Deniers confuse weather and climate and think that because polar bears are not extinct and that the gondoliers from Venice have not relocated to New York means that such things will never happen.
But one of my favorites to debunk is that global warming is supposedly all about raising taxes. But it has been 118 years since Svante Arrhenius published his findings to the effect that adding carbon dioxide to the atmosphere causes warming. Government conspiracies result in immediate policy change, or are dropped the minute they fail to lead to new policies.
Let's cut to the chase, the problem is not the science. And the answer will not be found in the (physical) science. To keep pounding on the science is like the person with a hammer who sees everything as a nail. We have to look outside the science to the nature of humans, to the social science to understand the issue. Studies are now showing what we have known all along in "eyewitness accounts." people bend the facts to fit their world view: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...
We may be familiar with the difference between liberal and conservative views compiled here: http://www.studentnewsdaily.com/conserva... But when it comes to climate science there is some tendency to expect everyone to fall in line and march to the same science based tune. They won't and the rhetoric of climate change must be more than just the science.
Other studies have shown that when the question is "what do climate scientists think about climate change" both liberals and conservatives are equally well informed. When the question changes to "what do you think?" the reaction changes. Belief trumps science and it always will. Science is accepted only because large numbers of people "believe in it" although many scientists would be uncomfortable with that terminology.
Ultimately climate science may have more "followers" if it took note of the benefits of "industry" and denounced the disadvantages of "sloth" IE we should do something rather than nothing.
It is very hard to understand that while the temperature of the Earth is going down for the last decade.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut...
That the CO2 level has gone up during this same time period. To a true scientist it is difficult to comprehend that CO2 is a driver of the temperature with those basic facts. But I guess it makes good sense to pot smokers. Easy to tell who is who by these comments.
Chem, it is only reasonable to all true scientists that if the temperature is going down and the CO2 level is going up, that if CO2 was a factor in the greenhouse affect that it is a very very weak one at best. It surely doesn't take much intelligence to see that, in fact you don't even have to be a scientist.
Gary F: You don't get it at all, do you? Temperature goes down or stays the same BUT THE CO2 LEVEL GOES UP and you don't have a clue as to cause and affect? Who is it that doesn't have even grade school science mentality? Apparently you believe in Al Gore's movie "The Inconvenient Truth" which couldn't even fool a half way intelligent first grader.
Chem, re your comment to Dork, "Part of why I ask questions like this is... there have been psychological studies suggesting that hearing someone repeat an idea several times makes them more likely to believe it. If the only ideas being repeated here are from the denialists..."
Consider this: Joseph Goebbels,
“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.”
The true scientists on this site, though obviously outnumbered, are not repeating a lie but refuting yours. And it seems it is getting your goat. Ha! Ha! I just love it when you greenies expose yourself you are losing and even admit it.
On the average, over the globe and a few years, the Earth is warming.
Ten or more year long cycles in ocean heat (where most of the warming goes) gives a wavy shape to the graph of temperature vs. time. But all indications, from thermometers, sea levels, satellites, and melting ice show a warming Earth. Looking for a reason, scientists find that CO2 is the most likely cause.
Some people just do not believe facts and deny this.
How fast can the best contributor to the greenhouse effect form a cloud and deflect IR away from the Earth and therefore cause a cooling effect in the overall climate? It's very abrupt (within minutes) in a lot of cases. Why is there a delayed reaction in CO2 forcing the temperature in either direction even though there has been an abrupt increase in atmospheric CO2 of 40% over the past 150 years?
Maybe you should worry about teaching them (6th graders) why the northern hemisphere is warmer than the southern hemisphere first and how the change in seasons directly effects global average temperature?
What is the difference between the NH and SH in average temperature again? ... and where are most temperature readings taken to form a global average temperature anomaly?
Maybe we should be teaching them about how many environmental climate scientists (climate clowns) are manipulating data in order to enhance their position in the scientific community?
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It's pretty funny how alarmism runs ramped with questions designed to "polarize" and "politicize" the issue. Looking forward to the CO2 satellite data that will show where the higher CO2 concentrations are and the temperature data that will surely accompany it.
"What about what (insert some unemployed scientist, or professor emeritus name here) says about the lack of evidence for global warming?"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_warm...
"The finding that the climate has warmed in recent decades and that human activities are already contributing adversely to global climate change has been endorsed by every national science academy that has issued a statement on climate change, including the science academies of all of the major industrialized countries."
There's a difference between "having trouble with" and flat out not liking or denying something.
It's not that they don't understand the concept.
The problem is that they don't like the obvious remedy if they admit to global warming being true.
I'll be more than happy to grant that there are lots of folks who listen to the likes of faux-lies and actually believe what they say.
However, the fox people, at least those who do more than read que-cards, do understand.
They also understand who pays their salaries, and why those folks pay their salaries.
If they profit from lying, then they're going to do that.
If they're afraid of an increase in their taxes, and don't care about their grandchildren, they're not going to change.
If they're really dumb enough to believe the aforementioned, then we're going to have trouble, because they also believe all of the other crap that such folks say, and it would upset too much of their base beliefs to change just one thing.
Edit: Zippi62: "It's pretty funny how alarmism runs ramped with questions designed to "polarize" and "politicize" the issue."
Pardon me while I choke a bit. "Alarmists are politicizing the issue."
As oppposed to those lilly white AGW deniers.
"Looking forward to the CO2 satellite data that will show where the higher CO2 concentrations are and the temperature data that will surely accompany it."
Where would you think that CO2 concentrations would be higher?
Maybe near power plants and major industrial areas?
And with the world wide wind patterns, how long would the differences last?
And, most of all, what differences can be found already?
How much? Where?
A claim currently poplar with Deniers is that the last 17 years of global temperature is scientific evidence that global warming has either stopped or reversed itself, or in some way disproves the AGW theory. Scientifically, the claim is nonsense because the length of record fails meet the minimal requirements of the mathematical tests that typically would be used .to answer the question.
Because of their pathological scientific illiteracy, Deniers cannot tell the difference between scientific evidence and non-scientific evidence.
It would be the same as the difference between a Denier walking through the local mall who saw a 17-year old they had never met and then claiming to know exactly what that person would be like when they were 30-years old and the collective opinion of family, close friends, teachers, and others who knew the important details of that 17-year old’s life.
Although neither the Denier nor the family of the 17-year old can know with absolute certainly what person will be like when they are 30 – we do know that the Denier’s opinion is not based on any knowledge, but entirely on their subjective beliefs; while the family members possess informed opinions based on years of familiarity and experience, and that their collective opinion is certainly more accurate, reasonable, and justified that of the Denier.
Deniers are practicing the same kind of psychic nonsense when they prophesize the behavior of a multidecadal temperature trend based on an isolated snapshot of something they have never known anything about.
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Zippi62 --
>>Maybe you should worry about teaching them (6th graders) why the northern hemisphere is warmer than the southern hemisphere<<
OK - it's because of northward cross-equatorial ocean heat transport and some other factors you know nothing about and have no interest is learning.
>>how the change in seasons directly effects global average temperature? <<
If they teach them what causes the seasons, the students will (1) be able to figure it out themselves and (2) they will know something that most Deniers do not.
Do you know why there are seasons?
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Zippi62 –
>>Looking forward to the CO2 satellite data that will show where the higher CO2 concentrations are and the temperature data that will surely accompany it.<<
Really? What are your thoughts on how the measurements could affect existing constraints on surface carbon flux determinations? Or, are you just anticipating a new opportunity to lie about things based on your vast ignorance?
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Sagebrush --
>>Gary F: You don't get it at all, do you? Temperature goes down or stays the same BUT THE CO2 LEVEL GOES UP and you don't have a clue as to cause and affect? <<
I get it perfectly. Your inability to understand, or refusal to recognize, multiple frequency signals, not to mention the concepts of time and lag responses, makes you either an idiot or a liar – and most likely both.
Grade school aged kids do not have a science mentality. That comes with brain development and it is becoming increasingly evident that your brain never fully completed the maturation process.
I say even if our climate science is not able to accurately predict what will happen to the climate in the face of added CO2, that the clear, undisputed, alarmingly sudden (in "only" 200 years) increase of CO2 in the air is scary all by itself. Especially since the increase tracks very well with the amount of coal, oil, and natural gas burnt. CO2 is an important chemical in the air and any change (up or down) will have some effect. If it goes to zero the plants will die, and if it goes too high, we will suffocate. The Apollo 13 crew nearly suffocated not because they ran out of oxygen, but because the CO2 levels in the air went up when the scrubbers went down in the command module. They famously adapted the lunar module CO2 scrubbers to use the command module filters using duct tape.
Explain to them, appeals to authority how 97% of scientist believe the B.S. throw in some gobbledygook about mathematical tests, explain to them that there is no pause just a slowing down of warming as you always say, deny reality, shout and scream about the dangers, explain the insurance principle how we should damage our economy beyond all means of repair, just in case AGW is real, tell them to ignore China India and the rest of the developing world, that they are just sheep and they will stupidly follow our lead.
Al Gore covered that with his Earth in the Balance book,
Written to be read by a kid of first grade
Certain Parties here seem to have a great deal of trouble with some of the scientific concepts that are key to understanding AGW, or climate in general. Feedbacks, temperature anomalies, long-term cycles, the greenhouse effect, and so on. Compounding the problem, many of them have little or no science education.
So, aiming for, say, a 6th grade level or below, what are your best simplified explanations of some of the things "skeptics" routinely have trouble with?
Anti-science dummies who have incurable trouble accepting the truth are beyond help.
Even "Dummies" and "6th Graders" understand what a Lie is.
Even "Dummies" and "6th Graders" understand what Fraud is.
