Defending the world from idiocy? (You gotta see this)

[Syntho-sis]

Out of general curiosity I receive a few dozen newsletters each day. I don't read all of them, I have a select few I enjoy. Lately I've been receiving Glenn Beck's daily newsletter. I know some of you may scoff at that, but I somewhat understand his 'anti climate-change position' and I'm interested in how to defend against it.

 

There's been alot of hype over this issue from that side of the table lately. Specifically over the rigor climatologists have invested in their study.

 

Honestly I just want to shut these belligerent arguments out with science and logic. I want to know the facts, that scientists have so far.

 

I also hear these same arguments in my own life and it would be nice to have a firm foundation from which to derail such fallacy laden arguments.

 

Granted I don't know a whole lot about climatology so you'll have to speech if laymen terms.

 

EX> Here's what I'm talking about. My blood pressure goes up just watching this.

 

Thoughts?

[DrP]

Millikan supposedly threw out 50% of his results from his famous Oil Drop Experiment. Half of his results gave him a quantised measure for charge of e-. The other half were pretty random. He (quite rightly) assumed that the random results were experimental error and that the hundereds of results he got with the charge being spot on e- were the correct ones.

 

How this relates to the above I'm not exactly sure, but feel that it is relavent to point out that not all models can be reproduced exactly and repetively every time due to their complexity and due to the inacuracy of the experimental procedures. He repeated his experiments THOUSANDS of times before concluding that it was way more than just a coincidence that 50% of the time he got the "right" result and that the value of e- was fixed and the same for all electrons.

 

e-.

[Sisyphus]

I can't watch videos right now so I don't know how relevant it is, but Scientific American recently put out "Seven Answers to Climate Contrarian Nonsense," that might be helpful:

 

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=seven-answers-to-climate-contrarian-nonsense

[D H]

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=seven-answers-to-climate-contrarian-nonsense

I don't have time to respond in detail, but Wow!, What a whitewash.

[bascule]

EX> Here's what I'm talking about. My blood pressure goes up just watching this.

 

Thoughts?

 

Glenn Beck arguing with scientists... I would love to see him take on evolution.

 

"Look, it's Charles Darwin, except with the body of a monkey. Charles Darwin thinks we came from monkeys! Let's laugh at him because he looks so ridiculous! Haw haw!"

[D H]

Granted: Glen Beck is an idiot. And a loon. Some loons and idiots latch on to those who disagree with the engineered consensus such as Lindzen and Choi, or Pielke Sr and Jr, or Roy Spencer, to name a few. So what? Other loons and idiots latch on to the AGW viewpoint. The views of loons and idiots are irrelevant.

[iNow]

The views of loons and idiots are irrelevant.

 

Couldn't agree more (although, I'm pretty sure I'm interpreting that comment differently than how you intended it).

[Syntho-sis]

That scientific American article was much appreciated... And pretty much answered all the questions posed in the video..

 

When people are ignorant and arrogant at the same time...And they are telling you...You're wrong. That's when you are very close to going insane.

[bascule]

It's another case of Kenneth Parcel's argument:

 

"Why should we listen to what a bunch of scientists have to say?"

 

Science has been wrong in the past and it will be wrong in the future!

[padren]

The sad truth is they are ill equipped to evaluate scientific arguments. Apparently, they have a tradition spanning multiple generations evaluating macro-scale arguments based on a combination of authority and appeal... and only applying critical logic to micro-scale arguments where data can be easily verified for oneself, or at least direct experience with the messenger bringing forth the data.

 

I am not singling out and making generalized comments about conservatives or "the religious right" but commenting on how people get by that have no real experience with the scientific method. There are a lot of "granola head hippies" that have "progressive" views on AGW not due to their rational faculties but due to it's appeal to them - and it's subsequent justification for "taking care of the earth" element of their philosophy.

 

Without a true understanding of the scientific method these people only have their "gut feeling" to go on and they have no personal relationship with the messengers, and the message is pretty dire. You show someone a new cell phone and they don't care how it works - they talk to someone that shows them what it can do and they find it appealing, and applaud our culture's scientific ingenuity. Show them an x-ray with a dark spot on their lung, and they want to go talk to their family. They don't want to investigate radiology, medical biology and review medical journals - they want to talk to people they trust who have had experiences with cancer before. They ask them if the treatments helped, if they have confidence in the medicine. Without exploring the science and no idea where to start, they can't hope to make sense of the huge field of medicine and thus try to find a way to make it personal by talking to someone they know who has experienced it.

Thankfully a lot of people do trust their family doctor, and the specialists their doctor refers them to by proxy, and the field of medicine their doctor has so much confidence in but that is simply how they made it personal in scale to them - not how they evaluated the science.

 

When it comes to climate science, they don't have that personal connection.