Extremes of Climate Castigation
( When is a 'consensus' not a consensus ? 'Deniers' that the climate does NOT change want to know )
https://theconversation.com/the-science-for-climate-change-only-feeds-the-denial-how-do-you-beat-that-52813
Walter Freeman
Oh dear: the dreaded “Conspiracy Theory” - everyone run for cover - the tin-foil hats have gone back into production….
Having two sides to the story is healthy - it gives people the opportunity to sift through all the points raised and rule out the nonsense so as to get a balanced perspective of the facts.
There are always more than one side to a story, which Aesop’s Fable of the Man and the Lion describes well: A man and a Lion traveled together through the forest. They began to boast of their respective superiority to each other in strength and prowess. As they were disputing, they passed a statue carved in stone, which depicted a Lion strangled by a Man. The man pointed to it and said: “See there! How strong we are, and how we prevail over the king of beasts.” The Lion replied: “This statue was made by one of you men. If we Lions erected statues, you would see the Man placed under the paw of the Lion.”
However I do not understand the stigmata assigned to the two words “Conspiracy” + “Theory”.
(1) There is a classification of science that is theoretical (incomplete) that many scientists accept as the best current explanation; and
(b) the law recognizes conspiracies of the criminal kind as an offense.
Conspiracies have happened in the past, for example: the Manhattan Project involved cities that housed 100,000 people that were secretly kept from the general public - their policy was “what you see here, what you do here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here”.
Hundreds of the world’s top scientists were holed up in a desert for months as they worked on the Atomic Bomb. More than 100,000 people, each sworn to silence, worked on the project in 3 secret cities.
A test bomb was even detonated in the the desert and not one word was said about it! This conspiracy was so secretive, that when FDR died and Vice President Truman became President, FDR’s advisors had to inform him of the Project’s existence.
What we need to do is look at the elements of truth for each point on both sides - the who, what, where, when and most important: why.
There is motive on both sides to twist the truth - $$$$$. There is money to be made by green technology and pseudo-green-economy punters while there is also money to be made from petrochemical and pollution spewing technologies in jurisdictions that fail to enforce protection of the environment.
The average joe is concerned that ‘climate change’ aka ‘global warming’ demands an increase in the cost of living and concerns over the longevity and waste of expired ‘green’ technologies he is burdened with.
Then there are issues where extreme temperature fluctuations occurred prior to the industrial revolution recorded in newspaper articles.
The problem I see is that academica expect the body politik to go along and wear the burden of increase cost in living by following their findings yet academica expect not to accept liability of the science is flawed.
A court expects affirmations under oath and penalty of perjury so as to get to the truth of serious matters yet society is expected not to demand the same for such a serious matter as climate change?
As to the ‘climate denier’, not all deny, rather they ask for proof of claim which is logical in accordance to the onus of proof principle.
The “back and forth” may have been done to death however the public remain divided because both sides have done such a poor job in arriving at the truth of the matter.
If the scientific community has very strong evidence, then let affirm it so under penalty of perjury. The people are entitled to establish credibility of the author before going along with any proposition.
Such ‘evidence’ is only admissible in a court of competent jurisdiction when it is entered into the court record before the hearing - a judge cannot hear what s/he cannot see and those who twist the truth are subject to severe penalties.
A matter like this is too serious to be taken light-heartedly when public opinion risks being incompetent to such an extent that mechanics of democracy rule on a potentially deceptive perception of “climate change” instead of a realistic one.
“Proof is the result or effect of evidence, while evidence is the medium or means by which a fact is proved or disproved, but the words "proof' and "evidence” may be used interchangeably.“ - Law Dictionary
When I said “proof”, this means (from a juristic perspective) the evidence as well as the logic applied to the evidence in collection, analysis and interpretation satisfy the standards of logic and scientific method. That means the evidence is found to be true, correct, complete, certain and not misleading.
When someone is prepared to affirm the proposition “climate change” meets such standard, then we will have something worth talking about. Until then its all fluff.
Asking for proof is not denying and to make such an accusation towards anyone who asks for proof is fallacious sophistry.
It is honourable to asking for proof necessary to give genuine consideration so as to arrive at the truth of a matter.
So since you portray yourself by virtue of your opinion, bring forward the proof otherwise I will take it your opinion lacks competency.
Oh dear: the dreaded “Conspiracy Theory” - everyone run for cover - the tin-foil hats have gone back into production….
Having two sides to the story is healthy - it gives people the opportunity to sift through all the points raised and rule out the nonsense so as to get a balanced perspective of the facts.
There are always more than one side to a story, which Aesop’s Fable of the Man and the Lion describes well: A man and a Lion traveled together through the forest. They began to boast of their respective superiority to each other in strength and prowess. As they were disputing, they passed a statue carved in stone, which depicted a Lion strangled by a Man. The man pointed to it and said: “See there! How strong we are, and how we prevail over the king of beasts.” The Lion replied: “This statue was made by one of you men. If we Lions erected statues, you would see the Man placed under the paw of the Lion.”
However I do not understand the stigmata assigned to the two words “Conspiracy” + “Theory”.
(1) There is a classification of science that is theoretical (incomplete) that many scientists accept as the best current explanation; and
(b) the law recognizes conspiracies of the criminal kind as an offense.
Conspiracies have happened in the past, for example: the Manhattan Project involved cities that housed 100,000 people that were secretly kept from the general public - their policy was “what you see here, what you do here, what you hear here, when you leave here, let it stay here”.
Hundreds of the world’s top scientists were holed up in a desert for months as they worked on the Atomic Bomb. More than 100,000 people, each sworn to silence, worked on the project in 3 secret cities.
A test bomb was even detonated in the the desert and not one word was said about it! This conspiracy was so secretive, that when FDR died and Vice President Truman became President, FDR’s advisors had to inform him of the Project’s existence.
What we need to do is look at the elements of truth for each point on both sides - the who, what, where, when and most important: why.
There is motive on both sides to twist the truth - $$$$$. There is money to be made by green technology and pseudo-green-economy punters while there is also money to be made from petrochemical and pollution spewing technologies in jurisdictions that fail to enforce protection of the environment.
The average joe is concerned that ‘climate change’ aka ‘global warming’ demands an increase in the cost of living and concerns over the longevity and waste of expired ‘green’ technologies he is burdened with.
Then there are issues where extreme temperature fluctuations occurred prior to the industrial revolution recorded in newspaper articles.
The problem I see is that academica expect the body politik to go along and wear the burden of increase cost in living by following their findings yet academica expect not to accept liability of the science is flawed.
A court expects affirmations under oath and penalty of perjury so as to get to the truth of serious matters yet society is expected not to demand the same for such a serious matter as climate change?
As to the ‘climate denier’, not all deny, rather they ask for proof of claim which is logical in accordance to the onus of proof principle.
The “back and forth” may have been done to death however the public remain divided because both sides have done such a poor job in arriving at the truth of the matter.
If the scientific community has very strong evidence, then let affirm it so under penalty of perjury. The people are entitled to establish credibility of the author before going along with any proposition.
Such ‘evidence’ is only admissible in a court of competent jurisdiction when it is entered into the court record before the hearing - a judge cannot hear what s/he cannot see and those who twist the truth are subject to severe penalties.
A matter like this is too serious to be taken light-heartedly when public opinion risks being incompetent to such an extent that mechanics of democracy rule on a potentially deceptive perception of “climate change” instead of a realistic one.
“Proof is the result or effect of evidence, while evidence is the medium or means by which a fact is proved or disproved, but the words "proof' and "evidence” may be used interchangeably.“ - Law Dictionary
When I said “proof”, this means (from a juristic perspective) the evidence as well as the logic applied to the evidence in collection, analysis and interpretation satisfy the standards of logic and scientific method. That means the evidence is found to be true, correct, complete, certain and not misleading.
When someone is prepared to affirm the proposition “climate change” meets such standard, then we will have something worth talking about. Until then its all fluff.
Asking for proof is not denying and to make such an accusation towards anyone who asks for proof is fallacious sophistry.
It is honourable to asking for proof necessary to give genuine consideration so as to arrive at the truth of a matter.
So since you portray yourself by virtue of your opinion, bring forward the proof otherwise I will take it your opinion lacks competency.
As the research presented in my article indicates, trying to convince the hold-outs is at best an incredibly difficult proposition, at worst, counter-productive. A far more fruitful avenue of approach, as indicated in my own data and in other psychological research is communicating the 97% consensus to the undecided majority who are open to scientific information.
What you be doing then is an appeal to popularity fallacy which is an abuse of democracy particularly when the majority of the body politik go along with it out of incompetence and mental weakness.
I recall that the godfather of propaganda built his sophistic mischievous methods on the abuses of psychology.
There have been instances of consensus in the past that have had devastating results in a society, such as bolchevism and the ‘jewish’ question.
No, it’s an evidence-based approach to science communication, recognising how people think about complicated scientific matters. The psychological research indicates that the lay-public rely on the scientific experts on complicated issues, as a heuristic or mental short-cut. This makes sense and it’s something we all do on issues that we aren’t expert in ourselves.
As a consequence, opponents of climate science have persistently sought to manufacture doubt about the consensus - in fact, arguing “there is no consensus” is the #1 argument against climate change by conservative opinion columnists.
So what scientists need to communicate to the general public is that there is a scientific consensus among publishing climate scientists, which is built on a consilience of evidence. We have a series of lectures in Denial101x on this very issue you raise which basically runs through this line of logic:
There are many independent lines of evidence for human-caused global warming:https://youtu.be/5LvaGAEwxYs
But the public don’t have time to master the scientific research for every scientific topic so they rely on expert opinion - in the case of climate change, expert opinion is 97% consensus among publishing climate scientists that humans are causing global warming:https://youtu.be/WAqR9mLJrcE
This overwhelming consensus is also seen in published climate papers:https://youtu.be/LdLgSirToJM
How do we know the consensus is reliable - or “knowledge-based”? If it’s based on a consilience of evidence, with a scientific community with social diversity that relies on common standards of evidence:https://youtu.be/HUOMbK1x7MI
We also have a great compilation of interview excerpts with scientists who have done some of the key work on consensus:https://youtu.be/tU_aMg73h90
(sorry about all the links but they are both relevant and pretty cool, IMO)
Walter,
Prima facie your idea certainly has merit, but your advocacy of it is being hampered by semantics.
The scientific and legal interpretations of the word “proof” are very different!
Indeed, many scientists consider “proof” the domain of mathematicians and logicians—theoretically unattainable in any a posteriori, empirical, natural-world question. The highest any scientist really aspires to is irresistible evidence.
So I’d urge you to put scare-quotes around the word “proof,” indicating the legalistic provenance of the concept, if you want to obviate the more pedantic dismissals of your idea by scientists.
Otherwise keep up the good work.R. Ambrose Raven
Ah, the denialists. “Denialism” refers to those who use spurious reasoning plus more or less aggressive forms of discussion to strengthen opposition to a theory despite not having any reasonable scientific basis for doing so. Not only can’t we can’t advance any such debate by trying to reason with inherently unreasonable people, but also we must recognise that their aim is to wreck discussion and block consensus on action. Theirs is not harmless vandalism.
Denialists practice a number of methods to bully, intimidate and silence their targets:1. Doubt the science.2. Question the motives and integrity of scientists and AGW acceptors.3. Magnify disagreements among scientists and AGW acceptors.4. Exaggerate potential harm.5. Appeal to personal freedom.6. Divert the discussion to irrelevant and/or sterile sub-issues.7. Acceptance will threaten a dogmatically-held personal philosophy, be it religious, pro-capitalist, or simply sociopathic.8. Dorothy Dixers, where a brazen denialist pretends to debate with a fellow denialist who pretends to be only partly convinced.9. Accuse environmentalists of being bigoted and doctrinaire.10. Accuse environmentalists of exactly the underhanded tactics that the accusing denialist is using.11. Blame the victim. When a water crisis was reported in Tuvalu in 2012, the denialists said it was ‘their own entire fault’ for ‘breeding too much’. Population growth on Tuvalu is 0.7% as at 2012, amongst the lowest in 236 countries and regions .12. Complain that a AGW acceptor who is defeating a fellow denialist in the debate is not communicating courteously so should themselves cease to take part.
“'Carbon is pollution' pays good salaries …” is classic Rightist mirror-image blame. “ ‘Carbon is not pollution'pays much more well. Denialists also hate good public services.
Certainly some denialists are a rent-a-crowd that is part of a well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, Hard Right free-market lobby groups (such as the Institute of Public Affairs), and business, all driven to protect their financial interests.
However, other denialists are not just a rent-a-crowd - they are sociopaths, whose mentality is that of the muscle in a gang, a thuggery of bullies. What they admire, and want to identify with, is a hard, preferably vicious leader whose leadership authority and moral legitimacy gives some cover for their propensity for aggression.
They could just as easily have been Healyites, Laborites, ultraleftists, vigilantes, Muslim-haters, or bikie gang members. Indeed, climate change denialists occasionally smear those who accept the reality of climate change as “Stalinist”.
Still others reject anthropogenic climate change, because to accept it means accepting radical and certainly centralist remedies, measures that will threaten their dogmatic individualist personal philosophy. They may often appear religious/churchians, but their religion is a function of their ideology, not the other way around. John Howard, for instance, is an evangelical Anglican; but were his church to embrace rock masses and the ordination of gays, he would be off to a different church so fast that his feet wouldn’t touch the ground. To them, particularly, to accept climate change is to deny their “religion”.
Others, again, focus very much on present benefits and present consequences, so will change only when they have to. They’re not especially hostile to the realities of climate change, but just don’t want to know. However, they will dogmatically oppose any remedial action that impacts on them.
Sigmund Freud postulated that human societies are as driven by a ‘repetition compulsion’ in the unconscious mind, towards death and destruction as much as we are by the search for erotic fulfillment. That ‘repetition compulsion’ appears based upon instinctual activity and probably inherent in the very nature of the instincts. It is powerful enough to overrule the pleasure-principle and cause unpleasure . Thus human societies are as intoxicated and blinded by their own headlong rush toward death and destruction as they are by the search for erotic fulfillment.
Obviously there are those appearing to be denialists but who are honestly sceptical - being open to persuasion they are by definition not denialists. But they appear surprisingly rare; the great majority appear to see the information as quite adequate for a choice.
In today’s world, in almost any field we will rely on the views of a typically very small number of specialists (which means of course we must expect high standards of integrity). So we should follow the large majority, especially when the denier’s position clashes with both logic and with our own experience. A denialist or a sceptic promoting a flat Earth should not be given equal space to those who allege that the Earth is an oblate spheroid, or at least, sort of round.
John:
No, it’s an evidence-based approach to science communication, recognising how people think about complicated scientific matters.
Right. Evidence tells you that the fallacy of majoritarianism is an effective means to your end of persuading the uninformed; a fact that has been understood by propagandists from time immemorial. So it’s only rational for you to use what works.
The psychological research indicates that the lay-public rely on the scientific experts on complicated issues, as a heuristic or mental short-cut.
Right again. Of course the lay public is deluding itself, since the consensus heuristic is worthless in scientific questions, but since they mistakenly believe in it, it’s only rational of you to take advantage of their misconception.
This makes sense and it’s something we all do on issues that we aren’t expert in ourselves.
And it works quite well. Except in science. It’s an absolutely worthless heuristic in natural questions. But only scientists tend to understand this, which is why it’s so easy to get ordinary people to use it.
As a consequence, opponents of climate science have persistently sought to manufacture doubt about the consensus
Well, speaking as the kind of person you’d call an “opponent of climate science” (although technically I’m nothing of the sort), I prefer to point out that consensus is meaningless, rather than non-existent. For all I know or care there’s an overwhelming consensus on all sorts of things in science, including AGW. It just doesn’t mean anything.
( So at the end, people practising Strawman Argumentation for Anthropogenic Global Warming / Climate Change by the Hand of Man have satisfied themselves that there is no point in dealing with the facts of the case. That is logical - as there are few to be had ..... which has a disastrous effect on rebuttal and analysis both )
Destroying the Greenhouse Effect
Marc Facer
Public Address
BLOGS
Breaking the Silence
Over the past couple of years I’ve been increasingly working in the field of science communication – with the Science Media Centre I have been travelling around a wide range of science conferences, running an express media training programme. It’s what I call ‘white hat’ media training, in that the aim isn’t teaching people to avoid questions in favour of talking points, but simply to help the scientists explain their science better to the general public.
I could never quite understand why the British seemed to take such delight in division: the class system just completely baffled me. ..... So somehow in the UK (and to a certain extent the US and NZ) a well founded instinct that we are being screwed has been redirected. I can only admire the brilliance with which this desire for change has been directed away from the real cause of our problems.
This is ironic. The organisation that tells us we should accept climate science, that the science is settled and other such statements, is now being told the same thing about GE crops and foods, by eminent scientists who are also Nobel laureates.
( Hoist on their own petard. The thing about GE crops is partly that they tolerate more poison...which is in turn used at an increased rate. Safety assurances about such a situation - by the maker - tend to make me think of active sweeping under the rug of reasonable trepidation. The transference mechanism is another big question mark. How much are you willing to bet that animal based gene alteration [ DNA ] mechanism stays in the plant ? On a final note : Obama was given a Nobel award at the start of his first term because of a supposed commitment to peace. Tell that to those murdered by drone proliferation 'warfare'. Is it warfare when the target can't shoot back ...or is even advised he has a bulls-eye on his person ? So much for reliable wisdom of the Nobel committee. )
Farange on Brexit - his day to strut
It isn't pointless if it grows the bureaucracy
Posts
