noise won't stop until some of these "skeptic" scientists are dead." -- James Hansen, 2006 : talking about achieving consensus

Koyoto is "the first component of an authentic global governance." -- Jacques Chirac, The Hague, 2000

"To capture the public imagination, we have to offer up some scary scenarios, make simplified dramatic statements and little mention of any doubts one might have. Each of us has to decide the right balance between being effective, and being honest." -- Sephen Schneider, lead 2007 UN IPCC, wrote in 1989 : and he lead the global cooling scare in the 1970's.

<end of quotes>

Also, do you care to address the questions regarding the uncertainties of the models used to predict the global warming, such as those described here:  http://www.skeptic.com/the_magazine/featured_articles/v14n01_climate_of_belief.html ?

Given what Washington is producing these days, I'd settle for lots of running around in circles.

Nah I don't buy it.  Jello put a ton of effort into becoming the global warming 'top answerer'.  He spent untold hours cheating the system using multiple IDs to vote for his answers.  He managed to recruit two lackeys to ask dozens of questions every day for the sole purpose of giving him best answer.  Deniers took huge amounts of pleasure in having one of their own as 'top answerer'.  I don't think Jello would abandon that ID and start using another.

I'm sticking to my theory that he currently resides in prison.

Okay, Randall has made the top of my list.  I think this Uranus question is a perfect microcosm of the denial movement.

I've got a BA in astrophysics.  I spent 6 years studying the subject, and did 2 years of grad school research in astrochemistry (plus several summers researching astrophysics and cosmology).  I answered the question by citing a peer-reviewed scientific study on temperature change on Uranus.  I even provided a link explaining stellar occultation, because I knew some denier would come and say "we don't know".  Sure enough, Randall did, and his ignorance and propagation of misinformation was awarded 'best answer'.

In the post-question comments, he continues to make statements about how we can't know the temperature change on Uranus.  The guy has no idea what he's talking about, but he's convinced he knows more than people who have spent years studying the subject, including scientists who have actually measured the planet's temperature change.

That's the denial movement - the Dunning-Kruger effect.  People who have no idea what they're talking about, but who think they know more than not only those of us who have actually researched the science and read peer-reviewed studies, but even scientists who study the subject for a living.  These people who don't even understand the most rudimentary science think they've discovered a flaw that the scientists don't see.  It never ceases to amaze me when ignorant people think they understand a subject, but that's Dunning-Kruger.  Or when guys like Randall really believe the global temperature record is wrong based on their local weather experiences.  I just don't get them.  Maybe that's why I'm not a psychologist.

Quote:
You do realize that the skeptics there aren't looking for information.  They're looking for validation, and to get people who accept the conclusions of the IPCC angry.  So, when you get mad when they ignore correct science, they win, because it isn't about knowledge for them.  If it were about knowledge, they wouldn't be skeptics.

I'm more puzzled due to lack of understanding their psychology than angry.  I know one of their goals is to piss off AGW proponents, like little children, because they think it's all a game.  And when they get my goat, they feel like they've "won".  But really, who cares if the little children think they've won some little victory anyway?

Anyway, in this case the guy who pissed me off (the Uranus question asker) actually apologized (via email) for what he admitted was a mistake in choosing the ignorant Randall answer.  So his goal wasn't to piss me off.

Quote:
You really have to remember that they have completely and utterly lost the fight.  The science has just crushed them in every serious arena of debate except the internet.  There, the skeptics rule because there is no method of suppressing disinformation and the whole subject is so complex it just doesn't lend itself to short answers of only a few sentences.  So a question gets posed that doesn't have a simple answer, but nobody will read a complicated one, and reducing the complexity of the answer more often than not renders at least part of it technically incorrect.  The skeptic incorrect answers are crafted to be simple, emotionally appealing, and hard to refute with simple arguments (e.g., the Anthony Watts work, it's at best worthless, but explaining how bad it is takes pages that nobody will read). 

But back to my original point, they have lost the science so thoroughly they have nothing left except playing silly games.  For example, Eric C probably understands the mid-troposphere perfectly well, but doesn't care because he can score points with it.  You're not really debating them though. 

The likes of Eric C. are not worth the time.  I consider it more worthwhile to confront the denial pack leaders directly.  My target is Tim Ball because my first degree was from U. Winnipeg.  I am displeased that Dr. Ball makes my alma matter look second rate by association.  I did a radio interview mid June to correct Ball's misinformation the prior week.  

When the political season comes around and I read about the benefit of the blogs and how much news they put out I laugh.

Most (95%+ IMO) of the blogs don't distribute news but inane chatter - why should climate change be any different?  

I tend to challenge those who have roughly my same level of scientific expertise (none) in the AGW realm.  I leave the heavy lifting to the experts and learn from them.  It may seem easy pickings, but I think Andy has some of the funniest (not purposely) answers and, even funnier is he is taken seriously.  I think my question showed a lot about people (much of it already pretty obvious), but I especially like watching Andy try to formulate a coherent thought about any area of science.  Apparently his science information comes from Lee Iaccoca.  Perhaps that's why he thinks biologists don't want to study embryonic stem cells, but the politicians are forcing them to!  His entire post is an exercise in irony.

Ouch that's rough to come from the same university as Ball.  He's definitely a disgrace and sullies the school's reputation.  Glad to hear you were able to correct his garbage in a radio interview though.

There's a group of deniers on YA who are the worst of the worst.  Usually I just give them a thumbs-down and move on without reading their answers, unless I'm in the mood for a laugh.  James E is an obvious member of this group, and people like Poke the Bear, Peter J, and Dax O.  Andy is another.  His answers are always full of misinformation and irony.

There was one question I asked where I referenced a NY Times article and a wiki, among a couple other links.  In his answer andy said he didn't like my links so obviously I was wrong.  And of course in his answer he provided zero links or other supporting evidence, and made a bunch of false claims.

It always makes me laugh when the deniers automatically dismiss any answer containing a link with the word 'wiki' in it, but 90% of the time provide no evidence to support their claims.  Apparently wikis aren't trustworthy (even though they always cite their reference material), but some random ignoramus on YA is.

Wow, I honestly didn't think I'd be called a Nazi sympathizer for my question and comments.  I think Beam takes the cake! 

You guys are dealing with some seriously challenged people! Some of the view points are really off the wall!

Good luck!  

I had to put this quote on record because my jaw literally dropped when I read it.

In response to the question "Why the HECK did Reagan remove the solar panels from the white house that carter put up?", James E, who is currently the top active denier answerer in the  YA global warming section, said


And you thought his Dow Chemical conspiracy theory was bad.  Wow.  Just....wow.