Background: Link to original post about arguing with global warming deniers
As my argument continued, my friend Demea uses a kind of false equivalence argument by suggesting that scientific skepticism is the same as climate science denial; therefore he is doing the right thing by being a denier. He starts by calling out one of my earlier comments:
“I have a real problem with this statement:
‘Al Gore or not, to me, you either trust climate scientists (computer models and all) or you don’t.’
Not to put too fine a point on it, but doesn’t science occur BECAUSE OF skepticism? What’s this trust thing? When it comes to science, I trust proof better than people. Science, hard science, is supposed to be binary. And yes, I understand that some things are so complex or so theoretical and abstract, that getting a nice demonstrable 2+2=4 result is difficult. And you know what? That’s fine. That’s what academia is for.
But, when you start taking these theories based on science ‘that suggests’ this or that, regardless of whatever the poll results of scientists are, and trying to turn global economic policy over to a bunch of chin scratching transnationalists who think they know better than you or me what is best for us. THAT’S when I put a really high bar for these science to cross. A consensus does nothing for me. I want observable proof that doing X will solve Y problem.
None of the computer models to my knowledge predicted that plateauing of the temperatures the last decade and a half or the unusually harsh winters the last 3 years. There may be a rational reason for this in AGW theory. Fine. I’d like to hear it. Better yet, I’d like to see that this all knowing consensus predicted it.
Again, my problem with AGW is the political angle and THAT is why you have the back lash. You have non-intellectual simpletons asking pretty reasonable questions (I know, how dare they). How can you know that big ball of plasma in the sky is a non-factor? So, CO2 ‘poisons’ the atmostphere? Do plants agree with that? No one in their right mind would bet hard money on a 10 day weather forecast but we want to bet global prosperity on a 100 year forecast? We’ve had wide swings in CO2 that pre-dated SUVs. How exactly is this different? How can I trust weather measuring equipment that seems to have a high percentage of which placed in urban environments? So, science has advanced so much that a 100 year sample size of data of varying quality tells us all we need to know about climate history and how to predict the future? And this is not viewed as hubris? And finally, so the earth warming a few degrees is bad because…why again?
And yes, there is a consensus, but this ‘consensus’ basically agrees that we’re warming, man is partly responsible but there is a big gap in the ranges to what extent we are warming and how much we are causing it. The reason Al Gore is such a windbag is that he takes the worse case scenario from the outlier studies and uses that as fact. His movie had ‘facts’ that not even the ‘consensus’ backs up. More than a few politicians play that game.
Lastly, I work in software. Not only software, but forecasting software. I know a thing or two about the complexity involved in developing such software. And I know the complexity of it when all the variables are known. To say that this consensus knows all the variables in climate models with great certainty is a level of ‘trust’ that borders on faith. So, I am certainly a sceptic that a bunch of professors who learned Fortran as a hobby in 1985 can put together a computer model without the software discipline it takes to actually do such a thing. The FDA and the DOD have some very rigid rules around software development that can be sold to the government or in regulated industries (like say pharma). I know of no evidence that these computer models we are supposed to trust actually pass those tests. TheEast Angliaemails and code dump from the ClimateGate scandal merely reinforced my belief that some scientists are political hacks doing hack programming to build models meant to scare people into allowing centralized control of the economy.
You show me a computer model that nailed its predictions, complete with seasonal variations, across the globe over a 10-15 year period, and then I MIGHT ‘trust’ this consenus. Until then, I don’t want this ‘consensus’ within 10 light years of the political process.
So I responded as follows: I hear ya Demea – so let’s back up. Can we first agree that science absolutely works because of skepticism, among scientists? Not because you or I or Al Gore or Rick Perry, who are not scientists, are skeptical of their findings. The whole process of peer review is based on scientific skepticism (hey, here’s what I found, here’s how I did it, go poke holes in it fellow scientists, what? no holes, ok, so we might have something here, let’s go do more experiments, rinse and repeat)
I’m saying I trust the outcomes of this process and that it doesn’t have to have mathematical precision – if the weight of the evidence is so great, then it gets added to the human knowledge bucket.
To your second point. that’s not to say that there aren’t entire sections of the population who will continue to doubt scientific findings despite the weight of evidence; perhaps those findings are in conflict with a personal belief system, or perhaps, the policy reaction to those findings requires a multi-national response in order to create a mitigation strategy (which is another way of saying nations have to give up some sovereignty) which is a very tough pill to swallow without a doubt! I think that’s where you’re coming from on global warming. While the evidence is no longer debated among scientists, the practical question of “what to do about it” and who pays and how much, etc. is a much different set of issues. Maybe the answer is we don’t’ do anything at all thing about it? But the scientific community also predicts an increase in erratic and powerful weather events as global warming continues – so not doing anything will also have costs associated with it as well. I think answering these kinds of questions may prove more complicated than the science!
Finally, the science I’ve read indicate that the earth’s heat is not leveling off at all, but continues to accumulate. In fact, the most recent piece of “news” on the subject has more to do with a scientist changing his mind (i.e., Richard Muller’s Koch funded research validating what 97% of climate scientists already accept) – which means it’s a non story from a science perspective but only gets press because of who funded his research (but David Koch helps fund NOVA too – so I don’t get the rub on that one)
