Merged Global Warming Discussion II: Heated Conversation

[Trakar]

If he's retired and never published on the subject of global warming to begin with why would you think he "knows what he's talking about"?

He's published plenty of propaganda pieces on the internet. He hasn't published anything of note since the 90's and as I already told those papers have been refuted and debunked in the scientific literature.

Which of those papers do you think is notable and has significance to the discussion of global climate change? Be specific when you talk about how the papers content supports your position.

(I suspect you won't do this because I doubt you have any idea what's in any of them. Someone just gave you a list, told you "this is the guy to believe" and you never bother to look into any of the "arguments" he advancing to see if they are relevant.)

From the source I linked previously:

Although research has focused on diverse issues — from HIV/AIDS to vaccinations to climate change — several common variables have been isolated that determine whether people are likely to reject well-established scientific facts. Foremost among them is the threat to people’s worldviews. For example, mitigation of climate change or public-health legislation threatens people who cherish unregulated free markets because it might entail regulations of businesses (Heath & Gifford, 2006; Kahan, 2010; Lewandowsky, Gignac, & Oberauer, 2013; Rosenau, 2012); vaccinations threaten Libertarians’ conceptions of parental autonomy (Kahan, Braman, Cohen, Gastil, & Slovic, 2010; Lewandowsky, Gignac, & Oberauer, 2013); and evolution challenges people’s religious faiths (Rosenau, 2012). Another variable that appears to be involved in science denial is conspiracist ideation (Kalichman, 2009; Lewandowsky, Gignac, & Oberauer, 2013; Lewandowsky, Oberauer, & Gignac, 2013; Lewandowsky, Cook, Oberauer, & Marriott, 2013; Smith & Leiserowitz, 2012). Thus, AIDS is thought to be a creation of the US Government (Kalichman, 2009), climate change is a “hoax” perpetrated by corrupt scientists (Inhofe, 2012), and research into the health effects of tobacco is conducted by a “cartel” that “manufactures alleged evidence” (Abt, 1983, p. 127).

The conspiratorial element of denial explains why contrarians often perceive themselves as heroic dissenters who — in their imagination — are following Galileo’s footsteps by opposing a mainstream scientific “elite” that imposes its views not on the basis of overwhelming evidence but for political reasons. Mainstream climate scientists are therefore frequently accused of “Lysenkoism,” after the Soviet scientist whose Lamarckian views of evolution were state dogma in the Soviet Union. Other contrarians appeal to Albert Einstein’s injunction “. . . to not stop questioning” to support their dissent from the fact that HIV causes AIDS (Duesberg, 1989).

 

[aleCcowaN]

Nice try my friend , your anomaly in your pretty pictures tries to tell the world the arctic is warm .... my problem is that my thermometer said otherwise.

Who should we believe ?

If you were an honest researcher you would also have included all the pretty pictures showing unusual cooling.

Not surprisingly you wouldn't got it.. The "picture" hardly "tries to tell blah blah" because that's not the interpretation of the anomaly figures. That off is your comprehension of how the world works. You wouldn't even identify my question within the text correctly.

But in your puerile attempt of making an argument you cut and pasted some local weather conditions and a forecast for some date. Wow! I bend in front of such amazing evidence about the behaviour of the global climate in the long run: "Global Warming is shill because, look! my feet are cold!", the ultimate intellectual argument .

If you were an honest researcher you would also have included all the pretty pictures showing unusual cooling.

You're contemptuous because your weak belief system is melting in spite of your cold feet.

So, the conclusion is we only have your word that global warming isn't happening. Bye pal, turn the light off when you left. The corndog vendor is around the corner. Frostbite. And mauled by a polar bear.

 

[aleCcowaN]

I also fight fires in Greece , Norway is close by comparison , I am only in Churchill for the Polar Bear tourist season ... which unfortunately ended much too early because everything froze over way ahead of schedule.

Yeah, yeah! Give my regards to Indiana Jones when you bump into him

Yes, you're in Churchill for the Polar Bear tourist season which ended, when? late October? So you decided to stay there because Greece has nothing to offer that Churchill, Manitoba wouldn't have in late December.

Tell me, how many hours of daylight do you have now? 3.5?

About global warming you have shown you are eager to buy any bridge any stranger may offer you, and you think we are of that feather. Keep thinking.

 

[aleCcowaN]

All this- principally - from an increase in Carbon Dioxide? I doubt it, and so do a lot of Climate Scientists. I mean, it's no wonder that reputable Scientists like Richard Lindzen and Bill Gray think these Global-Warming Alarmists are clowns.

...

25 m? Really? And what's the source of your quote? Yourself? Stop trying to fool us with puerile fabrications.

So now you're a Global-Warming Alarmist !? Good Darwin!!

 

[macdoc]

25 m?

found on a tree hugger site - the entire quote he posted without attribution for which he was reported.
He seems to think he's dealing with the loonie left here instead of a science forum.
Delusional on a number of levels.

I'd actually be interested in where he came up with the Al Gore ice free Arctic in 2014 gem......

I know there was some chatter a few years back on a 2013 date for ice free summer given the trajectory but seems like the better date is circa 2030 down from 2080 not all that long ago.

I'm sure the shipping companies can't wait.

 

[aleCcowaN]

Oh come on, you've got to be kidding! Do you even know where Churchill is? It's at 58° North (actually closer to 59 than 58) and has a subarctic climate.

For the benefit of other readers on this thread, a temperature of -24°C at 5:00 PM in late December is normal for Churchill. The long-term average high for December 24 is -21°C, the average low -29°C. 5:00 PM is a full hour and a half after sunset, which occurred at 3:24 PM. (Source: Environment Canada.)

Thank you for that. I was about to do some research about it but I thought how the denialists like this Martin person dive in here just to create the illusion of a debate and trying to saturate the readers and the participants with nosense. So I decided to let it pass no matter it was indeed important.

Yet, as unusual as it is a location like Churchill, MB, from the point of view of a common human being, the minus twenty something has the potential to catch ordinary people and make them think "it's being extraordinary cold". After all, there are no denialist here telling Manaos was some day "freezing" with a 23°C low because they wouldn't convince anyone, even if they might be right that time. So, you participate in the right moment. I wish a lot of people in the fora participated when they detect such flaws -no matter which side's-.

 

[macdoc]

Hell it's -13 in Winnipeg....meanwhile in Arendel Norway on the same latitude as the "Arctic" Churchill...- it's postively balmy.... fancy that..

Arendal 1 – 3 Day Weather Forecast Summary: Heavy rain (total 21mm), heaviest during Fri afternoon. Mild temperatures (max 7°C on Wed night, min 5°C on Fri afternoon).

http://www.weather-forecast.com/locations/Arendal/forecasts/latest

 

[aleCcowaN]

found on a tree hugger site - the entire quote he posted without attribution for which he was reported.

So, it's another instance of one denialist making some convenient "data" up and another denialist bonafide -in good faith- taking that data to back his honest claims. A consistent pattern in denialist. A professional skill of their trade, I would say.

The user now going by Jules Galen has only done that so far, when "he" is not just being contemptuous.

In the end there's the surprisingly little discussed in forum.randi.org matter of epistemological hedonism being highly immoral. It's like those murderers who face a sentence for reckless endangerment or depraved indifference and they thought to be innocent just because they didn't want the person dead.

 

[macdoc]

Here is a very good and controversial article by Gavin on the role of scientist in advocacy.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2013/12/agu-talk-on-science-and-advocacy/

The first comment - while a little over the top - makes some interesting points about the scale of the issue with climate change being a challenge like no other.

 

[Trakar]

The Psychology of Climate Change

The psychological study of individual and group behavior in response to the issues involved in climate change, are at the least, as interesting as the physical science explorations of mechanisms and impacts.

Several of the more interesting reads that I have run across are:


"The Dragons of Inaction: Psychological Barriers That Limit Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation" - http://psychologyforasafeclimate.org/resources/The dragons of inaction Robert Gifford.pdf

Once one begins looking, quite a large number of psychological
obstacles to adequate (carbon-neutral) climate change mitigation and adaptation may be found. This article arranges 29 of the “dragons of inaction” into seven categories. The dragon2 family of seven genera with their
29 species is displayed in Table 1.

Environmental or climate-related inaction seems to have three broad phases. Genuine ignorance certainly precludes taking action. Then, if one is aware of a problem, a variety of psychological processes can interfere with effective
action. Finally, once some action is taken, it can be inadequate because the behavior fades away, makes too little a difference in the person’s own carbon footprint, or is actually counterproductive...

Psychology and Global Climate Change: Addressing a Multi-faceted Phenomenon and Set of Challenges
A Report by the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the
Interface Between Psychology and Global Climate Change
http://www.apa.org/science/about/publications/climate-change.aspx

excerpt from summary -

This report illustrates many ways that psychologists can contribute to understanding and responding to global climate change.
• Psychology can help illuminate how people form understandings of the risks of climate change and how those understandings affect individual’s concerns and responses.
• Psychologists can help clarify and identify interrelations among individual (e.g., beliefs, skills, needs) and contextual (e.g., structural, social, cultural) predictors of population growth and of economic and environmental consumption.
• Psychologists can describe behaviorally-based links between population growth, consumption and climate change.
• Psychologists can identify psychosocial impacts of climate change including: a) emotional, cognitive and behavioral responses to anticipated threats and experienced impacts, b) mental health outcomes, and c) social and community impacts.
• Psychologists can explain how stress and coping responses moderate and mediate the psychosocial impacts of climate change and the ability of individuals and groups to respond adaptively.
• Psychologists can help identify structural, cultural, institutional, cognitive, and emotional barriers inhibiting behavioral change and propose methods for overcoming them.
• Psychologists can provide empirically supported models of behaviors that drive climate change and help design effective and culturally relevant behavior change programs.
• Psychologists can help understand public and organizational behavior that contributes to effective societal responses to climate change,
157
• Psychologists can assist in the design of effective technologies and information systems for responding to climate change by applying their knowledge of cognition, communication, and human factors engineering.

The psychology of denial concerning climate mitigation measures:
evidence from Swiss focus groups - http://www.mnf.uni-greifswald.de/fi...e_psychology_of_denial_concerning_climate.pdf

The technique adopted here, namely integrated assessment (IA) focus groups, in which groups of randomly selected individuals in Switzerland looked at models of possible consequences of climate change and questioned specialists as to their accuracy and meaning, revealed a rich assembly of reactions. Respondents were alarmed about the consequences of high-energy futures, and mollified by images of low-energy futures. Yet they also erected a series of psychological barriers to justify why they should not act either individually or through collective institutions to mitigate climate change. From the viewpoint of changing their lifestyles of material comfort and high-energy dependence, they regarded the consequences of possible behavioral shift arising from the need to meet mitigation measures as more daunting. To overcome the dissonance created in their minds they created a number of sociopsychological denial mechanisms. Such mechanisms heightened the costs of shifting away from comfortable lifestyles, set blame on the inaction of others, including governments, and emphasized doubts regarding the immediacy of personal action when the effects of climate change seemed uncertain and far away. These findings suggest that more attention needs to be given to the social and psychological motivations as to why individuals erect barriers to their personal commitment to climate change mitigation, even when professing anxiety over climate futures.

Cool dudes: The denial of climate change among conservative white males in
the United States - http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/students/envs_5000/mccright_2011.pdf

...We find that conservative white males are significantly more likely
than are other Americans to endorse denialist views on all five items, and that these differences are even greater for those conservative white males who self-report understanding global warming very well. Furthermore, the results of our multivariate logistic regression models reveal that the conservative white male effect remains significant when controlling for the direct effects of political ideology, race, and gender as well as the effects of nine control variables. We thus conclude that the unique views of conservative white males contribute significantly to the high level of climate change denial in the United States.

 

[macdoc]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/25511818

Interesting take on the weather system that is causing havoc in Canada, the US and Great Britain.

 

[Red Baron Farms]

@aleCcowaN
You are engaged in self deception if you think it was "torn apart" by you. And yes I have posted 3 of these other places, just as the OP links have been posted other places as well. But they are related threads, so it shouldn't be a surprise to you or anyone else.

Your references to wiki are both off topic and irrelevant because the article in question and the comments you posted about it was in fact written and deleted long ago, and bears no resemblance to the new article at all, and in fact had nothing to do with me. Actually I was one of the editors working on fixing the article because it was very poorly written. We ended up deleting it for the reasons you mentioned and I wrote an entirely new article with a lot of help from other experienced editors. So attacking some article I had nothing to do with and pretending it reflects on me is ridiculous, even if it was on topic, which it isn't.

Then of course you sent a link from 2009 FAO UN report. Right in the report it says,

The conclusions given in this report are considered appropriate for the time of its preparation. They may be modified in the light of further knowledge gained at subsequent stages.

And both the white Paper link and the published paper from Agriculture, Ecosystems & Environment are published after 2009. Savory's "proof of concept" trial came after that as well. But I do find it ironic how you wish to condemn Holistic management and promote an old paper from 2009 and even in that paper it says,

A more holistic vision of food security, agricultural mitigation, adaptation and development is needed if synergies are to be maximized and trade-offs minimized. This needs to be mainstreamed into global agendas and national strategies for addressing climate change and food security

It also says,

Arable land expansion is found to be an important source of growth in sub-Saharan African and Latin America. These results highlight the potential tensions that may be created between the need to increase food production and the possible transition towards sustainable, low emission agriculture strategies if viable opportunities are not developed to enable meeting both goals

So Savory does exactly what the paper says is needed, and you find fault with him because he did? Just doesn't make sense. I get the distinct feeling rather than actually discussing the science, you prefer personal attacks and trolling.

Finally even a cursory reading of the IPCC report makes it VERY clear the numbers given are in large part based on the same conventional model of Agriculture that caused the problems in the first place. If you wish to claim sequestering carbon in the soil in quantities large enough to mitigate fossil fuel emissions is impossible with conventional agriculture, I'd even agree with you there. I have been arguing from the beginning for a change in agriculture though. So that using that report really is just a strawman, if you try using it for anything at all I am advocating. A good example is this,

Growing demands for meat may induce further changes in land use (e.g., from forestland to grassland), often increasing CO2 emissions, and increased demand for animal feeds (e.g., cereals). Larger herds of beef cattle will cause increased emissions of CH4 and N2O, although use of intensive systems (with lower emissions per unit product) is expected to increase faster than growth in grazing-based systems. This may attenuate the expected rise in GHG emissions

Sorry, but that is complete woo. First off it clearly has nothing to do with anything Savory is saying. He has NEVER advocated chopping forest to make a grassland. Secondly it is false as stated. Feeding grains in feedlots does not attenuate GHG emissions compared to grazing. That is pure propaganda, and isn't even true in conventional set stock continuous grazing. That idea came from some really really bad science several years ago put out as pure propaganda to promote the "ecological benefits" of raising cattle in feedlots. It is about as valid as the "science" put out by big tobacco saying cigarettes are healthy. Pure BS.


And lastly a bit of advise for you personally, "The man who says it cannot be done should not interrupt the one doing it.” ~Chinese proverb

 

[macdoc]

The intention is science based...I don't really mind Red Baron's thesis if he can back it and he does accept main stream opinion.

I'd prefer not to get into things like the efficacy of carbon tax versus tax and trade but I think geo-engineering and carbon capture....especially for coal are open for evidence based dissection.

One thing I would like to look is the wild jet stream velocities that seem to be driving this round of nasty weather in the US/Canada and Great Britain.

Here is the weather commentary on the BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/25511818

Is this part of the Arctic Dipole pushing circumpolar weather patterns further south?

 

[casebro]

From the OP: " ...many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. "

And before those millenia?

I'm a non believer, and excuse myself from this thread, per the OP.

And also, from th eOp subject, I though this thread would be about "mainstream science, minus the Meteorologists".

 

[aleCcowaN]

@aleCcowaN
You are engaged in self deception if you think it was "torn apart" by you.

<fluff edited out>

How would you know? You clearly have been unable to understand the original paper and its place. Least any criticism, including mine. Your silence about it has been proof enough.

Your group of links are partially unrelated among themselves, clearly not related to the topic of this or other threads, except the one you specially created as a container for that: "the science of organic". So it's clear not only to me that your links are the product of googling your terms of choice as you present them in an artsy macaroni gluing kid project way, one alongside the other in a way the words shine together while their senses clash or contradict. It's the typical approach of "I have a bunch good news for you" of all the pseudo-scientific press releases.

Your references to wiki are both off topic and irrelevant because the article in question and the comments you posted about it was in fact written and deleted long ago, and bears no resemblance to the new article at all, and in fact had nothing to do with me. Actually I was one of the editors working on fixing the article because it was very poorly written. We ended up deleting it for the reasons you mentioned and I wrote an entirely new article with a lot of help from other experienced editors. So attacking some article I had nothing to do with and pretending it reflects on me is ridiculous, even if it was on topic, which it isn't.

It's completely relevant to illustrate a pattern of behaviour here and there. The current article and the version before you supposedly contributed to straighten it up are not that different. And the part you told deleted were linked by me in a message quoted by you to, yet you say they were deleted, which is a obvious logical contradiction.

Then of course you sent a link from 2009 FAO UN report. Right in the report it says,

<tons of off-topics and ad-homs edited out>

Don't even try to caricature me and slip here your favourite topic. If you have something to speak of the virtues of holistic management, do it in a holistic management related thread.

Your problem is that you are so closed minded that you fail to see I don't have any problems with holistic management -on the contrary- but I do have problems with rioty individuals who are given free pass in Wikipedia and here to spam endlessly about the notions their epistemological hedonism -not their intelligence nor education- tell them to love. And there's clearly the case of your spamming, which relates with using the same links to promote an off-topic and doesn't compare with using the same links for the current topic, as you shamelessly dared to suggest.

 

[aleCcowaN]

From the OP: " ...many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. "

And before those millenia?

I'm a non believer, and excuse myself from this thread, per the OP.

You have two different approaches on that: how did it look like? and, how rapidly did it change? You have radically different worlds in olde times, and that includes land mass configurations which had both polar regions occupied by deep oceans. Are you interested in this or you meant other episodes of accelerated climate change? Surely some of that can be replied on topic.

And also, from th eOp subject, I though this thread would be about "mainstream science, minus the Meteorologists".

It clearly should.

 

[Jules Galen]

Here are some basics for review to new posters and to familiarize yourself with basic terms and established physics underlying AGW....

Background/history
http://www2.ucar.edu/atmosnews/opinion/9574/five-things-know-about-carbon-dioxide

Carbon cycle
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/research/themes/carbon/

http://agwobserver.wordpress.com/category/agw-evidence/

http://www.skepticalscience.com/empirical-evidence-for-global-warming.htm

http://ossfoundation.us/projects/environment/global-warming/human-caused

Current over view

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013...eport-is-out-its-warmer-and-were-responsible/

http://arstechnica.com/science/2013...-the-new-ipcc-climate-change-report-answered/

I don't think this is reliable information, and it's certainly not good science.

 

[aleCcowaN]

I don't think this is reliable information, and it's certainly not good science.

Thanks for sharing.

 

[Trakar]

From the OP: " ...many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. "

And before those millenia?

I'm a non believer, and excuse myself from this thread, per the OP.

And also, from th eOp subject, I though this thread would be about "mainstream science, minus the Meteorologists".

If you are talking about "rates of change" then even before those millennia, the record of changes appear to be without precedence.

The intention is science based...I don't really mind Red Baron's thesis if he can back it and he does accept main stream opinion.

I'd prefer not to get into things like the efficacy of carbon tax versus tax and trade but I think geo-engineering and carbon capture....especially for coal are open for evidence based dissection.

One thing I would like to look is the wild jet stream velocities that seem to be driving this round of nasty weather in the US/Canada and Great Britain.

Here is the weather commentary on the BBC

http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/features/25511818

Is this part of the Arctic Dipole pushing circumpolar weather patterns further south?

more energetic jet streams do seem to go hand-in-hand with a more energetic climate system in general. I believe we discussed this some a year or so ago in the old thread, but it could certainly use a revisit.


"The jet stream: slowing or no?" http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0262407913625361

A good background exploration that explains many of the important concepts, unfortunately it is pay-walled. I can excerpt a passage or two.

A changeable jet stream and intermittent blocking highs have always been part of weather in the middle latitudes, but some researchers see a worrying trend. In 2008, Cristina Archer, now at the University of Delaware in Newark, and Ken Caldeira of Stanford University in California analysed jet stream data from 1979 to 2001 and found a small but significant slowing of the northern polar jet stream during that period. In late 2012, James Overland of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported that the jet stream had been meandering more in the past five years than in the previous three decades. Also last year, Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, found that since the 1990s its average speed in autumn has fallen by 14 per cent over North America and the North Atlantic, with its path growing more idiosyncratic.
(...)
The Arctic is heating up two to three times faster than most of the rest of the planet, as white snow and ice that reflect solar energy back into space are disappearing, to be replaced by dark, energy absorbing ocean and land. This "Arctic amplification" means that the temperature difference between the Arctic and lower latitudes is diminishing. Since this difference creates the jet stream, it will weaken too. "The dynamics are complicated, of course, but what we are seeing is the effect of Arctic amplification on the jet stream. I am convinced of it," she says.

By no means everyone is persuaded by Francis's argument, however. Michael Lockwood at the University of Reading, UK, for example, doesn't discount Arctic effects, but thinks changes in the stratosphere caused by low solar activity might also be playing a part in slowing the jet stream.

 

[aleCcowaN]

[Comes from Science discussion of climate change based on mainstream science]

Seems he didn't read the OP carefully where it notes that participation confirms the mainstream view of climate science.
JG your denier posts may be parked here
http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/showthread.php?t=261928
as your participation here ackknowledges AGW.

But Jules Galen typically catches people by means of ambiguity. This person's post doesn't deny mainstream science. It's ambiguously redacted in a way it doesn't contradict the threads topic. Galen's perfectly could think the mainstream view of science is about right yet coincidentally the many papers you chose for that post are not good science (because, what is good science and what isn't? here's the typical ambiguity of these kind of sophists).

You have to read Jules' dialectics carefully as this person is talented to redact sentences that look informal but are carefully balanced -100% dialectics and advocacy, 0% science and good faith-. This person says: "I don't think this is reliable information" + "and it's certainty not good science". The dialectic twist consists in making strong assertions about undefinable characteristics ("good science") and dropping just casual opinions about what can be easily falsify (the reliability of some information).

Jules Galen's one-sentence post contains thus a double bait. If you question this person's opinion you'll get more opinions. If you question the assertion you get more assertions around the same or similar undefinable characteristics (it's not good science because it's not proper scientific method, and it's not proper scientific method because it's non-standardized procedure ... and so on post after post, as if you would be trying to catch a flea with chopsticks).

Jules' post is just a battering ram to start a chain of silly posts in this thread. If you think it coldly "I don't think this is reliable information, and it's certainly not good science." says really nothing and my "Thanks for sharing" -highlighting it's merely an opinion- is one possible reply, as it bounces the ball back in Jules' field. Once you got Jules' tricks this person is really harmless because, do you even have read something of this person that really deals with science -elementary school level- or even arithmetic? The dangerous deniers are those who have some education and intelligence and can mimic some scientific reasoning. This is not the case.