Michael Mann: Swiftboating Comes To Science 786
Lasrick writes: Michael Mann writes about the ad hominem attacks on scientists, especially climate scientists, that have become much more frequent over the last few decades. Mann should know: his work as a postdoc on the famed "hockey stick" graph led him to be vilified by Fox News and in the Wall Street Journal. Wealthy interests such as the Scaife Foundation and Koch Industries pressured Penn State University to fire him (they didn't). Right-wing elected officials attempted to have Mann's personal records and emails (and those of other climate scientists) subpoenaed and tried to have the "hockey stick" discredited in the media, despite the fact that the National Academy of Sciences reaffirmed the work, and that subsequent reports of the IPCC and the most recent peerreviewed research corroborates it.
Even worse, Mann and his family were targets of death threats. Despite (or perhaps because of) the well-funded and ubiquitous attacks, Mann believes that flat-out climate change denialism is losing favor with the public, and he lays out how and why scientists should engage and not retreat to their labs to conduct research far from the public eye. "We scientists must hold ourselves to a higher standard than the deniers-for-hire. We must be honest as we convey the threat posed by climate change to the public. But we must also be effective. The stakes are simply too great for us to fail to communicate the risks of inaction. The good news is that scientists have truth on their side, and truth will ultimately win out."
Even worse, Mann and his family were targets of death threats. Despite (or perhaps because of) the well-funded and ubiquitous attacks, Mann believes that flat-out climate change denialism is losing favor with the public, and he lays out how and why scientists should engage and not retreat to their labs to conduct research far from the public eye. "We scientists must hold ourselves to a higher standard than the deniers-for-hire. We must be honest as we convey the threat posed by climate change to the public. But we must also be effective. The stakes are simply too great for us to fail to communicate the risks of inaction. The good news is that scientists have truth on their side, and truth will ultimately win out."
Not sure why we'd listen to Michael Mann (Score:5, Funny)
Starsky and Hutch and Crime Story didn't really have much to do with climate change - but I did like the Del Shannon theme song he used on the latter.
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Scientists are the minority (Score:5, Insightful)
Society is not governed by science. We've made it to democracy and capitalism in which vote count and bank account reign supreme. And in our society, science is still poor and a minority. The truth does not ultimately win in a democracy. "It's about votes, not truth, dumb ass." And it's easier to buy votes than to inspire them with education.
Scientists completely underestimate the opposition. And the worst part is, the science doesn't even matter. It matters to scientists of course, but it doesn't matter to the deniers. They are on a mission to make money and serve their cause. And all they really need is to buy time. That is all they want. As long as they can postpone action, the more money they make. So even if they believed in the inevitability of scientific conclusion and of actual global warming, they aren't even concerned about those outcomes until they happen. All they have in mind is immediate gratification. So they've already won, and they keep winning. The battle scientists are fighting over "minds" is moot. There are no minds to find. They need to fight the money.
True scientists only echo the voice of nature. Today, nature is our slave. And nature has no voice. Global warming is inevitable. It's nature's revenge. I'd invest in a post warm economy than any attempts in saving it. Science will never have enough money to win the war on global warming.
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Well, aside from the animism, you are not far off. The problem scientists have is that there are a majority of morons that do not understand that scientists do not deal in personal opinions, but approximations to the truth as good as can be had. Ignoring science always has severe consequences.
The other thing is of course, that good scientists are bad liars. Their profession is very hard to master and mastering it requires absolute truthfulness to oneself and others. Hence whenever it is a debate not based o
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By saying the models are out of range, you have already admitted the models are correct, just out of range.
Scientists have no incentive to be wrong or inaccurate, and given evidence, they will incorporate it into whatever it is they are working on. If you're holding on to evidence no one has, please share it. If you're repeating what you read somewhere, well, then we've all heard it before.
> Try arguing about evidence rather than your feelings.
Nothing I said was emotional, but if it moved you, the
Denier? (Score:2)
I'm glad to see that Mr. Mann did not use the pejorative term "denier" even though the /. summary does.
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Re:Denier? (Score:4, Insightful)
"Climate change denier" is merely descriptive and accurate as such. Any negative connotations are purely the fault of those following this "school of though". Above some level of utter stupidity, any descriptive term automatically acquires negative meaning.
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Might be better and clearer, agreed.
On a related note: This may also explain why we have not seen anything of other people in this universe: If people are the same everywhere (i.e. 80% morons, 10% incompetent leaders catering to the morons and 10% others that get ignored), they may just all have wiped themselves out or crippled themselves permanently to a degree that they cannot become space-faring anymore. And it is not even only nuclear self-destruction or climate-change. It is utterly stupid things like
Mann: science by lawsuit (Score:2, Insightful)
When Canadian columnist Mark Steyn questioned Church of Warminetics doctrine, Mann took the unusual step of filing a suit:
http://www.steynonline.com/656... [steynonline.com]
I never knew that hiring lawyers was such a crucial element of the scientific method.
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How does filing a lawsuit for defamation of character (even if misguided, since it's tricky to win a defamation suit and typically the press has freedom to say what it likes) affect the way he does science?
Oh right, discredit the Mann, not the argument. Of course, my mistake.
Been there and stuff ... (Score:3)
I remember a similar event:
Scientists: "Tobacco kills."
Politicians: "Jobs."
So it is written, so let it be done.
Again and stuff.
Re:So, he is admitting that the attacks are true (Score:5, Informative)
Well, considering that the word "swiftboating" is derived from accusations against John Kerry that were true. when someone says they are being "swiftboated" they are admitting that the attacks against them are based in truth.
Except they weren't true, as almost all of his cremates have said.
Re:So, he is admitting that the attacks are true (Score:4, Informative)
Who are these crew mates?
http://mediamatters.org/research/2004/08/05/submerging-the-truth-about-swift-boat-vets-on-h/131593
Re:So, he is admitting that the attacks are true (Score:5, Informative)
That is interesting, since all of his crew mates I have heard say they are true.
I think you're full of shit. The people who made the accusations were either not part of his crew, or were not present on the missions for which they disputed Kerry's accounts and questioned the basis for the medals he received.
Some of those who did make the accusations flip flopped - they actually praised him, and one officer submitted his name for a Silver Star, before joining the Swiftboat political action group.
I think it's more likely that you just never bothered to get the facts, rather than that you are outright lying, but by all means, post a single shred of evidence for what you claim.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swift_Vets_and_POWs_for_Truth
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Lying scum are everywhere. And some will sell their honor for a meaningless political statement.
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Oh iI get it, very smarmy. Let me guess you only listened to the crew mate who said what you wanted to hear, hence all the crew mates you heard. Why does that so remind me of the typical Fox not-News spin, that and of course outright lies, like "It's not a police state it is a safe state" talk about doublespeak overdrive https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com].
This is exactly like the kind of PR=B$ that pseudo Christian pseudo conservative (both just masks they wear) foist on the public as pretend science, jus
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What are you trollboating?
Re:So, he is admitting that the attacks are true (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, considering that the word "swiftboating" is derived from accusations against John Kerry that were true. when someone says they are being "swiftboated" they are admitting that the attacks against them are based in truth.
You're missing the point entirely.
Typical political attacks aim for an opponent's weaknesses, broken campaign promises, personal indiscretions, etc.
Swiftboating is the opposite, it attacks an opponent's strengths and tries to turn them into vulnerabilities. With Kerry a big selling point was his war service and purple hearts, swiftboating created a second narrative where he was unpatriotic and a bad soldier.
The same thing happened in '12 where Romney's business experience was turned into a negative by associating him with layoffs and the rich people who broke the economy. And to a lesser extent in '08 with Obama and his academic credentials and intellectual reputation, many people started implying that his academic career was the result of affirmative action.
What's happening to scientists is the same idea. There's three big reasons to believe scientists.
1) They have a ton of integrity.
2) They're succeed by finding new things and changing the established thinking.
3) They use the peer review system to enforce rigorous standards.
Climate change opponents attack all of these qualities. They attack scientists' integrity by alleging mass fraud. They deny the revolutionary aspect by claiming scientists don't want to point out problems with climate change. And finally they claim the peer review system is used to stifle dissent and create a false consensus.
The plan is to discredit climate change by discrediting science itself, the opponents can't gain credibility, but if they discredit scientists they don't have to, it just becomes a case of he-said she-said.
Re:So, he is admitting that the attacks are true (Score:4, Insightful)
1) They have a ton of integrity.
Scientists have as much (or as little) integrity as the next guy. Fortunately the scientific method yields tools for outing the ones who acted with little integrity. Unfortunately, scientists with little integrity tend to move the discussion into into politics before the integrity problem can catch up with them, after which science kinda goes out the window.
Manning stands accused of the latter. Some of his emails focused on how to discredit folks who dispute his findings suggest those accusations have some merit. If you want to keep politics out of science, you simply can't engage on a political level.
2) They're succeed by finding new things and changing the established thinking.
No. Just no. Finding a new way to confirm an old theory is just as successful science as testing a new theory. Finding a way to refute an established theory is highly successful science which rarely happens, and finding the new theory that fits all the data -and- whose predictions survive the test of time is rare genius.
Test of time is important. If you have to incrementally revise the theory as new data comes in, it's not a very solid theory.
3) They use the peer review system to enforce rigorous standards.
A theory which, sadly, has been discredited in the past decade or so.
http://science.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
http://science.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
Re:So, he is admitting that the attacks are true (Score:5, Informative)
1) They have a ton of integrity.
Scientists have as much (or as little) integrity as the next guy. Fortunately the scientific method yields tools for outing the ones who acted with little integrity. Unfortunately, scientists with little integrity tend to move the discussion into into politics before the integrity problem can catch up with them, after which science kinda goes out the window.
Manning stands accused of the latter. Some of his emails focused on how to discredit folks who dispute his findings suggest those accusations have some merit. If you want to keep politics out of science, you simply can't engage on a political level.
The culture determines integrity, and the scientific culture has a ton of integrity.
As for Manning your narrative would imply that he's moved away from the science, but the reality is that he's still heavily involved in the science. Note that people are experts at compartmentalizing, if Manning has in fact shown less integrity in his public relations work (a point I don't concede) there's no reason to believe that's bled over into his research.
2) They're succeed by finding new things and changing the established thinking.
No. Just no. Finding a new way to confirm an old theory is just as successful science as testing a new theory. Finding a way to refute an established theory is highly successful science which rarely happens, and finding the new theory that fits all the data -and- whose predictions survive the test of time is rare genius.
Test of time is important. If you have to incrementally revise the theory as new data comes in, it's not a very solid theory.
That's not quite right.
Incremental revisions to theories are how science happens. You need to read the relativity of wrong [tufts.edu].
3) They use the peer review system to enforce rigorous standards.
A theory which, sadly, has been discredited in the past decade or so.
http://science.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
http://science.slashdot.org/st... [slashdot.org]
Is it perfect? No.
Do we have a better alternative? No.
Re:So, he is admitting that the attacks are true (Score:5, Insightful)
as soon as he returned he began vilifying the people he served with. The only people who thought Kerry's war service was a strength were people who were as anti-military as John Kerry.
Why does opposition to war automatically mean you're anti-military and vilifying soldiers?
Have you considered that people who oppose war simply want to minimize the number of people who are killed, and to avoid putting soldiers in the kind of situations that lead to people committing atrocities?
Re:So, he is admitting that the attacks are true (Score:4, Interesting)
Why does opposition to war automatically mean you're anti-military and vilifying soldiers?
Nobody ever said that it does, and there are many people today who oppose our nation's current overseas adventures but support the troops. However, back during 'Nam, that wasn't true, and those who opposed the war (mostly because they didn't want to be drafted) constantly showed their hatred of anybody in the US Armed Forces.
I call bullshit. Prove it.
I lived during the Vietnam war, I opposed the war, I had friends who were in the armed forces, and I didn't hate them.
Our opposition to the war had nothing to do with not wanting to be drafted. We didn't want to serve in a military that was oppressing other people.
You may be confusing us with Dick Cheney.
Incidentally, since you're judging others from such a high horse, when did you serve and what battle ribbons did you earn? Or perhaps you didn't serve at all.
Re:So, he is admitting that the attacks are true (Score:4, Interesting)
I spent over 7 months in Tonkin Gulf in '72, most of it on the Gun Line doing shore bombardment, and I have the service-connected hearing loss as a souvenir. My ship was one of the 38 that helped throw back the NVA during the Easter Offensive by taking advantage of the fact that their plans had completely ignored the fact that the USN completely controlled the eastern flank of the battlefield.
And, as far as how we were treated by the anti-war movement, I must congratulate you on your selective memory.
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He was also awarded a Bronze Star, Silver Star, and three Purple Hearts.
Are you really denigrating his service? Are you nuts?
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Man, you have a serious axe to grind against him.
So now that the "truths" that you have tried to push earlier in the thread have been exposed as lies by established facts, you're going after him for service length that somehow discredits his military service.
Oh right, you're giving a textbook demonstration of swiftboating. Carry on.
Re:So, he is admitting that the attacks are true (Score:4, Insightful)
So are you saying U.S. soldiers did nothing wrong when they raped, cut off ears, cut off heads, taped wires to human genitals, cut off limbs, blew up bodies, randomly shot at civilians, razed villages, and poisoned food stocks?
Or are you saying it's wrong, but we shouldn't talk about it?
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Because people in the know are smart enough to know that 'faux' rhymes with 'know'... not 'fox'.
Re:It's All In The Spelling (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing you seem to have failed to grasp is "Truth is objective."
Re:It's All In The Spelling (Score:5, Funny)
Fox News may be a proper noun, but so is Microsoft Works.
It still does not constitute a true statement. And while I do to some degree concede that Microsoft does work sometimes, whatever Fox produces ain't no news.
Re:Stop trying to win this politically (Score:4, Informative)
Stop listening to failed politicians to structure your political arguments.
Now that's some good advice.
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Funny, this article is by a climate scientist.
Karmashock is just trying to misdirect by pointing fingers at unrelated political arguments to create FUD and guilt by association. All of which are decidedly political tactics.
"Advice"...? Not so much.
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Funny, this article is by a climate scientist.
Yes, but in this article, he's not acting as a climate scientist, he's acting as a political strategist.
Re:Stop trying to win this politically (Score:4, Informative)
Political strategist? His "strategy" is to communicate with the public about science. It's not like he is planning out press releases and talking points and media buys. This is not some Karl Rove or David Plouff.
He's advocating scientists not remain silent. He is standing up for the right for scientists to be part of the conversation. And about how to spot disingenuous arguments. So yeah, this is the wrong time for the "oh stop the politics" argument. Trotting out and attacking Al Gore (as the GP poster did) is exactly the kind of bullshit arguments Mann is warning about.
I think that it is indeed our responsibility collectively, as scientists, to convey the societal implications of our work (Mann, 2014a). Just because we are scientists does not mean that we should check our citizenship at the door of a public meeting. There is nothing inappropriate about drawing on our scientific know-ledge to speak out about the very real implications of our research. As Stephen Schneider used to say, being a scientist-advocate is not an oxymoron. If scientists choose not to engage on matters of policy-relevant science, then we leave a void that will be filled by industry-funded disinformation.
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Political strategist? His "strategy" is to communicate with the public about science. It's not like he is planning out press releases and talking points and media buys. This is not some Karl Rove or David Plouff.
Apparently you didn't read the article? It's essentially discussing a certain political strategy, and then suggesting ways to counter-act it. That is Mann working as a political strategist.
Yes, Mann's political strategy is to counter lies by telling the truth.
First, it's to tell the truth in his scientific papers; second, it's to tell the truth again in a more accessible form in the public debate.
That's what scientists have been doing since at least Galileo's time.
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Re:Stop trying to win this politically (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah. Right. Just a blow job.
What I think is a whole lot better is a born again Christian who with his cronies, frittered away our money, lied to us, put us into the longest war in our history, destroyed our reputation around the world, put the world into the great recession.
Because, as you know, Character counts.
Re:Stop trying to win this politically (Score:4, Informative)
He's suing people that libeled him.
FTFY. Let us know when you denialist trolls are ready to provide superior science, and not the same warmed over rhetorical bullshit you've been serving up by hand for a couple of decades.
Re:Stop trying to win this politically (Score:5, Informative)
If you want to talk about science, then show me a tested climate model that has been subjected to an empirical test of its validity.
There are plenty of climate models that have been subjected to an empirical test of validity. [ed.ac.uk]
On the other hand... (Score:5, Insightful)
From your link:
Recent observed global warming is significantly less than that simulated by climate models. This difference might be explained by some combination of errors in external forcing, model response and
Ginternal climate variability.
In other words, the models don't work at all, what is the excuse that the rubes will buy so we can keep draining science funds for a few more years?
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No. The work, they just overestimate the effect. They are qualitatively correct but have quantitative errors.
That is far different from not working.
The difference shows that we have more to learn about a complex system. Not a surprise. It's not exactly good news for your desire to do nothing, it shows that we are probably exhausting some additional sink and so reversing the already measured effect will require more effort than we thought or at least will take longer than we thought to have the desired effec
Re:On the other hand... (Score:4, Insightful)
Nature has been known to sometimes print dodgy articles, so you'll need to get more verification before making a claim,
There's more. If you want to find them, you will. If you can't find it, you're not intelligent enough to understand any studies on the topic anyway. The scientific community has moved on, and is now working on figuring out why the models are wrong. Which is what you would expect them to do.
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The long-term trend is a failure. The models were supposed to predict surface temperatures. A recent claim that it went into the deep oceans instead doesn't validate the models. It's over ten years and the models have fallen outside of any predicted range.
Also, the big threat with global warming was supposed to be due to water vapor feedback, as opposed to just the forced warming from carbon dioxide. That has yet to be proven.
Re:Stop trying to win this politically (Score:5, Insightful)
If Global Warming is a science issue then stop trying to make political arguments.
Global warming is a science issue and is argued by scientists in papers. The problem is that convincing everyone to do something about global warming is a political issue, and politicians aren't above discrediting anyone who opposes them to get their way.
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They'll simply hand wave all that away as "natural effects" and play the appeal to common sense card by saying "how foolish to think that a man is big enough to affect something as big as the world" or "it snowed this christmas, so much for global warming!".
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The sea level rise is probably the best thing to talk about. From what I've seen of the data, we're looking at about 2 mm per year throughout most of the world right now. At that rate, we're looking at about 7 inches per 100 years. At that rate, it is hard to argue we have a problem. Variations of that kind furthermore are well known in the climate record.
Re:Stop trying to win this politically (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Stop trying to win this politically (Score:5, Informative)
You can, oh I dunno, gather more data... Which they do. What the fuxk do you think researchers actually do? They gather data, they refine models, they compare to the data, repeat and rinse.
Not all theories are built as monolithic constructs, and nowhere in science is it a requirement that a theory must be complete (whatever that means) to have utility.
Re:Stop trying to win this politically (Score:4, Insightful)
The political argument is choking on its own blood with crushed internal organs.
Frankly, Scarlett, I don't give a damn.
1. In my estimation, it doesn't matter all that much what we do at this point. I believe we've put enough energy into the atmosphere that we're going to go for a big roller coaster ride in the future. Heat equals energy, and it must be spent down to reach a new equalibrium.
But as my car hurtles out of control, I'll probably try the brakes to see if they help. 2. The political argument? Doesn't matter. We're going to do this thing. Rub the pumps kick it in the ass and see what happens. Any reductions we make in my country will just be taken up in others. The coal trains running out of my area are long and full, even if that coal is going to China.
Scientists can't win any arguments with politicians, unless it's about blowing things up or making things useful for them. Of what use is a warning, and something unpopular?
3. History is full of failed political systems who have made wrong decisions while being "right" And we are not immune ot that. 4. The Universe simply doesn't care what you or I think. The speed of light is 299,792,458 m / s whether you or I agree, or the creationists try to make it vary so it fits their 4004 b.c.e. creation myth need. Their thoughts, their debates with Bill Nye or Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins, even if they intellectually destroy the atheists, do not make their ideas one bit more true.
Combine all of those, and yeah, I think you "win". Congratulations, would you like a certificate or medal? Now that "winning" might entail some countries failing, and others succeeding. Will your political will be enough to overcome events should the USA take the route of this dude?
"My name is Ozymandias, king of kings.
Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains: round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare,
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
We will find out in due time. Perhaps the Greenhouse gas model fails on the global scale, and another effect simulates it. Perhaps God in his infinite wisdom, controls the atmosphere, and would never let anything get in the way of our manifest destiny. Perhaps Politicians know a lot more about science than scientists do. Perhaps.
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All well and good but you failed to back up anything. You just said:
"I am Chicken LIttle!
Look upon my works and freak out like a child!"
I am asking pro AGW people to show me a validated climate model or admit that they don't have one. I know you don't have one. I want you to admit it. And when that happens... you'll be admitting to having no high ground upon which you can piss on those below you.
You never had that high ground... but so many on your side seem to have deluded yourselves into thinking otherwis
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It isn't a competition between two political factions in science. It is a competition between your theory and reality.
Being more right then anyone else because you're the only one offering a model doesn't make your model accurate. It just means no one else is even bothering to try. And maybe that is sad. But it doesn't mean your model is correct simply because no one else is offering one.
If you were in a village 4000 years ago and offered a theory of gravity that was wrong... but you were the only one offer
Re:Stop trying to win this politically (Score:4, Insightful)
Sorry, but you are like the creationist who wants scientists t reprove everything every time a new creationist comes up to bat. You are saying "Prove that the speed of light isn't variable." "Prove that there was no great flood". Prove that your model that I won't accept anyhow is "wrong", or right or whatever.
What's the basis for your claim? Keep in mind that reality itself isn't fitting your models.
So if you cannot provide a model, then you have nothing to contribute
You can't provide a model that fits well enough either. You're still not paying me to do this, so I'm not doing it. Further, I just don't care that you think this isn't a contribution. You are simply wrong here.
In the end, you are not even the target audience oh my part of the discussion. You will never change your mind. There might be some others out there who will decide that perhaps scientists are better sources of science knowledge than politicians.
You are not even trying to convince me. You're just complaining that "I don't contribute". Why should I change my mind? I need actual reasons first not just some annoyed person who can't even start to make coherent arguments in support of their viewpoint.
For me, the problem is not that we have or don't have global warming. I believe we do and that it is in large part caused by humans. Where we diverge is in whether the situation is bad enough that we need to act right now on that.
What gets me is that we're seeing the classic signs of a scam. None of the alleged evidence is accessible to the layman. It's ambiguous data collected by a bunch of near anonymous researchers and then collected and interpreted by the gatekeepers, people like Michael Mann who clearly are acting in an adversarial role, like prosecutor or defender in a court trial. (Note that every bit of research and every public appearance that Mann makes are attempts to portray climate change in the worst possible light. He's not the only one doing this either.) That's fine, but I'm not going to make global economy changing decisions on that basis without something in the way of actual evidence and a sound, independent evaluation of the benefits and costs of the proposed change.
Then when that research is questioned, the critics are portrayed as anti-scientific. That collective, structural argument from authority/ad hominem attack when coupled with the growing disparity between predictive models and reality is a clear warning sign that the proponents of catastrophic AGW can't argue from actual facts, but have to resort to political power and influence to propagandize their side of the argument.
Re:Stop trying to win this politically (Score:4, Informative)
But if you actually saw Climate Change or more specifically Anthropogenic Climate Change as a valid threat, it would appear the answers would be to create a working group with the goals of developing the technology to make existing energy sources cleaner as well as clean alternatives and to make this information available to all parties concerned so they could implement it as it becomes reliable and economically feasible.
Huh? Haven't you noticed all the research that's been put into alternatives like wind and solar that has brought them or will in a short while bring them to grid parity with fossil fuel sources of energy? Also, all the work on battery technology? There's a ton of work going into alternatives and at the rate it's going it's just a matter of time ( 10 years) before they are easily the most cost effective way to produce most energy.
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With respect, neither wind nor solar are credible additions to the traditional power grid.
Maybe not at the moment but they may well be in the future.
I'm not against nuclear power but it seems to be one of the more costly ways to produce power. That's the biggest reason more nukes weren't built since the 1970's. It was cheaper and quicker to build a coal plant. We'll see how those plants they're building in Georgia work out.
Re:Stop trying to win this politically (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether global warming is happening and what the effects will be is a scientific issue. But what we need to do to reduce carbon dioxide emissions is to change energy policies, so that is a political issue. It's just the same as with CFCs eating away the ozone layer and sufur emissions causing acid rain. If no political action had been taken, those would still be problems.
Ironically, most of the people who argue against the science of global warming are opposed to what to do about it. They argue we should not destroy the economy and go back to an agrarian lifestyle. But using LED light bulbs (and doing other things to use energy more efficiently) and generating power from solar, wind, and nuclear are the actual proposed solutions, not lifestyle changes. In effect they're taking a politcal issue and trying to argue it in the scientific arena, which will never work.
That's mostly just the US. (Score:2, Insightful)
In most places outside the US, science isn't accepted as something that can be so casually threatened by special interests working against all objectively observable sources of information.
I've been following the wider skeptical movement here in the US for a while now. Perhaps earlier on (over a decade ago), challenges to the scientific consensus on things like global warming had some legitimacy as a real movement - but by now, it really is just a shill movement. Every existing doubt remaining is NOT in ter
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You have not been looking hard enough if you havent found skeptics elsewhere than in the US.
If you think the scientific debate on global warming has ended in countries like the UK, Australia, Canada, all European countries and elsewhere, you are actively trying to silence the debate.
Re:That's mostly just the US. (Score:5, Insightful)
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If Global Warming is a science issue then stop trying to make political arguments.
You are LOSING the political battle. Stop fighting. Everything since Al Gore started organizing this movement has been one political miscalculation after another.
Why would you expect otherwise? This is the same guy that lost to GWB after serving a Bill Clinton's Vice President for eight years. That election was in the bag. And he blew it by thinking that attacking guns in the middle of a presidential election was a good idea.
Are you saying that we should use guns to settle the "debate" on global warming?
Are you saying that advocates for action against CO2 pollution should present themselves as gun-friendly?
I don't get it.
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Re:Stop trying to win this politically (Score:4, Interesting)
As the other guy said, I'm saying Gore is an incompetent politician. Bill Clinton is a great politician. Even his enemies admire the man's skill. He had the nick name of "slick willy" because he was such a master speaker.
Gore by contrast was a wet fish. Very few politicians are as good as Bill Clinton. Again, I'm not saying his policies were good or bad... just that Bill was very good at politics. He knew how to talk to people.
Gore doesn't. He was handed the presidency on a golden platter and he fucked it up.
And after fucking it up, he went on to lead the green revolution which he's also done a shitty job at because he refuses to make friends.
He just insults and offends everyone making enemies out of people that otherwise might have supported him.
The green movement has done much the same thing. Big industry doesn't have to be your enemy. All they are going to care about is making money. Help them find a way to build a new green industry and they're not going to be your enemy.
Someone has to build all that stuff. And you're talking to people that take it as normal to build stuff on the bottom of the ocean or drill over a mile under the earth. These are not intellectual or engineering light weights. Why give them the finger and tell them they're assholes? That is not what a clever politician would have done. Such a person would have used and incorporated them.
Stupid politicians give everyone the finger, tell everyone "I'll do what I want", and then proceed to piss all over everyone. Short of a gun to my head, I'm not going to tolerate someone doing that to me. And by and large I am not alone. The only people that are putting up with it are those that think they're standing up on the pedestal with him pissing on everyone else. And over time most are coming to realize no one is up there but him a few other select interests. Which is why over time his political position is continually eroding.
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Feed in past climate data and see if your climate model can predict the past or the present accurately.
This is done routinely, it's known as the model's "hindcasting skill", Michael Mann's website 'RealClimate' is a good source of general info on climate models, you should find out what they do before criticizing (lest someone accuse you of building a 'straw man argument').
It's difficult to criticise the model denier's use since they have never produced one, they just put out press releases containing nonsense such as "models can't reproduce 20th century climate", assign the opposite statement to that all
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If Global Warming is a science issue then stop trying to make political arguments.
You are LOSING the political battle. Stop fighting. Everything since Al Gore started organizing this movement has been one political miscalculation after another.
Why would you expect otherwise?
I'll agree that Gore is a bad spokesperson in that his participation automatically politicized it.
But I also think that politicization was inevitable. Climate change comes from scientists, climate change hurts big oil, even if the business impact was small can you imagine the Republicans letting a political opportunity like that go to waste? The right will unify against climate change every single time.
At this point the only hope for climate change action is a complete implosion of the Tea Party (giving Dem
Advocates vs Scientists (Score:3)
What most people don't get is when scientists start advocating political policy they have stopped being scientists and have become advocates for a particular cause. What's more they can expect to be treated as such.
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Bill was popular after his presidency. Gore blew it by distancing himself and then going anti gun which is something Bill never would do... because it is politically stupid.
Which is my point. The AGW lobby is being run by well connected though stupid political agents. I am telling you to get better representatives that are less stupid.
Re:Stop trying to win this politically (Score:5, Informative)
Predictions have been pretty good, actually (Score:5, Informative)
Feed in past climate data and see if your climate model can predict the past or the present accurately.
And, surprise! It does. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07... [nytimes.com]
While I agree with most of your post, what you describe here is not science. That approach turns science on its head. The scientific method [wikipedia.org] begins with a reasoned hypothesis, followed by a prediction based on the hypothesis, and an experiment to prove or disprove this prediction.
Correct. The hypothesis dates back to Arrhenius 1896 http://www.lenntech.com/greenh... [lenntech.com] The numerical calculation of greenhouse warming due to carbon dioxide was first accurately done using measured value for infrared absorption and numerical integration of the profile was done in 1967 by Manabe and Wetherald-- it's summarized in any reasonable book about atmospheric science (such as the one on my desk at the moment, An Introduction to Atmospheric Radiation, by Liou (1980), p. 188). Calculating the greenhouse effect alone (that is, assuming no change in cloudiness, and constant relative humidity), Manabe and Wetherald showed "a ten percent increase in CO2 concentration (from 300 to 330 ppm) would lead to a warming of 0.3 K." It's a logarithmic response function (Arrhenius calculated that much back in 1895, although he didn't have the data to do the complete numerical integration), so it's easy to extrapolate this to the current carbon dioxide of about 400 ppm. It comes to about 0.8 K increase by their model.
Comparing it to the data, from 1967 on... looks like the experimental result matches the prediction.
Climate "science" on the other hand does exactly what you describe here. It looks at past data and attempts to fit it to a hypothesis.
Nope. The hypothesis dates back to Arrhenius. The detailed calculation dates to Manabe and Wetherald.
In any case, while the measured temperatures are a nice validation that the models are in the right ballpark, there's plenty of other data. You seem to be unaware that there is is a lot of measurements of the atmosphere.
That's not science at all. That's little more than a statistical model. These guys believe they have their answer and are trying to fit all observations to it.
That's a description of deniers. That's not the way climate science is done.
The reason we believe that the model is more or less accurate is that there are terabytes of data confirming it. The reason we don't believe that alternative models are accurate is that there aren't any. All of the alternative models proposed so far fail when compared against the evidence.
When there's an alternative model that fits the data, believe me, people will pay attention. Many people have looked very hard to come up with an alternative model. So far, no success.
You don't seem to know much about the subject, but this is not one or two scientists doing questionable work and then everybody else saying "oh, they must be right". There are thousands of scientists working on it; supercomputer models built on five different continents; ground, balloon, and satellite measurements, terabytes of data.
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In the first place 18 years is not long enough to invalidate a climate model. In the second place observations are still within the ranges projected by models. Most of the graphs you see on climate model output are from the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) [llnl.gov] that takes the results hundreds of individual runs from about 30 different coupled* models and produces a weighted average and spread** of them. That smooths out the effects of natural variability so it's expected that observations will be
So, make your point and quit attacking the science (Score:3)
I think you made the honest mistake, that I am directly debating you with the statements I made.
The difference between you and I, is that I DO care what the alarmist are saying because they are shaping public opinion, in the media and in politics.
Putting your head in the sand and saying, but science is sound, while ignoring
And, in fact, the science is sound. You have just written three posts in this thread asserting that the science is wrong... and now you're telling me, that's not your point, you don't know or care if the science is sound, what you care about is the "alarmists" trying to "shape public and political opinion"?
OK. This is slashdot. Some of us do care about the science, and do care about people attacking science to make polical points.
The science is sound. If you don't like the alarmism, go challenge that (h
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temperatures have not significantly risen in the last 18 years.
18 year graph, yes temperatures have risen over the last 18 years. [woodfortrees.org]
What you were trying to cite was the was this [woodfortrees.org]. If you look at that graph you'll see that the earth has been on a cooling trend line (the straight lines), every year since 1965. Obviously the graph is rising, and obviously all of the cooling trend-lines are completely fictional. That's exactly how denialist websites try to quote that warming has "stopped", when it obviously hasn't. The genuine long term warming trend always breaks the fiction
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Sounds like some of them are as inept as Al Gore has been said to be.
Oddly, in the sciences (as opposed to in politics), acknowledging uncertainty and quoting error bars is considered to be a good thing. The fact that they acknowledge uncertainty is a useful indication that scientists are not "inept."
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That isn't a climate cmodel. That is the observation that gases or even more generally matter retains thermal energy.
Do me this favor, look up the temperature of Venus at 1 atmosphere.
Repeat that by looking at the temperature of Jupiter at 1 atmosphere.
Repeat by comparing the temperature of the earth's atmosphere at an altitude where its density matches that of Mars.
Keep in mind, what we are doing is looking at temperatures at the same pressure in each atmosphere.
Don't read beyond this point until you've lo
What exactly do you mean by "Fraud"? (Score:5, Insightful)
One example of research that has been particularly well corroborated by later papers is the temperature reconstructions by Mann, Bradley and Hughes.
There is no higher standard of affirmation than reproduction by independent lines of evidence.
How can this possibly be fraud?
Neither is he self-promoting. He is science promoting. That is to be admired. Even if you're a Bush or Murdoch, so that you've an interest in not promoting it.
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Mann's claims were fraudulent because he deliberately used screwy statistical methods and selective sampling to make a modest rise look like impeding doom. He also flat out lied in his legal proceedings. He's slimy and I would still say that if I thought the global temperature was rising 1 degree per year.
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The whole situation of it all, doesn't escape me. Look at a bigger picture. Perhaps there are a lot of scientists getting slagged. It may have nothing,something or everything to do with claims stated here. I am willing to explore the nothing or something of it, though.
What reasons can we find by wringing our memories of the events of , shall we say, the slashdot age?
1.Science tainted by money.
2. Science tainted by politics.
3. Science tainted by idiots.
4. Misled, mismanaged,misinterpreted research that misse
Re:What exactly do you mean by "Fraud"? (Score:4, Insightful)
Personally I fully accept everything found by modern science. I'm on board with evolution, big bang, multiverse theory, and global warming. However I don't accept the "how" answer we've been handed on several of them. Nobody has figured out with certainty what exactly drives evolution (natural selection only represents part of it; there are many other processes that we've still yet to understand) we're still very uncertain of the expansion of the universe (is it asymptotal, cyclical, ever expanding, etc) and we're still uncertain what, if any, bridge there is between other universes (black holes being the likely candidate.)
Likewise, I still don't think we've fully figured out the "how" in global warming. Sure, you can place CO2 in a closed container and observe that it warms more than a container with normal air, but that is not at all a good model for atmospheric conditions. For example, we've still yet to figure out why the periods with higher CO2 composition than we have today (about 20 times as much) have been found to be cooler using the same methods that Michael Mann uses to argue his hockey stick graph.
Now, controlling pollution is good. You'll have a hard time finding even the most staunch libertarians that are against rules as far as keeping air and water quality good (Obama's big speech about them wanting dirty air and dirty water was likewise a straw man argument.) However CO2 doesn't play a role in that. I mean shit, we create it simply by breathing.
Even if CO2 is the big issue here, (as I said earlier, I'm not convinced) I'm sure there are other ways of dealing with it that don't involve putting a cap on the economy, which is essentially what the Kyoto protocol was asking for, and is what most of the free market types are rebelling against.
Alternative energy is fine (I myself am a huge fan of Tesla, I think those cars are really neat, not to mention fast, but I just don't have that kind of money, and I'm sure a LOT more people would be on board if they were cheaper) but it needs to be practical. Expensive is never practical. You can't just force everybody to operate on technology that isn't practical yet and expect that they won't push back. In many ways this is comparable to IPv6 adoption, which fortunately nobody is in a rush for anything other than letting it happen as gracefully as its adopters are willing.
Re:What exactly do you mean by "Fraud"? (Score:4, Interesting)
For example, we've still yet to figure out why the periods with higher CO2 composition than we have today (about 20 times as much) have been found to be cooler using the same methods that Michael Mann uses to argue his hockey stick graph.
Considering that the last time there was 8000 ppm of CO2 in the atmosphere was more than 5e7 years ago, I'd think that stellar evolution of our Sun could play a role in that (~4-5% less of radiative output at that time).
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The point about communication is particularly important. Just "knowing" the situation is never enough. If you cannot explain it, you might as well not know it.
Take a look at Tufte's review of the graphics explaining the effect of temperature (cold) on shuttle o-rings at the run-up to the Challenger launch. The engineers "knew" what the problem was, but it was not communicated. The graphics actually hid the information (or at least obscured it). Richard Feynman's on-camera demo (not experiment - he knew
Re:Mann is a fruad (Score:4, Insightful)
Anyone who is denounced so loudly by Koch Industries, the Scaife Foundation, and so many others probably has a story worth telling.
Re:Mann is a fruad (Score:5, Insightful)
and the religion of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change is alive and well... unfortunately
Ahh, the anti-science movement calling the pro-scientific movement a "religion".
This is one of the lies that the anti-science's PR movement pays people to tell. If you have a fault, it is a good idea to accuse the other side of that fault so that the perception develops that both sides are as bad as each other.
How's that working out for you with the audience of http://science.slashdot.org/ [slashdot.org] ?
That's because it doesn't work on people who are actually following what's going on.
Re:Mann is a fruad (Score:5, Insightful)
OTOH this is a USA phenomena and not worldwide. It's generally only in the US that there is such a schmozzle over this. The standard right wing response "The evidence isn't in yet." is still being used, or it's some kind of hoax. The right wing is making (or has made) world perception of the USA's public attitude as a bunch of morons willing to believe non-fact checked science. All the Koch bros/Fox are doing is discrediting the intelligence of the general US public. The impression is that the general US public is listening to them and believing them is so real that whether it is true or not, it really doesn't matter.
Re:Mann is a fruad (Score:5, Insightful)
The right wing is making (or has made) world perception of the USA's public attitude as a bunch of morons willing to believe non-fact checked science. All the Koch bros/Fox are doing is discrediting the intelligence of the general US public.
I disagree. They aren't "discrediting" the intelligence of the general US public, they're showing the world just how stupid the general US public is. We are a bunch of morons.
Re:Mann is a fruad (Score:4, Insightful)
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I hope and trust that Mann is right in this case, but the denialist movement has fucked us all.
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Indeed. Collective stupidity is on the rise. Unfortunately, for climate change, that is suicidal on a species-level.
Re:Fuck the KOCHs. (Score:5, Insightful)
The movement in religion seems to be towards the extremes. Fundamentalism and atheism are both on the rise - it's the middle that is in decline, the people who profess belief but only go to church for weddings and funerals, and who never actually read their bible. There's a contradiction in such people - they openly profess a belief which should define their lives, but ignore it in all their actions. So it's easy to confront them with this and force them to either turn devout and practice what they claim, or admit they were lying to themselves about believing all along and abandon their religion altogether.
Wree: Kuck the FOCHs. (Score:3, Funny)
Anti-vax?
You'll have to pry my MicroVax 3100 from my cold dead hands.
This is Slashdot, ya know. Take your politicking somewhere else
Re:Ad hominem attacks are Mann's specialty (Score:4, Interesting)
Steyn compared Mann to a notorious pedophile. Steyn is a vile asshole.
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You of course can provide citations in actual peer reviewed and primary literature to show Mann is a fraud, right?
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Re:A bit rich (Score:4, Interesting)
And thoroughly debunked (in peer-reviewed journals, natch) by McIntyre and McKitrick as an artifact of one proxy (Sheep Mountain) being artificially weighted hundreds of times more than any of the others. Without that one proxy, there would be no Hockey Stick shape and no academic career for Michael Mann.
The kicker is that in Michael Mann's files was clear evidence that he ran his algorithm using all proxies except Sheep Mountain (which would have shown no Hockey Stick shape) and then buried the result. He also claimed on more than one occasion not to have used the R2 metric which would have shown no statistical skill in his construction - which wasn't true because the calculating code for R2 was also in the files AND he put the calculated R2 into a diagram of the global locations of the proxies in his original publication.
Even more fun is that the Sheep mountain proxies used by Mann have been re-sampled and show no signs of the temperature sensitivity since 1980 when Mann's original data ended.
Regardless of people's position on AGW, a lot of climate scientists have come to the conclusion that what Mann did and continues to justify is scientific fraud.
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Debunking debunked. [realclimate.org] Repeating right wing bullshit over and over again doesn't make it more true and less bullshit.
Sorry.
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Really, you just failed "Theory of Science 101". Science does speak of truth. Science does not speak of complete truth or absolute truth, but neither does philosophy. That fallacy is reserved for the religious cretins.
Re:Curious... (Score:5, Insightful)
A socialist believes that the people (or government in actual practice) should own the means of production rather than private companies. We're not talking just about health care, we're talking about all major industries. No current US Democrat supports such a notion. Some Democrats may have been willing to work with socialists back in the 30's but they've grown farther and farther apart since that time. People like Soros want to place greater controls on the markets, but they also want the markets to continue to exist.
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You realize to half the country "swiftboating" means "pointing out facts you'd rather nobody knew"?
In the words of the late Senator McCarthy, "Facts, which if true..."
They ain't. The fact (and it is a fact) that some 40% of the populace is bamboozled by demagoguery and Fox News makes it easier to propagate this BS, but it doesn't change its truth value.
Re:"deniers-for-hire" (Score:4, Insightful)
It is hard to tell, since what you describe is not an ad-hominem argument.
The ad-hominem argument is using a trait about a person to imply something about the quality of their argument. What you describe is using the quality of the argument to imply a trait of a person.
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If Michael Mann actual had done all of those things you accuse him of then yes, he should be in prison. But despite trying for over 15 years no one has been able to make a case that he has done any of those things.
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Here are two peer reviewed papers that dispute M&M:
"Comment on "Hockey sticks, principal components, and spurious significance" by S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick", [harvard.edu] Huybers, P. (21 October 2005)
"Robustness of the Mann, Bradley, Hughes reconstruction of Northern Hemisphere surface temperatures: Examination of criticisms based on the nature and processing of proxy climate evidence", [ucar.edu] Wahl, Eugene R.; Ammann, Caspar M. (31 August 2007)