Monday, November 16, 2015

Part 6 - Debating ClimateDepot fan: AGW religion (epilogue)


Will responded to the final installment of my series back at #1, and considering that he tossed the "AGW is religion" turd at me, I decided Will's comment deserved the spotlight and a closer look.  (supporting links at the bottom)

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Will at 3:48 PM November 16, 2015 wrote:

Yours is not a debating site (1) but instead is an AGW religious site (2). I destroyed the AGW conjecture with one of my arguments that you did not disagree with but then decided just to ignore. (3) There is evidence that the climate sensitivity is 0.0 (4) and hence CO2 does not affect climate. (5)

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Will, good to hear from you, sad to hear you didn't learn a thing.  
Now let me say this about that:

Yours is not a debating site (1)

    If not, it's because AGW contrarians hide from anything that forces them to produce rational responses in writing.  They fear it because it exposes their weak underbelly, no substance, just a lot of flimflam.
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but instead is an AGW religious site (2)

    Then as if to highlight the hopelessness of attempting to communicate with one of your persuasion you lob that idiotic religion meme at me.  Religion is a belief system, our climate understanding is based on a huge body of scientific facts - even if you choose to ignore most of it and misrepresent the rest.

I challenge you, or anyone else, to explain how you arrive at such a conclusion?  Heck, can you even explain what it means; what do you think makes AGW a religion? 

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I destroyed the AGW conjecture with one of my arguments that you did not disagree with but then decided just to ignore. (3) 

    Please do tell me which argument of your's I've ignored, as I recollect you kept conflating a farmer's greenhouse with how greenhouse gases behave in our atmosphere which invalidated the conclusion you cling to.
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There is evidence that the climate sensitivity is 0.0 (4) 

    Here again, it is so easy to say stuff that sounds good, but you offer no evidence.  Where do you get that information?  Remember how I'm always sharing more information because my goal is to help folks learn about what's happening - how about you offering a few citations that support your claims.
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and hence CO2 does not affect climate. (5) 

    Wow, now that is really amazing.  Do you listen to yourself?  Think about your previous words "AGW science a religion"  yet, now you go making an absolute statement, brimming with certitude.  

There is no climate scientist who talks about his/her work with that sort of sweeping absolutism - because that's the stuff of religion and dogmatic fervor.  

Ignoring real world evidence that's in front of your face is also a religious trait.
You offer many claims, but no independent supporting evidence, still you project absolute certitude in yourself -  another cornerstone of religion.

Me I'm willing to entertain your every suggestion and weigh it against my accumulated understanding.  I will even seek out more information to help me understand what you've given me, if need be.  

But, your arguments need to measure up to my preexisting understanding and available information, if they don't I get to try to explain why I think you're wrong about something; both with my own arguments and with reference to authoritative sources of independent supporting evidence.  

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Will, Phil Plait has a series of questions that you (and pals) ought to have the intellectual integrity to consider.  Challenge your own assumptions:

If Global Warming is a hoax, then why . . .
http://www.slate.com/blogs/bad_astronomy/2015/10/28/global_warming_if_it_s_a_hoax.html

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The deep question:

By Joel Achenbach
http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2015/03/science-doubters/achenbach-text

Why Do Many Reasonable People Doubt Science?

We live in an age when all manner of scientific knowledge—from climate change to vaccinations—faces furious opposition.
Some even have doubts about the moon landing.
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Will this ain't religion, it's real:


Storm and drought: what Europe has to fear from climate change
Tomasz Ulanowski in Warsaw, Manuel Planelles in Madrid, Enrico Martinet in Turin, Martine Valo in Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, Tina Baier in Munich and Kate Lyons in London
Monday 9 November 2015 
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What you need to know about climate sensitivity
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How sensitive is our climate?
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IPCC - CLIMATE CHANGE 2013 
The Physical Science Basis
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The complete collection of my dialogue with WillH:

Tuesday, October 20, 2015
Wednesday, October 21, 2015
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Sunday, November 1, 2015
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Thursday, November 12, 2015
Saturday, November 14, 2015
Monday, November 16, 2015

6 comments:

Victor Venema said...

There is evidence that the climate sensitivity is 0.0 (4) and hence CO2 does not affect climate. (5)

(5) also does not follow from (4). The word "hence" is thus not justified.

I am sure your Depot friend would notice that when I would write:

There is evidence that the climate sensitivity is 6.8 (4) and hence CO2 does affect climate. (5)

It is not enough that there is some evidence for a specific (overly accurate) value of the climate sensitivity. For the conclusion, you have to weigh all the evidence. The balance of all the evidence is that the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity is likely to be in the range 1.5 - 4.5°C.

citizenschallenge said...

Thanks Victor

Not being a scientist I look at it from a slightly simpler perspective, at 60 I have watched the transformation of our weather patterns, rain storms have intensified, extreme wind events of one kind or another, the weirding of the jet stream with it's blocking patterns driving heat waves, etc.. We're seeing infrastructure destroying events at a tempo humanity hasn't experienced before.

Scientist say climate impacts from rising GHGs aren't manifested for three decades or more. Then I try imagining how much we've injected into our atmosphere since 1985.

This is all the climate sensitivity I need to know.
I fear most people don't appreciate how fast the decades flow by.
and they forget about accumulating compounding interest.

Nor do most appreciate how nice-weather-dependent our complex interdependent infrastructure is.
When I try to extrapolate into the coming decades, I'm horrified by what we've invited into our lives.

We could have been doing all we could to slow it down - by the 70s, 80s
we had all the information we needed to know what we were doing - the following decades warmed as feared, impacting communities throughout the world.

Global Warming: What We Knew in 82, ok how about the 90s, 2000s, 2010s, still nothing.

Back in my high school days I'd have thought this level of willful ignorance about the world around us would be impossible. People just needed to learn and they'd understand and behave differently.

Little did I realize most people were not like that, there was a party going on, they believed what they wanted and weren't interested in hearing anything else. Now it's too late for them to accept responsibility, so the charade continues and everybody else is always to blame for failures.

Victor Venema said...

Welcome. :)

Interpreting observations and comparing them can be quite involved and require a lot of expert knowledge.

(Or alternatively you could trust scientists, if you are not willing to make yourself expert. I normally do that for topics for which I have no expertise.)

Thus I like pointing to thinking errors. To see that such arguments are wrong does not require putting in work. This is something everyone, who likes to have a qualified opinion, can do.

citizenschallenge said...

What you mean trust the expert understanding (aka "consensus")?
You mean like taking your Harley motorcycle to a Harley mechanic rather than a bicycle repair technician?

Given my level of understanding I too focus on spotting errors in thinking and misrepresent the science -
and why I spend so much effort collection authoritative sources to support my claim. And why I do examine challenges to my understanding. It the whole love of learning thing that contrarians such as my pal Will can't seem to wrap their heads around.

{Incidentally Victor, I'm honored you take the time to visit over here.
For those who aren't familiar with Victor Venema check out his blog Variable-Variability.blogspot.com}

citizenschallenge said...

Speaking of Will, may as well share our most recent go-around:

Will commented at #1 : You are proving my point. You have totally ignored what I said and am now calling me names. You are calling me some sort of AGW heretic.
November 18, 2015 at 1:45 PM

CC responds:
Hmmm, where have I called you a "AGW heretic"
(=a person believing in or practicing religious heresy.)
I consider you self-deluded because you believe a partial understanding of Greenhouses -
gives you the knowledge to claim a community of experts who study this stuff are wrong and you are right.
Even though you can't even come up with a coherent argument that makes rational sense or encompasses observed phenomena.

You wrote: "To you it is not science but a religion."
It's actually rather squirrely wording -
are you vaguely acknowledging the power and independence of science itself,
but that I'm a science worshipper?
How does one worship a method of looking at and understanding the world around us?

You know I'm the one that spends countless hours looking at various proud climate science "skeptic" claims -
how much time have you spent actually understanding the science and observations?
Nah, instead you blithely dismiss all that expert knowledge in favor of your own superior mind.
Now that sounds more like religion and not any method of trying to get at fundamental knowledge.

citizenschallenge said...

oh those typos :-(
Too many distractions, never enough time.