One might speculate that science-denying white trash, with its reflective properties, may increase the planet's albedo, contributing to a global cooling indeed.
Global warming? Bollocks!!!...
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One might speculate that science-denying white trash, with its reflective properties, may increase the planet's albedo, contributing to a global cooling indeed.
...and don't get me started on heliocentrism! Copernicus, is that a Jewish name?
JustAsking
Sexy Member
No, Copernicus was not Jewish, but it can be shown that Hitler was greatly influenced by Copernicus and heliocentrism. Yes, heliocentrism led directly to the policies of the Nazi party.
SilverTrain
Legendary Member
JustAsking
Sexy Member
This is a typical problem in amateur science deniers of GW. They confuse short term effects with long term effects because (and this might surprise a lot of people) climate science is a profession and it is highly complex. It is not the same as debating who should be in the basketball hall of fame, etc.
Your buddy Prof. Latif happens to be one of the authors of the IPCC reports that so adamantly predicts global warming by climate scientists all around the world.
What Latif is talking about in this article is a relatively shorter term effect called NAO, which is the decades long oscillations in the ocean temperatures. What he is saying is something that is pretty well known, that the NAO has been on the upswing, slightly exaggerating the appearance of GW, and it will be starting on its downswing slightly attenuating GW for a decade or two.
However, Latif is not a GW sceptic. In fact, let me quote from an article in New Scientists that came out this month:
JustAsking
Sexy Member
He is probably off on another forum somewhere giving his studied opinion on Quantum Mechanics or brain surgery. After all, all leading edge science is sorted out by amateurs in Internet forums linking to YouTube videos, isn't it?
We need to work on your sense of humor...I thought my albedo joke was much more incisive...
P.S.: We are still eagerly awaiting your input in the atheist thread.
JustAsking
Sexy Member
I was joking, too, but it was hard to tell. I bow to your superior sarcasm in the face of science denialers.
By the way, this is funnier than either of us.
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SpeedoGuy
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I've said it before and I'll say it again: I'm often astonished at how many statisticians and climate physicists I encounter in web forums.
B_Enough_for_Me
Experimental Member
Great story. Anyone who believes in GW is credible, anyone who doesn't is not; got it.
I also love your glance past the huge pink elephant in the corner. The climate models that scientist are currently using (and the politicians are taking advantage of) never predicted what actually happened. They predicted doom, doom, and more doom, then nature slapped them in the face with something that, in Latif's words "we don't fully understand." Further, Latif and his team were able to link his new theory with lots of other happenings in recent history.
Surely, you've heard about the absurdly large list of IPCC scientist that disagree with the IPCC's final conclusion? You haven't? Let get let me get it for you: .: U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works :: Minority Page :.
Some are demanding their names be removed from the IPCC report.
Let me guess: they are all "science deniers" "bought and sold" by "corporations."
Whew, and I thought doom was coming tomorrow!
This doesn't mean A) he agrees with your version of GW, or B) that he didn't just say that there are some hard questions to ask; aka there is something wrong here.
I hope people soon realize that I will check facts. The article you cite does not end up the way you put it.
"Breaking with climate-change orthodoxy, he said NAO cycles were probably responsible for some of the strong global warming seen in the past three decades. "But how much? The jury is still out," he told the conference. The NAO is now moving into a colder phase."
From the BBC Article:
"The projection (of the cooling) does not come as a surprise to climate scientists, though it may to a public that has perhaps become used to the idea that the rapid temperature rises seen through the 1990s are a permanent phenomenon."
B_Enough_for_Me
Experimental Member
Didn't you just run out your grand dissertation?
Why, oh why, do I doubt you've ever written a dissertation?
Just a hunch Dr. JA
Thanks for the Laugh, JA....I was going to point out to thje scoffers of global warming that the glaciers in Greeland have been receeding. Some scientistcs hope they can locate traces of the settlements that were there in 1000 AD...
YouTube and Wikipedia seem to be overused and overrated. I've checked back on Wiki on a couple of singers and actors I like over a period of time and find them completely rewritten and differently slanted.
D_Gunther Snotpole
Account Disabled
JustAsking is not saying that every credible person will believe in global warming.
He is saying that every credible person will have some significant qualifications, since the subject matter is so complex.
There is no reason to say that, among all those so qualified, absolutely none will be climate change skeptics.
It's worth noting, however, that relatively few are.
(That of course doesn't mean that the 'believers' are all equally convinced, or that they don't remain intelligently open to new evidence.)
Sounds like Latif is a good scientist, properly humble before the complexities of nature.
If he did claim to "fully understand," then you should not walk but run away from him.
Fortunately, as you point out, he doesn't.
...without this in any way compromising his status as a believer in global warming over the longer term.
He says this explicitly in the quote that JA gave.
"I am not one of the skeptics," he says.
Latif is not among them.
No serious person has ever said this.
The existence of NAO cycles do not refute the notion that climate change/global warming is happening.
The phrase "breaking with climate change orthodoxy..." is the contribution of the writer.
Is it a break with climate change orthodoxy?
No one has ever said that climate change will proceed with every single day, week, month, year, decade ... all warmer than the one previous.
There is no straight line here.
In mentioning the short-term effect of NAO cycles, did Latif feel he was breaking with climate-change orthodoxy?
I doubt it.
I'm going to let you figure out how ... but this quote completely contradicts your position.
If you condescend to JustAsking, the more astute members of this forum will begin to dismiss you right off the top, E_f_M.
He is broadly informed, serious, and cares about the truth, virtues worth emulating.
It helps, also, to be hooked on phonics.
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HorsemanUK
Legendary Member
...It's climate change that will kill us all.
Has anyone else noticed that recently politicians and news readers no longer use the term "global warming"?
Climate change now seems to be the official term used to frighten us all into paying more taxes.
Could it be that recently low sun spot activity has actually caused the globe to cool down?
http://www.climate4you.com/images/SunspotsMonthlyNOAA%20and%20HadCRUT3%20GlobalMonthlyTempSince1960.gif
We shouldn't be surprised if "climate change" eventually becomes "impending ice age" within a few decades.
Don't think that I am complaining about the positive effects of such scare tactics, it's just that alternatives to oil and nuclear energy have been around for decades. Powerful oil lobbies have managed to slow down the transition from dirty polluting hydrocarbon based fuels to the unlimited clean free energy promised by inventors like Nikola Tesla over a century ago.
If the government really wanted to reduce the negative effects of pollution on our planet, the technology exists, it just needs investment.
It’s all a load of BS and a good excuse for new taxes, stealth taxes and money making scams in the name of 'saving the planet'. The earth has experienced times of extreme climate change throughout its history (Medieval Warm Period AD 800-1300). It’s natural and has nothing to do with emissions, fossil fuel use etc. Governments can commission scientists to come up with reams of statistics that suppose to prove climate change is taking place, however, they cant prove conclusively it has anything to do with anything the human race is doing. I would liken the current hysteria and naivety among 'green' supporters to the early modern witch-hunts (1480-1700).
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JustAsking
Sexy Member
No, in science no opinion is credible except that which comes out of the accumulated literature in the professional community. It was the one innovation that allowed science to become so successful. It's particular unwillingness to appeal to anyone's opinion as an authority.
As for opinions from "Internet scientists", there are a number of things that signal immediately that someone's opinion is not credible. Appeal to Authority is one of them, which you have done here in order to support your personal claims about global warming. ("You're right, global warming is bogus." -EnoughForMe ) A dead giveaway is the conspicuous citing of the credentials of the authority that is being appealed to.
You see, it doesn't matter what any individual scientist thinks about a particular scientific issue because even Nobel Prize winners can be not only be wrong, but sometimes complete crackpots on certain issues (e. g. Linus Pauling and vitamin C).
What matters is what that scientist publishes in the literature of the professional community and how many times others in the field cite the article in their publications showing independent verification and successful application.
One of the next signals for non-credibility is that the Appeal to Authority is often done by cherry picking certain statements of the alleged authority so as to suggests that the authority supports your opinion. This is related to another non-credibility signal which is the willful rejection of negative evidence.
In this case, you quotes an authority who by his own admission is not a GW sceptic. The term for taking the publication of a scientist, cherry picking pieces out of it to form a different conclusion that is then attributed back to the author is called "pub jacking" (jargon for hijacking a publication).
In this case you have also demonstrated another sign of non-credibility, which is to play on the lay reader's cognitive frame regarding science that equates science to something more like "received knowledge" rather than a work in progress. Science, being the ultimate sceptical intellectual pursuit is constantly challenging and re-testing all of its findings and theories as new information is found and published.
A typical non-credible "Internet scientist" likes to point out areas that are undergoing considerale investigation and debate as some kind of weakness rather than the very process that allows science to be so successful. (Ironically, Internet scientists also like to make that the reason why their crackpot notions are not accepted by science is that it is too dogmatic.)
In actual fact, scienctists challenge each other's findings and refine their theories almost daily as new findings come to fruition. It is a complete work in progress and is ultimately the most sceptical intellectual process we know of.
In this particular case, you have taken the fact that Latif has a particular concern about GW modeling in the area he is working on and claiming that this is a weakness in the overall GW science rather than a strength. You are able to do this because of another non-credible device that works pretty well with the public. This is called "conflation". Since the public is mostly unaware of the subtleties of the issues in modern science, it is easy to convince them of almost anything.
In this case the conflation has to do with short term (yearly), near term (decades), and long term (centuries) climactic changes. You hear "Internet scientists" say this all the time as something like, "Hey, it was really cold during this month of July, so I guess those high falutin' global warming scientists must be full of shit."
As you quoted from the end of the article, there is no surprise amongst climatologists that the models that they are using for long term climate change are not very good at predicting near term climate change. This is no surprise because there are different effects that dominate the measurements over these different time periods.
The problem with using long term models to predict near term changes is that there are periodic effects in the near term that dominate the phenomenon. One of the strong effects is the periodic ocean temperature oscillations called NAO that happen over decades and are pretty strong. So drawing conclusions based on measurements over a decade will give you either an exaggerated idea or an overly conservative idea of what long term change might be happening depending on what part of the cycle you are on.
And since these phenomenon are periodic (coming and going in a cycle over decades) long term models will not consider them as much as near term models would. It is like ignoring daily tidal effects if you are measuring the change in sea level over a long period of time. Therefore, long term models used to predict climate change over centuries will perform very poorly if you compare it to actual measurements you make over short periods of time. (This is why you don't ask the climatologist what the weather is going to be like tomorrow.) In the world of climatology, they have a saying, "Climate is what you expect. Weather is what you get."
What Latif and others are pointing out is that our research and our long term models are better at predicting the long term climate change than they are the near term climate change. This is not suprising because in the long term, cyclical effects will average out. But in the near term, cyclical effects need to be understood and correctly modeled.
As Vicky Pope says in the NewScientist.com article I linked to:
My interpretation of these articles is that the scientists who are quoted are not GW sceptics. They continue to accept the fact that the professional community has demonstrated that global warming over the few centuries is likely happen and it is likely to be significant. However, they are warning scientists and laymen alike to not look to near term phenomenon and draw quantitative conclusions about the long term. They are also reminding everyone that the near term phenomenon is more complex and less understood than the long term phenomenon.
There is only one reason why someone would pubjack an article, appeal to the author's authority, mispreresent scientific progress as some kind of uncertainty, and wilfully conflate complex issues so as to lead the lay reader to a different conclusion than the original article author. The answer is that the person doing this seeks to effect public policy on a scientific issue not by challenging the science but by using public venues to appeal directly to the public thereby taking advantage of the public's naivete.
BigDallasDick8x6
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Why would scientists want to raise taxes?? And why are these scientists from countries all over the world? It isn't like they are just in the US. So scientists in Australia just make stuff up so the taxes will be raised in the US? I don't think so.
HazelGod
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JustAsking
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Thanks, HG, that means a lot to me.
But consider that not every reader of this forum is porcine. That's why I put so much into it. There are a lot of very intelligent people in these forums who don't deserve to be manipulated by disengenuous argument techniques.
So, I consider that each fatuous claim from a science denier in front of a lot of reasonable people is an opportunity to present a good case to everyone who is within earshot. I hardly ever expect to change the mind of a science denier himself, because he has another agenda besides logic, evidence, and furthering science.
But if the denier is willing to attract some attention to the subject with his propaganda, I am willing to "blog" about it in response. For some reason, it is the head to head conversation that inspires me to blog, rather than blogging blindly to some general readership in a blog of my own. I suppose for me, blogging is better done as a contact sport.
Science deniers are out to affect public policy by affecting public opinion. They are either doing this with an overt agenda, or they are unwittingly taking up the cause. Most of the anti-GW fodder comes from heavily funded lobbying and PR firms such as The Heartland Institute.
The reason why it works so easily is because most of the population are not scientists and they don't realize what it means to know something scientifically. Unfortunately, this leaves them as vulnerable to intellectually dishonest argument techniques. The formula is very simple, actually, and it is pretty much the same amongst almost all science deniers, be they Creationists, anti-AGW, AIDS/HIV deniers, anti-vaxers, etc. The formula is designed to appeal to the naievete of the general public and the very strong American cognitive narrative frames of anti-institutionalism and individualism.
As Rubi pointed out, the journalist played into these frames in order to add drama to his article. It's not that interesting to write an article saying that some scientists are going about their everyday business incorporating new findings, refining their theories and models, etc. It is much more dramatic to resonate the anti-institutionlism and individualism frames of the lay readers with a contrived implication that this lone Clint Eastwood style scientist is going up against the "scientific orthodoxy".
And as someone pointed out, the journalist was too sloppy or had too little respect for his readership to see the inconsistency in a following paragraph where he more honestly conveyed that climatologist were not surprised by Latif's work at all. That he also left in the part about Latif not being a GW sceptic leads me to believe that the journalist was mostly being responsible but just happened to throw in the cheesy drama about orthodoxy to spice it up a bit.
The only way to counter this kind of confidence game is to appeal to intelligent people on how to recognize credible points of view from disengenuos ones.
By the way, I am not a climatologist either. All I did was Google Latif's full name and see what he was all about. The moment you see what Latif is all about IRL, its easy to see the dishonesty in pubjacking his papers or articles that are written about him to infer that he is a dissenter, or his work undermines the AGW conclusions in the community of professional climatologists.
Latif is one of them doing what they climatologists do all day. Which is to beat the crap out of all of their findings and assumptions (and each other) so as to further the veracity and usefulness of their collective work. The court of scientific inquiry is always in session and every case for every finding and every theory is fair game for being tried. And the case is never closed on any of them.
If anyone thinks this is a weakness in science, then they have to explain how it is that they are reading this over the Internet on a 2Ghz computer the size of a book when their great grandfather's book was illuminated by a whale oil lamp.
That most Americans don't make this connection scares the daylights out of me in this ever increasingly competitive world.
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