Have 'Believers' Stopped Using Predictions?

Question

No longer do the believers tell us that it will be warmer, or there will be more hurricanes, you never hear about Greenland anymore, and there's restraint when talking about the melting ice caps. Those who do like Algore or Prince Charles are quickly dismissed as quacks by the believers.

Have believers stopped using predictions because they never come true?

Now they just focus on the very long trend even making predictions about the climate long after we are all dead, like they can predict centuries out but not 10 years from today.

With no warming in the last 10 years, and more scientist questioning the consensus, is this new tactic just a new ploy by the believers to hold on to the last gasps of their faith?

Answer 1

"With no warming in the last 10 years, and more scientist questioning the consensus, is this new tactic just a new ploy by the believers to hold on to the last gasps of their faith?"

This is funny b/c we just talked abt Global Warming (now preferably called Global Climate Change) today in my Conservation Bio class.

Yeah there HAS been warming, it's been steady. You must remember the numbers are an average. Some places the temp is decreasing and others increasing (tropics are relatively unharmed by climate change... their temp has been pretty stable... temperate places (i.e. above equator area, below polar areas... that's like US type ecosystems) are the most effected. We just learned today that in the 30 years or so the temp over some parts of Antarctica have raised 6 degrees centigrade (about 10 degrees F).

There have been some immediate effects that no one seems to care about: animal/plant/bird migration/breeding timing. Many are temperature dependent... since it gets hotter earlier, they do migration/breeding earlier... many things are timed just right... this is even more a problem if one of the sp. in the chain is not dep. on temperature, but something like day length (which does not change)... then everything goes amuck.

We have limited info, but the info is really jarring. I can't tell you a hurricane is gonna happen at X time just as geologists can't tell you exactly when another earthquake will happen (plus climatology is very difficult to predict)... but hurricanes are not what we should be worrying about. Should be worrying about loss of biodiversity (# of kinds of animals) which is happening at this very moment. Low biodiversity is bad for a variety of reasons (crop loss, maybe some crazy species comes along and does damage of some sort, etc)... from what we can see, we can guess what can happen (extinctions and what-not).

Answer 2

Only in your imaginary world. You say "scientist" (singular) and I believe you are correct. One scientist is bound to question things, but an overwhelming majority of climate scientistS agree with AGW theory. You just don't like that fact.

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

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

http://www.aip.org/gov/policy12.html

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

http://royalsociety.org/displaypagedoc.a...

You need to read what scientists say...

http://royalsociety.org/downloaddoc.asp?...

Answer 3

You know, I actually beieve some of them are learning to think for themselves.  So I guess every cloud has a silver lining, even clouds caused by global warming.

Answer 4

Well the prediction Jim Hansen called most likely did pretty much happen so I'd have to say those who accept global warming are doing so on pretty good evidence.

"With no warming in the last 10 years"

Debunked already, there was warming, just that 1998 was a very hot year.

"and more scientist questioning the consensus,"

As scientists will do, but as is to be expected from a consensus based on reality there aren't many of them disagreeing with it.

Answer 5

kinda of reminds you of a cult where they predict the end of the world down to a day , year and hour,. but it never comes, so eventual you just start a 'main' stream religion, and go on.  living off those stupid enough to pay you for even more misinformation.

Answer 6

They seem to be a little uncertain, without any recent warming and no press releases from Hansen about how hot summer is, I think their waiting for a sign and ignoring the cooling. But the believers behavior is predictable, perhaps we should model it and try to predict their behavior if the earth continues to cool over the next ten years. We would not want them jumping out of windows like the stock brokers did during the crash of the 1930's, I mean I would kind of miss them. Some counseling might be in order if this cooling continues.

Answer 7

How do you come up with this stuff, deniers have been going on about Al Gore since day one and now (you say) believers are calling him a quack. Prince Charles talks to trees I don't think those on either side of this debate would have trouble calling him a quack.

to quote you

"Now they just focus on the very long trend even making predictions about the climate long after we are all dead"

It was said from the start that climate change was a long term thing with changes over 50 & 100 years, by the the scale of natural change this is very fast.

"With no warming in the last 10 years, and more scientist questioning the consensus, is this new tactic just a new ploy by the believers to hold on to the last gasps of their faith?"

"scientist" a Freudian slip perhaps

and the cooling of the last ten years (again!!!)

http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/had...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Instr...

Has the temp dropped back to the mid 90's level not even slightly, we are in a La Nina, the last large one (88/89) caused a similar drop, which you can see in the wiki graph, when it was over the temp went back to rising.

Answer 8

What would you like to know?

Nostradamus

Answer 9

I've noticed this too.

I think they take the skeptics' arguments seriously and the comparison to William Miller, they recognized that one as being spot on.   He had a few followers stay with him but most people thought he was a quack, in part because he kept pushing his predictions of the end of the world back.

Carbon credits sound a lot like ascension robes though - or papal indulgences.

As for Jim Hansen being "basically right" that's nonsense.   He gave three different CO2 scenarios and three outcomes, one for each scenario.   What happened did match one of his predicted outcomes - just, not the one that matched the CO2 scenario that had happened.

If I told you the Rays would fall out of playoff contention if Percival stays hurt but that they'd make the playoffs if he recovered and stayed healthy for the rest of the season, and then Percival ended up out for the rest of the season but the Rays won the AL East, then even though that was one of my predicted possible outcomes, I'd still have been wrong.

Dr. Hansen is the Dr. Z of climate science.

Back to predictions - I too notice the lull but I think their long term strategy is to go back to them.   They now have one to cover every eventuality.    No matter WHAT happens, someone out there has written a paper saying that's what will happen, and they'll trot it out.

I mean, when they say "it's not about the world getting warmer, it's about 'fluctuations'" - that's ridiculous.  We skeptics didn't invent the idea that global warming meant warming - that's what THEY said when it was, in fact, warming.

Remember Al Gore's great line, "the planet has a fever."

Only when it stopped warming did it become "fluctuations" - which is just silly because that's what weather does.

Answer 10

Well it seems this hoax has played out completely, but the real believers (aka deniers of real science) will never give up.

I heard where some AGW advocates say we only have 100 months left before the earth is destroyed.  I'm sure that's based on precise scientific analysis, but why 100 months?  I think 99 months sounds cooler.

Maybe it's like the bottles of beer song.  Next month they can say we have 99 months left to live.

Ignorance knows no bounds.