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Philippe Chantreau at 01:20 AM on 13 April 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #15
JW Rebel's multiple points appear extremely ill informed, and have internal contradictions.
Zoonotic origin has been firmly established.
Hydroxychloroquine is no panacea and has significant side effects, including cardiac arrest, arrythmias requiring defibrillation, profound hypoglycemia etc. It is by no means a risk free drug. Overdose is extremely toxic, often lethal. When I was growing up in Africa, it was known to be a suicide risk for troubled teens who had to take malaria prophylaxis, like everybody else. There is no conclusive evidence that HCQ/AZT actually helps outcomes.
Asian countries achieved control at the price of drastic social distancing and self quarantine measures, the very thing that JW Rebel complains about.
The fact that the survival rate of critically ill patients is low makes a strong argument for limiting contagion, less we allow something similar to the 1918 pandemic to happen.
The whole point of social distancing is to prevent overwhelming health care facilities. The alternative would be to not practice distancing and tell people to not bring their sick relative to the hospital. We're talking about people in their 50s and early 60s, here; they work, they have families and other responsibilities. How is that going to go down in the Western world where we find it normal to code, intubate and throw heroic measures at people in their 90s with multiple chronic conditions?
The fact that most working families do not have savings to withstand a crisis on the horizon of a few months speaks volumes on how unhealthy the entire socio-economic system has become. The fact that corporations that pay dividends would not be able to have a financial safety cushion is just mind boggling.
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sailrick at 01:04 AM on 13 April 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #15
J W Rebel @2.
"[1] Zoonotic origin. No direct evidence given for zoonotic origin"Yes there is.
How China’s “Bat Woman” Hunted Down Viruses from SARS to the New Coronavirus
Moderator Response:[JH] Activated url link.
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MA Rodger at 18:23 PM on 12 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
prove we are smart @37,
Your contention @32 was that "Google and Amazon are now in the oil business," (this being the title of a webpage @vox.com) and that would bring into question Google's stance on climate denialism with Google being the owners of YouTube. That webpage you link-to actually says very little but more informative are some of its links (eg here) which describe Google, Amazon and others providing services for the oil industry. That isn't quite the same as being 'in' the oil industry.
Having the oil industry as a client is a relationship many many companies have. The novel point to the the services being offered by Google etc is that it is about using high tech (eg AI) to improve the efficiency of oil extraction, indeed of oil exploration. You may argue the ethics of providing such services, as Michael Mann does in the webpage I linked above which also describes the creation of Google's Oil, Gas & Energy Division. To suggest such moves by Google would cause it to support climate denialism (or cause it not not shut down denialist YouTube content) is surely a bit of a leap.
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MA Rodger at 18:17 PM on 12 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Duncan61 @34,
You ask about "Sea level due to ice melting and warming expansion" adding "some claim it is happening and provide data, some claim there is more ice and provide data."
The increase in sea level due to melting ice and warming oceans is easy to demonstrate.
So I would suggest that the "claim there is more ice" is the point needing examination. You say these "some ... provide data." While I could find some contrarian website with articles attempting to set out such claims (eg here), these may not be what you are looking at. So could you provide a link or two containing the claims you're talking about?
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nigelj at 18:01 PM on 12 April 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #15
J W Rebel @2.
"Don't forget, a 12% save rate with people on ventilators is the highest claim I've seen; it was 5% in Wuhan."
Correct about Wuhan. About 30% in the UK and Washington State survive as below. This appears to be the best outcome, with 55% being normal for other respiratory problems. So its not as bad as you say but still pretty bad.
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RedBaron at 17:34 PM on 12 April 2020Startups aim to pay farmers to bury carbon pollution in soil
@4 doug,
As it turns out, no I had never tried them. And as it turns out moments after seeing your post I did go there and begin their process.
Turns out their peer review and verification process can be tough at times. However, for the last two months I have been hammering it out with their reviewers and did eventually get approved. The project goes live on the 16th.
Thanks very much for directing me to them. It was frustrating at times, but in the end I feel it was a very good way to proceed. I even managed to get an endorsement by none other than Joel Salatin! While I have been in touch with him before by email and phone, this is the first direct endorsement I ever got of that caliber and he probably would not have done so without it being such a reputable site.
Thanks very much for the link. I owe you. Feel free to come by this summer for a free box of tomatoes ;)
What is the rate a new regenerative agricultural method sequesters carbon in the soil?
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prove we are smart at 16:42 PM on 12 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Bob Loblaw@33,yes choose carefully, this climate blog site S S, I use and recommend on my other forums. But what I wondered at 32 is because Google now has increasingly more involvement with the fossel fuel moguls-should the status quo change?
https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/3/21030688/google-amazon-ai-oil-gas
Moderator Response:[DB] Hot-linked URL.
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Philippe Chantreau at 14:21 PM on 12 April 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #15
" Are there any virus diseases which we have been able to eradicate, barring small pox?"
I am surprised that JW Rebel is asking a question that is so easy to answer.
-Rabies, effectively eradicated among humans and even animal populations with enough coverage.
_Polio, wherever campaigns were completed as planned, effectively eradicated in the Western World.
-Mumps, same as above.
-Varicella, same again.
-Rubella, same.
Some vaccines have not been available for long enough but HPV caused cancers can potentially be eradicated. Same goes for Hepatitis A and B.
There has been some pseudo-debate on the value of vaccinating against Measles, but the reality remains that Measles can potentially be quite serious, leading to penumonia or encephalitis, or even subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, possibly decades later. There is no honest debate to be had there.
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nigelj at 14:19 PM on 12 April 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #15
Rebel @2, clarification. "[1] Zoonotic origin. No direct evidence given for zoonotic origin"...."Sounds a bit like your unsubstantiated opinion."
I meant to say I recall reading there was direct evidence, and that you are making quite a few assertions without explaining yourself.
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Eclectic at 12:39 PM on 12 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Duncan @ 34 , you seem to be getting nowhere fast.
# Your problem is that you are swallowing a great bunch of bullshit and only a tiny bunch of scientific facts & analysis.
What's worse, you don't seem to be trying to recognize the difference between bullshit and fact.
If you wish to really understand the situation, then educate yourself. If you are not a keen reader ~ then use Youtube. Sure, there's a lot more rubbish than reality published on Youtube, and the Youtube organization won't give you any guidance in distinguishing what's what. So, you yourself will need to choose . . . wisely.
Duncan, the more you educate yourself, the easier it gets to recognize the bullshit propaganda. A good start is the Youtube video series by science-journalist Potholer54. His first video is titled: "Climate Change - the scientific debate" . . . and there are 50 more in the series (most are 5 - 15 minutes long).
Potholer54 is informative & entertaining (and often amusing, too !)
He doesn't cover everything . . . but he is very good at pointing out a lot of the bullshit coming from the usual (mostly American) propagandists. Potholer54 doesn't have an Aussie accent, but he's lived long enough in Australia to get very well acquainted with that good old Aussie word "bullshit". (Yeah, well, maybe the word wasn't invented in Oz, but most Aussies fancy they have a well-developed Bullshit Detector. Except you, Duncan ~ your BS Detector seems to be faulty or non-existent . . . or maybe you just choose not to use it on Climate stuff.)
Get with the strength, Duncan. Use Youtube & Potholer54. Then you can come to SkepticalScience for lots of finer details.
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nigelj at 12:28 PM on 12 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
duncan61 @34, you claim some data supports sea level rise and some data says there is more ice, so presumably no sea level rise. You give no details or examples or sources.
Sea level rise is measured by both tidal gauges and satellite and they both unequivocally show sea leve rise. Satellites are also able to monitor the mass balance of ice sheets and show Greenland is losing ice dramatically and Antarctica is losing ice slightly. Glaciers are also monitored and most are losing ice. If you just bothered to read the appropriate information under secptical myths on the left side of this page you can get some details.
Now the denialist side of the debate typically make claims that glaciers are advancing, but if you read carefully they refer to just a small subset of glaciers, or they say sea ice is increasing somewhere when this doesn't actually affect sea level rise so its not relevant. Or they say Antarctica is not losing ice or much ice, while not mentioning that plenty of other places are. Or sometimes the denialists data is just made up.
None of this is new, in fact its now almost ancient history. I have several times explained these sorts of climate things diplomatically but you dont seem to get it. I cannot make you understand if you can't or won't, and I can't teach you critical thinking skills if you cant or wont.
We have tidal gauges and satellites and historical photos and god knows what all pointing to melting ice and sea level rise and its very hard for me to believe these systems of measurement and observation would all be 100% wrong because so many differerent monitoring systems show the same thing. I equally find it hard to believe its all some conspiracy. But perhaps you are built differently.
Personally I think you are just trolling for attention, and that you will come back with a whole lot of silly data.
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nigelj at 11:50 AM on 12 April 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #15
JWRebel @2
There are far too many points and questions for me to respond to, so Ive just picked out a few that relate to things I have some knowledge of form our media.
"Nothing particularly new in this interview."
Ok maybe so, but you seem to be judging it as something meant to inform experts. It was intended more for the general public that may know virtually nothing about the issues.
"[1] Zoonotic origin. No direct evidence given for zoonotic origin"
Sounds a bit like your unsubstantiated opinion. And its an article directed at the general public not a 20 page thesis on the subject!
"[2] I have not seen anybody make a cost benefit case for social distancing. "
I have in our local media. I can't find the article but they assumed about $2 million (NZ) per human life being average earnings potential and deduced from this the government could spend $150 billion on assistance to business during a lock down, thus giving a basis to put a time frame on a lock down (all other things being equal).
"What will be the costs in human life years of the global depression we are now headed into? "
We don't know that we are heading into a global depression. The data suggests a deep recession at this stage. But I take your point, an economic recession or depression can cost lives, and obviously reduce quality of life.
My own view is that the scenario in Italy is very scary, and some level of border controls and social isolation seems very justified in my country at least (New Zealand), especially as we had a lot of tourism, but I'm not immune to the considerable economic problems lock downs bring, and their social and health implications. That is also very scary. For that reason I think lock downs have to be of limited duration, enough to buy time to strengthen health care systems, deveop a vaccine, and flatten the curve. Just so you know where I'm coming from.
"How many lives have we actually saved? "Don't forget, a 12% save rate with people on ventilators is the highest claim I've seen; it was 5% in Wuhan. If we take a one year survivor horizon, it will be even slimmer. Most of the people that didn't go to ICU would survive without hospital care (oxygen can be administered at home), so it isn't at all clear what the lives saved margin really is. "
Where have you seen your claims about ventilators? Administering oxygen at home has various logistical complications and the patient is certainly going to be infecting the whole family. But I don't really know I'm not a health care expert.
"[3] China adopted HCQ + Zinc + Azithromycin +Remdesavir in their standard treatment guidelines after published clinical studies on Feb19. So did S. Korea, which had far lower mortality numbers. Yes, there are a lot more angles to this, but we seem incapable of learning from the Chinese. "
Who is we? New Zealand has copied China's lock down policy and social distancing and shortly after this rates of growth in infections started to slow and I doubt its a coincidence. Nothing much else explains it. We also used track and trace from very early on like Asian countries. Our infection rates and fatality rates are quite low comparitively speaking (easily googled).
"Do we actually know if the oral-fecal route is not important?"
This is a rather technical question for this climate website.
" Do we know whether health care itself is not a primary vector? "
I recall reading that hospitals are a major source of spread and its important to keep covid 19 patients in their own isolated wards and keep health care professionals divided into groups, and that some places are doing this.
No doubt there are things we dont know. Im not sure what you real point is. Its a new virus, the experts are dealing with it as best they can.
I have read several experts saying aerosols are a minor factor and why, and none saying they are a major factor.
"China immediately started building/dedicating facilities b/c hospitals were transmission nodes, and a third of the health care workers in Wuhan were out of commission. Interview does not mention any of this."
No it didn't. Maybe they should have, but no interview printed in the media is going to cover everything.
"[4] Vaccines. This is happy talk. Is there a vaccine for HIV or SARS? No. "
But my understanding is the Sars vaccine was cancelled because SARS fizzled out.
"Are there any virus diseases which we have been able to eradicate, barring small pox? "
Why are you asking me this? Vaccines keep measels and seasonal flu at very low levels (depending on public uptake). Dont make the perfect the enemy of the good.
Are there any vaccines against Corona viruses human or veterinarian which give more than an ephemeral protection? Do people have long-lasting antibodies to protect them against colds (Corona viruses)? No."
I read an article that although getting a corunavirus related cold does not give immunity, people who get reinfected dont have any symptoms or symptoms are at very low level as below, so its possible it may be the same with covid 19:
https://play.stuff.co.nz/details/_6145112480001
"[5] Did we do a good job protecting our health care and the most vulnerable? No. "
Again who is we? New Zealand required elderly (over 70) and vulnerable to self isolate early in the growth curve. Personally I think that is the key to the whole issue.
"Having schools shut does not significantly impact ICU demand. The entire spike in ICU demand would have to come from the risk groups. But we have shut down the economy without taking appropriate steps to quarantine the most important vector (the vulnerable), which represent virtually the entire pool (>98%) of ICU demand. 40% of deaths have come from nursing homes, globally! Not counting all those who die at home (too frail to go to ICU). These places/people should have been locked down in February, with zero people entering or exiting. Pay the staff triple overtime for staying on premise (way cheaper than Tr$6 to save all the banks and hedge funds)."
Sounds like you mean America? Young people are carriers and often asymptomatic, so surely that ultimately means it spreads at school and from there to older people? That said, I admit closing schools is a big thing and can't last indefinitely for obvious reasons.
Like I said we in NZ have isolated the elderly in home isolation early in the growth curve. However it leaves the rest home problem, although they have stopped allowing visitors from a couple of weeks ago. Most of our fatalities have been from a rest home cluster. I agree pay rest home (nursing home) staff triple the pay to stay on the premises.
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duncan61 at 10:46 AM on 12 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
I am sure I am on topic here and would like to share my opinion.At this point in time the AGW debate is occupying a lot of my thoughts and I am still on the fence.I watch a lot of youtube on both sides of the debate and at this point I believe that there is some merit in the CO2 warming effect however it is being blown out of proportion to reality as most of the predicted events are not happening.I will live for another 20 years and if nothing is happening still where do we go.
.Sea level due to ice melting and warming expansion
some claim it is happening and provide data
some claim there is more ice and provide data
The sea level is the biggest deal to me all the other claims of ocean acid bushfires drought etc??
I visit a lot of forums and this one is unique in the only one I feel I have been offended when a comment was posted that anyone who does not believe we are all doomed wholeheartedly is an idiot.
If this forum is for believers only I will not weigh in again.Regards Duncan
Moderator Response:[DB] Fake cries of ad hominem and egregious strawman claims snipped.
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michael sweet at 10:19 AM on 12 April 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #15
JWRebel,
Please provide references for all your claims. The zoonotic orgin has been demonstrated by DNA analysis. Likewise the rest of your claims are not what has been widely reported in newspapers (I read the Guardian, BBC, Politico, CNN, LA Times and NY Times.).
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JWRebel at 08:43 AM on 12 April 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #15
@Nigelj Couldn't disagree more. Nothing particularly new in this interview.
[1] Zoonotic origin. No direct evidence given for zoonotic origin. There are a host of obstacles to the zoonotic claim. Not mentioning these and not offering direct evidence means it's not scientific. Any scientific approach should not fail to mention strengths and weaknesses of competing hypotheses. That's the trouble with most slanted information/propaganda — failure to take into account contrary evidence and hypotheses, which are almost always present.
[2] I have not seen anybody make a cost benefit case for social distancing. What will be the costs in human life years of the global depression we are now headed into? How many millions of families in the informal economy are already having to tell their children there is no food? How many people will have no health care access at all in the future? How many lives have we actually saved? Don't forget, a 12% save rate with people on ventilators is the highest claim I've seen; it was 5% in Wuhan. If we take a one year survivor horizon, it will be even slimmer. Most of the people that didn't go to ICU would survive without hospital care (oxygen can be administered at home), so it isn't at all clear what the lives saved margin really is. There is plenty of evidence that the R₀ (reproduction rates) rolled over before NPI's (non-pharmaceutical interventions) could have had an impact.
[3] China adopted HCQ + Zinc + Azithromycin +Remdesavir in their standard treatment guidelines after published clinical studies on Feb19. So did S. Korea, which had far lower mortality numbers. Yes, there are a lot more angles to this, but we seem incapable of learning from the Chinese. Do we actually know if the oral-fecal route is not important? Do we know whether health care itself is not a primary vector? Do we know how minor the aerosol vector is? The Chinese and Koreans (index patient 31, super spreader) warned about asymptomatic carriers in January (later studies show 79% of infections caused by asymptomatic carriers), but many Western countries denied it. Singapore warned about the extreme transmissability via various routes. China immediately started building/dedicating facilities b/c hospitals were transmission nodes, and a third of the health care workers in Wuhan were out of commission. Interview does not mention any of this.
[4] Vaccines. This is happy talk. Is there a vaccine for HIV or SARS? No. Vaccine formulations for SARS led to ADE in cats (antigen dependant enhancement, making subsequent infection progress more catastrophically instead of less). Are there any virus diseases which we have been able to eradicate, barring small pox? Are there any vaccines against Corona viruses human or veterinarian which give more than an ephemeral protection? Do people have long-lasting antibodies to protect them against colds (Corona viruses)? No. Does everybody show strong antigen protection after recovery from Covid? No, au contraire.
[5] Did we do a good job protecting our health care and the most vulnerable? No. Having schools shut does not significantly impact ICU demand. The entire spike in ICU demand would have to come from the risk groups. But we have shut down the economy without taking appropriate steps to quarantine the most important vector (the vulnerable), which represent virtually the entire pool (>98%) of ICU demand. 40% of deaths have come from nursing homes, globally! Not counting all those who die at home (too frail to go to ICU). These places/people should have been locked down in February, with zero people entering or exiting. Pay the staff triple overtime for staying on premise (way cheaper than Tr$6 to save all the banks and hedge funds).
Moderator Response:[JH] Blatant sloganeering struck through. Sloganeering is prohibited by the SkS Comments Policy.
Please note that posting comments here at SkS is a privilege, not a right. This privilege can be rescinded if the posting individual treats adherence to the Comments Policy as optional, rather than the mandatory condition of participating in this online forum.
Please take the time to review the policy and ensure future comments are in full compliance with it. Thanks for your understanding and compliance in this matter.
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nigelj at 07:07 AM on 12 April 20202020 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #15
Thank's for the covid 19 article. It is very detailed and one of the best I've read on the issue. However this company reckons they could have a vaccine on the market by September.
One reason Germany has a reasonably low mortality rate could be because it has a high number of hospital beds and also ventilators per 1000 people. In comparison Italy has the opposite. America is somewhere in the middle. I did some googling on this and didn't keep a record of the data and sources on ventilators, but you can find numbers of hospital beds per 1000 people here.
It appears there is a philosophy in some countries of minimising numbers of hospital beds to save costs and treat as many people at home as possible. I recall this from our media some years ago. Unfortunately this has problems when you get huge surges of patients with natural disasters and pandemics.
That said, numbers of beds would be one factor of many. It appears that even ventilators arent saving some people.
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Bob Loblaw at 05:09 AM on 12 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Prove (may I call you "Prove"?:
To paraphrase something first seen in a comment over at Real Climate: the difference between Google and your local library is that one of the two is trying to make you smarter, while the other is trying to sell you $#!^. Choose carefully.
For all the amaziing information available on the Internet, you have to remember that much of it is wrong. Critical thinking is more of a need than ever before.
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prove we are smart at 19:33 PM on 11 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Sorry to butt in, but since Youtube is Google, after just watching this, should I be more concerned about bias on the internet? " Google and Amazon are now in the oil business"
https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/1/3/21030688/google-amazon-ai-oil-gas
Moderator Response:[DB] Hyperlinked URL.
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prove we are smart at 18:41 PM on 11 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
I guess here is where i should mention this, beware this morally deficient blog site. See what Wiki says-
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Public_Affairs
It appeared as a popup on Youtube-I get angry now when I read these falsehoods, how many believe this stuff? Except for a different countries name added at end of the title, there seemed many more..
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nigelj at 15:39 PM on 11 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Eclectic @28 &29, yes I thought you were talking aloud to anyone and everyone, not just me and the regulars. I do this myself at times.
And the New Zealand climate science coalition has been outsourced, after shooting themselves in their own feet. You can get the history on both on their wikipedia entry, and in more detail below. And this bit of history is an absolute gem:
theconversation.com/an-insiders-story-of-the-global-attack-on-climate-science-21972
www.stuff.co.nz/national/7634556/Climate-sceptics-fail-in-Niwa-case
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Eclectic at 13:38 PM on 11 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Nigelj , an addendum :- Yes, the climatescience.org.nz does have that fingerprint ~ a professional slickness. Now I am wondering if the scrubbing of all comments sections [rather unusual for a propaganda website] is a sign that they don't wish to deal with presumably-local people.
Drawing a long bow perhaps ~ but could this mean that the website has been outsourced to international management (Heartland, for example) ??
Once you remove local input/interaction, it would take very little effort & expense for an international player to just paste in some samples of their standard propaganda material.
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Eclectic at 13:02 PM on 11 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Nigelj , please pardon me if I have given you the impression my comments (above) were a sort of "lecture" introducing novel information to naive students. I know that you and all regular commenters here at SkS are very much aware of the common propaganda tricks used by Denialists. Rather, I was aiming to compose my thoughts into semi-formal order.
Yes, the GWPF ["sounds important"] is a sort of Heartland propaganda organization, but more of a one-man-band deriving from a wealthy Englishman (but of course gathering up a team of less-wealthy cronies ~ and some freelance denialist journos plus some "faded scientists" receiving stipend payments). When its prime funder Lord Lawson (age 88) dies, who will provide all the financing of GWPF ? Will it then fall apart gradually? In comparison, Heartland is somewhat more secure, as it has a multi-decade history of hustling from multiple American sources.
# More on your denialist climatescience.org.nz [also "sounds important & sciencey"] : I am sorry to hear that the website no longer has Comments columns. Was hoping to experience the flavor of Kiwi Denialists ~ and whether they brought a "regional" tang of madness to the standard international smorgasbord.
BTW , I did read one further article ~ the one by 80-year-old Professor Happer (co-written with his son). A very lengthy article, a huge cauldron of soup, swimming with formulae and graphs plus many irrelevancies ["plant food" . . . despotic world socialism threat, etc . . . the usual suspects . . . almost the full Gish Gallop]. SkS regulars would immediately see all the holes & errors & false logic. But a naive reader might well think : Wow this is all very impressive, here's a famous scientist who obviously knows his stuff, all this science & mathematics, and he's really intensely skeptical about all that Global Warming palaver.
Happer's "tour de force" commentary will re-confirm and re-convince the dyed-in-the-wool Denialists in New Zealand ~ but as they are the only ones likely to frequent the climatescience.org.nz website . . . then probably little harm is done to the general population.
# Nigelj , I don't intend to read the public comments attached to NZ newspapers etc. Worldwide, IMO, such publications attract vast numbers of bots & paid trolls, who flood the comments sections. No, I reckon the real essence of Denialist insane thinking is best found on Denialist websites : where they believe they are talking to "their own".
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nigelj at 07:47 AM on 11 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Eclectic @24, yes I also noticed the tricks the denialists use with the big bold headlines and the paper that sounds like a research paper, but is just an article on a website and so on. Its so much trickery its hard not to conclude its utterly premeditated and deliberate. It has the fingerprint of a Public Relations agency all over it as well, with their spin.
Some quick cursory reading about the low sunspot numbers during the little ice age shows temperatures only dropped 0.5 degree c and over a long period, to this sort of event won't change modern AGW global warming significantly, if a low sunspot period was to happen. But the denialists will never mention that of course because they only tell people what they want them to hear.
Even the name of the "global warming policy foundation" think tank is ironic because they seem to have no policy, except to do nothing about climate change if you count that as policy. But the name makes them sound non partisan and important and neutral, which of course they are not. Its like the Heartland Foundation has this warm harmless sounding title when they are really a nest of snakes promting a hard right economic agenda and climate denial, and talking more out of their posterior than their heart.
The NZ climate science coalition doesn't allow posting of comments, last time I visited a few months ago.
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michael sweet at 05:26 AM on 11 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
l Adapted,
I tried to post on WUWT a few times but it was immediately clear that no-one there cared what the peer reviewed literature said. I was surprised when someone posted that I was a regular poster at SkS (of course that was true but I didn't think they read here).
I taught upper level High School chemistry students for 15 years (I retired two years ago). When I started around 2005, every class had at least three rabid deniers in it. By 2015 there were virtually no rabid deniers (students often do not like to argue with a teacher so some deniers might have been present and chose not to engage). There were still a few students who would question the science but not many, and they did not accuse scientists of lying. The number of students who were concerned increased strongly.
I would have the students write a report on the NSIDC yearly summary. Many expressed surprise at how much temperature had changed. Occasionally I would have a student twice and they would express surprise the second time they wrote their summary.
I think a lot of the deniers on Youtube are paid. Unfortunately, since they post so much it influences some people.
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Mal Adapted at 03:04 AM on 11 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Eclectic @20, thanks for your observations of WUWT. Like nigelj, I made a couple of visits way back when, and have avoided it ever since. Most of my non-blog engagement with deniers is in comments to climate-related articles at NYTimes.com. Lately, to be sure, there's been little enough climate-related content or comment on nytimes.com, with the overwhelming focus on the pandemic.
For whatever reason, in the last few years I've noticed fewer of the stubborn, cocky denialists that plagued NYT comment threads earlier this century, and perhaps fewer random drivebys. Editorially, too, the Gray Lady has abandoned false balance. Aside from climate-realist blogs, I'm innocent of social media however, so presumably much public climate-science denial passes me by. And there's no doubt that skilled professional disinformers are still flooding the public sphere, if not the NYT, with pernicious nonsense paid for by fossil-fuel capitalists.
Sigh. Under the Governor's stay-home order in my vote-by-mail state, I await this year's presidential election with mixed hope and apprehension. I wish good health to you all.
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Eclectic at 23:51 PM on 10 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Thanks Nigelj , yes I do read Realclimate from time to time (and note your presence there too ).
Now I am reporting back after reading the first article listed on Page One of climatescience.org.nz
# It is a fine example of one style of Denialist propaganda.
The article is titled, in very large blue letters in upper case :- [ * Moderators please excuse my use of upper case for this exact quote] :-
" DROP IN NUMBER OF SUNSPOTS SIGNALS IMMINENCE OF A COOLER WORLD "
~ this is followed by a single paragraph in small font, commencing:
" An important new paper by Dr David Whitehouse for the Global Warming Policy Foundation reveals that 2019 was mostly without sunspots. ... [and finishing:] This paper discusses some of these issues." With LINK to the GWPF important new paper .
Note the typical Denialist technique:
(A) The huge headline indicating Imminence of a Cooler World ( i.e. that the mainstream scientists are wrong about ongoing global warming)
(B) An entirely unrigorous newspaper-supplement-like report (by Dr Whitehouse) is implied to be a respectable scientific paper. It is no such thing.
# The editor of this website knows that many of his Denialist clientele will not bother to read past the headline, and they will proceed elsewhere holding the comforting knowledge that the planet is about to enter a cooling phase.
And that those who do actually read the single paragraph, also will proceed elsewhere, holding that same "Cooling" impression.
(C) Those who do follow the link, are met with a multi-page essay headed by beautiful huge photos & artistic illustrations of close-up views of the sun (all looking a bit National Geographic sciencey). Followed by 8 pages (plus sciencey reference list) of Whitehouse's text ~ discursively discussing cherry-picked famine in 17th Century France; horrible child mortality in Europe during the Little Ice Age; dire comments from a sermon by a contemporary English preacher . . . and various other irrelevancies including historical aspects of sunspot observations.
In the end, Whitehouse has given no quantification of the implied Grand Solar Minimum which is "imminently" about to strike us. Indeed, regarding future climate, he hasn't really said anything at all. His "important new paper" is lurid but vacuous commentary.
As such, it all comes as no surprise to regular readers of SkS.
Nigelj , I fear that the rest of the NZ website's headlines probably have a similar modus operandi. Is that correct? (And does that website have comments columns?)
I am very much reminded of that propagandist, the marvellous Lord Monckton who boasted that 400 scientific papers demonstrated the worldwide nature and much-higher-than-today warmth of the Medieval Warm Period. When science-journalist Peter Hadfield (Potholer54) challenged him for the list, Monckton blandly supplied the references [actually a list by Dr Idso]. Hadfield said that he carefully studied the first 6 papers on the list, and found none of them supported Monckton's MWP claims. So no point reading further down the list. (Monckton is well known for his bold mendacities/errors.)
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michael sweet at 22:28 PM on 10 April 2020Deep emissions cuts this decade could prevent ‘abrupt ecological collapse’
The results of this study suggest that fast action will help a lot compared to BAU. That is good news.
Last August I was able to log a few SCUBA dives on the North side of Cuba and at Cozumel. These are reputed to be among the best dive locations in the world. In both locations over 90% of the coral was dead. In Cozumel they closed the main wall to diving in hopes it would recover. The surrounding areas were very dead. There was also little fish life considering that Cozumel banned all fishing decades ago.
It was recently reported in the Smithsonian Magazine that the Great Barrier Reef is facing its most widespread bleaching event ever, the third in 5 years.
Perhaps coral reefs are the first to go and other locations will not be as bad. I noticed that North Cuba and Cozumel are in the few areas hit hard in the RCP 2.6 graph in the OP.
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nigelj at 16:54 PM on 10 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Eclectic @22, for gems of imaginative denialist madness try the crank case and bore hole at realclimate.org. Or even their main pages comments section, for example comments by Victor and Ken Maynard.
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Eclectic at 14:17 PM on 10 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Nigelj , thanks for the link (climatescience.org.nz ~ a marvellous example of unintended irony in title, as is often the case for science-denier websites).
Although we don't live in Venice, this 2020 is a sort of Year of the Cholera . . . so I shall certainly take time to look through some of that website, for entertainment.
A quick glance at its First Page listed articles does appear depressingly banal for denialism. I see that the very-emeritus Professor Happer gets a mention. And kind of disappointing there's no prominent mention of Feynman or Galileo (those names are usually a nice marker for the presence of scientific-pretentiousness in denialism sites).
Here's hoping there are some unusual gems of madness to be found there. Sadly, all too many such science-denier sites are filled with nothing but ordinary "cut glass" madness . . . so, rather boring for the gem fossicker.
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nigelj at 13:17 PM on 10 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Eclectic @20, well I'm stuck at home in covid 19 lock down of severe proportions, so I have a bit of time to read long screeds and respond. You say denialists dont use their intelligence I say its deliberate stupidity, perhaps these are different sides of the same coin. And thanks for your screed its definitely of interest.
I've only visted WUWT about 5 times, and it was an awful experience so that was enough. I do still like to see both sides of the climate issue, but I tend do do it on our local denialist website that I linked above.
Several posts in the comments section of WUWT comments section were similar, in that were very technical and definitely from people with a good science education, and quite correct looking at the start, although not terribly germane, then you got to the last paragraph which was usually the "punch line" and it invariably had a huge blunder that a secondary school student should be able to see, and it null and voided all their previous points. Its mystifying how someone can be so technically well versed and then make such a huge obvious blunder. Perhaps this is them doing your "suppressing seeing the bleeding obvious", and just why they do this is not clear but its certainly a notable phenomenon.
The denialists so often have extreme political views that one suspects this is the underlying reason they "just dont see" plus perhaps some people are psychologically hard wired not to see. Political tribalism and ideologies can become fervent and extreme and could switch off part of the brains logical centre without the person even knowing. As a result they spout rubbish absolutely convinced they are right.
My politics is a bit tepid and centrist so probably doesn't strongly influence my evaluation of science in that way, at a guess. But those on the right seem "just not to see" with alarming frequency.
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David B. Benson at 13:10 PM on 10 April 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
The site is moderated.
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David B. Benson at 12:55 PM on 10 April 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
And another error: the BNC Discussion Forum is moderated. Post facto, same as here.
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Eclectic at 12:32 PM on 10 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Since the SkS scene is a bit quiet at the moment (a covid-19 effect?) , I take the liberty of doing some more waffling about the notorious WUWT website. So my apologies for this long post.
WUWT claims to be the world's "most viewed site" for global warming and climate change ~ and I have seen no evidence disproving WUWT 's possession of the crown for most popular Climate Denial echo-chamber website status.
As mentioned above, WUWT has a rapid churn of headlines to keep its fans interested & clicking-on frequently. Proprietor Anthony Watts claims WUWT receives no subsidy from the fossil fuel industries ~ I don't know if this was so in its early days, but it could well be so nowadays. (There are of course many ways in which secret sponsors can covertly channel funds indirectly to WUWT or associated entities . . . but that's not immediately relevant to the site's anti-science activities.) Judging by the large range of of on-line advertising at the WUWT site, it seems there is no shortage of dollar income ~ and it also suggests that the on-line advertising agencies have examined & confirmed a high rate of traffic going to the website.
Nigelj and OPOF ~ my earlier wording that many of the regular WUWT commenters "are thick as two short planks" . . . was a colloquialism, and was not meaning that Denialists are of lower IQ than the general population. AFAIK, there is no evidence that Denialists have an average IQ lower than logical thinkers have. Yes, most of the WUWT commenters are "pretty average" [another colloquialism!]. But as always ~ it is not whether you are intelligent but whether you actually use the intelligence you have.
And there are indeed [a few] highly intelligent commenters at WUWT. My favorite is Willis Eschenbach. Very intelligent, and he has a sense of humor I like . . . but despite his analytical skills, he nevertheless has a "Dark Side" twist in his psyche ~ such that he always fails in the end to reach the destination of logical synthesis of the full context of the climate issue. I reckon he has a combination of Motivated Reasoning and Doublethink. Like so many (all?) Denialists, he somehow manages ultimately to suppress seeing the Bleeding Obvious.
# There are certain neurological conditions [often, from stroke] where the brain fails to identify the human face, or other objects. Climate Denialists achieve that status, sometimes wilfully perhaps . . . but eventually it becomes an automatic mental habit to "not see" what their emotions don't want to see.
Nigelj , as I mentioned earlier, it surely must be that the WUWT Moderators allow Nick Stokes as a token example of their "non-discrimination" policy. But there is yet another example ~ Steven Mosher. Mosher does not come from the strong scientific background of Stokes . . . but over the years he has gained his stripes as a scientist (in a de-facto manner). IIRC, Mosher was at first rather climate-skeptical, and joined the original BEST project in a sort of literary capacity. And when the BEST project eventually confirmed the mainstream climate science data, he accordingly "converted" to become a mainstreamer.
As a convert from "skepticism" , Mosher is loathed and hated by the bulk of WUWT commenters. Mosher's style is usually not to go into details on how the OP or fellow commenters have messed up or been stupid . . . but he more often issues a one-liner to point out an error, or he merely says [in effect] : "Sigh. You've gotten it wrong again." Unsurprisingly, this enrages many of the Denialists.
Stokes is hated too, and is hated also because he is unfailingly correct , and the Denialists can find no chinks in his scientific armor ~ not that the Denialists at WUWT would ever change their viewpoint merely because someone publicly proves them wrong !
In the past, WUWT had a system where registered commenters could vote a Like or a Dislike to any post in the Comments column. Run-of-the -mill Deniaist comments sometimes garnered one or two or a handful of Likes. But I always found it amusing to see how every comment by Stokes or Mosher was immediately garnering 20 - 50 Dislikes ! (In a way, it's pity this Like/Dislike barometer got scrubbed.)
# Over my years of observation, there have not really been any other "anti-Denialists" to stay the course in the hostile environment at the WUWT comments columns. Some appear for a little while, then disappear ~ mostly by being censored I think (but doubtless, a few have become tired & disgusted). Yet I also detect a few who (after banning) resurrect themselves under a new pseudonym. However, in recent months WUWT has introduced a new stricter regime of registration to make resurrection far more difficult. ( It also raises your risk of being doxxed.)
And no, I myself don't post at WUWT. The denizens there are largely rabid political ultra-extremists, quite uncharitable to humanity as a whole. There are also some (apolitical or non-partisan) scientific crackpots. But all are hard-core deniers of climate science, and they show zero inclination to become sane.
# If you examine the bulk of WUWT posted articles, you see a strong undercurrent of petulant and childish propaganda slant. Clearly WUWT is essentially aiming at the Lowest Common Denominator of everyday Denialists. (Some Denialist websites exist, which are slightly more high-brow e.g. Judith Curry's and Roy Spencer's .) But for rampant psychopathology, my "vote" goes to WUWT.
My apologies once again for the long post. I hope readers have found elements informative and/or entertaining.
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David B. Benson at 10:28 AM on 10 April 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
It is time to move beyond the linear no-threshold theory ...
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David B. Benson at 10:25 AM on 10 April 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
The BEIR VII Executive Summary is the only part with the serious statistical error which is used to support LNT. The body of the report states that there is no evidence of the effects of low-level ionizing radiation.
I will attempt to send one of the supporting links from my prior, but 29 entry, not 100+, link to BNC Discussion Forum. It will, I hope, be in the following message.
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michael sweet at 09:04 AM on 10 April 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
David Benson:
The BIER VII report was comissoned by the National Academy of Science to provide a summary of current scientific consensus. A group of experts in the field reviewed all the recent data. They concluded that LRNT is strongly supported by the data. Linking to a 100+ response list on a blog is not a refutation of a NAS scientific consensus report. Please link to the relevant comments instead of making us read all the chaff on your unmoderated site.
The Executive summary contains a summary of the information in the report. Even if there was a minor error in the Executive summary that would not invalidate the netire consensus of experts.
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David B. Benson at 07:05 AM on 10 April 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
Possibly this works.
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David B. Benson at 07:02 AM on 10 April 2020Is Nuclear Energy the Answer?
With regard to the biological effects of low-level ionizing radia9tion, there continues to be the mistake of using LNT, the Linear No Threshold assumption of the effects. LNT is simply wrong. Towards the end of the BNC Discussion Forum thread on Wade Allison ' "Radiation and Reason", there are many links to the recent, largely peer-reviewed, literature. Unfortunately I don't know how to provide a link here as the usual copy & paste doesn't work for me.
Here I will just point out that the Executive Summary of BEIR VII, the latest NRC supported study of the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation, contains a serious misapplication of Pierson-Nyman style statistical inference. This sets up the hypothesis to beat as the so-called null hypothesis. BEIR VII uses LNT as the null hypothesis. For lymphoma the nonlinear hypothesis beats LNT but not for solid cancers. The authors of the Executive Summary thereby make the error of concluding that LNT is the best model.
But it is easy to see that when placing the nonlinear hypothesis as the null hypothesis LNT cannot beat it. A standoff.
The better statistical method is to compute the Bayes factor of the two hypotheses to discover that the preponderance of the evidence favors the nonlinear hypothesis.
Unfortunately the federal regulatory agencies do not appear to be able to move away from LNT and so large sums are simply wasted and possibly public health is lessened.
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nigelj at 06:00 AM on 10 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Came across this litle gem on debating tactics: The Argument Pyramid.
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:10 AM on 9 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
I commented on the recent "A History of FLICC:..." post with what I think accurately describes Deniers (of any improved awareness or better understanding):
- People who are less aware, with a related lack of understanding, who are unwilling to learn - including people who have a lack of interest in learning - especially people who sense that learning would require them to change their mind about something they have developed a liking for.
Everyone else, including the most knowledgeable of experts, are:
- People who are less aware, with a related lack of understanding, who are interested and willing to learn.
Deniers are not Dumb or Incapable of learning. They lack an interest in learning, maybe because there is so much they learned that would have to be corrected that they are happier to carry on believing what they developed a liking for - no amount of effort to increase awareness or improve understanding will make much of a dent in those types of made-up minds.
Tragically for the future of humanity there is a lot of developed Liking that needs to be corrected but resists being corrected because the corrections would be detrimental to many developed Impressions of Superiority Relative to Others. Massive denial resistance easily Drummed up by misleading marketing appeals to people willing to be easily impressed by it is to be expected.
Sites like WUWT and Dr. Roy Spencer's are like Pied Pipers for people desiring to be misled, not wanting to learn how to be helpful, liking excuses for being harmful. As are all the misleading YouTube bits that this OP is concerned about.
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MA Rodger at 06:39 AM on 9 April 2020Could the Atlantic Overturning Circulation ‘shut down’?
william @2,
The SLR on the US East coast appears more often in the literature. The SLR on the West coast of Europe has been seen in models. See Kuhlbrodt et al (2009) 'An Integrated Assessment of changesin the thermohaline circulation' which is likely the source of the 50cm figure.
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nigelj at 06:06 AM on 9 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Eclectic @16, the other reason WUWT keep N Stokes on is probably so they can't be accused of censorship and being anti free speech. As long as they have one regular warmist they can maintain their charade of free speech.
Psychopaths are self centred and dont like rules, so they are going to be annoyed with the whole climate change mitigation thing, so they will be attracted to the other side. Psychopaths are intensely dishonest so this explains their ridiculous and contradictory denialist rhetoric. They just don't care, as long as they think they can fool people, and they have a captive audience that is easily fooled.
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william5331 at 05:30 AM on 9 April 2020Could the Atlantic Overturning Circulation ‘shut down’?
Not mentioned in the article on the destabilization of the WAIS is the effect of the 'ice pump'.
https://mtkass.blogspot.com/2017/11/the-ice-pump.html
Moderator Response:[DB] Self-promotional advertising snipped.
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william5331 at 05:11 AM on 9 April 2020Could the Atlantic Overturning Circulation ‘shut down’?
No mention is made of why sea level would rise '50cm around the Atlantic basin' if AMOC shut down. Am I correct in assuming this is due to Coriolis no longer trying to pull the water away from the Atlantic coast of America. If so, wouldn't this effect only be seen on the East Coast of North America and not on the west coast of Europe. In fact, there might be a slight decrease in sea level along the West Coast of Europe as water is released to rise along the Eastern Seaboard of the USA and Canada.
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Eclectic at 23:08 PM on 8 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
MA Rodger , the marvellous WUWT that you call rogue planetoid, is not a planet nor a planetoid. It is more of a moon or lunar body, orbiting the real universe yet not truly part of it. Yet it draws sustenance from the real universe, just as a tick draws sustenance from its unwilling host. (You can see that I am laboring to get lunar & tick into the same sentence, to describe WUWT . . . but sadly the intended pun is an uphill labor, and I had better retract it, and move on.)
For my sins (and for the pleasure of Schadenfreude ) and for my education in the field of psychopathology I am often reading parts of the comments columns at WUWT. (Of the lead articles there, I would say that 80% of them are not worth reading or maybe just worth a very high-speed skim.) But the comments columns are a goldmine of mental pathology.
Not every commenter there is intellectually and/or morally insane. There are a few notable exceptions ~ pre-eminent is Nick Stokes, who is always worth reading. Nick is a very well-informed scientific thinker who is regularly (and blandly) correcting the the usual errors & inanities of the run-of-the-mill commenters at WUWT. He is balanced and scientifically accurate . . . in short, he is the complete opposite of the typical on-line Denialist. And they hate him for it, and bay for his blood. Most non-denialists are quickly booted out by the website proprietor (Mr Anthony Watts) and his Moderators. Yet Nick Stokes endures, year after year (and AFAICT he is unfailing correct in his observations). I am sure Anthony Watts keeps tolerating Nick Stokes ~ partly as a demonstration of the [cough] civilized & open-minded nature of the WUWT website . . . as a token "contrarian" [i.e. mainstream scientist] . . . and possibly also as a piece of raw meat to keep inflaming the rabid dogs who frequent the WUWT columns (and who keep the website hit-rate high, for the benefit of the routine on-line advertisers).
And yes, just recently WUWT has been serving up quite a bit of Covid-19 headlines ~ that's out of the ordinary for the site, but surely no worse than all other media outlets at present. The usual WUWT articles are sourly scoffing or sneering [e.g. anti-Thunberg] or generally anti-renewables . . . spiced up with the occasional mathematical clangers from Christopher Monckton as he comes up with his bi-annual mathturbational "proofs" that the Equilibrium Climate Sensitivity is only 1.1 degrees or 0.5 degrees or whatever (or that the scientific Consensus was not 97% but actually 33% or 4% or whatever). And sometimes other scientific Mc Experts demonstrate (in completely different & incompatible ways) how the mainstream scientists are all wrong about climate.
WUWT puts up several new headlines each day. It's important to keep the flock supplied with fresh clickbait. And I must admit they occasionally have a brief but interesting article of general interest, including astronomy news. After all, this is a serious science-based website !
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MA Rodger at 19:45 PM on 8 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Eclectic @13,
Your mention of that rogue planetoid Wattsupia prompted me to give the place a quick fly-by. Strangely for a place that brands itself as being "The world's most viewed site on global warming and climate change," there aren't many of their grand proclamations nailed up there at the moment that are actually "on global warming and climate change." The flavour of the place is far more Covid-19 with actual AGW coverage presently reduced to a single posting (about modelling black carbon which apparently, with the publication of Fierce et al (2020), can be seen on Wattsupia as showing "Once again, “climate science” fails the tenets of basic science").
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nigelj at 17:26 PM on 8 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Eclectic @13, you are definitely not wrong. I see the same parade of denialist charcters in our media and comments pages and on our own climate denial website here, although I rarely visit it these days. Same old same old.
And talking about conspiracy theories and thick as two short planks this article on covid 19 is a perfect example. But I still maintain much of the climate denialism is in the deliberate stupidity department and lack of wisdom and objectivity, rather than a low IQ or bad education as such.
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Eclectic at 13:55 PM on 8 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
Nigelj ,
a large part of that "short-term" thinking is just plain selfishness.
In my travels in the land of WattsUpWithThat website, I see many commenters who are thick as two short planks ~ and who are still today in full denial of any planetary warming, and are in full denial of the GreenHouse Effect and especially the role of CO2. But also a smaller number of reasonably intelligent commenters too (of whom only some are in denial about CO2).
But once you get past the "total denial of AGW" crowd, you also find the partial deniers : the lukewarmers who assert the minimal & severely-restricted amount of current Global Warming. Or others who flip over entirely and assert that the present & future warming can only be a blessing for humanity (as in the allegedly halcyon days of the Roman Warm Period and the MWP). #More CO2 and CO2 plant food please!
Now, what is behind these unsupported, unscientific views? Some of it is sheer "tribal thinking" ~ people who are angry with our changing social world, and who wish to revert to an earlier golden age (in their eyes) of perhaps half a century ago. And the more intelligent, do indulge in all sorts of convoluted Motivated Reasoning to negate the scientific evidence & scientific assessments.
And then there are the paranoid ~ the Conspiracy Theorists holding various insane views about all the scientists worldwide being in a century long plot to overthrow Sacred Free-Market Capitalism and install World Communism & an oppressive freedom-destroying undemocratic oligarchy. The scientists all being "useful idiots" or willing tools of Mr Soros et alia.
Scratch deeper ~ and you find Money & Selfishness. Bigger government must surely mean bigger taxing of my money . . . and a World (Socialist) Government will surely mean redistribution of my money to the undeserving poor of (my) America, and even worse, the redistribution of my money to Third World countries (or any country which isn't the USA).
So in that way, it comes back to : money & selfishness. Which are just two sides of the one coin.
Nature or Nurture as the cause of selfishness? The larger proportion of such selfishness (expressed as climate denialism) in Americans, is unlikely to be simply genetic traits of personality. Surely culture & upbringing must be a component : possibly aided (at the local national level) by much much more Oil Industry propaganda along with the ever-present modern enhanced Tribalism.
From what I can see in the WUWT comments sections, with all their anger & resentments about climate science [presumably just the visible tip of some larger unknowable iceberg] . . . it is especially the redistribution threat which is getting up the nose of the middle class right-wing in the USA. A selfish group, comprising (at an educated guess) about 15% of the population ~ plus some hangers-on who are just going along with the Tribal slogans.
And yet, against that [and as we see in today's Coronavirus emergency] there are many others who are acting nobly & charitably & unselfishly to help their fellow citizens & the community generally. Three cheers for them!
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SirCharles at 09:07 AM on 8 April 2020Could the Atlantic Overturning Circulation ‘shut down’?
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nigelj at 07:13 AM on 8 April 2020YouTube's Climate Denial Problem
factotum @10, interesting article. Of course it depends how you define "dumb". Clearly many deniers are quite intelligent as MAR points out. But perhaps we can say the denialists are deliberately dumb in the way they reject science and even reality. Then its a question of why do they do this? I would say its because they feel threatened by the effects of climate mitigation in case it restricts their freedoms and short term profit making, just read their comments and its kind of obvious.
And its fair to say making money is a survivalist thing, but its a near term survivalism focused on immediate profits and freedoms that risks longer term obliteration even of their lives. It's akin to the smoker needing their tobacco hit, furious about big governmnet taxing tobacco, very concerned about personal freedoms,and suspicious of the science even although the habit could kill them. So are they dumb in an evolutionary sense? Sure looks like it. Yet one can also see some level of sense in their concerns and suspicions.
The question is then why dont the denialists take a wider view of what climate change might do to them further down the road, and why don't they seem to care very much about the effects of climate change on "others"? Perhaps its because thats the way people are, in that evolution has lead to groups of people with different brain structures some very focused on the here and now, some of whom take a longer view. There is in fact published research suggesting this easily enough googled.
Both long term and short term views are self evidently useful in a survivalist sense, but too much focus just on the immediate here and now can be suicidal, so we have to try to persauade people to look more broadly and longer term, even although changing their innate mode of thinking is hard work. We really have no alternative.
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