June 26, 2020
Arguing with Idiots: Global Warming Propaganda Edition
Timothy Birdnow
(Special thanks to Dr. Roy Spencer for kindly providing a much-needed link to a paper refuting the "consensus" claim.)
Here is an argument I had on Facebook. Sheesh!:
Jane:
"We aren’t a nation of know-nothings; many, probably most Americans are willing to listen to experts and act responsibly. But there’s a belligerent faction within our society that refuses to acknowledge inconvenient or uncomfortable facts, preferring to believe that experts are somehow conspiring against them."
A Plague of Willful Ignorance
I replied:
But who decides which experts Americans are to listen to? There are any number of medical researchers who didn't think the Nouvelle Coronavirus was going to turn into a pandemic on the scale of the 1918 bug, but they weren't "sexy" enough so the media largely ignored them. And the media regularly ignores the vast number of climate scientists who say carbon dioxide probably has raised planetary temperatures by a small degree but that it is hardly a doomsday scenario. There are a LOT of those people - climatologists,
Jane replies:
I do my own research and go with the most credible information I can find. I look at science sources, not Fox News, or MSNBC.
Me again:
So do I Jane. That is the way it should be done. And everyone should always try to read both sides or an issue so as to know what the debate is about.
Again Jane:
Here is my other thought. If you have been following the news around the world, you have obviously seen what has happened in other countries, why would it be any different or a conspiracy when it reaches here?
Margo tosses her 2p in:
According to nasa-97% of climate scientists believe in global warming caused by human activity. One degree change in temp is massive -2 degrees is catastrophic. Twenty years ago my husband & I visited Alaska. Sixty five miles of Glacier Bay existed because of melted icebergs. It’s happening & could threaten human existence.
I respond:
Jane, much of my news COMES from overseas because the American media does a terrible job covering the news. But it should be pointed out that the forces of collectivism are at work in multiple countries and indeed fostered by the United Nations. All ships sail in the same direction. And the multinational corporations are all on board with it because they make their money from world markets and like the idea of a big open world. That doesn't mean it's good for America or for anyone for that matter. It's largely good for big money and these international organizations and for the Universities which promote some utterly ridiculous notions these days.
Margo based on what? James Hansen at Goddard was an activist for decades and he promoted AGW theory over the objections of a lot of people Joanna Simpson, who I already mentioned, was one such. Where does that 97% concesus claim come from? TWO sources - Naomi Oreskes, an historian who ran a rather dubious title search on papers and abstracts and found that there was no openly stated disagreement with global warming theory (as if anyone would put such a thing in the title) and Jim Cook, the activist who runs the horribly misnamed "skeptical science" propaganda blog (fake news site) who did a survey and the people who returned it agreed with him. (Hardly systematic or scientific.) The way this was worded was horribly devious, too because they asked if the planet was warming (of course; it's been warming since the end of the Little Ice Age in the Nineteenth century) and if human beings had anything to do with it (of course, but as Roger Pielke Sr. pointed out, a lot of that has to do with land use changes). Even asking if carbon dioxide has something to do with it will get a positive response, as Dr. Roy Spencer, who runs the University of Alabama Huntsville satellite data center (for NASA, and a "climate skeptic") will agree that carbon dioxide probably has something to do with modest (and I mean modest - less than a degree ) planetary warming, largely because he and nobody else can deduce where the extra heat is from. But there is so much we do not know; we don't know about solar-related phenomenon, such as magnetic effects on atmospheric temperatures, cosmic rays, changes in Milankovitch cycles, cosmic micrometeor bombardment, etc.As Astrophysicists Willie Soon and Sally Balliunas think, much of the warming can be contribued to changes in solar activity. The big argument there is that the TSI - total solar irradiance - doesn't seem to justify it. But then spectral changes make a difference too, so total tsi does not tell the whole story. Ditto the solar wind. And, again, temperature changes have been very nominal, and most of the breathless reporting of "hottest year ever" fail to mention that these are interpretations of data (we don't know what the planet's temperature is) and usually involves a statistical dead heat with a bunch of other "warmest on record" years. It should be pointed out that we have had little statistically significant planetary warming since the late nineties. But none of that matters to the media, who want to promote AGW theory in it's most disastrous form because a.its fun to report doom and b.it helps promote an agenda the media agree with. BTW, The Federal government took over almost all funding for science in the late seventies and they are getting the data they want; he who pays the bills is boss. And we have a number of examples of both NOAA and NASA "correcting" data - both past and present - to suggest more warming than is observed (satellite data usually shows little to no warming). The surface stations are very poor quality data, with many of them simply decomissioned and averaged out. Oh, and as for the scare stories on glacial melt, there is also considerable glacial growth; that ebbs and flows over time. But you don't know any of this because it doesn't get reported because the media wants this big scary story out there. I've corresponded with a number of these scientists who are very frustrated at the way this is handled. I've talked with Roy Spencer, for instance, and Roger Pielke Sr. on any number of occasions. Ditto S. Fred Singer, Jennifer Marohasy, and a bunch of others. Most of them are where the father of this theory - Roger Revelle - was; he saw it as a minor warming, a novelty, and little more. The main argument is over feedback loops and climate sensitivity; will the modest warming lead to evaporation of ocean water that warms the planet, or will it lead to cloud formation that cools it? Nobody knows, but the Earth has had higher levels of co2 in the past and been cooler. The point is, there is no justification for impoverishing the planet and killing lots of people in the Third World at this point.
Elizabeth chimes in:
https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ To answer your question, we go with consensus from studies published in peer reviewed research journals. I can pull some up for you if you like. Google scholar is lovely. Incase you wanted a simpler explanation, here is a compiled list of 18 different scientific organizations statements on climate change.
Also, here are more references. J. Cook, et al, "Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming," Environmental Research Letters Vol. 11 No. 4, (13 April 2016); DOI:10.1088/
Quotation from page 6: "The number of papers rejecting AGW [Anthropogenic,
J. Cook, et al, "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature," Environmental Research Letters Vol. 8 No. 2, (15 May 2013); DOI:10.1088/
Quotation from page 3: "Among abstracts that expressed a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the scientific consensus. Among scientists who expressed a position on AGW in their abstract, 98.4% endorsed the consensus.â€
W. R. L. Anderegg, "Expert Credibility in Climate Change,†Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 107 No. 27, 12107-12109 (21 June 2010); DOI: 10.1073/
P. T. Doran & M. K. Zimmerman, "Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," Eos Transactions American Geophysical Union Vol. 90 Issue 3 (2009), 22; DOI: 10.1029/
N. Oreskes, "Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,†Science Vol. 306 no. 5702, p. 1686 (3 December 2004); DOI: 10.1126/
Also, just as further clarification, a longer explanation does'nt mean anything if all your arguments have no backing and just make you sound smart. If you would like more sources that have actual research behind them, let me know and I would be happy to share. There is also a really fun online course called "Calling Bullshit" that is free from the University of Washington that you should really check out. https://
I reply:
one of the most annoying things about alarmists is the inherent dishonesty. I went over in detail what was wrong with Oreskes (an historian and climate crusader) and Cook (a Communications professor and climate crusader) and you simply ignored it, citing them anyway. The other studies you cite use Oreskes and Cook as their source material. I provided a link to a site listing scientists who oppose the alarmist viewpoint, which you simply ignored. I didn't bother to mention the Oregon petition, which was signed by a lot of very qualified people (precisely because I knew someone like you would sneer at it. Well, there are thirty thousand signiators to that petition and if even ten percent are valid signiatures you are still talking three thousand.) You mention papers - well, how about the NIPCC http://climatechangereconsidered.org/about-the-nipcc/ which has done quite a bit http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/22835.pdfof research http://www.sepp.org/science_papers.cfm on the subject and published. As I stated the "concensus" involves Cook's looking for papers that overtly say there is NO climate change and seeks to prove that - something that no climate scientist would say (climate is always changing,) It is designed to stifle debate. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Climate-Consensus-and-‘Misinformation’%3A-A-Rejoinder-Legates-Soon/bfc2469919e2e296884b16d6b752e0bbbac00467But you don't care, do you? Here is a list of sceptical papers. https://notrickszone.com/248-skeptical-papers-from-2014/ But because they do not actually claim to refute the "concensus" they weren't included in the research. Perhaps you missed the NASA scientists who dispute the claims. https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-scientists-dispute-climate-change-2012-4 You know that in science any time you have a "concensus" of that magnitude you are being fed fertilizer. The concensus is that the climate is changing and Man has something to do with it. That is all. And as I said earlier, since most climate research is funded by governments or organizations that rely heavily on government money one should hardly be surprised that nobody comes out and says "Bull" directly. I think you would understand that Elizabeth. Perhaps you missed it that Freeman Dyson, Ivar Giaever (Nobel Prize), Robert Laughlin (Nobel Prize), Edward Teller, Frederick Seitz, Robert Jastrow and William Nierenberg, William Happer, all disagreed with the catastrophic theory. http://www.populartechnology.net/2010/07/eminent-physicists-skeptical-of-agw.html The point is, the media won't report the debate going on in climate science (and there is a debate) because it has an agenda it wants to promote. Remember Michael Mann's Nature Trick? The media trumpeted the "hockey stick" graph which was a splicing of two different datasets together . Media barely reported it. Remember Climategate? I read the e-mails, so don't try to tell me they were out of context. There was definite attempts to manipulate climate science - and media tried to cover it up. Do not deny it Elizabeth. Media has also covered up the old Global Cooling scare. See https://notrickszone.com/285-papers-70s-cooling-2/ for a list of papers that have been buried. And, as you no doubt are aware, we have had little in the way of ocean warming (which is where the so-called "missing heat" is supposed to be), no tropical tropospheric hot spot, and no major rise in the rate of sea level rise. Also, satellites show little warming. As you clearly didn't read my comment or simply ignored most of it. Your primary argument is the logical fallacy argumentum ab auctoritate. And I run off at the mouth BECAUSE I have dealt with people like you in the past and know that it is imperative that details be piled on; you guys have the media on your side, as well as the new Google "fake news" algorithms. But then, when a counter-argument is made you dismiss it in the exact way you just did. In the final analysis, the models do not fit the reality on the ground so we are supposed to ignore the reality and accept the models. Yeah; that's science! I've just had to waste a half hour when I have personal family issues to attend to, btw.
Oh, and Elizabeth, the website "Calling Bullshit" is classic gaslighting.https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201701/11-warning-signs-gaslighting?fbclid=IwAR0LK1vyxHfJjVtBISa9IiThSpujRlsEjoVPBHXlUL-zoeLkJLXS9gpCZb4 , I actually correspond with a number ofOh, and here are three more links about that "concensus" https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/ https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2013/07/23/whats-behind-the-battle-of-received-wisdoms/#comment-182401 https://www.pbl.nl/sites/default/files/cms/publicaties/pbl-2015-climate-science-survey-questions-and-responses_01731.pdf
Oh, I forgot Benny Peiser's critique of Naomi Oreskes. https://www.cfact.org/2005/05/04/dr-benny-peisers-letter-to-science-magazine-and-the-story-of-its-rejection/ See also https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-013-9647-9?fbclid=IwAR0fY_kgXQrLY3krXkzMirFFZ759sr1v95Ol4S-6pAeIECA-Op9gZ2Z8TME
(Special thanks to Dr. Roy Spencer for kindly providing a much-needed link to a paper refuting the "consensus" claim.)
Here is an argument I had on Facebook. Sheesh!:
Jane:
"We aren’t a nation of know-nothings; many, probably most Americans are willing to listen to experts and act responsibly. But there’s a belligerent faction within our society that refuses to acknowledge inconvenient or uncomfortable facts, preferring to believe that experts are somehow conspiring against them."
A Plague of Willful Ignorance
I replied:
But who decides which experts Americans are to listen to? There are any number of medical researchers who didn't think the Nouvelle Coronavirus was going to turn into a pandemic on the scale of the 1918 bug, but they weren't "sexy" enough so the media largely ignored them. And the media regularly ignores the vast number of climate scientists who say carbon dioxide probably has raised planetary temperatures by a small degree but that it is hardly a doomsday scenario. There are a LOT of those people - climatologists,
Jane replies:
I do my own research and go with the most credible information I can find. I look at science sources, not Fox News, or MSNBC.
Me again:
So do I Jane. That is the way it should be done. And everyone should always try to read both sides or an issue so as to know what the debate is about.
Again Jane:
Here is my other thought. If you have been following the news around the world, you have obviously seen what has happened in other countries, why would it be any different or a conspiracy when it reaches here?
Margo tosses her 2p in:
According to nasa-97% of climate scientists believe in global warming caused by human activity. One degree change in temp is massive -2 degrees is catastrophic. Twenty years ago my husband & I visited Alaska. Sixty five miles of Glacier Bay existed because of melted icebergs. It’s happening & could threaten human existence.
I respond:
Jane, much of my news COMES from overseas because the American media does a terrible job covering the news. But it should be pointed out that the forces of collectivism are at work in multiple countries and indeed fostered by the United Nations. All ships sail in the same direction. And the multinational corporations are all on board with it because they make their money from world markets and like the idea of a big open world. That doesn't mean it's good for America or for anyone for that matter. It's largely good for big money and these international organizations and for the Universities which promote some utterly ridiculous notions these days.
Margo based on what? James Hansen at Goddard was an activist for decades and he promoted AGW theory over the objections of a lot of people Joanna Simpson, who I already mentioned, was one such. Where does that 97% concesus claim come from? TWO sources - Naomi Oreskes, an historian who ran a rather dubious title search on papers and abstracts and found that there was no openly stated disagreement with global warming theory (as if anyone would put such a thing in the title) and Jim Cook, the activist who runs the horribly misnamed "skeptical science" propaganda blog (fake news site) who did a survey and the people who returned it agreed with him. (Hardly systematic or scientific.) The way this was worded was horribly devious, too because they asked if the planet was warming (of course; it's been warming since the end of the Little Ice Age in the Nineteenth century) and if human beings had anything to do with it (of course, but as Roger Pielke Sr. pointed out, a lot of that has to do with land use changes). Even asking if carbon dioxide has something to do with it will get a positive response, as Dr. Roy Spencer, who runs the University of Alabama Huntsville satellite data center (for NASA, and a "climate skeptic") will agree that carbon dioxide probably has something to do with modest (and I mean modest - less than a degree ) planetary warming, largely because he and nobody else can deduce where the extra heat is from. But there is so much we do not know; we don't know about solar-related phenomenon, such as magnetic effects on atmospheric temperatures, cosmic rays, changes in Milankovitch cycles, cosmic micrometeor bombardment, etc.As Astrophysicists Willie Soon and Sally Balliunas think, much of the warming can be contribued to changes in solar activity. The big argument there is that the TSI - total solar irradiance - doesn't seem to justify it. But then spectral changes make a difference too, so total tsi does not tell the whole story. Ditto the solar wind. And, again, temperature changes have been very nominal, and most of the breathless reporting of "hottest year ever" fail to mention that these are interpretations of data (we don't know what the planet's temperature is) and usually involves a statistical dead heat with a bunch of other "warmest on record" years. It should be pointed out that we have had little statistically significant planetary warming since the late nineties. But none of that matters to the media, who want to promote AGW theory in it's most disastrous form because a.its fun to report doom and b.it helps promote an agenda the media agree with. BTW, The Federal government took over almost all funding for science in the late seventies and they are getting the data they want; he who pays the bills is boss. And we have a number of examples of both NOAA and NASA "correcting" data - both past and present - to suggest more warming than is observed (satellite data usually shows little to no warming). The surface stations are very poor quality data, with many of them simply decomissioned and averaged out. Oh, and as for the scare stories on glacial melt, there is also considerable glacial growth; that ebbs and flows over time. But you don't know any of this because it doesn't get reported because the media wants this big scary story out there. I've corresponded with a number of these scientists who are very frustrated at the way this is handled. I've talked with Roy Spencer, for instance, and Roger Pielke Sr. on any number of occasions. Ditto S. Fred Singer, Jennifer Marohasy, and a bunch of others. Most of them are where the father of this theory - Roger Revelle - was; he saw it as a minor warming, a novelty, and little more. The main argument is over feedback loops and climate sensitivity; will the modest warming lead to evaporation of ocean water that warms the planet, or will it lead to cloud formation that cools it? Nobody knows, but the Earth has had higher levels of co2 in the past and been cooler. The point is, there is no justification for impoverishing the planet and killing lots of people in the Third World at this point.
https://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/ To answer your question, we go with consensus from studies published in peer reviewed research journals. I can pull some up for you if you like. Google scholar is lovely. Incase you wanted a simpler explanation, here is a compiled list of 18 different scientific organizations statements on climate change.
Also, here are more references. J. Cook, et al, "Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming," Environmental Research Letters Vol. 11 No. 4, (13 April 2016); DOI:10.1088/
Quotation from page 6: "The number of papers rejecting AGW [Anthropogenic,
J. Cook, et al, "Quantifying the consensus on anthropogenic global warming in the scientific literature," Environmental Research Letters Vol. 8 No. 2, (15 May 2013); DOI:10.1088/
Quotation from page 3: "Among abstracts that expressed a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the scientific consensus. Among scientists who expressed a position on AGW in their abstract, 98.4% endorsed the consensus.â€
W. R. L. Anderegg, "Expert Credibility in Climate Change,†Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 107 No. 27, 12107-12109 (21 June 2010); DOI: 10.1073/
P. T. Doran & M. K. Zimmerman, "Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change," Eos Transactions American Geophysical Union Vol. 90 Issue 3 (2009), 22; DOI: 10.1029/
N. Oreskes, "Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,†Science Vol. 306 no. 5702, p. 1686 (3 December 2004); DOI: 10.1126/
Also, just as further clarification, a longer explanation does'nt mean anything if all your arguments have no backing and just make you sound smart. If you would like more sources that have actual research behind them, let me know and I would be happy to share. There is also a really fun online course called "Calling Bullshit" that is free from the University of Washington that you should really check out. https://
I reply:
one of the most annoying things about alarmists is the inherent dishonesty. I went over in detail what was wrong with Oreskes (an historian and climate crusader) and Cook (a Communications professor and climate crusader) and you simply ignored it, citing them anyway. The other studies you cite use Oreskes and Cook as their source material. I provided a link to a site listing scientists who oppose the alarmist viewpoint, which you simply ignored. I didn't bother to mention the Oregon petition, which was signed by a lot of very qualified people (precisely because I knew someone like you would sneer at it. Well, there are thirty thousand signiators to that petition and if even ten percent are valid signiatures you are still talking three thousand.) You mention papers - well, how about the NIPCC http://climatechangereconsidered.org/about-the-nipcc/ which has done quite a bit http://www.heartland.org/custom/semod_policybot/pdf/22835.pdfof research http://www.sepp.org/science_papers.cfm on the subject and published. As I stated the "concensus" involves Cook's looking for papers that overtly say there is NO climate change and seeks to prove that - something that no climate scientist would say (climate is always changing,) It is designed to stifle debate. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Climate-Consensus-and-‘Misinformation’%3A-A-Rejoinder-Legates-Soon/bfc2469919e2e296884b16d6b752e0bbbac00467But you don't care, do you? Here is a list of sceptical papers. https://notrickszone.com/248-skeptical-papers-from-2014/ But because they do not actually claim to refute the "concensus" they weren't included in the research. Perhaps you missed the NASA scientists who dispute the claims. https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-scientists-dispute-climate-change-2012-4 You know that in science any time you have a "concensus" of that magnitude you are being fed fertilizer. The concensus is that the climate is changing and Man has something to do with it. That is all. And as I said earlier, since most climate research is funded by governments or organizations that rely heavily on government money one should hardly be surprised that nobody comes out and says "Bull" directly. I think you would understand that Elizabeth. Perhaps you missed it that Freeman Dyson, Ivar Giaever (Nobel Prize), Robert Laughlin (Nobel Prize), Edward Teller, Frederick Seitz, Robert Jastrow and William Nierenberg, William Happer, all disagreed with the catastrophic theory. http://www.populartechnology.net/2010/07/eminent-physicists-skeptical-of-agw.html The point is, the media won't report the debate going on in climate science (and there is a debate) because it has an agenda it wants to promote. Remember Michael Mann's Nature Trick? The media trumpeted the "hockey stick" graph which was a splicing of two different datasets together . Media barely reported it. Remember Climategate? I read the e-mails, so don't try to tell me they were out of context. There was definite attempts to manipulate climate science - and media tried to cover it up. Do not deny it Elizabeth. Media has also covered up the old Global Cooling scare. See https://notrickszone.com/285-papers-70s-cooling-2/ for a list of papers that have been buried. And, as you no doubt are aware, we have had little in the way of ocean warming (which is where the so-called "missing heat" is supposed to be), no tropical tropospheric hot spot, and no major rise in the rate of sea level rise. Also, satellites show little warming. As you clearly didn't read my comment or simply ignored most of it. Your primary argument is the logical fallacy argumentum ab auctoritate. And I run off at the mouth BECAUSE I have dealt with people like you in the past and know that it is imperative that details be piled on; you guys have the media on your side, as well as the new Google "fake news" algorithms. But then, when a counter-argument is made you dismiss it in the exact way you just did. In the final analysis, the models do not fit the reality on the ground so we are supposed to ignore the reality and accept the models. Yeah; that's science! I've just had to waste a half hour when I have personal family issues to attend to, btw.
Oh, and Elizabeth, the website "Calling Bullshit" is classic gaslighting.https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/here-there-and-everywhere/201701/11-warning-signs-gaslighting?fbclid=IwAR0LK1vyxHfJjVtBISa9IiThSpujRlsEjoVPBHXlUL-zoeLkJLXS9gpCZb4 , I actually correspond with a number ofOh, and here are three more links about that "concensus" https://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/07/18/what-else-did-the-97-of-scientists-say/ https://blogs.nottingham.ac.uk/makingsciencepublic/2013/07/23/whats-behind-the-battle-of-received-wisdoms/#comment-182401 https://www.pbl.nl/sites/default/files/cms/publicaties/pbl-2015-climate-science-survey-questions-and-responses_01731.pdf
Oh, I forgot Benny Peiser's critique of Naomi Oreskes. https://www.cfact.org/2005/05/04/dr-benny-peisers-letter-to-science-magazine-and-the-story-of-its-rejection/ See also https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11191-013-9647-9?fbclid=IwAR0fY_kgXQrLY3krXkzMirFFZ759sr1v95Ol4S-6pAeIECA-Op9gZ2Z8TME
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at
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<a href="https://statusriver.com/romantic-status-in-english/">romantic status in english</a>
Posted by: Ananya pandey at June 27, 2020 07:58 AM (gQSoZ)
Posted by: Ananya pandey at June 27, 2020 07:58 AM (gQSoZ)
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It must suck to be as dumb as Jane.
Posted by: Dana Mathewson at June 27, 2020 09:37 PM (S3Uvu)
4
Jane is actually a nice person but she drank the kool-aid of Progressivism. She's a school teacher, so she's spreading the disease around, alas.
Elizabeth is probably her sister-in-law and I don't know her but I doubt she's any better. She clearly believes in consensus as the way science is done.
Elizabeth is probably her sister-in-law and I don't know her but I doubt she's any better. She clearly believes in consensus as the way science is done.
Posted by: Timothy Birdnow at June 28, 2020 07:21 AM (1UZYx)
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