The Thought Experiment That First Made Me A Climate Skeptic
DrCaleb @ Wed Feb 26, 2014 8:21 am
A pretty good read:
$1:
Last night, the accumulated years of being called an evil-Koch-funded-anti-science-tobacco-lawyer-Holocaust-Denier finally caught up with me. I wrote something like 3000 words of indignation about climate alarmists corrupting the very definition of science by declaring their work “settled”, answering difficult scientific questions with the equivalent of voting, and telling everyone the way to be pro-science is to listen to self-designated authorities and shut up. I looked at the draft this morning and while I agreed with everything written, I decided not to publish a whiny ode of victimization. There are plenty of those floating around already.
And then, out of the blue, I received an email from a stranger. Last year I had helped to sponsor a proposal to legalize gay marriage in Arizona. I was doing some outreach to folks in the libertarian community who had no problem with gay marriage (after all, they are libertarians) but were concerned that marriage licensing should not be a government activity at all and were therefore lukewarm about our proposition. I suppose I could have called them bigots, or homophobic, or in the pay of Big Hetero — but instead I gathered and presented data on the number of different laws, such as inheritance, where rights and privileges were tied to marriage. I argued that the government was already deeply involved with marriage, and fairness therefore demanded that more people have access to these rights and privileges. Just yesterday I had a reader send me an email that said, simply, “you changed my mind on gay marriage.” It made my day. If only climate discussion could work this way.
So I decided the right way to drive change in the climate debate is not to rant about it but instead to continue to model what I consider good behavior — fact-based discussion and a recognition that reasonable people can disagree without that disagreement implying one or the other has evil intentions or is mean-spirited.
More:
And then, out of the blue, I received an email from a stranger. Last year I had helped to sponsor a proposal to legalize gay marriage in Arizona. I was doing some outreach to folks in the libertarian community who had no problem with gay marriage (after all, they are libertarians) but were concerned that marriage licensing should not be a government activity at all and were therefore lukewarm about our proposition. I suppose I could have called them bigots, or homophobic, or in the pay of Big Hetero — but instead I gathered and presented data on the number of different laws, such as inheritance, where rights and privileges were tied to marriage. I argued that the government was already deeply involved with marriage, and fairness therefore demanded that more people have access to these rights and privileges. Just yesterday I had a reader send me an email that said, simply, “you changed my mind on gay marriage.” It made my day. If only climate discussion could work this way.
So I decided the right way to drive change in the climate debate is not to rant about it but instead to continue to model what I consider good behavior — fact-based discussion and a recognition that reasonable people can disagree without that disagreement implying one or the other has evil intentions or is mean-spirited.
More:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/warrenmeyer ... e-skeptic/
BartSimpson @ Wed Feb 26, 2014 10:22 am
Well, fact-based discussion gets one called a 'denier' by the AGW cultists so I wish him luck in his Stygian task.
Zipperfish @ Wed Feb 26, 2014 10:27 am
Kind of what I've been saying for some time. The radiation physics part of the argument is pretty solid, but the assumption of positive feedback is a lot dicier, and doesn't really align with my own experience dealing with complex systems (i.e. in most complex systems, feedback will be neagtive to attempt homeostasis).
BartSimpson @ Wed Feb 26, 2014 10:30 am
Zipperfish Zipperfish:
Kind of what I've been saying for some time. The radiation physics part of the argument is pretty solid, but the assumption of positive feedback is a lot dicier, and doesn't really align with my own experience dealing with complex systems (i.e. in most complex systems, feedback will be neagtive to attempt homeostasis).
Ironically, AGW theorists encounter negative feedback from sceptics who are attempting to maintain homeostasis!
DrCaleb @ Wed Feb 26, 2014 10:34 am
Zipperfish Zipperfish:
Kind of what I've been saying for some time. The radiation physics part of the argument is pretty solid, but the assumption of positive feedback is a lot dicier, and doesn't really align with my own experience dealing with complex systems (i.e. in most complex systems, feedback will be neagtive to attempt homeostasis).
'Zactly. A lot of assumptions, and the reason we conduct experiments is because Nature tends to throw curve balls we don't see coming.
But the article sums up the anti-AGW argument nicely, I though.
BartSimpson BartSimpson:
Well, fact-based discussion gets one called a 'denier' by the AGW cultists so I wish him luck in his Stygian task.
If only it were that simple. The problem is many facts aren't in, and in the interim many feel the need to ignore the predicted symptoms we already see.
Jabberwalker @ Wed Feb 26, 2014 11:23 am
My guess is that if climate change is not man-made ... it is not YET man made. Our current nitrogen/oxygen atmosphere is entirely the product of organic activity over time, so we know that biological systems can have a profound influence on the atmosphere. The question is whether there are enough of us, yet, doing sufficiently influential things to affect the atmosphere. if you don't believe that we're there, yet at 7.5 Billion, will we start to have an effect at 10 Billion ... 20 Billion. We may never reach numbers like 20B because we will starve or we will change our Earth so much in the process that we aren't viable here, anymore. You can dig in your heals and conclude that human activity will NEVER have an effect... maybe you are right but it is stretching credulity, seeing as previous species have obviously totally transformed the place. We can plainly see that direct human activity is causing a major extinction event, right now. Just about every large animal that we not made pets of (or raised for food) is in some danger of extinction because of us. Pretty clearly, we can profoundly change the conditions on the planet. Why is it so difficult to see that we can change the atmosphere as well?
BartSimpson @ Wed Feb 26, 2014 12:04 pm
DrCaleb DrCaleb:
The problem is many facts aren't in
And that's the fact that the AGW cultists like Algore have the hardest time accepting.
The science is NOT in, the debate is NOT over, and the conclusion is NOT settled.
Good on you for honoring science!
Albert Einstein would be proud of you and I mean that most sincerely.
![[B-o]](./images/smilies/drinkup.gif "Drink up")
N_Fiddledog @ Wed Feb 26, 2014 12:05 pm
I've been a Warren Meyer fan for some time. His no nonsense stress on the basic foundational problem with the catastrophe hypothesis of Global Warming has been consistent. His main point has always been inflated imaginings of climate sensitivity don't make sense.
Here's the short vid from Meyer in 2008 that convinced me he had a point. There's a bit after the 3 minute mark that's worth the price of admission, where he explains positive feedbacks, and why it's extremely unlikely they'll be causing a problem.