Winning the hearts and minds of the skeptics never proved to be so hard?

Question

I'm a skeptic and i found something popped inside of my head that asked the question stated in the title. If you think its so thoroughly proven and ALL the scientists agree with you, which i find very hard to believe(common when a new vacine comes out theres lots of oposition saying it won't work). With the help of media megaphoning techniques i find it pretty hard that you can't convert/pursaue us to the green side. Now i don't want any answers saying that skeptics are dumb or ignorant or something demeaning about skeptics because i like to keep my questions very clean so please refrain from calling us skeptics anything bad and give us an intelligant answer like you believers claim you are.

Answer 1

The main difficulty is that the skeptics set the threshold of proof so high that it is impossible to prove: A type of self-defeating or self-fulfilling prophesy.

1) No subject in the world is ever agreed upon by ALL people - asking for ALL scientists to agree on GW is impossible

2) The skeptics generally pick and choose facts and change the definition of the theories - e.g. skeptics will use local weather patterns over the last year as if they are the same as global climate trends (which they are most definitely not and often don't have that much to do with each other)

3) The skeptics want to wait until the process is over to see what has happened - trouble is, it's a process without end! (This is equivalent to watching a soccer game where, at half-time, the score is 8-0. The GW advocate says, well, that shows that side A is better; the skeptic says, ah, no, the game isn't over yet so I can't agree that side A is better until the end).

My question is why not do something about GW?

1) If I'm wrong, and you had followed our advice to 'save the planet', your worse case scenario tends to be that the economy would be hard hit causing drops in standards of living (which I don't believe will happen, but will go along with this for now).

2) If you're wrong, and we all followed your advice to ignore the GW 'nuts', then our worst case scenario involves the extinction of 90% of species on this planet and 3-4 billion people dead

I dunno... out of the two, I'd rather gamble on a poor few economic years than mass extinction!

P.S. Following our advice, you'd also live in a nicer, cleaner world, save money on fuel costs, live and be healthier and be preserving parks and reserves for your grandchildren... even if we are wrong!

Edit:

In answer to your new info, this is what I mean by being selective with the science. GW advocates do not say anyone is going to die because it is warmer than today; we even agree that there are periods when it was warmer/colder!

It is SPEED of change that is the issue - whether it leads to warming or cooling is almost incidental. Fast change does not allow time for species to adapt, hence they die.

The number of species that became extinct due to natural climatic fluctuations (e.g. from ice age to interglacial warm period and back again) is quite low.

The five "great die-offs" that the world has seen (60-90% of species died out) were all associated with rapid climate change usually caused by unusual circumstances (e.g. asteroid impact, mass larva outflows such as the Deccan flats).

Today, we are seeing some of the fastest rates of change in our global climate in global history: The last five times this happened, life perished on a massive scale, do we really need to wait until then?

The World Health Organisation has said that 150,000 deaths in 2000 were a direct result of climate change and that number is exponentially increasing each year.

The current rate of extinction is approximately 50,000 species every year - approximately 1,000 X normal rates and accelerating. This is only .25% per year but over the next 50 years (your lifetime?) the trend will be for some 20-30% of all species gone for ever.

A UN report in 2006 said unequivocally, "we are currently responsible for the sixth major extinction event in the history of earth, and the greatest since the dinosaurs disappeared, 65 million years ago".

There was a man who fell from a window on the 60th floor. As he fell past the buildings 2nd floor, he said, "I don't see what all the fuss is about - obviously no one gets hurt falling out of windows..."

Answer 2

Skeptics get accused of all kinds of crimes against humanity and willful ignorance for not sharing the believers faith.

Personally, I see believers as being well meaning, but naive individuals who will continue trying to save the world from AGW until the media cries wolf on some other scare.  Being accused of willful ignorance is hardly going to change my mind.

Answer 3

I guess you're asking why it's so hard to convince global warming 'skeptics' that they're wrong?

1) They don't want to be convinced.  Most 'skeptics' are 'skeptical' because of political reasons, not scientific ones.

2) Global warming science isn't simple.  Many 'skeptics' simply don't understand the science (and/or they don't want to understand it, as discussed in point #1).

3) There is a lot of misinformation out there.  For example you mentioned a big one, the Swindle.  Every point made in the film was either wrong or purposefully dishonest.  

For example, they tried to prove the Sun was responsible for the current global warming.  To prove it, they showed a graph that stopped in 1980, and labelled 1980 as "now".  If they had showed the graph all the way to the present, it would have proven that the Sun isn't responsible for the current warming:

http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-...

That's just one example of dozens of deceitful tactics used in the film, and the film is just one example of the tons of misinformation available.

I've summarized the science based on peer-reviewed scientific studies in the link below.  No lies, no deceit, just science.

Answer 4

I'm a skeptic about global warming.  But I still believe in progress, which includes searching for other means of energy.  I support windpower and nuclear power, but both are expensive to set up.  I'd support new technology for our cars to lower or eliminate the dependence on gasoline if it could be developed.  That's just part of a growing society.  

What I can't support is a weak theory being promoted as fact, with not discussion or debate, that will change the way we live dramatically.  Especially when there is so much evidence saying that this theory is dead-wrong.

Answer 5

Here's the answer--

By definition, those who claim to be sceptical about global warming don't understand basic science--and don't want to.  No one really cares towast the time and effort teaching someone who doesn't want to learn.

Nor is there any reason to. They have no real impact and never will. The talk a lot, contribute nothing--and don't make any difference.

In short--no one cares what you think--if you think at alll.

Answer 6

You mentioned the swindle video.  It's nonsense, but you shouldn't believe my unsupported word (or that of anyone else here).  Here's a ton of proof that that video is nonsense.  It's way too much for here.  If you want the facts you HAVE to read the links.

It is simply a political statement which distorts science.  The director has a history of putting out misleading stuff.  In 1997 he made a series for Channel 4 called “Against Nature”, which compared environmentalists with n***s. Channel 4 had to apologise for the misleading stuff in that one.  The present movie is also a distortion of the science. More here:

"A Channel 4 documentary claimed that climate change was a conspiratorial lie. But an analysis of the evidence it used shows the film was riddled with distortions and errors."

http://news.independent.co.uk/environmen...

"Pure Propaganda"

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/07/0313p...

Explanations of why the science is wrong.

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/arc...

http://www.durangobill.com/Swindle_Swind...

http://www.amos.org.au/BAMOS_GGWS_SUBMIS...

History of the director.

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

Gore's movie may be a little over dramatic, but it has the basic science right.  This movie does not.

Channel 4 itself undercuts the movie in a funny way.  If you go to their website on the movie you find links to real global warming information.  They also have a way to "Ask the Expert" about global warming.  The questions go to a respected mainstream scientist who supports (mostly) human responsibility for global warming.

So, why did Channel 4 broadcast it?

"The science might be bunkum, the research discredited. But all that counts for Channel 4 is generating controversy."  

http://environment.guardian.co.uk/climat...

There's a lot less controversy about this is the real world than there is on Yahoo answers:

http://www.worldpublicopinion.org/pipa/a...

And vastly less controversy in the scientific community than you might guess from the few skeptics talked about here:

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

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/fu...

EVERY major scientific organization has issued an official statement that this is real, and mostly caused by us.  The National Academy of Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute of Physics, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Meteorological Association, etc.

Answer 7

It would help to be credible......

Answer 8

Exactly - All that needs to be done is to tell us how much warmer it will be in 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, 5 years and 10 years from now and show us their work on how they came to their conclusion.

If they were right, who would be able to argue?

However the believers just say that this scientist, this scientific group believes, so I have to as well.  If it gets colder in the future, that's just weather, but if it gets warmer, that's proof that global warming is real.

Science isn't faith in others, following others or belief in things you can't prove.  This is for the mystics.

Answer 9

I'll be keeping my eye on this question to see how the believers answer it.

Edit: So far I like Adam C's  answer the best, since he didn't slam us for being stupid like Crabby_blindguy3 did. However, I feel both sides have been shown to cherry pick data.

(Another thing Adam, a lot of us skeptics do feel we need to look into alternative fuel sources, clean up pollution - look at Beijing's air quality the mixture is SO2, NO2, CO - Carbon Monoxide, not Carbon Dioxide - and a few other nasty things make up the bad air in China, especially their large cities. - Protect and save the rain forests etc etc etc.

I also feel money would be better spent in looking at ways to reclaim the deserts. That would mean man made lakes, rivers, streams and other irrigation systems to bring more water into these areas. - I'm not talking about taking back the entire desert system, since I feel they do keep our planet overall system in a state of equalibrium. And at least two of our major deserts were caused naturally by our planet. Only the Sahara is claimed to have been caused by over grazing by livestock. -)