Global Cooling

[Q5Quint]

The award should be a set of pink bottlecaps with mis-matched tires, to be sent to the next winner in 6 months?

[nando]

I'm not sure GWB has had an E30 for quite some time. Maybe he could use them for a coffee table or a flotation device for when the sea level rise washes away his mansion. :p

[herbivor]

As an off topic outsider who only stumbled in here because of the naval yard shooting I want to give OP (and a few others) my nomination for the biggest retard on r3v award for 2013. Don't be offended it's actually an honor.

I'm thinking I'm equally deserving of the reward for continuing to argue with a retard. Anyway, at least I've had the opportunity to see with my own eyes the indisputable evidence of AGW. Most that argue against it hardly make it out of their cul-de-sac to see what's happening around them.

[z31maniac]

I'm thinking I'm equally deserving of the reward for continuing to argue with a retard. Anyway, at least I've had the opportunity to see with my own eyes the indisputable evidence of AGW. Most that argue against it hardly make it out of their cul-de-sac to see what's happening around them.

But it's a nice cul-de-sac, amiright?

[Q5Quint]

You guys aint gunna belive this~ but global warming is actually caused by LACK OF PIRATES




If we are serious about stopping this we need to find more pirates.

[nando]

breaking story! Faux News just posted an article about a study funded by the Heartland Institute, in their political section, that claims that global warming is not happening. Also, it's definitely not influenced by the fact it's funded by oil companies and the Koch brothers.

*shocked*

Of course anything Faux posts in their political section is definitely 100% true - I mean, they never outright lied about anything during the election last year. So, I guess this is the end - we can expect an ice age anytime soon now!

[herbivor]

[rwh11385]

Good article:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=why-we-should-choose-science-over-beliefs

Ever since college I have been a libertarian—socially liberal and fiscally conservative. I believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility. I also believe in science as the greatest instrument ever devised for understanding the world. So what happens when these two principles are in conflict? My libertarian beliefs have not always served me well. Like most people who hold strong ideological convictions, I find that, too often, my beliefs trump the scientific facts. This is called motivated reasoning, in which our brain reasons our way to supporting what we want to be true. Knowing about the existence of motivated reasoning, however, can help us overcome it when it is at odds with evidence.

....

I saw a reflection of my former self in the cherry picking and data mining of studies to suit ideological convictions. We all do it, and when the science is complicated, the confirmation bias (a type of motivated reasoning) that directs the mind to seek and find confirming facts and ignore disconfirming evidence kicks in.

My libertarianism also once clouded my analysis of climate change. I was a longtime skeptic, mainly because it seemed to me that liberals were exaggerating the case for global warming as a kind of secular millenarianism—an environmental apocalypse requiring drastic government action to save us from doomsday through countless regulations that would handcuff the economy and restrain capitalism, which I hold to be the greatest enemy of poverty. Then I went to the primary scientific literature on climate and discovered that there is convergent evidence from multiple lines of inquiry that global warming is real and human-caused: temperatures increasing, glaciers melting, Arctic ice vanishing, Antarctic ice cap shrinking, sea-level rise corresponding with the amount of melting ice and thermal expansion, carbon dioxide touching the level of 400 parts per million (the highest in at least 800,000 years and the fastest increase ever), and the confirmed prediction that if anthropogenic global warming is real the stratosphere and upper troposphere should cool while the lower troposphere should warm, which is the case.

The clash between scientific facts and ideologies was on display at the 2013 FreedomFest conference in Las Vegas—the largest gathering of libertarians in the world—where I participated in two debates, one on gun control and the other on climate change. I love FreedomFest because it supercharges my belief engine. But this year I was so discouraged by the rampant denial of science that I wanted to turn in my libertarian membership card. At the gun-control debate (as in my debates with Lott around the country), proposing even modest measures that would have almost no effect on freedom—such as background checks—brought on opprobrium as if I had burned a copy of the U.S. Constitution on stage. In the climate debate, when I showed that between 90 and 98 percent of climate scientists accept anthropogenic global warming, someone shouted, “LIAR!” and stormed out of the room.

Liberals and conservatives are motivated reasoners, too, of course, and not all libertarians deny science, but all of us are subject to the psychological forces at play when it comes to choosing between facts and beliefs when they do not mesh. In the long run, it is better to understand the way the world really is rather than how we would like it to be.

So, should we all go about life assuming reality is how we would like to perceive it and in support of our beliefs, or try to be objective and use something called science and facts to lead us down the proper path?

[Q5Quint]

Most 'debates' I hear today consist of 'Obama eats another baby after taking away the fathers gun and bible, all while bankrupting our country and forcing the mother watch'.

We live in a world of shared intelligence at our fingertips and computer screens~ the knowledge of Alexandria x1000 is right here today.... and yet that same feat of scientific and technical achievement also allows for 1000x the idiots to communicate with each other as well. And we are foolish enough to actually acknowledge them and give them credit above people who work their entire lives trying to solve a problem or find out a bit of knowledge about how our climate works.

Without a respect for education, intelligent responsible decision making, and a respect for our neighbors who are willing to sacrifice their time and money to help others... where will we be in 20 years? Back to fighting indians alone on the frontier in our cabins?

I enjoy healthy debates with all kinds of political spectrum, and that article above is a great example, but most of the time there is no actual debate if everyone just believes all the 'facts' are 'lies'. Well, what if they are not lies? What if fox news lied to you?

[gwb72tii]

so, how many more prophecies of global environmental doom have to fail before there is a 97% consensus that we just really don't understand the complexities of climate science?

LOL

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm

to cut to the chase, this is a bbc report on Maslowski, who with much fanfare and lame stream press support predicted the Arctic would be ice free by 2013, and instead we get a colder than normal summer and record sea ice extent growth

[BraveUlysses]

Keep fuckin' that chicken

[gwb72tii]

maybe we should start a separate thread of the failed climate models' projections?

[nando]

considering most climate models' major predictions are on timescales that you won't live to see, I'm not sure what models specifically you're talking about. But, you'll probably just make something up and then link to a story on a right wing news blog that doesn't actually say what you think it does.

[gwb72tii]

^^ ^ ^^ maybe you should read the article, eh?

and here's one way to get to a 97% consensus on global warming. just plain ole lie about it.

http://joannenova.com.au/2013/09/monckton-honey-i-shrunk-the-consensus/#more-30815

[nando]

I should play the lottery after that post, George. You did exactly what I thought you would!