Moderated Global Warming Discussion

[uke2se]

Since this has already been explained in the thread, the challenge that Malcolm ran from should be really easy for him now. I'll just ask this:

Malcolm, would you still assert - knowing that we know that it's false, and seeing as you are unable to present evidence for it - that Freeman Dyson disputes the physics underpinning AGW theory?

 

[aleCcowaN]

A timely article on this issue:

How do people reject climate science?

In a previous article on The Conversation, Stephan Lewandowsky asked, why do people reject science? I’m going to take a slightly different angle and consider how people are able to reject climate science in the face of strong evidence.

A growing body of research has found that when a person’s worldview is threatened by scientific evidence, they interpret the science in a biased manner. One issue where this influence is strongest is climate change.

For supporters of an unregulated free market, regulating polluting industries to reduce global warming is so unpalatable that they are far more likely to reject that climate change is happening.

http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu....yetalPsychScienceinPressClimateConspiracy.pdf

I notice some elephant in those rooms: the association between free marketers and climate science rejection has been found within the culture of Anglo-Saxon countries.

There are many reasons AGW denialism hasn't spread in many countries, including mine, and one of them is the striking different ideological profile of different local denialist: they may find good arguments in websites from the Anglo-Saxon-sphere, but they are so not kindred spirits that they hesitate as foreign "deniers" would be providing the technology to fight local "warmers" and they are indeed ideologically the same thing.

As a matter of fact, in the United States a scientist earns good money and science and business are not regarded as incompatible, so in the denialist imagination a money grant can twist research severely as science has no auto-control -according to them-. In most societies in the world, scientists (like physicians) earn just a living -though in many countries they get some money to avoid many from emigrating to the States-, a person become a scientist because of a strong call, not for pleasure and money -they are like volunteer firefighters-, so being influenced by grant money is as inconceivable as a volunteer fireman accepting a bribe to let some building burn. If some private funding is involved, including universities that collect tuitions and get royalties from patents, then they are just fake or corrupt scientists and all of that AGW is just an invention to do business, and "obviously" "big business" would control "the synarchy that manages the world" with free markets as their instrument of domination and imperialism, yada yada yada ..., so, summarizing, just a little bunch of extreme lefties and populists believe AGW is a complete fake -though there are some moderated people who may embrace that idea too because they like conspiracies-.

On the other hand there's this self-righteous approach of these Anglo-Saxon cultures with tons of people walking with a stick up their you know where, so, if GW was AGW, they have to do something or they'd be moral midgets, so it is not A, it is not even GW, so they happily can keep both their life style and their stick up without moving a finger (or contracting smooth muscle tissue). Other cultures have a more indulgent and contemplative approach to life, so it predominates the video meliora proboque (I see the best things and I approve them) without the deteriora sequor (-but- I do the worst ones) part, maybe "I do not care", without a guilty feeling. So most societies in the world doesn't need to twist science to do little or nothing.

 

[BenBurch]

Since this has already been explained in the thread, the challenge that Malcolm ran from should be really easy for him now. I'll just ask this:

Malcolm, would you still assert - knowing that we know that it's false, and seeing as you are unable to present evidence for it - that Freeman Dyson disputes the physics underpinning AGW theory?

I should just write him a letter (Dyson) and ask him to clarify his position.

 

[metzomagic]

Surveygate?

As the Arctic sea ice extent continues its death spiral (NSIDC has it at a tad over 3.5 million sq km as of yesterday, and *just* beginning to bottom out), it's... interesting to see the AGW deniers digging their collective hole ever deeper. The latest popcorn moment (and it's rather one of the best ones, I must say) is furnished by Australian psychological researcher Stephan Lewandowsky's upcoming paper on the high correlation between 'endorsement of a laissez-faire conception of free-market economics and rejection of climate science'.

The data for the paper were gathered in the form of 1100+ on-line survey entries. As far as can be ascertained, 8 science based AGW sites and 5 skeptic sites were invited to participate by posting the survey on their site via e-mail invitation from Lewandowsky's research assistant. This effort was carried out in August and September of 2010. The funny thing is, while all 8 of the science based sites hosted the survey, it turns out that only 1 out of the 5 skeptic sites did: Junk Science. I verified this by using the Wayback Machine to look at the Junk Science site snapshot from 26 Sep 2010. Indeed, the survey is there, but it has a big disclaimer posted along with it that basically says: "We can see what you guys are up to, but we'll post your manky survey anyway. Wink, wink".

The other 4 skeptic sites vehemently denied being invited to participate. But in fact Steve McIntyre was eventually able to recover the e-mails, one sent on 06 Sep 2012, and a follow-up on 20 Sep. He had just ignored them. So this is where the fun really starts, and why I like to call it 'Surveygate'. All the usual suspects like Bishop Hill, The Blackboard, WUWT, Jo Nova, etc. are righteously miffed at not having been asked to participate (or so they assume), and are demanding that Lewandowsky disclose which sites were asked to participate. Lewandowsky has referred back to his superiors regarding the ethics involved in such a disclosure:

NASA and the blogosphere

Anyway, Watts is predictably squealing like a piglet and jumping up and down about the sheer injustice of it all. He is even seriously calling for a retraction of the paper:

Stephan Lewandowsky's slow motion Psychological Science train wreck

Well, heck, the actual paper is here:

NASA faked the moon landing - Therefore (Climate) Science is a Hoax: An Anatomy of the Motivated Rejection of Science

and this is from the abstract:

Paralleling previous work, we find that endorsement of a laissez-faire conception of free-market economics predicts rejection of climate science (r ~ .80 between latent constructs). Endorsement of the free market also predicted the rejection of other established scientific findings, such as the facts that HIV causes AIDS and that smoking causes lung cancer. We additionally show that endorsement of a cluster of conspiracy theories (e.g., that the CIA killed Martin-Luther King or that NASA faked the moon landing) predicts rejection of climate science as well as the rejection of other scientific findings, above and beyond endorsement of laissez-faire free markets.

It amuses me that Anthony Watts is protesting so much when it is quite obvious to any interested third party who has perused the comment section in any article at WUWT can detect that "climate scientists are all academic frauds only in it for the research money" attitude (with bells on) that comes shining through in almost every comment posted by the regulars on the site. If that isn't a stereotypical whopper of a conspiracy theory, then what is?!

Other things have come to light since this on-line brawl started, namely that Lewandowsky discussed his preliminary results before the survey was technically completed (which is apparently common practice), and that the preamble questions on the survey were different whether they were to be posted on a science based site or a skeptic site. For these two reasons alone Watts is calling for the paper to be retracted. The Dunning-Kruger is strong in this one. He presumes to tell a very experienced psychological researcher how he is allowed to conduct his studies? What an idiot.

Going to the shop for more popcorn.

 

[BenBurch]

...

Going to the shop for more popcorn.

Try the salt+vinegar flavored popcorn. Love it!

 

[aleCcowaN]

...

I verified this by using the Wayback Machine to look at the Junk Science site snapshot from 26 Sep 2010. Indeed, the survey is there, but it has a big disclaimer posted along with it that basically says: "We can see what you guys are up to, but we'll post your manky survey anyway. Wink, wink".

...

You are too generous. They say:

[Following some explanation from the researchers on how the internet survey works]

"I went through the above and felt it has numerous problems - questions are framed in absolute terms but lack useful definition (climate change is used frequently but is not defined, do they mean CAGW, natural variability with some anthropogenic component or what?). Climate scientists is used as a generic term without distinguishing between modelers (PlayStation® Climatology) or physical scientists (very few geologists are impressed by claims of CAGW, for example).

Basically it seems to be fishing for conspiracy theorists in an effort to associate them with CAGW skepticism. I suspect Hanich & HREC are likely to get a lot of complaints about this framing."
​

Something like "beware! they seem to be looking for people who is suspicious of almost everyone!"

 

[uke2se]

Something like "beware! they seem to be looking for people who is suspicious of almost everyone!"

Meta-paranoia.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Wait a minute!

I've found no evidence of the survey containing any number of dismissed questions designed to avoid the subjects to tailor their answers.

Did they use general public who didn't know why they were doing that? I've found no evidence either.

Am I mistaken? I understood they placed the link to the survey only in 8 GW-related blogs. Warmers' ones to be precise. And they got answers with a high correlation between denialism and quasi-right ways of thinking (anglo-saxon style), and a high correlation between denialism and people whose roofs lack two or three tiles. Well, what kind of denialist did they expect to find to be perusing a warmer site? Who other else that Duracell bunnies arguing silly things in the comment section or reading articles someone referred in the comment section of denialist blogs and doing this with the horrified mood and angry predisposition a denialist probably has on sight of such an abundance of explicit "warmerness" on display. If some of these typical characters found the link and answered the survey, well, no wonder the result is that. C'mon!! The paper says that there's evidence that conspiracy theorists follow many conspiracies at the same time -one for each Sybill in them-, then, one day, the researchers were cavorting through the orchards like Little Red Riding Hood and out of the blue had the brilliant idea of making a "neutral survey" to find out if there was any conspiracy theory associated to AGW up there in the crapsphere? in 2010?

If you don't get it yet, it's like they placed the link here and got Malcolm, poptech, Justinian2, 3bodyproblem, JudeBrando, mhaze, little grey rabbit, Matt Giwer, Herzblut, the guy with Beaker and Proff. Honeydew as avatar and the like answering the survey. What did they expect to measure? Is it even serious?

 

[uke2se]

If you don't get it yet, it's like they placed the link here and got Malcolm, poptech, Justinian2, 3bodyproblem, JudeBrando, mhaze, little grey rabbit, Matt Giwer, Herzblut, the guy with Beaker and Proff. Honeydew as avatar and the like answering the survey. What did they expect to measure? Is it even serious?

Don't you think that's a good representation of who the AGW deniers are?

 

[Halsu]

If you don't get it yet, it's like they placed the link here and got Malcolm, poptech, Justinian2, 3bodyproblem, JudeBrando, mhaze, little grey rabbit, Matt Giwer, Herzblut, the guy with Beaker and Proff. Honeydew as avatar and the like answering the survey. What did they expect to measure? Is it even serious?

Well, that's pretty much what the crowd of "critics" consist of.

Edit; uke2se beat me to it, apparently...

 

[aleCcowaN]

Don't you think that's a good representation of who the AGW deniers are?

Well, that's pretty much what the crowd of "critics" consist of.

Edit; uke2se beat me to it, apparently...

Well, in some way I have to agree. But if they were to make a guided analysis, why bothering in disguising it as "the universe" of uninformed-scepticism/denialism.

The whole study looked to me like departing from the premise of some blue-collar badly-lit-at-night neighbourhood being dangerous, and designing an experiment to prove that which consists in not-randomly selecting eight corners and placing in each of them, from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m., a fellow wearing a tuxedo who shows ostentatiously a golden Rolex™ while he fans himself with a thousand sterling pounds in tenners.

I don't know of a good study that have measured honesty by asking the subjects "Are you always 100% honest?" (The only one who'd answer "No" would be Ned Flanders). Fishy! (Mmmm! Fish! -insert here Homer gurgles of delectation-)

 

[jimbob]

http://websites.psychology.uwa.edu....yetalPsychScienceinPressClimateConspiracy.pdf

As you're no doubt aware, the deniosphere is in an uproar over that, which must be a wonderful distraction from all the nasty climate stuff that just keeps making a bad year worse. It'll be such a relief for them when Arctic sea-ice bottoms out and a record rate of re-freeze (and hence recovery) can be predicted. And corn and soya crops are in, so the bad news can become old news in a week and then become not as bad as alarmists predicted. There may even be snow somewhere.

Lewandowsky's paper itself scores a 9.8 on the Well D'uh Scale, as does the response from all the prima donnas who will be mortified if they weren't thought worth contacting. So after the knee-jerk "he lied about contacting five sceptic sites" they got into competitive discovery of the contact - with McIntyre leading the field, you have to give him credit for smarts. It's a poor field but he's well out in front of it.

Comment 19 here http://www.shapingtomorrowsworld.org/ccc2.html#235, from hengistmcstone, is wonderful.

"The lesson in this is Mr McIntyre et al should be paying more attention to emails addressed to themselves and less attention to reading other peoples."

The NZ media had an interesting take on it:

This story

Done elsewhere but I hadn't seen this quote

Terry Dunleavy, of climate change watchdog the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, declined to "comment on the climate ravings of a psychology professor" in response to Prof Lewandowsky's findings. He referred questions to the coalition's founder, Cambridge University-educated Wellington scientist Dr Vincent Gray.

Dr Gray has consulted on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change since its inception and said environmentalists had hijacked climate change, turning it into a religious belief system.

A former communist who once believed John F Kennedy assassination conspiracies, Dr Gray said he was "not that keen" on capitalism but accepted the links between smoking and lung cancer and HIV and Aids.

This was the person that the spokesman for the AGW denialist organisation pointed people to in order to discredit the research...

I also liked the idea that being "Cambridge educated" meant anything.

A former colleague (retired now) was educated at Cambridge and is the only British biblical literalist I have had to interact with in real life. He is very intelligent, and frequently wrong on many things.

 

[CapelDodger]

I must admit that I'm not really up to speed on the denier responses so any extra information regarding that paper is interesting to me. Have there been any credible or thorough, genuine responses (apart from blogs, forum posts or YouTube comments)? Probably a silly question...

There has been some reasonable criticism of the paper (which is an online poll, really) but I don't recall offhand where I've seen it. Personally, I'm not that impressed with the methodology, and it does only provide a blinding glimpse of the bleedin' obvious .

The denier response raises suspicions that it's all an elaborate set-up . There's coverage of it at WachingTheDeniers http://watchingthedeniers.wordpress...iwagate-or-when-denial-echo-chambers-implode/. And Eli's on it, of course http://rabett.blogspot.co.uk/2012/09/here-there-really-be-tygers.html.

 

[CapelDodger]

IOn the other hand there's this self-righteous approach of these Anglo-Saxon cultures with tons of people walking with a stick up their you know where, so, if GW was AGW, they have to do something or they'd be moral midgets, so it is not A, it is not even GW, so they happily can keep both their life style and their stick up without moving a finger (or contracting smooth muscle tissue). Other cultures have a more indulgent and contemplative approach to life, so it predominates the video meliora proboque (I see the best things and I approve them) without the deteriora sequor (-but- I do the worst ones) part, maybe "I do not care", without a guilty feeling. So most societies in the world doesn't need to twist science to do little or nothing.

An interesting analysis. I think it goes some way to explaining why the average Joe and Joanne might not "believe" in AGW, but not why some people get so exercised about it - the types who fill up Guardian comments with frothing fury whenever the subject is even mentioned. They identify intimately with their worldview, and it's a worldview which is undermined by AGW.

Libertarians and laissez faire types believe that the ideal economy is the sum of two-party contracts freely entered into; all of their analysis is based on that axiom. Externalities and third-party effects simply cannot be incorporated, and so must not exist.

In Europe it's very clear that the further right a party is, the more likely it is to make AGW denial a central plank of its policy (it's a certainty with unashamed fascists). I really don't know why that should be. Old-time Marxists have a big problem with it as well, because there's no room in their analysis for anything but capital and labour.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Here's the current local rank in different countries for some climate sites, according to Alexa (we can later discuss why Alexa is not reliable)

wattsupwiththat.com (world rank : 19,527)

Country

Rank​

New Zealand

1,748​

Australia

2,325​

Thailand

3,835​

Canada

4,226​

United Kingdom

6,714​

United States

8,559​

Japan

10,684​

Philippines

18,489​

India

58,097​

Germany

151,295

skepticalscience.com (world rank: 140,127)

Country

Rank​

Netherlands

12,452​

Canada

15,825​

Australia

27,848​

United Kingdom

36,372​

Spain

63,415​

United States

88,983​

Sorry I can't find complete information as Google Trends is providing almost nothing now.


​

​

 

[bit_pattern]

An interesting analysis. I think it goes some way to explaining why the average Joe and Joanne might not "believe" in AGW, but not why some people get so exercised about it - the types who fill up Guardian comments with frothing fury whenever the subject is even mentioned. They identify intimately with their worldview, and it's a worldview which is undermined by AGW.

Libertarians and laissez faire types believe that the ideal economy is the sum of two-party contracts freely entered into; all of their analysis is based on that axiom. Externalities and third-party effects simply cannot be incorporated, and so must not exist.

In Europe it's very clear that the further right a party is, the more likely it is to make AGW denial a central plank of its policy (it's a certainty with unashamed fascists). I really don't know why that should be. Old-time Marxists have a big problem with it as well, because there's no room in their analysis for anything but capital and labour.

I remember reading something a year or two back about the correlation between the preponderance of climate science denial in the Anglo-sphere and the influence of Murdoch-owned media in thse countries. I'll try to dig it up for you.

ETA: Here 'tis. From Robert Manne, one of Australia's leading 'left' intellectuals

http://www.themonthly.com.au/blog-how-can-climate-change-denialism-be-explained-robert-manne-4386

2. The second hypothesis helping to explain the contemporary profile of climate change denialism relates to the role played by the mass media. In recent weeks, Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford has published a fascinating study – James Painter’s Poles Apart: The international reporting of climate scepticism. In it, the climate change coverage of high quality newspapers in six countries – the United States, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Brazil – is analysed. There are three main conclusions. First, climate change “scepticism” (what I prefer to call “denialism”) is far more common in the newspapers of English-speaking countries than in the papers of the others countries studied. Second, climate change scepticism was particularly prominent in editorials and opinion pieces in the press of these two countries. And third, in the countries studied, right-leaning newspapers, like the Wall Street Journal, are far more likely to publish denialist material than left-leaning newspapers, like the New York Times. At the recent launch of Poles Apart at Durban, the dreadful performance of the Australian press in regard to climate change reportage was mentioned, something that recently both Wendy Bacon and I have recently written about.

 

[aleCcowaN]

And yet, you wouldn't be able to perceive how different is the rest of the world. Basically denialism of evolution and anthropogenic global warming are US' developments that have infected all the English speaking sphere, and that includes the extremely peculiar ideological shape of those rejections (from an international point of view).

I started to look for clones of wattsupyourhat (much humbler versions, of course) in other countries and languages, but I can't manage to find them. I only knew one from my country: one isolated and unarticulated populist that rambles about the yank imperialism and their inventions: global warming, HIV causing AIDS, CIA killing those who try unleash the energetic power of water so we can abandon oil (who said that the chap was a coherent person?), and the like.

About local newspapers, the most important of them on the "right" (here called "liberal" because of "free trade" in the mid 1800s) constantly publish articles about AGW (and then their comment sections burst with the twenty or thirty local deniers, including the populist named above), while "lefty" papers generally make silence about the issue (but they eventually published "climagate" until it was revealed to be a joke).

I think I'll pursue the lead of newspapers, their ideology and their take of AGW. It'll take time, but I've helped in language fora daily and many people owe me favours worldwide. I'm afraid that the objective result will be so similar to confirmation bias that it'd make me shy and I wouldn't share my conclusions.

Another way is asking forum members here. Of course, people in the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Iceland and Sweden tend to be "shaped" the like of "Anglo-Saxons" and certain "certitudes" of "internationalization" felt within the anglosphere come from them being "foreign enough", so let them momentarily apart. Differences begin with Belgium and Germany and away.

 

[a_unique_person]

Could the thing in common that swings the balance of numbers be ownership by Rupert Murdoch.

 

[aleCcowaN]

As if Rupert Murdoch were a cultural leader who shaped the natural appetites of the masses?

I think not. Attributing that to Murdoch is seeing the straw in one's own eye instead of seeing the impaling rafters in our brothers' derrières.

US cultures are not very different with or without Murdoch. Do you think other countries had a strong advocacy on tobacco not being related to lung cancer? It's the twist-reality-to-save-your-moral-arse approach that many people use around the world but most cultures reject.

 

[CapelDodger]

As if Rupert Murdoch were a cultural leader who shaped the natural appetites of the masses?

I don't think Murdoch's influence on the masses can be easily dismissed. As a Brit I've had the opportunity to observe it longer than anybody but the Aussies and it's not been a pretty sight. Recent developments have been a setback for him but not as much as one would like.

People tend to assume that newspapers can't just make stuff up (contrary to all evidence, of course, but that's people for you, sapiens sapiens my arse) so they tend to legitimise even silly ideas. Strike up a conversation at, say, a bus-stop and this becomes clear. Of course, in the UK such conversations tend to be about the weather and it's a short step from that to climate change and one's "beliefs" about it.

What I find much more interesting than the masses (bless 'em) are the amateur activists who populate the comments sections on blogs and media sites. The main bloggers are easy to understand; they're professionals (such as Morano) or crave the attention (Watts, McIntyre). It's the tireless angries posting themselves to an early grave who are hard to explain. There are enough observations for me to form a sort of empirical mental model of their behaviour but the underlying mechanisms remain a bit mysterious.

It's the twist-reality-to-save-your-moral-arse approach that many people use around the world but most cultures reject.

In other words, Anglo-Saxon hypocrisy. Perhaps there's less of it elsewhere; I'm not in a good position to judge, obviously . I have noticed that my French and Spanish friends tend to be quite open about just not caring but then that's probably be saying more about me than about the French and Spanish in general. They're as contemptuous of the Catholic Church as I am, for instance. And they're educated.

As for the US Americans I've known, they've all been living in Europe and that's a far from representative sample of the US population.