Why do so many people deny climate change

[SSDD]

You have one source and I have one source. You like your source because what they say you want to be true.

Obviously, you didn't click on a single link. Each one of those links goes to a different study. The "one source" as you call it acts as a clearing house for hundreds of studies. So you had one study while I provided 45 studies and can continue to provide more and more.


Answer the question.....how many peer reviewed studies, published in respected journals would it take to make you believe that mann's paper was flawed and he was mistaken in his findings? Name a number.

 

[PMZ]

You have one source and I have one source. You like your source because what they say you want to be true.

Obviously, you didn't click on a single link. Each one of those links goes to a different study. The "one source" as you call it acts as a clearing house for hundreds of studies. So you had one study while I provided 45 studies and can continue to provide more and more.


Answer the question.....how many peer reviewed studies, published in respected journals would it take to make you believe that mann's paper was flawed and he was mistaken in his findings? Name a number.

Obviously you would like to drag all AGW conversations from what is useful to what is irrelevant.

Both of these topics are irrelevant.
Everything done by man is flawed. Mann's work was a pioneering effort whose main point was not the MWP at all. It is the consequences of putting the pre-carboniferous GHGs back into the atmosphere. He made his point. Has and will his work be advanced? Absolutely. That’s the nature of science.

McIntyre was hired to refute his inconvenient truth. The up coming civil suit will resolve the issue in terms of science vs politics.

The point of Mann's work has been solidly and irrefutably proven. McIntyre is a not innocent bystander to the science. He has not advanced the science defining the current problem one bit. He is what he was paid to be. A distraction. A court jester.

 

[SSDD]

Answer the question. How many peer reviewed studies published in respectable journals would it take to convince you that mann's work is flawed and not worth the paper it took to produce it?

mann was not a pioneer and your claims regarding his work hinge on whether his findings were correct or not. His study wasn't the first....not even the 100th. The vast bulk of papers in that field say he is wrong.

As to his work being proven, think again. If there were only 5 papers disputing his work, then his results would be be beyond question...there are hundreds with different findings so his work is not irrefutably proven. Answer the question.

How many to convince you he was wrong? Name a number. Is there any number that would convince you he was wrong? Why are you afraid to answer such a simple question?

 

[PMZ]

Answer the question. How many peer reviewed studies published in respectable journals would it take to convince you that mann's work is flawed and not worth the paper it took to produce it?

mann was not a pioneer and your claims regarding his work hinge on whether his findings were correct or not. His study wasn't the first....not even the 100th. The vast bulk of papers in that field say he is wrong.

As to his work being proven, think again. If there were only 5 papers disputing his work, then his results would be be beyond question...there are hundreds with different findings so his work is not irrefutably proven. Answer the question.

How many to convince you he was wrong? Name a number. Is there any number that would convince you he was wrong? Why are you afraid to answer such a simple question?

Be specific about what you claim that he was wrong about.

 

[SSDD]

Be specific about what you claim that he was wrong about.

The hockey stick and all that it has led to.

His paper is in a very very small minority that claim the MWP wasn't warmer than the present and global in nature.

Answer the question you f'ing coward.....how many peer reviewed papers published in respected journals would it take to convince you that the work that led to the hockey stick was wrong?

 

[PMZ]

Be specific about what you claim that he was wrong about.

The hockey stick and all that it has led to.

His paper is in a very very small minority that claim the MWP wasn't warmer than the present and global in nature.

Answer the question you f'ing coward.....how many peer reviewed papers published in respected journals would it take to convince you that the work that led to the hockey stick was wrong?

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change

The scientific opinion on climate change is that the Earth's climate system is unequivocally warming, and it is more than 90% certain that humans are causing most of it through activities that increase concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, such as deforestation and burning fossil fuels. In addition, it is likely that some potential further greenhouse gas warming has been offset by increased aerosols.[1][2][3][4] This scientific consensus is expressed in synthesis reports, by scientific bodies of national or international standing, and by surveys of opinion among climate scientists. Individual scientists, universities, and laboratories contribute to the overall scientific opinion via their peer-reviewed publications, and the areas of collective agreement and relative certainty are summarised in these high level reports and surveys.

National and international science academies and scientific societies have assessed current scientific opinion on climate change. These assessments are generally consistent with the conclusions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), summarized below:

Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as evidenced by increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, the widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level.[5]
Most of the global warming since the mid-20th century is very likely due to human activities.[6]
"Benefits and costs of climate change for [human] society will vary widely by location and scale.[7] Some of the effects in temperate and polar regions will be positive and others elsewhere will be negative.[7] Overall, net effects are more likely to be strongly negative with larger or more rapid warming."[7]
"[...] the range of published evidence indicates that the net damage costs of climate change are likely to be significant and to increase over time"[8]
"The resilience of many ecosystems is likely to be exceeded this century by an unprecedented combination of climate change, associated disturbances (e.g. flooding, drought, wildfire, insects, ocean acidification) and other global change drivers (e.g. land-use change, pollution, fragmentation of natural systems, over-exploitation of resources)"[9]

No scientific body of national or international standing maintains a formal opinion dissenting from any of these main points; the last was the American Association of Petroleum Geologists,[10] which in 2007[11] updated its 1999 statement rejecting the likelihood of human influence on recent climate with its current non-committal position.[12] Some other organizations, primarily those focusing on geology, also hold non-committal positions.

 

[SSDD]

Wiki? So you are saying that you would believe wiki over any number of peer reviewed papers published in any number of resepected journals with regard to mann's work that led to the hockey stick.

Interesting. Maybe we should start a separate thread where this revalation could get the recognition it warrants. How far gone must one be to accept wiki over peer reviewed papers published in respected journals? What does that say about your views? Does it suggest an open scientific mind or a mind slavishly devoted to a particular dogma and unwilling to change for any reason?

 

[PMZ]

Wiki? So you are saying that you would believe wiki over any number of peer reviewed papers published in any number of resepected journals with regard to mann's work that led to the hockey stick.

Interesting. Maybe we should start a separate thread where this revalation could get the recognition it warrants. How far gone must one be to accept wiki over peer reviewed papers published in respected journals? What does that say about your views? Does it suggest an open scientific mind or a mind slavishly devoted to a particular dogma and unwilling to change for any reason?

You didn't even read it. It's a compilation of other opinions. But, I know that Wiki is on your forbidden reading list. There's danger of learning.

Here's more knowledge for you to avoid.

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus

 

[PMZ]

From http://davidsuzuki.org/issues/climate-change/science/climate-change-basics/climate-change-deniers/

The debate is over about whether or not climate change is real. Irrefutable evidence from around the world—including extreme weather events, record temperatures, retreating glaciers and rising sea levels—all point to the fact that climate change is happening now and at rates much faster than previously thought.

The overwhelming majority of scientists who study climate change agree that human activity is responsible for changing the climate. The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is one of the largest bodies of international scientists ever assembled to study a scientific issue, involving more than 2,500 scientists from more than 130 countries. The IPCC has concluded that most of the warming observed during the past 50 years is attributable to human activities. Its findings have been publicly endorsed by the national academies of science of all G-8 nations, as well as those of China, India and Brazil.
Who are the climate change deniers?
Despite the international scientific community's consensus on climate change, a small number of critics continue to deny that climate change exists or that humans are causing it. Widely known as climate change "skeptics" or "deniers", these individuals are generally not climate scientists and do not debate the science with the climate scientists directly—for example, by publishing in peer-reviewed scientific journals, or participating in international conferences on climate science. Instead, they focus their attention on the media, the general public and policy-makers with the goal of delaying action on climate change.

Not surprisingly, the deniers have received significant funding from coal and oil companies, including ExxonMobil. They also have well-documented connections with public relations firms that have set up industry-funded lobby groups to, in the words of one leaked memo, "reposition global warming as theory (not fact)."

Over the years, the deniers have employed a wide range of arguments against taking action on climate change, some of which contradict each other. For example, they have claimed that:
• Climate change is not occurring
• The global climate is actually getting colder
• The global climate is getting warmer, but not because of human activities
• The global climate is getting warmer, in part because of human activities, but this will create greater benefits than costs
• The global climate is getting warmer, in part because of human activities, but the impacts are not sufficient to require any policy response

After 15 years of increasingly definitive scientific studies attesting to the reality and significance of global climate change, the deniers' tactics have shifted. Many deniers no longer deny that climate change is happening, but instead argue that the cost of taking action is too high—or even worse, that it is too late to take action. All of these arguments are false and are rejected by the scientific community at large.

To gain an understanding of the level of scientific consensus on climate change, one study examined every article on climate change published in peer-reviewed scientific journals over a 10-year period. Of the 928 articles on climate change the authors found, not one of them disagreed with the consensus position that climate change is happening and is human-induced.

These findings contrast dramatically with the popular media's reporting on climate change. One study analyzed coverage of climate change in four influential American newspapers (New York Times, Washington Post, LA Times and Wall Street Journal) over a 14-year period. It found that more than half of the articles discussing climate change gave equal weight to the scientifically discredited views of the deniers.

This discrepancy is largely due to the media's drive for "balance" in reporting. Journalists are trained to identify one position on any issue, and then seek out a conflicting position, providing both sides with roughly equal attention. Unfortunately, this "balance" does not always correspond with the actual prevalence of each view within society, and can result in unintended bias. This has been the case with reporting on climate change, and as a result, many people believe that the reality of climate change is still being debated by scientists when it is not.

While some level of debate is useful when looking at major social problems, society must eventually move on and actually address the issue. To do nothing about the problem of climate change is akin to letting a fire burn down a building because the precise temperature of the flames is unknown, or to not address the problem of smoking because one or two doctors still claim that it does not cause lung cancer. As the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) acknowledges, a lack of full scientific certainty about some aspects of climate change is not a reason for delaying an immediate response that will, at a reasonable cost, prevent dangerous consequences in the climate system

 

[SSDD]

You didn't even read it. It's a compilation of other opinions. But, I know that Wiki is on your forbidden reading list. There's danger of learning.

I read it...probably more carefully than you did. You were right about mann insofar as he has been a pioneer of sorts in the field. A great deal of the opinion expressed in that wiki article can trace its lineage right back to mann and the work that produced the hockey stick.

Which brings us back to the point at hand. If mann was wrong, then everything that has followed from that foundational work is corrupted by that work. Error cascade....remember?

If his work was incorrect regarding the MWP then chances are it is wrong on other points and the conclusions reached are also incorrect and that opinion piece from wiki is based on flawed science.

So again, how many peer reviewed papers published in respectable journals would it take to convince you that mann's work which led to the hockey stick was wrong?

Name a number.

url]http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus[/url]

I read that as well and again, most of that consensus thought can trace its heritage right back to mann's work and all of the papers which came after building upon it....taking it at face value without checking. If mann was wrong, then that imaginary consensus you believe so strongly in loses its support and comes crashing down around your ears.

AGAIN....HOW MANY PEER REVIEWED PAPERS PUBLISHED IN RESPECTABLE JOURNALS WOULD IT TAKE TO CONVINCE YOU THAT MANN WAS WRONG? IS THERE A NUMBER OUR WOULD YOU REJECT ANY NUMBER OF PAPERS CONTRADICTING MANN IN ORDER TO HOLD TO YOUR BELIEF?

The more we talk, the more I believe this needs a thread of its own. Imagine, stating in public that no amount of peer reviewed, published research would overturn your belief in mann's work. What would that do to your already abysmal reputation? Can reps to into negative numbers? Does it bother you to think of being exposed as a dogmatic acolyte with no interest in the scientific method?

 

[mamooth]

He doesn't. The NAS confirmed that his criticism of the Hockey Stick graph were valid.

I'm sure the CultOfMcIntyre told you that, and thus you believe it with all your heart. It's what cultists do. However, your cult lied to you. Let's check out what actually happened, as opposed to denialist cult revisionist history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/science/22cnd-climate.html?_r=0
---
The panel said that a statistical method used in the 1999 study was not the best and that some uncertainties in the work "have been underestimated," and it particularly challenged the authors' conclusion that the decade of the 1990's was probably the warmest in a millennium.

But in a 155-page report, the 12-member panel convened by the National Academies said "an array of evidence" supported the main thrust of the paper. Disputes over details, it said, reflected the normal intellectual clash that takes place as science tests new approaches to old questions.
---

Now, if you had any self-respect, you'd call your cult leaders to the carpet, and demand to know why they lied to you. After all, now you're left humiliated and twisting in the wind. You should be angry about that. Alas, I don't think you have the fortitude to demand honesty. Instead, you're going to crawl back to your cult and demand more lies.

And SSDD? Why did you lie and say the NAS refuted Mann, when the exact opposite happened? You got some 'splainin to do as well. Were you just a dupe like Bri, or were you being deliberately dishonest?

 

[Uncensored2008]

There is never any point in engaging in discussion with people who think that they advance their case by calling those who with whom they disagree "morons". I'm new here so it is useful to be able to start a list of those who's posts may be safely ignored.

You are new here, and far be it from me to defend PMZ, but in this case I will.

His post is just the culture of this board. We are a rough and tumble group, his post was actually pretty mild in USMB terms. If you stick around, you WILL be called far worse.

Now CONTENT wise, please do eviscerate him.....

 

[bripat9643]

You didn't even read it. It's a compilation of other opinions. But, I know that Wiki is on your forbidden reading list. There's danger of learning.

Here's more knowledge for you to avoid.

Climate Change: Consensus

Nope, there's no danger of learning anything from any Wiki article about global warming.

 

[mamooth]

Which brings us back to the point at hand. If mann was wrong, then everything that has followed from that foundational work is corrupted by that work. Error cascade....remember?

So you actually think every bit of AGW science since Mann's one paper used the same data and techniques?

That's ... really stupid and delusional. It's another illustration of how the inability to understand basic logic is a defining characteristic of denialists.

So again, how many peer reviewed papers published in respectable journals would it take to convince you that mann's work which led to the hockey stick was wrong?

When do you plan to post one?

Yes, I realize you _say_ you've done so. But you tend to be full of shit in that regard, being as you rely so much on cherrypicking, bad logic and misrepresentations. And it really annoys you when people recognize your propaganda tricks.

 

[SSDD]

He doesn't. The NAS confirmed that his criticism of the Hockey Stick graph were valid.

I'm sure the CultOfMcIntyre told you that, and thus you believe it with all your heart. It's what cultists do. However, your cult lied to you. Let's check out what actually happened, as opposed to denialist cult revisionist history.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/22/science/22cnd-climate.html?_r=0
---
The panel said that a statistical method used in the 1999 study was not the best and that some uncertainties in the work "have been underestimated," and it particularly challenged the authors' conclusion that the decade of the 1990's was probably the warmest in a millennium.

But in a 155-page report, the 12-member panel convened by the National Academies said "an array of evidence" supported the main thrust of the paper. Disputes over details, it said, reflected the normal intellectual clash that takes place as science tests new approaches to old questions.
---

Now, if you had any self-respect, you'd call your cult leaders to the carpet, and demand to know why they lied to you. After all, now you're left humiliated and twisting in the wind. You should be angry about that. Alas, I don't think you have the fortitude to demand honesty. Instead, you're going to crawl back to your cult and demand more lies.

And SSDD? Why did you lie and say the NAS refuted Mann, when the exact opposite happened? You got some 'splainin to do as well. Were you just a dupe like Bri, or were you being deliberately dishonest?

You are the liar around here and everyone knows it.

The NAS indicated that the hockey stick method systematically underestimated the uncertainties in the data (p. 107).

2. NAS agreed with the M&M assertion that the hockey stick had no statistical significance, and was no more informative about the distant past than a table of random numbers. The NAS found that Mann's methods had no validation (CE) skill significantly different from zero. In the past, however, it has always been claimed that the method has a significant nonzero validation skill. Methods without a validation skill are usually considered useless. Mann’s data set does not have enough information to verify its ‘skill’ at resolving the past, and has such wide uncertainty bounds as to be no better than the simple mean of the data (p. 91). M&M said that the appearance of significance was created by ignoring all but one type of test score, thereby failing to quantify all the relevant uncertainties. The NAS agreed (p. 110).

3. M&M argued that the hockey stick relied for its shape on the inclusion of a small set of invalid proxy data (called bristlecone, or “strip-bark” records). If they are removed, the conclusion that the 20th century is unusually warm compared to the pre-1450 interval is reversed. Hence the conclusion of unique late 20th century warmth is not robust—in other word it does not hold up under minor variations in data or methods. The NAS panel agreed, saying Mann’s results are “strongly dependent” on the strip-bark data (pp. 106-107), and they went further, warning that strip-bark data should not be used in this type of research (p. 50).

4. The NAS said " Mann et al. used a type of principal component analysis that tends to bias the shape of the reconstructions", i.e. produce hockey sticks from baseball statistics, telephone book numbers, and monte carlo random numbers.

5. The NAS said Mann downplayed the "uncertainties of the published reconstructions...Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that ‘the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium.’

A subsequent House Energy and Commerce Committee report chaired by Edward Wegman totally destroyed the credibility of the ‘hockey stick’.

CHAIRMAN BARTON: Dr. North, do you dispute the conclusions or the methodology of Dr. Wegman’s report?

DR. NORTH [Head of the NAS panel]: No, we don’t. We don’t disagree with their criticism. In fact, pretty much the same thing is said in our report.

DR. BLOOMFIELD [Head of the Royal Statistical Society]: Our committee reviewed the methodology used by Dr. Mann and his co-workers and we felt that some of the choices they made were inappropriate. We had much the same misgivings about his work that was documented at much greater length by Dr. Wegman.

WALLACE [of the American Statistical Association]: ‘the two reports [Wegman's and NAS] were complementary, and to the extent that they overlapped, the conclusions were quite consistent.’

 

[mamooth]

The IPCC on the MWP, from AR4.

6.6 The Last 2,000 Years - AR4 WGI Chapter 6: Palaeoclimate

They also say it's warmer now than during the MWP. But then, the cult can fall back on the vast global socialist conspiracy to fake the data, their all-purpose excuse. It's what makes it so obvious that denialism is unfalsifiable pseudoscience. Don't like the data? Just say it's all forged!

 

[mamooth]

You are the liar around here and everyone knows it.

So instead of looking at the whole report and the conclusions, you're still cherrypicking snippets and ignoring the parts that directly contradict you. Because it's all you can ever do.

Good luck with that. You've certainly convinced the rest of the choir. If you keep shouting the same things over and over, maybe you can convince someone outside the cult. But probably not.

 

[SSDD]

Which brings us back to the point at hand. If mann was wrong, then everything that has followed from that foundational work is corrupted by that work. Error cascade....remember?

So you actually think every bit of AGW science since Mann's one paper used the same data and techniques?

No I don't, but as I said, any paper that has referenced mann et al and taken his findings to be sound has been corrupted by that work. You don't seem to be able to grasp what an error cascade is or how it gets initiated, or how terribly it can damage an entire field of study.

When do you plan to post one?

, I realize you _say_ you've done so. But you tend to be full of shit in that regard, being as you rely so much on cherrypicking, bad logic and misrepresentations. And it really annoys you when people recognize your propaganda tricks.

Since you are clearly to stupid to follow the links I have provided to the 45 papers in this conversation alone, I guess you will just have to take my word for it. ......idiot.

 

[SSDD]

You are the liar around here and everyone knows it.

So instead of looking at the whole report and the conclusions, you're still cherrypicking snippets and ignoring the parts that directly contradict you. Because it's all you can ever do.

Good luck with that. You've certainly convinced the rest of the choir. If you keep shouting the same things over and over, maybe you can convince someone outside the cult. But probably not.

When a report says that his methods were biased and flawed, and his data comes from inappropriate sources, and that the skill of the method to predict was not signifigantly different from zero, what else do you need? It is you who is cherry picking around the pertinent facts of the report and that is that his work was wrong.

 

[Peterf]

If you were anything like you claim to be, you'd be demanding science and evidenced based action in the face of completely unaffordable consequences of doing nothing about energy.

You say you don't even have the excuse of being misled by Fox. Does that imply that you are a self made moron?

Like most deniers you look around and notice that your grass is green today so, what's the problem?

What you're really doing is hoping that someone else will take care of you as the problem unfolds and solutions get put in place. Unfortunately, as almost always happens, the problem solvers will take care of the problem creators. If mankind could fix that there would be a lot fewer problem creators and a lot more problem solvers.

There is never any point in engaging in discussion with people who think that they advance their case by calling those who with whom they disagree "morons". I'm new here so it is useful to be able to start a list of those who's posts may be safely ignored.

Perhaps my assessment would change if you could explain why any who believe as you claim would not support the pure climate science of the IPCC. The only science applicable to AGW. Do you have a source of alternative science that you forgot to mention?

You flatter yourself if you think I give a fig for your 'assessment'.