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Quoting n0whereman's good rant

Yea, I agree with all of that about the scientific community's poor interactions with the general population.

It's made even worse when there are individuals and groups who specifically try to corrupt the scientific method to their end with the only intention of winning the public debate. Scientists are completely unprepared to have to defend their research against people who aren't playing by the same rules.

Yea, I agree with all of that about the scientific community's poor interactions with the general population.

It's made even worse when there are individuals and groups who specifically try to corrupt the scientific method to their end with the only intention of winning the public debate. Scientists are completely unprepared to have to defend their research against people who aren't playing by the same rules.

Kind of like how sometimes a good poker player will get thrown off his game when he finds himself sitting at a table full of crazy fish.

Yea, I agree with all of that about the scientific community's poor interactions with the general population.

It's made even worse when there are individuals and groups who specifically try to corrupt the scientific method to their end with the only intention of winning the public debate. Scientists are completely unprepared to have to defend their research against people who aren't playing by the same rules.

In England I think there are quite a few doing a good job in some places mainly through scientists producing documentary series and other programs, so perhaps it's improving, but this isn't enough to overcome the tabloid/BBC effect especially with health scares. How could that be overcome?

In England I think there are quite a few doing a good job in some places mainly through scientists producing documentary series and other programs, so perhaps it's improving, but this isn't enough to overcome the tabloid/BBC effect especially with health scares. How could that be overcome?

I don't have a good answer to that. Personally, I think it would take a fundamental societal change. We're talking about our society as a whole saying "no, don't feed me sensational, slanted news; give me the unbiased facts and let's figure this out rationally". Most people aren't good at this ever and no one is good at it all the time. Asking our collective mentality to think like this seems daunting at best, maybe even impossible?

........ Sneakers who is your source for your claim that CO2 has been dis-proven as a causal factor as you have said in another thread?

I posted the video in the OP. I think it is a worthwhile watch.....with a lot of international scientists explaining it. It is the only video I have seen that encapsulates the inaccuracies regarding CO2 being the cause (hockey stick graph controversy).


@nowhereman. Appreciate the candiness regarding at least the possibility of scientists/professors having different agendas (i.e. "grants/awards/tenure/board memberships"). Honestly, this is exactly it -- the corruption of the scientific community that causes my concern/skepticism.

I do not mind be educated about the earth, but BS is BS.....especially when they use the political powers/laws to shape our purchasing decisions. Like most things, I believe a little is good.....but extremeism is bad. The GW scare has reached that extreme level IMO.

Calling it Climate Change just makes the BS easier to fit into any scenario.
Yeah, see that. Climate Change/GW.
But if the opposite happens, Yeah see that. Climate Change/GW

One other thing that makes me a skeptic......
Most people forget how it was just 20+- years ago (pre-consumer mass Internet). We did not have instant information/news at our fingertiips. The Internet makes it seem like everything is happening at once. We do not realize that a lot of crazy stuff has happened thoughout the world's history. Today, we know about everything instantly. (and record it). Makes it all seem new.....but it isn't.

Sneakers, I'm not sure why you think that scientists receive all kinds of rewards for finding evidence of global warming. Scientists commonly find flaws in fellow scientists' findings without any ill effects on their careers.

Ok guys. I am not going to respond to everyone's post. I am not a huge advocate, and just giving an opinion after watching that video (albeit watched it some time ago). The questions being asked of me can be answered in that video.

In short, I do not mind listening and learning from others, but I am not going to regurgitate the information from the video. I'm not the scientist, and I am guaranteed to be caught up in an endless cycle of back-n-forth. A bit distracting from my work/studies right now.
No disrespect meant. Thanks.

I think one important thing to note is in my eyes until we have a very clear decision on this we should be protecting ourselves against it. If there's even a 1% chance we are influencing global warming to the effect some people say (and cutting back on CO2 will improve our situation), it's obvious that we should be mitigating this threat even if 99% of the time we're going to lose a few trillion dollars (no idea what reasonable $ estimates are). I think waiting to get a better understanding is a really good idea, trying to repeal things that reduce CO2 emissions seems reckless to me at this point. We should be full speed ahead.

Also I've never been sure why they couldn't experimentally show whether increased CO2 concentration increases heat retention or not. Seems easy to test, although I assume it must be super complicated somehow.

In England I think there are quite a few doing a good job in some places mainly through scientists producing documentary series and other programs, so perhaps it's improving, but this isn't enough to overcome the tabloid/BBC effect especially with health scares. How could that be overcome?

As Luke said, I think this requires a basic change in the rational thinking standards we hold everyone in society to. I'm not saying everyone on earth needs an advanced science degree. I'll happily set the bar pretty low. But to illustrate my point, how many people do you know who have made a statement similar to one of the following:

1) It either happens or it doesn't, so it's 50/50.
2) Nah, this is totally the best/worst/insert superlative here X evar - I tried it once and it was amazing!
3) Of course X is right - that's the way we've always done it!
4) Gah there's science/numbers/anything that requires me to think! Just looking at that makes my head hurt.

I could go on forever. Think of all the terrible logic you ever here at a live poker table!

We as a society (imo) train a relatively small number of people to live their lives using a great deal of logical thought processes. Everyone else either figures that shit is best left for lawyers and scientists (and therefore want NO part of it), or has been left to the wolves by their education system. They've also been led to believe that CNN/BBC/etc are capable of providing quality medical/scientific/political/legal advice, when most of the time they are really bad. So it's this combination of things where a small group has all of the knowledge, and everyone else either actively doesn't want to know (because they've been told since age 5 it's unattainable) or they've never had the resources to try.

If instead, we got more people to care about science (STEM advocacy!), got everyone to understand that logical reasoning is a gigantic aid to living better - not just being a nerd - and generally educated the masses 1000000000x better (ie simply, but as adults) about complicated subjects, I think we'd do a lot better. I actually think the age of wikipedia will also have a tremendous impact on this sort of thing (in terms of useful knowledge being more accessible/utilized, not that people will think more rationally).

........
Also I've never been sure why they couldn't experimentally show whether increased CO2 concentration increases heat retention or not. Seems easy to test, although I assume it must be super complicated somehow.

If you watch the video (hint hint lol)....... you will see that the CO2 theory is debunked by several scientists. It is shown that CO2 increase actually lags behind warming by hundreds of years. The way I understand it is, that the oceans absorb and release C02 due to warming and cooling......thus the lag time.
summary: warming causes C02 increase ...... and Al Gore's core discussion of the hockey stick graph was inaccurate.

There was also a Medieval Warming Period when apparently England was full of Vinyards. This is still noted by vinyard type names for some streets in London. Not sure if vinyards are common in England today. Anyone know?

The Little Ice-age came later......when people were ice-skating on the Thames river (seen in paintings).

dangit Mitch.....I'm doing what I said I wouldn't do. Watch the video.

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EDIT:
Medieval Warming Period: 950 - 1250 (approximately)
Little Ice Age: 16th-19th century

Starting this thread, as to not derail another thread.

Serious topic to me, but I understand it pushes a lot of people's buttons.

For me, I am a fairly strong skeptic regarding Pope Al Gore and Global Warming. Yes, to the GW believers, I am a heretic. Pope Gore says that "The debate is over". Kind of convenient, don't you think? Considering there are a lot of scientists who have tried to debate him publicly. It is for that reason, that I believe it is a cult/religion of sorts.

I will write a bit more later. Again, just filtering out another thread, which is kind of unrelated.
Here is the movie that made me do a double-take and revert to skeptic.

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NOTE: please keep dialogue respectful. Yeah, that includes me. I'll be cool. Pun intended.

You're starting from a faith based position and projecting that onto your opponents.

Not a good start tbh.

Nowhereman and luke make some excellent points above about commonly held understandings of maths and science in general. Where scientists try to put things down in concrete and robust way the media takes advantage of those misunderstandings to push an agenda. No surprise really.

You only have to look at all the 'science' behind crystal healing rods or homoeopathy to see how it works.

Prerequisites for the debate:

- Does increased levels of CO2 change the basic properties of the atmosphere?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeYfl45X1wo

- Has human activities increased the levels of CO2?

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/history.html

By way of example I'm currently talking to someone elsewhere who is quoting the dav vinci code as if it were fact. "many a book has been written with insider knowledge ..you have to sieve through it .". This is part of a discussion on the existence of god. I shit you not.

I see no way this thread could be a bad idea.

If you watch the video (hint hint lol)....... you will see that the CO2 theory is debunked by several scientists. It is shown that CO2 increase actually lags behind warming by hundreds of years.

Right I just meant some experimental testing like make a model world with a light source on it, create an atmosphere around it with equivalent earth gases and mess with the CO2 content to see how heat retention, etc is effected. I assume this is somehow a terrible/impossible experiment to carry out though as it hasn't yet, but if we were able to do it that would obviously be amazing as we could study CO2 changes in a controlled experimental environment.

Basically I don't understand if a chemical has certain properties (however CO2 is meant to heat up the earth) we can't easily test for the properties experimentally, rather the looking at all this complicated data from history/nature which is full of noise and outside influences. Like if I tell you ice is cold we can test that, and don't have to look at global temperature compared to the size of ice caps to work this out (although that's one way you could do it).