71% of Americans do not believe in anthropogenically forced climate change

[Sayonara]

Sorry, the implied question is: why is this so? Are Americans just ignorant, or has the climate science community failed to make their case for the predominance of anthropogenic climate forcings?

 

I like the way most of your new threads from yesterday triggered eventful debates without really giving a novel proposal or asking a question

[geoguy]

? just knowing that humans convert materials from one form to another in large quantities and often into types of materials that cannot be changed into to anything else and others into quantities too exaggerated for the forces of nature to casually keep in check is enough to know that something severe will occur eventually it's just a matter of what was going to give first .

 

???? quite the sentence. Could you provide some meat on your 'just knowing'....and 'enough to know'. Next time I review a science paper I'll skip over the details and advise the author that 'just knowing' is proof enough.

 

And what's this about 'forces of nature to casually keep in check'? Do you mean a god or some other agent? Forces of nature are dependent on energy and matter and the physics of such. Matter and energy can't be 'exaggerated'. Matter and energy is never out of balance. E =mc2. I assume you mean some stable predictable climate and not forces of Nature.

[ParanoiA]

otoh' date=' it contradicts most peoples self-interest to believe that smoking and alcohol are harmful, yet most people believe these facts (which i'd point out are quite simple and easy to understand).

 

I'd say that conflict with self-interest probably gives motivation to deny, whilst complexity seems to facilitate denial somehow.

 

anyhoo, my point was actually that the complexity begets confusion, which aids the spreading of the kind of crap that is floating around about GW/evolution, which makes it easyer to disbelieve (standard strawman -- look at y; mistake it for x; see how y is wrong; conclude, therefore, that x is wrong).[/quote']

 

I think you nailed it. Or, at least you've described me quite well. Since it is complex, with numbers, sources and nifty factoids supporting deniers and believers both - it makes it hard to choose.

 

I already hate cars and petroleum - yes I drive and yes I know I'm a hypocrite. I already have fantastical dreams of my all electric house, with my pure electric car, nestled in the country side within the forest, weeds, and over growth that was there before I moved in. GW would fit in my life and my belief system quite nicely.

 

But the GW deniers seem to be emersed in numbers and logic. The GW believers also have numbers and logic, but they also have a lot of followers who are purely emotionally driven. That's a big turn off for me, as emotion is only good for activism, motivation, not for scientific proof.

[Royston]

This reminds me a lot of the American public's view of the "evolution debate"

 

The sources of the twisting of information are completely different, the evolution debate stemmed from a political ideal voiced by a few key States in America, where as the GW debate is global, I wouldn't be so quick to compare the two. I would say the former has an agenda, the latter is the media acting irresponsibly.

 

However, amazing isn't it...the IPCC has such a strong argument, but it's been swept under the carpet, not only by the constant problem of newsworthy articles, where uncertainty fuels headlines...i.e the media look for 'worst case scenarios' and 'gaps in knowledge' as a means to exploit uncertainty, leading to the information dealt to the public being skewed. Slamming a current theory, whatever it's source is newsworthy, the media doesn't have scientific interest at heart.

 

Recall the Eiffel Tower had it's lights turned off, to mark the occasion of the third IPCC report, and what has happened since then ? Not much, and what infuriates me, is that the public are key to alleviating the problem.

 

Sorry, the implied question is: why is this so? Are Americans just ignorant, or has the climate science community failed to make their case for the predominance of anthropogenic climate forcings?

 

These are two different questions, but again it's not solely America that's at fault. It's that 10% of uncertainty that causes the debate, and personally I find that wholly unscientific.

 

I'm yet to find a report / article that refutes anthropogenic causes to GW with convincing evidence...yet even basic science points towards 'us' as the cause. The carbon cycle has been accelerated, compounds absorb radiation, and there is a clear correlation between the GMT and our output. Not only that, it would do us no harm at all to adopt energy saving tactics, economically it would be a huge boost, so I fail to see the debate against it.

[swansont]

I don't think that is it. Relativity is also difficult to understand, but people don't have much problem with it.

 

It's also not something they run into every day. And the ones that have a problem with it have a BIG problem with it.

[someguy]

???? quite the sentence. Could you provide some meat on your 'just knowing'....and 'enough to know'. Next time I review a science paper I'll skip over the details and advise the author that 'just knowing' is proof enough.

 

And what's this about 'forces of nature to casually keep in check'? Do you mean a god or some other agent? Forces of nature are dependent on energy and matter and the physics of such. Matter and energy can't be 'exaggerated'. Matter and energy is never out of balance. E =mc2. I assume you mean some stable predictable climate and not forces of Nature.

 

ya, that was quite the sentence huh? of course everybody knows that just knowing is enough to know and if they don't then they don't know enough to know anything......

 

ya i meant that nature kind of gets into a balance well.. a continuously changing balance or slightly off balance but everything evolves or changes at roughly the same rate so the world can remain "balanced" in terms of forms of energy, though all things are energy certain forms can only transform into other forms in specific ways so having too much of one type of energy can be bad like having so much co2 the trees can't breath it fast enough and we would run out of oxygen and all there would be left is plants. but also I meant that we change things much more quickly than evolution can keep up with. and that's not good for us i don't think. if we put too much co2 in the air gradually, then maybe trees could grow bigger or taller and eventually increase their capacity to breath co2 or something like that, and all other animals that use those trees could compensate for it. but we don't give evolution a chance to keep up. but evolution usually always does since all things evolve at similar rates depending on their life spans or rather speed of reproduction.

[1veedo]

I think you nailed it. Or' date=' at least you've described me quite well. Since it is complex, with numbers, sources and nifty factoids supporting deniers and believers both - it makes it hard to choose.

 

I already hate cars and petroleum - yes I drive and yes I know I'm a hypocrite. I already have fantastical dreams of my all electric house, with my pure electric car, nestled in the country side within the forest, weeds, and over growth that was there before I moved in. GW would fit in my life and my belief system quite nicely.

 

But the GW deniers seem to be emersed in numbers and logic. The GW believers also have numbers and logic, but they also have a lot of followers who are purely emotionally driven. That's a big turn off for me, as emotion is only good for activism, motivation, not for scientific proof.[/quote']This is entirely not the way it is. What we have is the science which says that global warming is caused by humans. Then we have 'emotionally driven' people on both sides in the general public and everyone in between, with varying understanding of the issue. And to make things worse we have the media feeding off this apparently 71% of Americans who aren't educated on the issue. But all things considered equal the science is unequivocally clear and none of this around the bush straw man stuff is going to change this fact.

[someguy]

It's also not something they run into every day. And the ones that have a problem with it have a BIG problem with it.

 

I think you guys both found the real thing here. People will not understand something like relativity but they will agree that it is a natural law of nature, maybe that it would require refining in the future but they would believe it as science and pretty much a truth without understanding it. If people are willing to do this then they can be convinced of almost anything it just depends how reliable the source seems to be. how convincing the "argument" is. and that to me is politics. the art of seeming and making believe without having anybody really understand you. So, if people aren't going to understand you if you explain something scientifically to them.. what's the point? you need to try to be better at politics than the person representing the "wrong" view. this is why democracy is not such a good idea in my opinion. It requires politics.

 

So, i think actually i would prefer the person that has a big problem with relativity until they understand it. or that they remain without opinion until they do. having a big problem with it and telling everyone about the problems you have with it should eventually teach you all about it anyways. that's the way i try to be at any rate. some people can get annoyed with that because they think that you think that you're better or that you know better than the person who's name is attached to a given theory but that's not the case. in fact it's sort of the opposite.

 

just trusting stuff you don't understand is how propaganda works. i think it's Millgram's experiment that basically showed that roughly 50% of people when asked to give a guy an electric shock large enough to kill him would do it.. because the order came from a guy in a lab coat.

 

so put a guy in a lab coat on tv saying there's no global warming and that's 50% right there and maybe the other 21% lives in a cave somewhere or are Amish or something. Certainly some are just skeptical and that's the best part of the 71% i guess.

 

what evidence is there that we are not causing global warming?

[1veedo]

"what evidence is there that we are not causing global warming?"

 

Argument from ignorance, someguy.

[Bignose]

what evidence is there that we are not causing global warming?

 

While I do believe that mankind's influence is a significant contributor to GW, there is plenty of scientific evidence that at least questions mankind's role. There is a good collection at http://www.worldclimatereport.com/

 

They take articles out of peer-reviewed scientific journals that do indeed raise doubt about mankind's influence and summarizes those articles. Like this one: http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/05/14/questioning-ocean-warming/ that discusses a very recent paper that compares 50 years of ocean temperatures. Note that some parts of the ocean warmed and some parts cooled and the authors of the paper feel there was no systematic warming or cooling. Compare that with all the hype about how hot the oceans are getting, and the actual data record is eye opening.

 

I know that the site has an agenda, and it is largely funded by companies that have the same agenda against anthropomorphic GW, but I really like the site since the popular media only seems to report about the scary and very pro-anthropomorphic GW studies and never about the ones that use good science to dispute it. I think that both sides of this debate need to be reported and that one side has a monopoly. The other side has scientific papers written too, and I like to see them as well as the ones reported in the popular media.

[Realitycheck]

Actually, carbon dioxide isn't causing any ozone hole. The culprit for that is CFCs. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and asume it was a slip-up.

 

Currently carbon dioxide is responsible for 57% of the global warming trend. http://healthandenergy.com/air_pollution_causes.htm 3/20/07

 

 

 

Don't bother looking for counter-arguments. I already found one for you. Check out this little Republican gem.

 

http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

 

I can see it now. Republican congressmen says, "Keep pumping CO2 and buy forestation stocks. DO IT, DO IT, DO IT!"

[Realitycheck]

The figures in the second quote are actually derived from a textbook, Ristinen, R & Kraushaar, J, Energy and the Environment, 1999, Wiley & Sons. However, the nearest one is supposedly 150 miles away. Of course, I have found plenty of other articles that go either way. This science project looks kind of convincing.

 

http://brneurosci.org/co2.html

[someguy]

ya but is there evidence that suggests that co2 won't cause global warming? because it's a sure thing that we caused an excess of co2. and btw 1veedo a question never demonstrates ignorance always the opposite and mine wasn't an argument just a question.

 

The temperature of the oceans doesn't matter. If we are heating the atmosphere and sending ice that was not previously in contact with the water into the water even if it had just melted the water should be kept quite cool. what matters about the oceans is the salinity level which will diminish as more ice melts into the ocean. if the ocean reaches much higher temperatures than it has been on average then we will already be toast... no pun intended.

 

who decides what scientific is? does scientific mean just using facts? are statistics not facts? would not all of us agree that we could "prove" opposite points of view using real statistics? for me, scientific means that there must be a consensus. if two groups of people are representing opposite points of view and both claiming to be scientific and both have shared all of their information with one another, then at least one of them must be full of it.

 

 

 

 

Don't bother looking for counter-arguments. I already found one for you. Check out this little Republican gem.

 

http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm

 

I can see it now. Republican congressmen says, "Keep pumping CO2 and buy forestation stocks. DO IT, DO IT, DO IT!"

 

well then if that's what you believe then i hope your children are either plants or at least that they learn to breath CO2.

 

you i think, believe that we should build build and produce produce and go economy go. what if the economy one day was completely maxed out? that would mean we would have no more resources. what would you do then? the economy is just confusing lingo for the rate at which we are using up our resources (except for the few recycled materials). I would prefer to slow it down until we figure out how to use them more efficiently. your mentality is very capitalist but it's not even smart capitalism to use up materials faster than you can reproduce them because then you'd have nothing left to sell.... except for if you run out after your dead or if you achieve more money than you can possibly ever spend first.... so then your mentality is extreme capitalist and selfish... yup, that sounds republican to me.

[Realitycheck]

ya but is there evidence that suggests that co2 won't cause global warming? because it's a sure thing that we caused an excess of co2. and btw 1veedo a question never demonstrates ignorance always the opposite and mine wasn't an argument just a question.

 

First of all, I was being kind of sarcastic. Sorry for the misunderstanding. I am not really sure about the CO2 issue, since ecoli stated otherwise, though I tend to lean towards the advice of textbook authors.

 

It's very easy to believe that CO2 is contributing to the warming, but the evidence that I have seen is not so clear-cut. No doubt, pollution does something. It is also easy to believe that that other pollutants are the major culprits to the warming and CO2 is just fertilizing the trees, though it could easily rise to toxic levels over 600 ppm, which is reason enough to sound a call.

 

CO2 has been measured from 280 to 360 ppm over the past 130 years, always progressing upwards. Going back 800,000 years through ice cores, we see that it has gone as low as 180 ppm, though it has never gone above 280 or so, until the Industrial Revolution. The thing is that the temperature has varied quite a bit over these last 800,000 years, devoid of any manipulation of CO2 levels. Over the past million years, we have had ten different ice ages, with average temperatures varying by about 5 degrees celsius, on average, and it is actually cooler now than it has ever been over the past 65 million years. Actually, it has been this cold during only two other relatively small ages over the entire life of the earth. If the temperature continues to rise, it will be the hottest that it has been in 1.35 million years, a minor blip in the grand scheme of things. It was anywhere from 15-25 degrees hotter from 30-60 million years ago. If you look back further, you see that the meteor that caused the dinosaurs demise didn't necessarily cause a significant change in temperature (though possibly very short term), and in fact, it was actually progressively hotter going backwards for another 40 million years.

 

The more and more I look at these temperatures, the more and more it looks like we are not having any significant effect on the planet's temperature, but I don't necessarily let myself slide into that kind of misjudgement. Pollution is pollution.

 

http://math.ucr.edu/home/baez/temperature/temperature.html#65Myr

[swansont]

I think you guys both found the real thing here. People will not understand something like relativity but they will agree that it is a natural law of nature, maybe that it would require refining in the future but they would believe it as science and pretty much a truth without understanding it. If people are willing to do this then they can be convinced of almost anything it just depends how reliable the source seems to be. how convincing the "argument" is. and that to me is politics. the art of seeming and making believe without having anybody really understand you. So, if people aren't going to understand you if you explain something scientifically to them.. what's the point? you need to try to be better at politics than the person representing the "wrong" view. this is why democracy is not such a good idea in my opinion. It requires politics.

 

A subset of the people who rail against relativity fall into the category of "I don't understand it, therefore it must be wrong." One might presume that a similar attitude is present in some fraction of those who rail against global warming. What relativity lacks is an idealistic/political/economic driver that benefits from an opposing viewpoint. And, for all of its conceptual difficulty, it's fairly easy to test it.

 

But there are people who are swayed by rhetoric rather than science, or worse, rhetoric wrapped up in scientific jargon, which is why folks still fall for e.g. charlatans peddling perpetual motion/free energy. They sound convincing to the uncritical thinker. When you will have someone that is swayed by rhetoric, every logical fallacy in the book is now in play. Look at the arguments presented, and you can see them.

[1veedo]

ya but is there evidence that suggests that co2 won't cause global warming? because it's a sure thing that we caused an excess of co2. and btw 1veedo a question never demonstrates ignorance always the opposite and mine wasn't an argument just a question.

Well I wasn't pointing out anything specific. The actually question is an example of a logical fallacy known as appeal to ignorance. It has nothing to do about "demonstrating ignorance" or anything of the like. The word "ignorance" just happens to be what it's called.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

The thing is that the temperature has varied quite a bit over these last 800,000 years, devoid of any manipulation of CO2 levels.

This is not true. CO2 and temperature correlate very closely. They actually work as a feedback chain known as, surprisingly, the temperature-CO2 feedback system.

 

http://www.nap.edu/catalog/10850.html

 

Basically higher temperatures cause increased CO2 in the atmosphere and CO2 causes temperatures to rise. After every ice age about 50% of the warming is a result of increased CO2 in the atmosphere, with smaller contributions coming from the actual solar irradiance increase,other greenhouse gases, and a couple other feedback systems.

Actually, it has been this cold during only two other relatively small ages over the entire life of the earth. If the temperature continues to rise, it will be the hottest that it has been in 1.35 million years, a minor blip in the grand scheme of things. It was anywhere from 15-25 degrees hotter from 30-60 million years ago. If you look back further, you see that the meteor that caused the dinosaurs demise didn't necessarily cause a significant change in temperature (though possibly very short term), and in fact, it was actually progressively hotter going backwards for another 40 million years.

 

The more and more I look at these temperatures, the more and more it looks like we are not having any significant effect on the planet's temperature, but I don't necessarily let myself slide into that kind of misjudgement. Pollution is pollution.

This is the common climate variability argument. It's presented in the great global warming swindle and refuted here:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656640542976216573&q=%22global+warming+swindle%22&total=186&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2

 

Just to summarize the premise is,

P1. The climate is always changing, and has changed in the past without any help from humans.

This is of course true. The inferences that we are meant to draw from this is

I1. Because past climate change has been natural, current climate change is natural.

I2. Because climate change is natural, it can't be a bad thing.

 

I2 is of course obviously false when you look at it this way because many things in nature are bad, eg aids. And I1 is a false inference because it does not follow from any law in boolean logic. The only proper inference you can draw from P1 is,

 

Current climate change may have a natural origin.

 

And that's all you can really prove here. But of course we know that current climate change does not have a natural origin because scientists settled this issue almost 10 years ago. Our understanding of the climate system is that more CO2 means higher temperatures, which is just a basic principle of physics that you cant get around, and that CO2 levels are rising because of humans which is a simple fact that again, you can't get around. Put simply,

 

Premise:

More CO2 = higher temperatures.

Current CO2 increase is almost all anthropogenic.

 

Conclusions:

Temperatures are higher because of anthropogenic factors.

 

We know of course that CO2 is not the only factor that humans have altered but it is one of the largest. The second largest is methane which is caused by cutting down trees and other agricultural use. You can read all about this in science journals. Google to see if your library has a website and look for an electronic database, research center, or something similar, and find a search for scholarly journals (eg ebsco, jstor, etc). They'll probably ask for your library card number and once you're there type in like global warming or climate change.

[Realitycheck]

I knew most of that. I just didn't say it like you.

[someguy]

Well I wasn't pointing out anything specific. The actually question is an example of a logical fallacy known as appeal to ignorance. It has nothing to do about "demonstrating ignorance" or anything of the like. The word "ignorance" just happens to be what it's called.

 

oh ya i see what you mean, sorry. i didn't mean it as an argument, just a question.