Why do skeptics think their unsupported assertions about global warming would convince anyone?

Question

Why would anybody believe someone random on Yahoo answers saying "Global warming is a hoax.", with no backup sources or data? Instead of thousands of climatologists, scientists, and organizations like the National Academy of Sciences?

How convincing are arguments that absolutely require thousands of scientists to be stupid, like, "it's the Sun". Do people think scientists don't look at the solar data?

Of course if you think it's all a vast conspiracy (like NASA faking the moon landings) you can explain anything.

But if that's the best argument you've got, you're now in the group of people who claim the world is 6000 years old and that the Almighty created the Grand Canyon, fossils, etc. to "test our faith". Agreed, it's an irrefutable argument, but not one of science.

Answer 1

It has more to do with people than anything else.  In the US there are people who embrace the idea that they are super intelligent (though almost always based on formal education) and they have figured that the opposite of logic is true.  No matter how much information points toward global warming they will deny it and feel as though they are in a small, very intelligent group that has seen past reality, facts, and truth.  In short some people are just stupid and there is really nothing you can do about that.  They have not noticed that the dirtry industries that used to say the same things (for reasons of profit) no longer hold those views and are working toward clearner production means.  The wobblies are still out there saying the same thing.  You know, smoking is actually good for you, the US blew up the WTC, Bush is stupid but smart enough to do that as soon as he took office, it goes on and on.  Seat belts kill, you can drink and drive, they can quit drinking any time they want, they just don't want to....Stupidity is part of the human experience and they will always be there.

Answer 2

Throughout time history is filled with people believing the conventional wisdom over science.  It's not that the people believing conventional wisdom were stupid, ignorant, religious, or of political parties, it's just that what sounded like a reasonable argument was accepted as proof.

Science is only right if it's objective, if it can be verified, and shown to be true.

The conventional wisdom for global warming is that it's real and man made, yet no one can tell you if it will be warmer next month, next year, next decade and show their work on how they came to that conclusion.

Many people believe that there's life on other planets.  They base this view on the number of stars, the number of possible planets, and that life manages to exist.  There is however no proof that there is life on other planets, this is only a persons emotions that want to believe in extraterrestrial life.

And the same is true for global warming.  There's reason to believe it's real and happening, but no proof can be offered to show any relationship between co2 and temperatures.  It's a persons own faith, beliefs, and emotions that steer them to their conclusion.

Because we know so little about the climate, we blame everything on what we don't understand on the possibility that global warming is real.  Floods and droughts, hurricanes and lack of hurricanes, warmth and cold are all blamed on global warming without proof, without precedence, because of ones emotions and faith.  We know that these things cannot be true because warming can't cause cooling, and warming cannot cause both more and fewer hurricanes.  There are no contradictions in science.

[Edit] Contradictions only exist because we don't yet know why there appears to be a contradiction.  As time goes on, as we learn more we will discover that in fact there is an explanation that can be explained and verified by others.  Once we gain the understanding, the contradiction will be resolved, and the contradiction will no longer exist.

Answer 3

There is a difference between politics and conspiracy.  AGW is a political issue.  It is somewhat naive to suggest that there aren't people working together pushing an AGW agenda.  

If every world leader believed in significant AGW, like you sometimes claim they do, we would have a time table to phase out fossile fuels, but we don't.

Some scientists are quite blunt that we have a moral duty not to publish research that  discredits AGW.  It seems that the politics are more important than objective science.

Answer 4

sorry bob but after reading you question and reading all the long answers i have forgot what i was going to say i thought i just read power without glory it felt like it ,was the longest thing ive read in ten minutes ,so what was the question again! oh yes now i remeberglobal warming yes i think its all wrapped up below me!

Answer 5

It's not the purpose of a global warming skeptic to convince anyone he's right.  It's the purpose of a global warming skeptic to instill enough doubt in enough people to delay action with regards to global warming.

Naomi Oreskes recently gave a talk in which she pointed out that the denier tactic has always been to claim that there's no scientific consensus and there is scientific doubt with regards to AGW.  It was the same tactics used with regards to the link between smoking and lung cancer, made by many of the same people.

http://www.uctv.tv/search-details.asp?sh...

The skeptics know they don't have a valid alternative explanation for the recent warming.  That's why they claim it's due to the Sun, but provide no supporting evidence.  Because no scientific study has concluded that more than one-third of the recent warming could be attributed to the Sun, and most attribute just 0-10%.  Yet they continue to claim it's the Sun, because it sounds like a plausible theory.  As long as you ignore the scientific data.

By the way, Ken and I did not say that global warming has "stalled".  We simply discussed a Hadley Centre study which concluded that in the short-term, we are going to have a couple of relatively cool years (still hotter than almost every year on record) due to factors like a strong La Nina cycle.  Then around 2010, we'll start to have more record-breaking hot years.  Anyone who knows the difference between weather and climate knows this doesn't mean global warming has "stalled".

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;...

Answer 6

They're just unwilling to face facts, they're not able to comprehend the fact that earth is in trouble.

Answer 7

Why do non skeptics(of global warming) think their supported assertions should convince everyone or anyone. Hasn't been that long ago that scientists/doctors believed that we as people would replace that ole bad butter with healthy margarine and really save us a lot of misery, pain and death from heart disease. That wasn't just some nut jobs that told the entire country/world this but honest, good-intentioned very intelligent and highly educated people. I have read(research it for yourself) that just before the turn of the century in the late 1890's that the greatest scientific minds of the time stated that in the area of physics that there was nothing new left to discover. We knew it all. Wow. -----As a race, are we really that arrogant, that we believe that we are so smart that we could possibly understand something so unbelievably complex and intricate as the global climate? If we really are that wonderfully intelligent and knowledgeable, then tell me why we are yet to cure the diseases of the world and why we can't even understand and control our own desires. We don't even understand how to raise and nurture our children so that they do not walk into their schools and kill their classmates. Is the earth warming? Maybe. Maybe not! Is it warming because of mankind? Maybe. Maybe not! I am glad that I don't "know"everything or for that matter much of anything.

Answer 8

What's irrefutable is using common sense to see what's happening to our climate.If a person starts their car in a garage and doesn't open the door,they die.Times millions of cars,day after day,decade after decade,and it should be clear.God created the universe,and the delicate balance of nature on earth.He also created man with free will.The greed of man has brought on the climate changes,glacial melting,depleted salmon runs in the Northwest,depletion of the Ozone layer,and the danger of harmful rays from the sun.The government would have to ban so many industrial,and personal practices to stop the cycle of destruction we're on.

Answer 9

http://journals.royalsociety.org/content...

"There are many interesting palaeoclimate studies that suggest that solar variability had an influence on pre-industrial climate. There are also some detection–attribution studies using global climate models that suggest there was a detectable influence of solar variability in the first half of the twentieth century and that the solar radiative forcing variations were amplified by some mechanism that is, as yet, unknown. However, these findings are not relevant to any debates about modern climate change. Our results show that the observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever of the mechanisms is invoked and no matter how much the solar variation is amplified."

http://blogs.nature.com/climatefeedback/...

"blaming the sun for recent global warming is no science-backed position anymore – it is deliberate disinformation. "

Quirin Schiermeier

German Correspondent

Nature

That pretty much sums it up... deliberate disinformation.

Edit -

Dr. Blob, fortunately the United States is a republic, not a direct democracy.  The average citizen is not informed enough to make national public policy decisions, and fortunately they're not allowed to.

Answer 10

Of course we back it up.  But the vast majority of the time when we do back it up, instead of attacking what is being said, you attack who said it and where it was said.  This makes me even more skeptical.

Disagreements in the world of academia is very common.  Yes there are people who say that the sun is not responsible.  There are many who say it is.  According to you there aren't any.  You still support the Oresky's study. Then when we produce studies you claim it is a few.  Well there are many.  

The notion that scientists are perverting science for social and political  goals is by people within the climatology community.  I do not believe the NASA faking moon landing conspiracy.  But if people within NASA started to say that they were fake, I would not dismiss them either.  

Can you name me one conspiracy that has the backings of so many professors from prestigious Universities like MIT and Harvard, Yale?

Please keep religion out of it.  These people compromise a small minority.  But that is what happens when people become so fanatical about a subject.  It clouds their judgment, just like the

AGWs fanatics have their judgment clouded and they refuse to even consider the notion that man is not totally responsible for the total warming, or future warming will not be catastrophic.

Edit:  Do not twist my words.  You know perfectly well that professors from MIT, Harvard and Yale are among the Skeptics.  The also believe that Climate scientists are driven by the profit motive.

Do you mean like when the National Academy of Science were in agreement that humans were causing climate change in 1975.  Of course they were talking about global cooling.  They then called on the government for more money to research the phenomena.

Answer 11

Because we skeptics think that GW supporters base their beliefs purely on emotion and not on scientific facts.  Presenting you facts is not going to change your mind.

I can give you many facts and list many scientists for you who do not support GW.  Email me if you want to hear them.  It is too much information to put here.

Try this site http://icecap.us/index.php

Answer 12

most people are already set in there ways, the other bob is an example. i don't think any proof would convince him he is wrong. there are probably a few of the same type of people on the "alarmist" side as well  but there is so much evidence they don't have to result to the same tactics.

Teller

since the hottest year on record in 05 the earth has been cooler. is that proof of global warming stalling?

Answer 13

Despite the condescension, It's still just a theory(agw).

It's not a vast conspiracy, It's UN funded.

Answer 14

Bob:  It's always easy to believe people telling you what you want to hear.  Seriously, when people tell you how darn rational you are, don't you purr and get a warm and fuzzy feeling?  Stroking works.  

TC:

From the website you linked to:

"Stay tuned for the next update (by March 11th, delayed due to travel) to see where the MEI will be heading next. I have to admit that the drastic drop in the MEI since August was quite unexpected (although predicted repeatedly by several coupled atmosphere-ocean models, if only for earlier this summer)."

Kind of sounds like maybe the AOGCMs maybe do a better job than you think eh?  

You're like this guy I met recently with a background in signal processing who was *convinced* CO2 couldn't be forcing climate.  But like you, when I pressed him on how the planet was getting rid of the extra 1.3x10^15 watts of heat trapped globally by CO2 (i.e., 1.6W/m^2 times surface area of planet), he couldn't answer.  But he was so sure it didn't matter.  Touching really.

TC:  If you want to invoke deep convection then you have to demonstrate it's increased by at least 40%.  That's the increase required to offset the radiative forcing from CO2.  You also have to show a net equatorial flux of heat from the poles since the radiative forcing from CO2 is uniform with latitude and deep convection isn't.  Ignoring these physical constraints is why even you, as the "thinking man's skeptic" would be crushed by a real climate scientist.  You can't ignore the known physics, no matter how inconvenient.

Answer 15

what kind of shower head do you have?

Answer 16

The problem Bob, is you discount any evidence as unsubstantiated that doesn't agree with your flawed arguments. Many have left the IPCC because they have found it to be perpetuating false data. Like you, the vast majority of proponents for your cause only accept evidence which supports their agenda and dismiss all else that presents a modicum of doubt. Gore’s entire propaganda piece has been shown to be a blatant misrepresentation of information, products of erroneous models, flawed data collection techniques, presentation tricks and just plain lies. In the past you have been provided with mountains of evidence from reputable scientist, some of whom you have quoted but now that they have changed their position you refuse to give any credence what so ever to their findings. Why is it that the only acceptable data is that which you provide and all else is bunk? More and more evidence is being uncovered daily that refutes the data in support of your argument hence the growing skepticism. More and more are jumping off your bandwagon everyday because they are finding the facts don’t support the cause.

You submit that those that don’t agree with you are just plain stupid, ignorant or extremist religious zealots. Uninformed individuals that refuse to accept reality. Yet your refusal to even entertain the possibility that the continuously mounting evidence against your position could have some credibility discredits you.

You call yourself a scientist… One of the basic foundations of scientific research/investigation is objectivity. I submit you have lost yours and in doing so have become nothing more than a propagandist. When a scientist conducts research looking for a predetermined outcome are you inclined to blindly accept their findings?

One part of this argument you never touch upon is the fact that most of the data in support of GW is the result research conducted by entities whose objective is to prove the case for man made GW. So if research reveals evidence to the contrary it is ignored in favor of that which does. It only makes sense. If you receive a grant to research the effects of “Man made GW” and your evidence is not in support of that outcome will your grant be renewed? Probably not and then said scientist/expert is out of a job. Are you one of those guys who is doing nothing more than protecting his job by supporting the flawed argument?

Your question asks why anyone would accept a conclusion without quantifiable, irrefutable, supporting facts. It seems to me those who accept your side of the argument are doing exactly that.

Answer 17

First, because people are full of biases... (See source)

Second, because people are afraid of losing their money and security over this. People usually react in three broad ways when faced with grave events - the 3 F: Fight, Flee or Freeze.

Since the scientific community is now overwhelmingly certain of AGW (save a few people, since for any complex issues there's no way everybody will agree to every statement ever made), AGW Skeptics are in the Flee zone.

And that's not a comfortable position to be in...

But to comfort themselves in this position, they need the approval of many others. So they throw any little piece of yet unexplained data out there in hope somebody can lower their anguish... And that's good... As science advances in a rigorous, methodical, peer-reviewed way, eventually their claims are proven/disproved.

Now many people looking at all this, must wonder: "If that's so bad, and many species are going extinct, and GW is going to give our children a lesser world, and then our grand-children  won't even know what a polar bear is, why do our leaders not do more about this? Surely they must know this isn't so bad?"

And that is why AGW skeptics think their assertions can still convince people. The leaders aren't very active.

Unfortunately, that's a vicious circle:

Undecided leaders  ---> Little incentives to rock the boat ---> Low research ---> Little information about issue ---> Low population awareness ---> Low priority in polls / Non-issue in election ---> Back to undecided leaders

We're barely breaking out of that vicious circle now, and that's for two reasons... The oligopolies that threw us in this problem after having distorted the market by manipulating prices now have amassed large sums of money to fund their transformation into the next level... And the scientific consensus is strong enough that smaller business leaders, including the media, are seeing lots of great opportunities in this necessity to change our world and our ways of building/doing things...

Answer 18

The sad fact is the average person believes what they want to believe.  

Their unsupported assertions are convincing enough people to stall action in the US so they are, at this point, winning the battle.  Why change what works?

This is a major problem people.

When the dogmatic, ignorant, dimwitted, shortsighted reactionary right can instill doubt in the average person with specious, callous, shallow emotional (and not to mention completely nonsensical) arguments designed to appeal to the base instinct, and it works like a charm every time…  

It calls into question the very basis and viability of our Democracy.

I’ve been wading upstream against this my whole life.  I was given a great gift in my youth.  No one told me what to think or even how to think.  I had a modicum of intelligence and fortunately a larger portion of curiosity.  So I educated myself.

I have had so many conversations with so many different sorts of people… and the results are always the same.  Nothing has changed in 35 years.  Here is the conclusion…are you ready?

Most people are willfully ignorant.  Their wants and needs are satisfied, their curiosity is moribund; they have no need or desire to ask any hard questions.  If you challenged them the unfailing response is hostility.

I heard it again last night.  An interview with Joan Rivers.  Man, she is hilarious!  [paraphrasing now] She got to talking about how she offends some people; others take it in stride (and see the bitter truth contained in the most biting comedy).  

Question from commentator:  Who likes you?  Answer:  The smart ones.

edit:

Oh, and did I mention?  They're a bunch of bald-faced liars.  

Do it straight to the face, unflinchingly.  It's more convincing that way.

edit:

Well JS, I'm going to side with Franklin and Jefferson on this one.  The Hamiltonians are still in charge, and look at what we got.  Maybe if we were given the responsiblity we would rise to the challenge.

edit:

Teller, I'm a libertarian right up to the point where you begin to infringe upon my rights.  We know more now than they did then.  We now know that man has the ability to affect the global biosphere.  When you pollute you infringe on my right to live.  Period.  The problem we are experiencing is due to carbon pollution.  Period.  Jefferson was not an absolutist and if he were alive today and understood the global problems we face perhaps he would not be so quick to compromise for the sake of the beloved experiment.  Libertarian Democracy and Democratic Collectivism are not mutually exclusive.  The European Union may have higher taxes but they have more social freedoms than we do.

Answer 19

Probably for the same reason that proponents do.

Answer 20

Because its hard to post information from books Ive read.  I really dont feel like looking the info up and collaborating it on here for a bunch of 16 year olds who are worried about the planet and polar bears.  You cant deny that there are many scientists who dont agree with the concensus.  I believe a group of 300 or 400 just signed some counter paper or something.  If you want to know more about cyclical climate change, read The winds of change by Eugene Linden, or Unstoppable global warming every 1500 years by Singer and Avery.  They use a lot of the same peer reviewed articles that the IPCC does to assert that nothing strange is going on right now.

And there is nothing you can do about it anyways bob, there is nothing any of the 300,000,000 people in america can do either.  Because if we stop using fossil fuels, the producers wont stop producing, theyll end up with a surplus, and the price will drop allowing developing nations to start using them causing more over population, and the same amount of emissions as before we stop....  sooooo the only way to fix anything if it was happening is to go back in time and kill all of the people involved with the rise of fossil fuels.

Answer 21

Most people don't have time to be experts on everything, so whatever they hear on the 5 o'clock news, or what they learn by watching CSI, Law & Order, or Oprah, they take as matter-of-fact.

Answer 22

There are a lot of so-called AGW climate experts out there who are well-meaning but mis-directed.  As I have posted numerous times, many of these scientists are the victims of bad data.  The surface-station data is simply wrong.  NOAA has done nothing to correct the situation other than to claim that they have developed a "fix" to account for all of the sub-standard monitoring equipment.  Of course, they will not disclose the code used to 'fix' the bad data.  Until NOAA/GISS replaces the bad stations, artificially high temperatures will continue to be reported......and used to predict more (incorrectly) AGW.

Heck, even the 'Dean' of Climatology doesn't agree with the so-called AGW consensus group:

•7 May 2007

Father of Climatology Calls Manmade Global Warming Absurd

Reid Bryson is Emeritus Professor of Meteorology, of Geography and of Environmental Studies. Senior Scientist, Center for Climatic Research, The Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies (Founding Director), the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Many climatologists regard him as the father of climatology. Professor Bryson calls manmade global warming absurd.

Reid A. Bryson holds the 30th PhD in Meteorology granted in the history of American education. Emeritus Professor and founding chairman of the University of Wisconsin Department of Meteorology now the Department of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences in the 1970s he became the first director of what is now the UW’s Gaylord Nelson Institute of Environmental Studies. He is a member of the United Nations Global 500 Roll of Honor created, the U.N. says, to recognize “outstanding achievements in the protection and improvement of the environment. He has authored five books and more than 230 other publications and was identified by the British Institute of Geographers as the most frequently cited climatologist in the world.

“All this argument is the temperature going up or not, it’s absurd” Bryson continues. “Of course it’s going up. It has gone up since the early 1800s, before the Industrial Revolution, because we are coming out of the Little Ice Age, not because we’re putting more carbon dioxide into the air.”

Bryson mentions the retreat of Alpine glaciers, common grist for current headlines. “What do they find when the ice sheets retreat, in the Alps?”

We recall the two-year-old report saying a mature forest and agricultural water-management structures had been discovered emerging from the ice, seeing sunlight for the first time in thousands of years. Bryson interrupts excitedly.

“A silver mine! The guys had stacked up their tools because they were going to be back the next spring to mine more silver, only the snow never went” he says. “There used to be less ice than now. It’s just getting back to normal.”

Q: Could you rank the things that have the most significant impact and where would you put carbon dioxide on the list?

A: Well let me give you one fact first. In the first 30 feet of the atmosphere, on the average, outward radiation from the Earth, which is what CO2 is supposed to affect, how much [of the reflected energy] is absorbed by water vapor? In the first 30 feet, 80 percent, okay?

Q: Eighty percent of the heat radiated back from the surface is absorbed in the first 30 feet by water vapor?

A: And how much is absorbed by carbon dioxide? Eight hundredths of one percent. One one-thousandth as important as water vapor. You can go outside and spit and have the same effect as doubling carbon dioxide.

Edit 1:

Bob,  If you take the time to thoroughly review Watt's website, you will find that there is more to Watt's survey work than "pretty pictures"  The proof is there, but the AGW club can't bear to admit it!  In fact, others are delving into the same subject......it IS a serious problem.

Answer 23

Bob, you put too much faith in the scientific communities current understanding of how Earth's climate works. Take for instance the latest plunge of global temperatures, this was caused by the oceans. Nothing affects short term climate on Earth more than the oceans, and the oceans receive the vast majority of their energy from the Sun. The ocean is a very large stratified body of water with various circulation patterns that have cycles of over a thousand years in length. One day perhaps humanity will posses the knowledge to understand this and utilize it to predict short and long term climate trends, but until events like the La-Nina and it's impact on short term climate we are experiencing are predicted in advance, you cannot expect rational people to believe in long term predictions of climatologists, until they get the short term events right. When global temperatures plunge 0.75 Degrees C in just a couple of months that is not weather, it is climate. The very complex flywheel system of the oceans is poorly understood and is a much more important part of Earths climate than trace gases in the atmosphere.

EDIT GCNP58

I have told you many times, your trivial radiative forcing variable associated with CO2 is dwarfed by the amount of energy that convection transfers from the surface to the top of the troposphere, get over it!

And as far as the signal processor you referenced, he probably knows how to interprit and absorptivity spectrum a little better than you, it comes with the job.

.

.

Answer 24

Bob - Skeptics/deniers don't have to provide proof. All they need to do is create doubt and that is so easy to do with science, because with science there is always a chance the current understanding is wrong. No matter how small that chance, people will see that doubt as an excuse to continue the offending behavior. That is human nature when it conflicts with their beliefs. Unfortunately, beliefs are not reality. With a consumer driven society morality is rarely used, and I prefer to use morality in my thought process.

What if we are doing others harm?

EDIT - Kim, I'm not trying to force morality on anyone (unlike the conservative right), I just said I use it when I think.

Answer 25

We believe it, you don't.  You continue your beliefs, we'll continue ours.  When the time for a separation comes, you remember your unconcious decision and go your nonbelieving way with the other polluters.

Answer 26

Teller - Nice try at misconstruing my words ;-)

As I've posted many times, global warming did NOT stop after the peaks of 1901, 1915, 1938, 1973, 1981 or 1990 and it did NOT stop after the peak of 1998. And no amount of false uninformed assertions of victory by doubters will change that. Hot & cold years, El Niño & La Niñas, 11-year solar cycles, etc. are all merely bumps in the road up the hill of global warming.

Bob, the doubters couldn't possibly believe their unsupported assertions would convince anyone with a decent education (unless the person's a huge conspiracy theorist), but somehow it seems to give them a psychological lift.  It's easy to take pot-shots, it's hard to do research and come up with actual evidence to support one's position.  Reading scientific literature (let alone understanding it) is hard work. So most of them (not all) simply take the lazy way out.

The forces behind the obfuscation of good science, aren't interested in convincing anyone that they have a better theory, they're only interested in putting enough noise into their media PR channels to delay action and confuse.  

If you want to ruin the performance of a good choir, you don't have to prove anything, just sing loudly a little off key.

Answer 27

I must admit it doesn't make much sense to me other than the format of Y!A where one gets points by spouting a little (its a scam or a hoax) or more impressively a lot, even if it is complete speculation.  I guess conspiracy theories can be quite breathtaking in their audacity in an anarchic sort of way and perhaps people think there is no smoke without fire and jump on the band wagon with their own constructs.  I can't say that I have never over reached myself in terms of correctness on Y!A but I hope not too often and I do try to learn from my mistakes.