(As usual I've been doing some touch up editing, 2/24 evening.)
Questions for SoD plus other observations, including links to further resources
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There's an abbreviated version (1b) of this review,
and another one stripped down to only the links (1c)
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The following gets a bit complicated so here's an introduction.
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"2.2) My explanation for the 12yr is bad. It was a quick shot from the hip. Instead of "boil over" I should have written "freeze over", also stupid but less so.2.3) I never bothered to reply to SoD's criticism of my explanation. Didn't even seriously ponder it. (My impression was that he took it totally backwards.) ..."
I agree with Flori, SoD did take it totally backwards, but that was no misunderstanding, it was tactical. I haven't changed any words, it's close enough, so warts and all, here's Florifulgurator's response:
The Holocaust, Climate Science and Proof
Posted February 4, 2015 by scienceofdoom
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“Smear by association” ? No.
1.) The psychology of denial is stunningly similar. (I’m German. While my grandpa (R.I.P.) was innocent, he had less innocent beer buddies, ex Waffen SS guys. I’ve had my share of Auschwitz debate with them. Sometimes I felt sorry for them and their psycho-logical self torturing. Very Serious Old People making totally ridiculous clowns out of themselves. May they roast in hell…)
2.) The effects of climate change may very well dwarf the Auschwitz death toll 10-fold. Maybe even a billion. We’ll see later this century. (Just look at Syria today, the paradigm of things to come, where overpopulation met agricultural collapse due to a climatic glitch, pushing 1m poor farmers over the cliff. Have a look at the madness of ISIS, or Boko Haram, etc. etc. Darfur anybody? Etc. etc. The madness will grow as things worsen. Homo “Sapiens” won’t starve peacefully.)
3.) The very first shoah deniers were Jewish Germans: They couldn’t believe it coming. Same thing today with climate (plus overpopulation plus resource depletion, etc.) Roundness of planet (hence finitude) is not yet generally accepted in politics and finance and will continue to be denied by many Very Important Persons.
Finally. here’s some associative eye candy:
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- on February 6, 2015 at 10:00 pm |
- Florifulgurator, This is a very good point.
- Those people who knowingly try and prevent action on climate change in full knowledge that probably up to 1 billion people will die as a direct result should also be called ‘d..rs’.
- That is almost certainly just about everyone not in 100% agreement with the latest IPCC report (detail alert – that is, in full agreement with the ‘executive summary’ – not the content which might be less certain).
- No one can be confused – as I’ve shown in the article. That’s not possible.
- No one can have any doubt about the 1BN people dying as a direct result.
- Case closed. I will issue a retraction.
SoD hiding behind the shield of sarcasm is cheap.
What's being ignored is that the issue is not about "agreeing with the IPCC report 100%"
The issue is deliberate, and in fact malicious, misrepresentation of the substance of the IPCC report and the state of the scientific consensus.
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- on February 6, 2015 at 10:26 pm
- Florifulgurator
- Well, we can (and alas will) debate endlessly if it will be 1bn really. Or less. Maybe just 500m? (A favorite argument of one of the old Nazi guys: “Auschwitz was just 1m dead! Look at all the survivors everywhere!”) Or that Homo Sapiens can change his mind. And that there will be compassion and reason when the SHTF.
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- on February 7, 2015 at 12:33 am
- Well probably my satire attempt has thrown you off, not the first.
- I’m not debating how many people are going to die as a direct result of the coming Armageddon. I’m taking it as read that you are correct.
- In fact this whole article was written to demonstrate that it is slightly more difficult (‘slightly’ is satire..). Start again with zero satire..
- In fact this whole article was written to demonstrate that it is much more difficult to understand the evidence for anthrogenic global warming than it is to understand the evidence for the Holocaust.
Nonsense!
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- SoD: Of course, many people claim otherwise, as shown in the link I found on Keith Klor’s article. I don’t think they understand how complex the subject is – in fact, the claim that it is an easy subject and no one could be confused is a claim mostly taken on faith.
- Unless, and here is the caveat on that specific point, unless the people claiming it are themselves seriously involved in the field of atmospheric and ocean physics and understand climate modeling to a high level, their claim is simply a claim taken on faith of what other people have told them. In my quick scan of that list of people, they are all people who have taken it on faith from other people.
SoD do you actually think through what you are saying? "Other people" - come on, we're talking a huge scientific community of people from around the globe, spanning generations!
These people are constantly cross checking each other's work and adding new information... the debate is alive and well and the learning curve has been breathtaking, but one needs to take the time to listen and learn to know that.
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- SoD: And to clarify what I am saying a little further, that’s not the belief that AGW is real and a real threat – it’s perfectly reasonable to take expert opinion when you don’t have the time, expertise and passion to research it yourself. No it’s the belief that no one could be confused. And therefore, the parroted claim goes, because no one could be confused, therefore it is wilful denial. And so we will label them appropriately.
SoD claims to have no doubt about Anthropogenic Global Warming or it's threat, but finds it understandable and OK for people to be confused.
Why not a word about the PR campaign of dishonesty that has forced this confusion onto we the people's understanding?
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- SoD: No one has demonstrated a proof of AGW being simple.
What kind of standard of proof are you expecting?
Define your expectations!
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- SoD: The fact that it is often presented simplistically doesn’t mean the simplistic proof is in any way defensible.
- And so we move onto the problem.
- Some people naturally don’t take stuff on faith.
Why not? How do you justify ignoring the consequences of a developing situation, because you can't nail down the exact speed of the drivers of those ominous transitions?
Why never learn from lessons taught?
Naomi Oreskes: Why we should trust scientists
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- SoD: I was even taught to check ideas and evidence for myself. No doubt these scientists and academics who promoted independent thought and scientific skepticism should also be subject to the same punishment as regular ‘d..rs’ for encouraging possibly heresy. {... blah, blah descends into more sarcasm.}
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SoD, why are you picking on the scientists again?
This thread isn't about what's happening within the community of actual practicing climate scientists! You're writing about the public "debate" - I expected you to recognized the difference.
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- on February 7, 2015 at 12:35 am
- DWP
- Florifulgurator, Miss SoD’s sarcasm did we?
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Sarcasm stinks and underscores SoD's intellectual bankruptcy on a topic he spent way too little time actually thinking about before jumping into this cesspool.
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- on February 7, 2015 at 12:49 am
- Also, even if an academic researcher, a physics professor who fully grasps the subject claims it is *easy* they still have work to do.
- My experience of university lecturers was they were very bad at teaching because they never recognised how difficult the subject was, whether a naturally difficult subject like quantum mechanics or an ‘easy’ subject like heat transfer.
- A few students seemed to grasp new ideas and how to implement them quickly – they stayed in academia. Most of us struggled.
- So, show us the simple proof that everyone can grasp that CO2 is not ‘saturated’, and for part 2, because the first one is simple by comparison, demonstrate that Miskolczi was wrong in his claim that water vapor changes cancel out increases in the greenhouse effect (and therefore there is no coming Armaggedon)
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It's like SoD is holding basic learning and understanding hostage by setting up impossible expectations that a lay-person should be convinced of matters they don't even fully comprehend.
Want simple proof? Here's a quicky from Professor Alley:
"Who says CO2 heats things up?"
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- SoD: And you can’t use any material from this blog because that would be cheating.
- And just to be completely clear, I am not in doubt on these points. I am claiming, and demonstrating, that the subject is difficult and not at all like weighing up witness statements and photographs.
- Not a single person in the 250 comments so far appears to have made the slightest effort to demonstrate anything to the contrary. Perhaps that is because it is not possible.
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Why don't you prove the need for this "proof" you've set up as the gold standard?
How about a few words on what it takes to become an expert and why we have "experts" in the first place?
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- on February 7, 2015 at 3:28 am
- Florifulgurator
- Yes, climate science is hard. But hardness is relative. (Like, QM can be easy if you love Hilbert space math. Like, the burden of complexity being distributed over many shoulders of giants.) The rough picture is known since Arrhenius (if not Fourier and Tyndall) (modulo some ocean chemistry). The rest is observation and well-grounded (not ego-disturbed) intuition. Some caring and love of reality required beyond your wallet. Incl. observing scientists (E.g. observing string theorist Lubos M tripping over the CO2 saturation thing…)
- Heck, climate is basically steam engine physics. Steam engines work. Why don’t the den*ers den* QM or relativity?
Haven’t noticed the Kloor link (and would have skipped anyhow).
Counter question: Who can prove me that the Earth circles the Sun? (That it isn’t flat is easy, now that we have airplanes.)
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Regarding "climate is basically steam engine physics" I submit the following layperson's understanding. And even though in light of further learning, I admit some of my details are shaky, the outline is accurate enough - as succeeding decades have shown:
An Essay Concerning Our Weather | Nov/Dec 1995 Humanist magazine
2005 version
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- on February 7, 2015 at 4:04 am
- Florifulgurator
- P.S.: hmmm
- P.P.S.: I hesitate going further, for this all is deeply unsettling for most. (Plus I should get sleep). But. Even the Holocaust evidence is “hard”. Body count from photographs? What if those gas chambers were for disinfection? Zyklon B required 300ppm to kill insects, but 30000ppm to kill humans! I heard the crematory at Dachau was a U.S. Army installation… Anyhow, the proportions of cruelty weighted with numbers: The Croatian Holocaust even made their Nazi peers throw up (hand crafted, not nice clean gas chambers…). And didn’t Stalin kill more?
- (Like, wasn’t there climate change before?) wrrr… Apropos, I seriously recommend looking at the Croatian Holocaust (or maybe Pol Pot) as a mental preparation for thinking through the prospects of the coming century. The hard stuff begins when multiplying the several converging catastrophes with “human nature” (which I contend is not a well-defined concept). Alas we need to look into this abyss (looking away would be criminal neglect) so we might find a way to bridge it. Or descend decently… (Methinks Heidegger gave a good hint to think-through around 1937: “Why is the Earth silent at this destruction?” – Beiträge §155)
Good night.
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- on February 7, 2015 at 8:59 am
- R.D.
- Disgusting and dangerous nonsense.
- "I hesitate going further, for this all is deeply unsettling for most … Even the Holocaust evidence is “hard” …"
- No it’s not. Some people are not prepared to accept incredibly strong, easy to understand historical evidence of horrific reality. What makes it “hard” for them is a flaw morally – or perhaps, most charitably, in the people they’ve had the misfortune to be influenced by. (And in the end that too is not a misfortune but a choice.) I’m talking about the ordinary person here, the “man on the Clapham omnibus” as English law used to say.
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What I find particularly disgusting and dangerous is a political agenda stopping people from honestly learning about climate science simply because of their biases.
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- R.D.: What makes it hard for me to believe the new paper in Nature by Jochem Marotzke and Piers Forster {Rerouted RD's link, away from the echo-chamber spin to the actual Nature.com paper} is any use in explaining discrepancies between GCMs and reality is a different thing. But do deployers of the D-word ever make any distinction to exclude Nic Lewis and his publisher Steve McIntyre from its baleful scope? In all my disgusted reading, never. Counter-examples very welcome indeed.
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Considering some Nic and Mc's cherry picking, misrepresentation, manipulation, and politicized commentary, why doesn't the label climate science denier fit? Please explain?
Incidentally, "EXPOSED - The RealClimate.org's "McKitrick and McIntyre" Files"
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- R.D.: Or, as SoD says, take CO2 saturation. I agree with him and with you on what’s true. But I agree with him, not you, that it’s hard to explain, even for someone with some background in physics. For the ordinary person getting on with their life it’s bafflingly hard. Which the Holocaust isn’t.
- But that’s also, I’m sure, not a problem for you. You simply have to explain the CO2 saturation situation in terms any 12-year-old could understand.
- We’re waiting.
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Here's a start:
The greenhouse effect and the 2nd law of thermodynamics
An exponential increase in CO2 will result in a linear increase in temperature
Can anyone clarify the CO2 band saturation thing?
Why some gases are greenhouse gases, but most aren’t, and some are stronger than others
The carbon dioxide theory of Gilbert Plass
Carbon Dioxide and the Climate
A 1956 American Scientist article explores climate change
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- on February 7, 2015 at 2:45 pm
- Florifulgurator
- R, so here’s my explanation of the saturation thing for the interested 12y old:
- 1.) Paleoclimatic evidence shows there is no saturation. (So why are d*ers even discussing is?) And there is actually no need to understand such detail (just as you dont need to learn Jiddish and German to understand the Holocaust.) But of course it’s interesting and real physicists (not me) care about it.
- 2.) Angström’s experiment that showed saturation does not represent the structure of the atmosphere. He jumped to a conclusion that has long been disproven by other scientists.
- 3.) There’s radiative balance, otherwise the Earth would long have boiled over. Heat radiation escapes to outer space at the high layer of the atmosphere.
- 3a) Even if there were saturation at lower layers, somewhere this has to stop to keep the balance. So, an effect of adding CO2 to the atmosphere is that heat has to travel further up (getting absorbed and thrown around by the GHG until it reaches the top on this erratic way) – but at the end a proportion necessary to keep the heat balance is emitted into space and goes away.
- 3b) Anyhow measurements show that there is no absorption even in the lower layers of our atmosphere.
- Better, ask the real experts: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/06/a-saturated-gassy-argument/ (This is the place a bright 12y old should seek out anyhow!) Here’s what they say:
- “(…) So, if a skeptical friend hits you with the “saturation argument” against global warming, here’s all you need to say:
- (a) You’d still get an increase in greenhouse warming even if the atmosphere were saturated, because it’s the absorption in the thin upper atmosphere (which is unsaturated) that counts
- (b) It’s not even true that the atmosphere is actually saturated with respect to absorption by CO2,
- (c) Water vapor doesn’t overwhelm the effects of CO2 because there’s little water vapor in the high, cold regions from which infrared escapes, and at the low pressures there water vapor absorption is like a leaky sieve, which would let a lot more radiation through were it not for CO2, and
- (d) These issues were satisfactorily addressed by physicists 50 years ago, and the necessary physics is included in all climate models. (…)”
————————– - The the new paper in Nature by Jochem Marotzke and Piers Forster I refuse to discuss when referenced via a known antiscientific blog.
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- on February 7, 2015 at 3:09 pm
- Florifulgurator
- P.S.1.: Actually I find the saturation counter point harder to grasp than the real thing. Maybe because I’m stupid or lazy. Maybe because the d*ers are psychpathologically grasping at any straws.
- P.S.2.: Yes I seriously contend that the Holocaust is hard to grasp for some. Not only for Nazis old and young. I recall my share of debate with a very learned theologian (a clericofashistoid type, now killed by alcohol, R.I.P).
- And of course I get it. But to get it you have to open your mind just like with any nontrivial reality: Not only probe the details (and the detail arguments). You need to try to get hold of as much as possible of the whole web of things – which requires a different kind of pondering and looking than just accounting the machination of details. This second kind of minding can make the whole edifice of climate science easier and rewardingly beautiful to behold.
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- on February 7, 2015 at 3:50 pm
- Florifulgurator,I love point 1 of your answer. I paraphrase: The past proves my point.
Five beautiful words.
How?
One word.
Do you want to strike point one or defend it?
Your point 1 is not a proof or even evidence, it’s a claim. This man (points at defendant) murdered the victim. The prosecution rests.
- Five beautiful words.
- How?
- One word.
- Do you want to strike point one or defend it?
- Your point 1 is not a proof or even evidence, it’s a claim. This man (points at defendant) murdered the victim. The prosecution rests.
- Perhaps that’s why you think the subject is easy for everyone..
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Trivializing and sarcasm are nothing but devices of avoidance. Besides, since when hasn't the past informed our understanding of the future?
Can SoD specify what level of resolution he expects before we the people can learn from what the professionals have learned?
I'm convinced all it takes is a good faith interest in learning about our planet Earth.
Climate change: How do we know?
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Global Climate Change Indicators
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Evidence for global warming
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Climate Change 2013: The Physical Science Basis
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- on February 7, 2015 at 4:00 pm
- Florifulgurator, Point 2 is not clear. Someone proved saturation was not the case a long time ago and then other people proved this guy wrong.
- Is that it?
- I want actual evidence. What specifically did this guy do and who replicated it? Explain the evidence, give details.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/print.php?n=2864}
- {For starters try: Marotzke & Forster Respond to Nic Lewis:
- I wonder if you are confusing proving something scientific with ‘making vague claims’ you read on a blog and never checked.
- A skeptic at this point would think “his first two points are clearly his best – and that’s it?”
- I wish I’d taken my exams at a facility you ran. Much less stressful.
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More sarcasm, intent on deftly avoiding Florifulgurator's point, which was:
"... But to get it, you have to open your mind just like with any nontrivial reality: Not only probe the details (and the detail arguments).
You need to try to get hold of as much as possible of the whole web of things – which requires a different kind of pondering and looking than just accounting the machination of details.
This second kind of minding can make the whole edifice of climate science easier and rewardingly beautiful to behold."
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- on February 7, 2015 at 7:10 pm
- Pekka
- What we do believe ourselves, and what we can expect others to accept are two different things.
- It should be clear that very few can personally judge the science. That applies as much, or perhaps even more to the paleoclimatic evidence that is highly dependent on accepting the narratives and in many ways indirect evidence that the most important part of paleoclimatic is using.
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Yet again willfully ignoring the huge community of informed competitive probing scientists and grad-students, checking and cross-checking and challenging and finding errors and resolving why those errors happened and constantly moving forward building up a reliably understanding.
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- Pekka: When most people can base their beliefs only on what others are telling, the next question is, how they can decide whom to believe.
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It's not about relying "only on what others are telling"! It's about trusting a huge community of experts who keep each other honest.
Which is more than can be said for the perpetual refusal to absorb new information, which is the defining hallmark of the alternative Republican/libertarian science in a vacuum "it's a hoax" "keep the debate alive" attitude which SoD seems to embrace.
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- Pekka: Again they are not capable of judging the merits of of the various sources. They have sources that they trust more and these sources have their sources. There are typically more than two intermediary steps between the original sources of knowledge and typical lay audience.
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Why not object to clearly politically driven interests spreading demonstrable disinformation about basic climate science and global observations?
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- Pekka: People do intuitively understand that the message may get distorted by this multilevel process. That’s one reason for the reality that other factors than thoughts about the physical reality affect strongly the policy views and the policy views affect what people say about the physical reality, whether people have any trust in their knowledge on that or not.
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What happened to a little self-skepticism and the desire to learn?
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- on February 7, 2015 at 8:34 pm
- HAS
- {...} Pekka, Turning to climate science I think the central issue is around the latter problem. It has become political and a section of the scientific community activists. It therefore pays for the public to take the science, particularly that which is advocacy related, with a grain of salt. Just like our tendency not to trust the shiny suit who has “a deal for you” . If we don’t trust the systems that generated it and the motives of those involved, it makes good sense not to naively trust the outputs.
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SoD I fault you for not stepping in on such paranoid comments. Why do these folks need to make enemies out of everyone?
For instance this claim of scientific advocacy, activists and shiny suited shysters - why not look at our Republican/libertarian friends? And what they've done to FairPlay and the honest exchange of scientific evidence.
Why no concern for their twisting of scientific facts and observed truths?
I use the term Republican/libertarian as a deliberate descriptive for the source of today's public confusion - here's some of the supporting evidence:
Conservative Think Tanks and Climate Change Denial Books
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"Dark Money" Funds Climate Change Denial Effort
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Right-wing think tanks are often quoted, rarely labeled
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Climate Change Denial A Bargain At $1.2 Mil
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Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks
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Heartland Institute
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The Googlization of the Far Right
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"The troubling story of how a cadre of influential scientists have clouded public understanding of scientific facts to advance a political and economic agenda."
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- HAS: And finally this brings us to Florifulgurator. He/she believes in the system, including the system that sits in that political world beyond the science.
For all the above reasons I’d be sceptical of any assertion that came from that quarter
- For all the above reasons I’d be sceptical of any assertion that came from that quarter without good prima facie evidence to back it up.
Would you buy a used car from this person?
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"without good prima facie evidence"
Would HAS and pals pay attention to it, if they saw it?
Infrared radiation and planetary temperature
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Or how about good 'ol Earth observations?
Climate change: How do we know?
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Global Climate Change Indicators
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USDA Plant Hardiness Zone Map
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Would some background information about the long history of climate science help?
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- on February 7, 2015 at 9:06 pm
- T.S.
- I guess I’m more interested in the easier proof of the assertion that AGW “may very well” = 60M or “maybe” 1B deaths. Since it is science I’m interested in the actual estimated probabilities and manner of death here. I guess I have more faith in humanity’s ability to adapt than others.
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This is like 'how many angels can dance on a pinhead?" What about acknowledging and understanding the trends we've been watching develop these past decades?
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- T.S.: I’m also interested in how one can accept “climate change” caused the situation in Syria. The assertion that “climate” was a material factor in this civil war is a stretch, the assertion that “climate change” is a material factor in light of little evidence of changes in global drought trends is even more of a stretch.
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Notice the need to misrepresent? T.S. we are talking "conflict multiplier" not "caused".
Don't suppose you'd want to learn about it?
WikiLeaks, Drought and Syria - Thomas Friedman
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MARCH 3, 2012
by Francesco Femia & Caitlin Werrell, in a Center for Climate & Security repost
[Addendum by Joe Romm]
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September 10, 2013
Drought helped cause Syria’s war. Will climate change bring more like it?
By Brad Plumer
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May 30, 2014
The age of climate warfare is here. The military-industrial complex is ready. Are you?
by Nafeez Ahmed
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On Point: California Drought And The U.S. Food Supply
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Leading Scientists Explain How Climate Change Is Worsening California’s Epic Drought
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It's not accurate to say that droughts haven't increased globally, it's an extremely complex thing to track. Here's an informed description of the situation - plus an example of the way science works - A couple of these authors have written reports using the same data and arriving at different results, now they are working together to resolve the confusion, that's the way scientific method at work. It's understanding the questions and answers that's most important.:
Global warming and changes in drought
Trenberth, K. E., A. Dai, G. van der Schrier, P. D. Jones, J. Barichivich, K. R. Briffa, and J. Sheffield, 2014:
Nature Climate Change, 4, 17-22, doi:10.1038/NCLIMATE2067.
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- T.S.: I suppose one can dream up triggering events and then blame every single death on the fact that it didn’t rain last Tuesday. A butterfly flaps it’s wings….but I’m not very inclined to believe that without compelling evidence it isn’t simply because the two groups hate each other and it is a struggle for political control. Paleo of past wars seem to support a theory of a political struggle being a dominant cause of past wars. I guess that is part of my d….l.
The last time I looked radical Islamists have an agenda entirely unconnected to climate change.
- The last time I looked radical Islamists have an agenda entirely unconnected to climate change.
- The last time I looked radical Islamists have an agenda entirely unconnected to climate change.
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T.S. this has devolved into pure silliness.
No one ever claimed radical Islamist agenda was connected to climate change!
Climate change will just make it easier for them - you can be sure "the madness will grow as things worsen."
The point to understand is that hungry mouths, make for restless angry desperate people - and our warming planet will cause more weather extremes and droughts, meaning it will be getting tougher on farms and the people who depend on them. The trouble is already out there even if you ignore... er, deny it.
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- on February 7, 2015 at 10:17 pm
- I’m sure once F’urator’s convinced us of the simplicity and completeness of his explanation of CO2 saturation for the person in the street, compelling proof of climate change’s central role in the atrocities in Syria will be right behind.
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The disingenuous 'CO2 saturation' distraction has been addressed above, get an education. Regarding Syria see the above links.
R.D., do full bellies dictate a people's sense of wellbeing and satisfaction?
Billion Dollar US Weather Disasters, 1980-2013
Source National Climate Data Center
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The Last Time CO2 Was This High, Humans Didn’t Exist
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2014 World Population Data Sheets
Download Full Report: 2014 World Population Data Sheet (PDF: 2MB)
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- on February 9, 2015 at 2:44 am
- ... But nowhere has it said the 12-year-old has to be bright. She wouldn’t need to be to understand the evidence for the Holocaust. And it’s the claim of such equivalence that is the subject here.
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RD, SoD, and pals, what's the moral "equivalence" of willfully tearing apart our planet's natural life support system (not to mention our complex manmade infrastructure - think coastal cities and farms for starters) you know, the stuff that's made life so easy for "the haves"?
§ Is there evidence that our burning of fossil fuels is causing our "global heat distribution engine" to warm up?
§ Will warming (read, energizing) our global heat distribution engine impact the rhythms of the global biosphere that humanity and society has developed within?
§ Will a warming climate system energize our atmosphere's hydrology, both by increasing the amount of water the troposphere holds and by increasing the energy that needs to be dissipated? (read, less, but more intense rain/wind storms).
§ Are our food supply systems dependent on the established rhythms of our 'current' seasons and rain patterns?
§ Will an increasingly warming planet cause it's cryosphere to melt at increasing rates?
§ Will that melting and warming cause global sea levels to rise?
§ Will rising sea levels impact coastal installations such a shipping ports, oil refineries, coastal cities and subsurface infrastructure, tourist hotel strips and barrier island real estate holdings, to mention just a few?
Sea level rise blog
§ Is the math of compounding interest for real?
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CC's "Denial Games at ScienceOfDoom" Collection
1 comment:
It was disappointing to find SoD catering to the tone trolls with the denier = Holocaust denier therefore it is a 'blood libel' or something.
But I have observed in he past that while SoD is clearly capable of grasping the mathematics underlying climate science, and therefore acknowledges the legitimacy of mainstream climate science, he has always displayed a certain reluctance to engage with the implications of his science.
I suspect that because his blog is so technical it has been visited more by 'war mists' wanting to understand the maths than deniers wanting to question it. Apart from some obsessives who like SoD are geeky enough to get into the maths and have driven long blog posts and discussions about back radiation.
One can hope that exposure to the more typical denier who jumped on that thread might enable him to have a better grasp of just how the denial sphere operates. Perhaps the response of those took him to task for trying to police people's language will cause him to reconsider.
However I think that this recent excursion by SoD into the non-science aspects of the issue reveal that he is a maths geek who because HE can grasp how the formulas and calculus validate the science, anybody who cannot match his maths grasp does not understand it.
It's the tendency to think that because you have a hammer and know how to use it it is the only tool that can do the job and anyone NOT using it is doing it wrong.
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