Do you agree with this definition of a global warming 'alarmist'?

Question

All of them alarmist always post links to political web sites and to wiki and blog sites that can't be taken seriously I feel that no alarmist should be taken seriously until they can provide us with cold hard science.

Answer 1

Yes, someone is an alarmist if they don't provide real science. I personally don't cite blogs or political websites. My main sources are National Geographic, Discover, textbooks, and what I've learned from my college science classes. Many do, but it would be nice if more skeptics would cite their sources as well.

Answer 2

yes

Answer 3

global warming is nothing more than a global myth perpetuated by Gore and the liberals and the contingent of "green" entrepreneurs who would scare you into buying their "green" products to line their pockets with the real "green" they are interested in.

We are going through nothing more than a natural cycle of climatic and geologic cycles that this planet has gone through from day one......alternating from ice age to warm up to ice age and so on and so on.

the beauty of it for them is that it is such a slow process that nobody is going to be around when the next cooling phase comes around to prove them wrong.

convenient hey?

Answer 4

hehehe your right the majority of them link back to wiki! thanks for pointing that out!

Answer 5

I'm sorry, was there a question in your question? It just sounds like a rant.

Answer 6

jagsfan : who is talking of 20 meters, the IPCC figure is put at ~24in I don't ignore this fact or the fact that the IPCC put the likelihood of AGW not as certainty but around 90% likely, this coming from the leaders in the field is far more likely to be correct than the information posted on things like OISM, Heartland Institute, whatupwiththat etc etc etc.

A 24in sea rise is still a major problem for the usually mentioned low lying Islands the Maldives etc and many of the world major cities during surge tides and storm fronts.

I try to never use blogs as a reference. By political web sites, I assume you mean NASA, NOAA, Hadley, USGS, British Antarctic Survey, British Met office, NSIDC and National Academy of Science etc.

While Wiki has it's problems it is fairly accurate for most things when pages have references to original sources.

Answer 7

hahahahaha!!! Yup, I agree! Have you seen Dana's question about skeptics? It's the exact same one... did he rip it off of you?

Way to go and I completely agree!

Answer 8

I would partially agree with you that an "alarmist" is one who bases their answers on opinion and diatribe rather than scientific fact. The 'partial' part is that, to justify such a strong title as 'alarmist', their claims would also have to be untrue, hysterical, dramatic, catastrophic, exaggerative, etc.

That said, I haven't seen many answers that match this definition. Certainly the statement "All of them [sic] alarmist always post links to political web sites" is patently false - "always"? I don't think so...

Fact is, this statement is itself untrue, hysterical, dramatic... etc.

As for alarmists not providing serious science links, let's take a quick look at the ten questions that preceded this one (should give us a random and representative sample). At the time of writing this, there were:

28 pro-AGW entries that gave 20 links to supporting information

These links included:

2 to science-related orgs: e.g. NASA

11 to scientific publications: e.g. Nature, Science, Theoretical & Applied Climatology, Journal of Geophysical Research, Journal of Climate,

5 to Universities or other research/higher centres of learing: e.g. CNRS, American Geophysical Union, American Meteorological Society, The Royal Society

1 to government: E.g. UK meteorological office

1 to blogs (I would have included An Inconvenient Truth here but oddly, no AGW proponent referenced it...)

42 anti-AGW entries that gave 13 links to supporting information

These links included:

7 to blogs, jokes or propaganda (incl. The Great Global Warming Swindle)

2 to scientific publications

1 to 'wiki' (or related)

1 to newspapers or popular publications: e.g. the Australian

2 to lobby groups: e.g. Science and Public Policy Institute

1 to government (Canadian)

I'll let you do your own research (as we all should!) on the details but the main facts that can be derived from the above are:

'Alarmists' are twice as likely as 'Deniers' are to provide support or backup for their arguments (71% vs 32%);

'Deniers' are six times as likely as 'Alarmists' are to use wiki or blogs as support (20%% vs 3.5%);

'Alarmists' are eight times as likely as 'Deniers' are to use credible, scientific sources as support (64% vs 7.5%);

(I have not counted links to government sources as being 'political' but - generously - allowed the newspaper link to count as credible, non-political).

Oh, and I think that safely puts the nail in the coffin of "ALL of them alarmist ALWAYS post links to political web sites and to wiki"!

This is quite obviously false. That is, a lie.

Typical 'denier' stuff, really - make up a bunch of lies, say them enough times and people will believe them... (paraphrasing one of the biggest deniers of them all - Goebbels).

Answer 9

I think what we see are a few true believers who do not have enough scientific diversity to see through the con and so continue to perpetrate it ad infintium. Then you have those who have been taught by true believers or have understudied true believers and join in spreading the con even if they personally receive no financial gain from it. Then we find the confused that get their total information from the media and have no educational experience to judge anything by and so like the front row at an old time camp meeting just shout the movements mantras at the top of their lungs hoping to convert the heretics through mass intimidation alone.

Problem is skeptics just are mentally unable to take anything on faith and severely question any group that expects them to. Skeptics in general will see that a faith-based program has serious errors in its doctrine of faith because they look for broad based causal evidence. Thus any skeptic will react unfavorably to evidences that do not align with observed facts such as the sudden radical jump in the Mann/Hansen chart that deviated so radically from real world recorded data. Subsequent research prompted by the actions of a skeptic caused NASA to review and correct these numbers bring the USA numbers back into line with historical data not the Mann/Hansen altered data.

Answer 10

Alarmists also ignore the fact that not even the IPCC is predicting doomsday and 20 meter sea rise. They cite the most extreme of the scenarios that computer models came up with and ignore the less "scary" ones.

Answer 11

Yes, I think that describes many of the alarmist that post here. In general, an alarmist attempts to paint such a scary doomsday scenario that people are afraid to question them despite the lack of scientific evidence. Al Gore is a perfect example of this, as he happily justifies the lies and exaggerations in his movie as being necessary to get peoples attention.

Answer 12

Personally, I think the people who post unsupported (and typically bogus) accusations are the real alarmists.  But the alarm bells they keep ringing are: "if we don't use coal our economy will collapse" or "the environmentalists are trying to take our rights away and turn us into a communist nation" or "the liberals have taken over all the major scientific organizations that claim AGW is real".  Such silly alarmist statements can't be taken seriously by anyone with a little common-sense and education.

Answer 13

Or they will site climate.org which in reality is a blog run by climate scientists, and claim it as a legitimate site.  They edit out comments by skeptics, and see nothing wrong with that.

I always thought doom sayers is a more appropriate term than alarmists.  They remind me of the followers of Nostradamus.  Every then years they keep saying the world is coming to an end.

Answer 14

Actually I do agree more with jagsfan's definition where alarmists, predicts domesday scenarios.

I'm not an "alarmist" but I do consider global warming to be and become a serious problem for millions if not billions of people within some decades. Just like IPCC does. Some countries will cope better than others but that don't free them from the responsibility to act.

Answer 15

Well from what I understand from your question I would say absolutely correct.

Science is not required for an alarmist, only a 'belief'.

Answer 16

no.  there are to many unanswered questions for me to believe man is causing this.  1) who or what caused all the other heat ups and cool downs in the past if man wasn't here to do it.  There have been at least 6 or 7 different ice ages so what caused them and what stopped them.  Right now several other planets are experiencing a rise in temp.  Man isn't causing those.  I love when Gore just says that the debate is over on global warming when no debate ever took place.

Answer 17

Gee, I hope you feel the same way about global warming deniers. Because I have yet to see any denier post a link to cold hard science.

Answer 18

As opposed to someone (you) who doesn't post any links to data at all?

I am no alarmist, meaning I don't think the earth will end, but we are in for a change I would rather not see.

I don't post political, wiki, or blog sites. I post scientific websites, unlike your propaganda, Baghdad Bob...

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/

http://dels.nas.edu/dels/rpt_briefs/clim...

http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/rese...

http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/positi...

http://www.geosociety.org/positions/pos1...

http://www.aps.org/policy/statements/07_...

http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/060720...

Based on your posts, I would refer to you as a climate change denier.

Answer 19

It depends who you use to term with, some are alarmists trying to scare us into action, some are merely expressing their beliefs and some are just misled by the media and poor science

Answer 20

There may be some alarmists offering cold hard science already.

But we choose to reject science as much as demand that it be cold and hard. We should be offering better science rather than simply reciting the political mantra that the other side is not always offering good science.

Remember, the question as you pose it is a political statement, and offers no real science itself. The proposition that alarmists should not be taken seriously without that science is sound as long as you have the integrity to apply it to yourself.

Answer 21

Doc, what do you consider to be a political website?  Any site with government connections?  I've been knocking around on this site for quite a while, off and on, and the sites I link are from a variety of sources.

Short answer: No, I don't agree.  Below are 10 links -- no wiki, no blog, no government, just in case -- that support my belief in the theory of global climate change.  

Please note that I don't use one derogatory slur.  I don't see the value of that, since it detracts from what I'm trying to say.  Your question is a direct response to the one posted by Dana, and that is legit to respond in this fashion -- but instead of simply mimicking his question, couldn't you improve upon it?  If you didn't like his question, why did you post the same one, from the other point of view?

Just wondering.  I'm past the point of caring whether you're a real doctor, or if you're ever going to change your mind.  That's irrelevant.  What is relevant in my world is that the state I live in is taking a leadership role on this issue.  Is this political?  Oh yeah, no doubt politics are involved.  So what?  That's a fact of life in the U.S. and most parts of the world. But California has a Republican governor and a Democrat as attorney general, and that is proving to be a pretty nifty combination at this point in time.  

Answer 22

And you are a Dr. of what exactly?  And you expect to be taken seriously yourself I suppose.  Case of the pot calling the kettle black it seems.