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nigelj at 12:18 PM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
I just want to clarify I think education about science, and climate science and climate denialist myths and foolishness is important, but simply everyone having a Bacheor of Science degree probably won't change every climate sceptics mind. At least half of the issue has become political / ideological / tribal, and slippery slopes indeed. Download the song Money by Pink Floyd.
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nigelj at 11:56 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Elizabeth Gordon-Mills @29, I agree there are a range of reasons for climate denialism, although I think fear is a constant factor through many of them. It is just incredibly obvious.
Science knowledge isn't great, but I dont know that poor science knowledge is a basic cause of climate denialism. I'm not sure better education would change peoples views much on climate issues. Its become political.
The denialists probably accept einsteins theories but not climate science, so go figure.
Most people get taught the basics of science, but its a question of whether they trust this way of thinking about the world. America is a very politically driven, and strongly religious nation, and this may have an effect on thinking.
However more time should be devoted to science in schools.
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Mal Adapted at 11:44 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Elizabeth Gordon-Mills:
There is probably a mix of reasons why seemingly intelligent and well (?) educated people are often vehement deniers.
WRT AGW-deniers including lack-, luke- and luckwarmers, the simplest explanation is unwillingness to pay their marginal climate change cost of transferring fossil carbon from geologic sequestration to the climatically active pool. They'd rather just keep on making other people pay them.
They're afraid a carbon tax that internalizes a fraction of their future marginal cost, requiring them to pay a few bucks more for a tankful of gasoline, is on a slippery slope to forcing them to pay for the accumulated socialized cost of their entire lives and allow illegal immigrants' kids to attend school with theirs, or something.
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nigelj at 11:16 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Thoughts @28,
There are probably a small number of climate sceptics who just have doubts about the science, and no other real motives, sort of contararians, but they are probably in a minority.
But I think the main reason for scepticism relates to various fears and vested interests and ideological issues.
Consider that people working in the fossil fuel industry are more sceptical than average about climate science, as in this peer reviewed study. It's hard to believe fears about job security are not a factor that leads to denial of the science.
uni.no/media/manual_upload/339_wp_3_2014__tvinnereim.pdf
Libertarians and fiscal conservatives are also more sceptical than average in various polls. They likely see government becoming too involved, and this could lead to denial about the science. Its hard to see any other reason why they would be over represented. Theres no evidence they have a superior knowledge of the science.
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ubrew12 at 10:48 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
At least in America, there's a culture divide as strong as any seen since the Civil War, and largely involving the same protagonists (one could even argue over the same issue: whether all people are created equal). Fossil money just attached AGW to that divide and it became part of people's cultural identity. My sister's an Evangelical Christian. It's not that she doesn't think, in her heart of hearts, that fossil CO2 is causing the current warming. It's that she's being told that until abortion is overturned, all other issues (even a sensible person's 'issues' with the current American President), take a backseat. So you get this situation, in Red State America, where they are telling you to give up your 'Global Warming Religion' and at the same time building up renewable power as quick as can be. That way they can serve the pulpit on Sunday and the planet the rest of the week.
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Elizabeth Gordon-Mills at 10:00 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
There is probably a mix of reasons why seemingly intelligent and well (?) educated people are often vehement deniers. My theory is that is it largely due to the appalling standards of science knowledge in the population, particularly so in the USA. The lay public is so illiterate about science and how it works that they fall prey to the misinformation put out by deniers. They will trot out all the old shibboleths which have been answered time and time again, but this hasn't got through to the general public.
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thoughts at 08:56 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Thank you for well-considered responses here. They are helpful. My point was not to bring up all sorts of questions; my point was to rebut the opinion that started this thread: the opinion that "deniers" are motivated by fear or self-interest. I intended here to show that "deniers" can be motivated by reason, by commonsense, and by wanting evidence before they believe what they are told. I do not think it is productive to label those who question as "deniers", or to suggest that they motivated by fear and self-interest. Listening and responding to questions is probably productive. (I have a lot of reading to do before I get this!)
Moderator Response:[PS] Abraham is using the word "denier" for those who are denying evidence which is the opposite from reason. True skeptics are not deniers. Pseudo-skeptics are skeptical about what is incompatible with their ideology and not remotely skeptical about any sort of fantasy that supports it.
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Doug_C at 08:50 AM on 19 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
It's amazing the difference just a slight rise in temperature has in the wildfire situation here. The last few days have been a bit cooler with less winds and the wildfire threat has stabilized in many places. There are still over 37,000 people who have been evacuated and are waiting for conditions to improve greatly before they can return home... or rebuild for those who have lost their homes.
BC has been pushed to the limit and is asking for international support, 50 fire fighters have arrived from Australia which is greatly appreciated. They give some of our crews a chance to rest and regroup.
As this becomes the norm in the coming years there are going to have to be new measures taken in regions like western North America and many other places to deal with the new risks. Australia is another place that faces this challenge. International cooperation and sharing of resoures may be one method, I'm sure there are BC crews who would be willing to return the favour.
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Jim Eager at 08:45 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
@19: "Many do not see evidence for that “fact”.
Then they either aren’t looking or they are in outright denial of labratory experiments that demonstrate the fact.
For example, in this one Dr Iain Stewart shows very clearly how effective an IR absorber CO2 is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeYfl45X1wo
The IR energy from the flame is almost totally absorbed by the CO2 in the tube. What, exactly, do you think happens to the temperature of the gas in the tube after it absorbs that energy? Conservation of energy says that it can not simply disappear, it has to be converted into another form.@19: “I believe that CO2 continues to follow temperature (by about 2oo years) until they both reach a peak, when CO2 continues to follow temperature downwards.”
Yes, in the ice core record it does, in fact the lag was more like 700-900 years, which is the length of time it takes for the full volume of earth’s oceans to respond to the inital warming. Again, it is orbitally driven changes in isolation distribution and timing that peak first and then reverse trend toward cooling. Therefore we expect CO2 to reverse after insolation does, since in this case it is acting as a feedback to the changes in insolation, not acting as the intial driver of those changes.
For more see the basic and itermediat responses to the “CO2 lags temperature" argument here
https://skepticalscience.com/co2-lags-temperature.htm@19: "and other factors we do not yet understand.”
So, you think that there is some mysterious climate forcing or source of CO2 that we don’t yet know about or understand, yet you outright reject a known and very well documanted source of CO2 (the burning of fossil carbon on a massive scale) and a totally natural forcing that we do know about and have known about for over 150 years? That is exactly the sort of magical thinking that science was invented to counter.
@19: "Is this a "belief", or evidence based?”
It is entirely evidence based. Belief has nothing what so ever to do with it, unless you count a belief in science to objectively observe and describe reality. See above for one example, among many, many others.
@19: "I see that records show that atmospheric CO2 lags global temperatures”
You are repeating yourself, but I also see that you are only looking at the ice core record, which only covers the last 750,000 years or so, during a period when we know that CO2 was not the initial forcing. Earth’s history is a lot longer than 750,000 years. Pseudoskeptics like to point out that earth's temperature has been warmer in the past. Indeed, much warmer. There have been several episodes during which an initial rapid but entirely natural elevation of CO2 in the atmosphere was the driver of global warming. The most recent was the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) of around 55.5 million years ago, when a massive injection of CO2 over the relativly short geologic span of 20,000 years forced temperature up by around 5C (9F), about the same difference between the last glaciation of North America and today. After the peak warming of the Eocene we then see an example of the reverse: a long, slow decline of atmospheric CO2 due to accelerated rock weathering as the Himalaya and Tibetan plateau were forced upward, forcing down temperature far enough for Antractica to permanently glaciate.
Now here’s another fact for you: we are currently injecting CO2 into the atmosphere much faster than nature did when it created the PETM.
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nigelj at 07:49 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Mike Evershed @16
You are sceptical about the consensus. Well at least 5 studies show theres a 90-97% consensus that we are altering the climate, by Doran, Cooke etc. This is conclusive that a very large majority of climate scientists think we are altering the climate. No poll has found otherwise, and maybe think about that.
You appear to also think the consensus is politically motivated, but you provide no evidence. Its just a poll of scientific opinion.
The word denialism is not evidence of political motivation and not really directly related to a poll on consensus issues. (Although I personally don't like the word, so partly agree with you its not a great word).
I want governments to look at consensus positions, always. They may not ultimately all be correct, but it's the only sane choice. Listening to the eccentrics is no basis for public policy.
Remember the small number of dissenting climate scientists are not terribly convincing. Many are funded by the fossil fuel lobby, and many have quite extreme ideological leanings.
Moderator Response:[PS] Mike does not appear to doubt that consensus exists. He seems to think that any scientific consensus is likely to be wrong and that policy should not be guided by it.
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One Planet Only Forever at 07:27 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
thoughts,
Spend some more time reviewing and understanding the information on the NOAA site linked in my comment.
As a minimum, look to the CO2 history movie. Check the CO2 records for the CO2 response you believe should happen after the Little Ice Age. Note that the more recent CO2 values go well beyond a response post-Little Ice Age (which would be a recovery to levels pre-Little Ice Age) and their timing and rate correlate well with increased human deforestation and fossil fuel burning.
There is a lot more information presented on the NOAA site that can help you better understand what is going on.
Someone has tempted you with a false claim, but you can learn to discredit and ignore them.
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nigelj at 07:10 AM on 19 July 2017Is energy 'dominance' the right goal for US policy?
The "energy independence" thinking is understandable, but it seems like a very inward looking, fortress mentality that has a lot of problems as well.The whole idea does indeed erode the whole idea of free markets and trade in general, and the benefits this brings. It assumes that trade is high risk and highly unreliable, but that really isn't the case in the main historically. There was admittedly the1970s opec oil crisis, but you can't let your thinking be ruled forever by that sort of thing, that was very temporary anyway.
The only real argument is that energy is critical to national self defence, but America could form trade alliances critical to the military with friendly countries or a wide diversity of countries, rather than trying for total independence, which is near impossible anyway.
It also begs the question why stop with energy independence, and not other products? Where do you draw the line?
Energy independence and national planning of this is also hypocritical, given America preaches to the world about free markets, small government and capitalism.
"Energy dominance" is just wishfull thinking. America is no longer big enough to dominate energy and other areas, as other countries and alliances have become huge. America has many hugely good qualities and can lead in other more enlightened ways.
America is hardly likely to dominate coal markets, and the whole coal market is stagnant with no furure. Global production has stalled and numbers of new mines has dropped considerably. What use is dominating that sort of market? What is the purpose other than just an empty, symbolic power play?
Here we have America and Britian turning inwards and backwards to the past. It looks like fear. Virtually every other country is embracing some form of liberalism, free trade and globalisation, not without problems, but that is the direction things are going in, and it looks inevitable.
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thoughts at 06:08 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
One Planet Only Forever -Thank you for your thorough and kind response. I understand the feedback mechanisms. But one part of your explanation leaves me puzzled still:
-Today what is seen is that CO2 levels are dramatically increasing. (NOAA provides lots of helpful information here) The only explanation for the rapid recent increase (since the mid-1800s) is human activity, particularly the unsustainable burning up of buried ancient hydrocarbons.
I did not think that the only explanation for the current rise in CO2 was man's burning of fossil fuels. My understanding was that for the past couple of hundred years we have been coming out of the "Little Ice Age". Given that it takes the oceans a couple of hundred years to respond to an initial rapid increase in temperature with an increased output of CO2, that inititial rapid temperature rise out of an Ice Age would seem to be an explanation for the current rapid increase in atmospheric CO2 . Is this incorrect?
Moderator Response:[PS] Many misconceptions here. For the "coming out of little ice age", see here and here. For idea that CO2 is coming from oceans(!!) see here. You cannot claim CO2 is coming from oceans at the same time as CO2 content of ocean is increasing, and the isotope evidence is the smoking gun. (Not to mention that we know how much FF we have burned..). I strongly suggest you use the "Arguments" button on top left and check your myths.
[TD] CO2 does not outgas from the oceans just because the temperature increases. CO2 constantly goes both in and out of the oceans. The net of those two opposite flows depends on the ocean temperature, the partial pressure of CO2 in the air, and the ocean chemistry (sort of the ocean equivalent of the partial pressure of CO2). When the partial pressure of CO2 in the atmosphere increases quicker than the ocean's temperature increases, and/or when the surface water does not mix fast enough with deeper water to reduce the "partial pressure" of CO2 in the surface water, then the net effect is oceans continuing to absorb CO2. See "Why Ocean Heat Can't Drive Climate Change, Only Chase It." Then see "How Do Human CO2 Emissions Compare to Natural CO2 Emissions?" In each of those posts, after you read the Basic tabbed panes, read the other tabbed panes.
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Tom Dayton at 05:16 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Mike Evershed: Your response to me after your first sentence was not in fact a response, but a change of topic. Your original comment was "in fact the stronger the consensus the harder we should question the hypothesis, and the more open we should be to challenges to it." I merely extrapolated your comment, and your response was merely to contradict your original comment and then attempt to shift attention away.
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One Planet Only Forever at 05:04 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
thoughts,
If you understand that 'one thing can lead to another', feedback behaviour, this may answer your question.
The warming of the planet for reasons other than human impacts is all that is shown in the history of the planet, except for the most recent times. Human activity has been understood to have severe regional impacts. We have recently had the collective global human impacts, primarily due to the impacts of the highest per-capita impacting people, become large enough to be recognized as severe global impacts.
When those other non-human reasons caused temperatures to rise there was often an increase in life activity on the planet. That added life activity resulted in more CO2 in the atmosphere which, because CO2 is a GHG, amplified the warming potentially further amplifying the initial warming factor.
Today what is seen is that CO2 levels are dramatically increasing. (NOAA provides lots of helpful information here) The only explanation for the rapid recent increase (since the mid-1800s) is human activity, particularly the unsustainable burning up of buried ancient hydrocarbons. The other possible non-human influences have been evaluated and without human impacts the global average surface temperature would be on a very gradual decline at this time (therefore, more than all - more than 100% - of the recent global average surface temperature increase in the land and ocean surface measurements or satellite measurements as you can see using the SkS Temperature Trend page, they are all increasing) is due to human impacts.
The expected result, since CO2 is a GHG, is temperature increases slightly lagging the forced human increases of CO2, unlike the previous history without human impacts where CO2 levels responded to some other factor.
And the feedback from added water vapour in the warmer atmosphere is a significant factor. By the way, when hydrocarbons are burned (oxidized) the main products are the GHGs CO2 and H2O with H2O even being more powerful (but the amount of H2O valour in the atmosphere is limited by how warm the atmosphere is).
Hope that helps you better understand this matter.
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thoughts at 04:07 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Further thought: the latest I read is that Dr. Andrew Weaver, climatologist at the University of Victoria, says that yes, CO2 lags temperature in the global records. He changes the subject to now to assert that all the Greenhouse Gases (95% water vapor) support the temperature changes which are caused by other factors. The question remains: When CO2 levels lag Temperature levels, why are we to believe that CO2 levels affect temperature levels?
Moderator Response:[DB] The real issue is the degree to which we can temporally resolve CO2 and temperature changes in the past vs those which are happening now. The temperature proxies of the past are what they are. Which is immaterial, as we know that human activities are driving the current rise in atmospheric concentration increase of CO2 (through a variety of methods)...and because we can precisely measure the timing of the increase in CO2 and the timing of the increase in temperatures, we know that our understanding of the radiative physics of CO2 are spot on.
As an illustrative example, the Koch Industries-funded BEST team found that, WRT 'Is CO2 leading or lagging temperature rise':"we know that the CO2 is not coming from the oceans but from human burning of fossil fuels"
And
"it is clear that it is the CO2 that comes first, not the warming"
Please unsure that future comments are constructed to be in compliance with this site's Comments Policy and are also on-topic for the thread on which you place them. Thousands of threads exist here on virtually every topic pertaining to climate change that one could think of (use the Search Function).
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Mike Evershed at 04:00 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Hi Tom - of course not - you have to make a judgement. But doctors are a good case in point - there have been strong medical consensuses in the past on the value of bleeding people, of using surgery for ulcers rather than antibiotics, and lots of resistance to change. As for gravity....I've conducted a lot of personal experiments falling off things, so I'm not quite so dependent on the consensus in that area! My point is the more moderate one that in science, when everyone agrees, it is usually time to start looking for the anomalies in the theory. All the recent data adjustments for example - doesn't that ring alarm bells for anyone on this site?
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thoughts at 02:46 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
To keep a reply short, I will respond to above:
"A basic logic fail repeated ad nausium. We know for a fact that adding CO2 causes warming." Many do not see evidence for that "fact".
"We also know that CO2 lags temperature in the ice core record because orbital changes were the intitial forcing, not CO2, so of course it follows temperature. " I believe that CO2 continues to follow temperature (by about 2oo years) until they both reach a peak, when CO2 continues to follow temperature downwards. The downwards trend is probably also caused by earth's cycles, activity of the sun (and other factors we do not yet understand.) It does not appear that downward trends are initiated by a fall in CO2 levels either.
"That in no way negates that fact that rising CO2 then produced still more warming." Is this a "belief", or evidence based?
"Furthermore, this point flatly contradicts your first one listed above. So which is it, CO2 and other greenhouse gases do cause warming, or they can’t? Get your story straight." Sorry if my point was not straight for you. My point was that "deniers" do not simply "deny" everything - my point was that there are unanswered questions. Getting hot under the collar about it is not an answer. Regardless of what may have been the original causes of temperature changes, I see that records show that atmospheric CO2 lags global temperatures, both up and down. If there is a "fact" that shows otherwise, there are many who would like to see it.
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Tom Dayton at 02:32 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Mike Evershed: So as you get more and more doctors' opinions that you immediately need heart surgery, you become less and less convinced that you really need it?
Has goes your hobby of jumping off buildings, inspired by the consensus on gravity?
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Johnboy at 02:08 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
I think many folks can't get their arms around the significance of a 2°C temperature change or how really fast this is happening relative to "natural" change. Maybe we need to excise the use of the word "since" in weather reports. You know, "warmest 18th of July since..." or "driest, since", "longest drought since".
As far as the rapidity of change, I like to ask my denialist friends to think about growing up living "across the street" from the glacier terminus at the end of the last ice age. Their great grandfather would be telling them that the glacier was there when he was born and his great grandparents said the same. It was permanent source of ice for us forever. For the temperature to have dropped 1°C would have taken 400 generations (10k years). Who would have noticed? Being born at the beginning warming, you would tell your great grandchildren the same thing, only now it would be a "mere" 40 generations to see a 1°C rise. Maybe relatives from 8,000BC left could have drawn a picture of it on the cave wall across from where the glacier was.
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Mike Evershed at 02:06 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
I think this article misses an important reason for doubting the consensus on anthropogenic global warming. Some of us are sceptical of consensus views, especially when they are so strongly bound up with politics and expressed in abusive terms. (Has anyone on this site ever questioned whether it is respectful to call someone a "denier". It smacks of the sort of things "believers" say about outsiders.) So I, for one, will continue to look at the facts and question some of the consensus assumptions. The world has undoubtedly warmed in recent years, and it is a reasonable hypothesis that man made CO2 has made a significant contribution, but it is hardly beyond doubt - in fact the stronger the consensus the harder we should question the hypothesis, and the more open we should be to challenges to it.
Moderator Response:[PS] This is sloganeering -assertions without any backing evidence. What is your evidence that the consensus of worldwide climate scientists is "politically motivated". Why should we challenge the consensus on say gravity or atomic theory again? If you want back your assertions for doubt about climate, provide evidence.
Our comments policy prefers respectful language but denier is a reasonable term when applied to someone who flat out denies evidence.
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One Planet Only Forever at 01:53 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
thoughts@13,
Jim Eager has done a fine job of correcting some of your expressed "thoughts"/preferred beliefs.
As a structural engineer I can add that my work (and the work of all other engineers - appliers of science) includes using analysis models to 'predict' the performance of a structure under a variety of conditions.
Those 'models' are developed based on the best developed understanding to date. And the behaviour of every part of the real structure is understood to not be exactly modeled, just very well represented in general so that the general behaviour is well enough understood to result in successful designs based on analysis models (btw, these are not toy models like model trains or model cars and they are not 'fashion models that may only be popular for a moment').
So from my perspective people who repeat a claim that analysis models are not relevant, or complain that 'models' do not 'exactly' represent things or 'exactly' predict what will happen, only proves that they 'do not really understand the matter that they are commenting on'.
The propensity for some minds to not properly understand issues, making-up thoughts about what is to be believed, is tragic when it becomes popular. Especially tragic is when those made-up minds lacking understanding get away with winning popular support by complaining that a concensus understanding among people who would better understand an issue is not relevant, is a conspiracy.
Why people fail to better understand matters like climate science is a serious problem. I still contend that many people who resist better understanding climate science also resist admitting the unacceptability of personally benefiting from unsustainable activity that cause harm to, or creates challenges for, others including/especially future generations of humanity. Many people resist understanding/admitting that their developed perceptions/beliefs are unjustified/poorly excused.
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Jim Eager at 00:21 AM on 19 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
@13: "Deniers accept that GHGs may exacerbate the effects of the Milankovitch cycles, etc.”
If you actually knew anything about the Milankovitch cycles you would know that they currently favour a slow global cooling, not warming.
And what are these “et cetera” that you mention? Be specific.@13: "What is needed is a clear explanation as to how mankind's addition of maybe 4% of the natural gas CO2 to the atmosphere can affect global climate."
Your personal ignorance or incredulity of such an explanation is not the same as the absence of that explanation. Furthermore, your estimate of the percentage of atmospheric CO2 that is anthropogenic is off by an order of magnitude. It is 30% (400 - 280 = 120 ppm out of the current 400).
"Many "deniers" have seen Al Gore's chart showing that CO2 follows global temperatures, both rising and falling, and cannot therefore be a cause of temperature”
A basic logic fail repeated ad nausium. We know for a fact that adding CO2 causes warming. We also know that CO2 lags temperature in the ice core record because orbital changes were the intitial forcing, not CO2, so of course it follows temperature. That in no way negates that fact that rising CO2 then produced still more warming. Furthermore, this point flatly contradicts your first one listed above. So which is it, CO2 and other greenhouse gases do cause warming, or they can’t? Get your story straight.
"What the 'deniers' see is computer models, not proven science.”
That’s becuase you don’t bother to look past the computer models. Don’t blame scientists for your failure to look at the established science that the models are derived from. You might try employing some actual *thought* before repeating such misinformed talking points.
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thoughts at 23:30 PM on 18 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
I do not think that either fear or self-interest is motivating "denial of the evidence." Disrespect for others does not make a case for AGW. Many "deniers" are not afraid to accept that the global climate is changing, and that it will affect us. "Deniers" accept that we are adding pollutants like SO2 and CO to the air, and that we prefer clean air. Deniers accept that GHGs may exacerbate the effects of the Milankovitch cycles, etc. But insisting that everyone agrees (97%!) does not make a case. What is needed is a clear explanation as to how mankind's addition of maybe 4% of the natural gas CO2 to the atmosphere can affect global climate. Many "deniers" have seen Al Gore's chart showing that CO2 follows global temperatures, both rising and falling, and cannot therefore be a cause of temperature, whether it is the 96% natural or the 3% man-made. What the 'deniers' see is computer models, not proven science. What the "deniers" do not see is clear evidence that mankind can affect the global climate. Calling them "fearful" does provide the needed evidence.
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Nick Palmer at 22:38 PM on 18 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
I don't think fear is a consicous motivation for denial of evidence - or at least fear of the results of climate change. From tackling many denialists, I suspect that if fear is a factor, then it is fear of change that provides the fertile ground for the deceit to grow in. Fear of having to change one's life, one's aspirations, one's hopes and dreams. Fear of wasting all that time and money invested in some parts of education, job qualifications, business experience etc which are only useful in the current status quo and would be redundant in a climate friendly economy.
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Tom Curtis at 22:03 PM on 18 July 2017Those 80 graphs that got used for climate myths
Digby Scorgie @11, I do not currently have access to Steig et al due to its being paywalled (and budgetary constraints). On the assumption that its content largely matches the second half of Steig's PhD thesis, then paragraph four of the section of the OP, "Creating a straw man" is not a full response to anticorncobb@66. Specifically, the "other graphs [which] where reconstructions [that] also showed warming globally" in the PhD thesis were reconstructions using pseudo-proxies rather than actual proxies, and therefore evidence of the adequacy of a statistical technique rather than evidence of global warming.
The reason the pseudo-proxy reconstructions showed, while the genuine reconstructions did not show warming appears to come down to two factors. First, ice core proxies are effected not just by temperature. The PhD thesis shows that pseudo-proxies reflecting all factors (Figure 2.6) do not reproduce the global temperature record as well as those reflecting temperature differences only (Fig 2.12). With real proxies, it is not possible to isolate the temperature influence from other influences is a similar way, leading to a significant amount of noise. Second, while pseudo-proxies can be generated anywhere that feels convenient, genuine proxies must actually be obtained by drilling in available ice. In this case that means that the pseudo-proxies came from 105 locations scattered across the Arctic, Antarctica, Himalayas, Andes and the Rockies. In contrast, the actual proxies are restricted to just 40, from 7 locations within Greenland, 5 locations from the rest of the Arctic, 23 locations from Antarctica, and just one from the Himalayas and no others from outside of polar regions (Fig 2.1). The highly biased distribution of proxies means the proxy network poorly captures global temperature trends - a feature reinforced by the dominance of Antarctic sources, with the majority of Antarctic experiencing little warming over the 20th century (with the exception being the West Antarctic Pensinsula).
The problem of noise generated by other influences can be combated by having a large number of proxies, prefferably of different types, such that the noise tends to cancel out. The limited number of proxies, and geographic bias of proxy locations can be combatted by using a wide variety of proxies from different parts of the world. At least one proxy based reconstruction of 20th century temperatures have bas been done using a greater number of proxies of different types, and it does in fact show global warming over the 20th century. But, as it turns out, the limited number of ice core only proxies used by Steiger et al does not.
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Digby Scorgie at 20:17 PM on 18 July 2017Those 80 graphs that got used for climate myths
anticorncob6 @9
The answer you want is in the fourth paragraph after the heading "Creating a straw man".
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One Planet Only Forever at 13:40 PM on 18 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
I believe one of the most powerful and prevalent fears in the minds of climate science deniers (miss-understanders, delayers fighting against correcting incorrectly developed human activity), is the fear of having to admit that their developed perceptions of personal wealth, prosperity and opportunity are not justifiable, are not actually deserved.
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nigelj at 11:36 AM on 18 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
JW Rebel @6,
I agree totally, but everything you mention comes back to fear of something. For example it is exaggerated fear of government, fear of rules applying to business, fear of loss of power or privilege, paranoid fear of loss of individual rights. All this can obviously become excessive and deluded.
Individual rights are obviously important, but self evidently do not give people the right to damage the environment or harm the community or expect government to ignore environmental matters.. That sort of world can’t work and we don’t have to put up with it. People promoting it are ultimately toxic.
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Bob Loblaw at 11:01 AM on 18 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
The aspect of fear applies to the followers more than the leaders. Some people have a real knack for scaring the $#!^ out of people, and then reassuring them that they will be saved if only they follow the One True Path.
A long but very interesting read on the psychology of much of this is Bob Altemeyer's The Authoritarians. (Free download at the web page I have linked.)
A shorter, less-scholastic blog post is The Long Con. Also very interesting.
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Funkypants at 10:11 AM on 18 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Ironically, when people like Al Gore, Michael Mann or Bill Nye expound the impending dangers of AGW they get howled down as Alarmists & Fear Mongers.
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JWRebel at 09:57 AM on 18 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Mixing in Trump, Russiagate, and electoral fraud in a "false facts" narrative does help the case. Not all false claims are related, and many false narratives have been propagated on many fronts historically, and often refuse to die, like zombies, no matter how fastidiously they have been debunked. Russiagate has no publicly verifiable facts, and there is a decades old literature on electoral fraud in the USA. Contrary to accepted opinion, US elections do not set a standard of democratic integrity for the rest of the world; on the contrary, basic controls are so poor or even absent that monitoring organisations state that it is not even possible to monitor US elections, putting them behind monitored elections in Kazakhstan or Syria. Americans do not seem capable of enacting electoral reforms.
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JWRebel at 09:45 AM on 18 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
I agree that fear is an underlying ground for much denialism — many scientists were also reluctant to accept the magnitude of the problem as it became clearer and clearer the past 50 years.
But there are other important aspects. One is international context. Vociferous denialism seems a peculiarly Ango-Saxon disease. Why would that be?
- The concentration of news into the hands of the likes of Rupert Murdoch, always printing ammunition for "scepticism".
- Corporate disinformation and ideological think tanks.
- The strong anti-governmet anti-left narrative that has taken hold since Reagan was president. Don't forget that Reagan won by scuttling Carter's energy policy, telling Americans they were great, and everything would go back to how it was in the fifties — without all these perplexing modern problems.
These factors play much less of a role in most other countries of the world.
A further factor is group loyalties. Many people's views on many subjects are informed by loyalty to their tribe and how the tribe has decided to view the matter. Loyalty is a big part of conservative and religious denialism, but it is precisely this loyalty that can be used to change the narrative [loyalty also means not running down the family farm before handing it to your children].
As for people like James Delingpole, there have always been a small number of irredeemable miscreants who find their claim to fame in serving evil.
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scaddenp at 08:25 AM on 18 July 2017Those 80 graphs that got used for climate myths
I cant access the full paper but since the subject about methodology for reconstructing the temperature records from water isotope proxies, I am guessing the original graph showed one methodology compared to "actual" data (the BEST global record from of weather stations worldwide). I would suspect from conclusions, that this was showing the that methodology has limited skill in global reconstructions of temperature.
The denier arguments obviously believes that an inferred temperature scale based on water isotopes from a very limited no. of ice cores with poor spatial resolution is a better record for temperatures than actual thermometers from 1000s of weather stations.
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Doug_C at 08:15 AM on 18 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
It is amazing how these changes are playing out across the globe, I'm still trying to get my head around how heat is both trapped within the atmosphere, how that is mostly downloaded into the oceans and how that is affecting circulation patterns and things like ocean-atmosphere coupled systems like El Nino/La Nina which influences climate around the globe.
My niece married an Auzzie and they both live in Texas so I get first hand accounts of what it was like living on that continent and how chaotic weather can become in some areas like Texas. They have been through both tornadoes and hurricanes. There does seem to be a much higher frequency of the super-cell systems that spawn tornadoes in the US south and midwest.
My sense is that climate science and scientists have slowly been chipping away at the artificially created roadblocks erected by the fossil fuel sector in its interests alone to deny the science of climate change and delay mitigation for as long as possible. The level of genuine doubt for most people is disappearing and when it goes I think the changes will come quite suddenly compaired to how long it had taken to get effective action.
Here in BC there was a lot of denial and the main economic initiative of the last government which was just defeated in election was a massive fracking program in the BC NE with LNG plants and terminals all along our coast. I think that will change.
I've also spent a lot of time learning about the alternative technology to replace fossil fuels and with abundant power from things like thorium power molten salt reactors, there's no question in my mind at all that we could build within decades completely viable, dynamic, innovative and most importantly sustainble economies and societies. We don't even have to do away with internal combustion powered transportation as we can make diesel, octane and other fuels directly from air with electricity and the addition of carbon and other readily available materials. Technology like thermal depolymerization allows us to turn any long chain carbon molecules to short chain organic material very similar to light crude in a matter of hours. Add in all the other alternatives like solar, wind, biomass, geothermal, etc... and there is simply no reason at all to keep investing billions of dollars on a fossil fuel powered future that by all indications ends in catastrophe.
When the turn comes - and I'm confident it will, even if I have down moments like right now when climate change is in the face of thousands of us here - it will be because of people like the ones who have created and populated this site with facts presented in a professional and endlessly patient manner that I do think is in fact wearing down the denial movement.
Moderator Response:[DB] "how that is mostly downloaded into the oceans"
Your answer is here (in short, the energy goes directly into the oceans from the sun, but its exit path back to space is slowed by rising levels of CO2).
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scaddenp at 08:10 AM on 18 July 2017Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
Sadly, CAIT doesnt seem to supply anymore. Try here for what it looked like.
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nigelj at 07:24 AM on 18 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
Doug_C @22, interesting points.
Australia appears to be at particularly high risk from climate change, particularly forest fires. As you probably know they have a hot, dry, drought prone climate that can also be quite windy. They have many houses among forests of gum trees which appear particularly susceptible to fire, however they are also big coal producers, and this lobby is powerful. Their response to climate change has been mixed at best, although they have made some decent progress with wind power. It all seems to depend on who is in government.
I live in New Zealand, and we are affected quite differently, but almost as badly. We are an island nation in the path of a system of frequent low and high pressure systems, and tend to have a rather wet, mild, cooler, windy climate, actually rather more like British Columbia. Climate change has made droughts slightly worse, but the most obvious impacts are more rainfall, all in exactly the wrong places. It's predicted we will get more stormy weather possibly quite severe cyclones from the north, serious sea level rise, more droughts and forest fires. However given our wet, slightly cooler climate forest fires are not quite the major concern Australia has.
But it shows how the same warming climate can effect different geographies, and still in negative ways.
I try to read something on the climate issue. I find it a very interesting issue, because it reflects a whole range of personal interests of mine including earth sciences, politics, economics, human psychology.
I haven't done any advanced physics, however I did several papers in physical geography at university, and they covered an introduction to the theory of weather and climate. I also did some basic maths, and chemistry and psychology.
I think websites like this are good because they promote the science in a authoritative logical way and without catastrophising. They also deal with denialist myths very well. I actaully think the majority do understand broadly whats happening, confirmed by polls in my country showing over 70% acceptance of the science (although it fluctuates weirdly), but its important to get that number higher.
The real sticking point is poor leadership to politicians, who look to be captive to various industry lobby groups, and wealthy donors sceptical of climate science. It would be great to get this money out of politics, and at the very least voters need to put pressure on politicians.
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nigelj at 06:36 AM on 18 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
I agree fear sums the issue up quite well. I would take it further and say "fear of change". However this doesn't get us too far, because simply saying be less afraid isn't going to do much.
Take a step back. I look at climate denialists and I see evidence of vested interests, addiction to big v8 cars, jobs in the fossil fuel industry, dislike of big government, religious factors, and conservatism. I think it makes them deny the science, or issues around renewable energy, even although the denial is clearly illogical and contradictory etc.
All these are fear of something, whether loss of jobs, petrol prices going up, government rules, beliefs being challenged, change in general. These are real and should be acknowledged, even although they are generally missplaced fears. For example renewable energy is actually creating jobs, electric cars are cheap to run, all governments have laws, etc.
I think if we own this, it becomes easier to see a way forwards in terms of convincing people and addressing specific fears. We won't convince everyone, for example look at tobacco, vaccines, or evolution which are also issues revolving around various fears, addictions, etc, but it should be possible to convince the overwhelming majority, and that is what is important.
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silence at 06:10 AM on 18 July 2017Human CO2 is a tiny % of CO2 emissions
The graph in the "Further reading" section appears to be broken.
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ubrew12 at 05:37 AM on 18 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
If this is fear, then good news on non-fossil energy is the antidote. It may do more to emphasize the enormous strides being made in renewable power lately, than to prove conclusively to someone immune to proof that the 'hiatus' never happened.
Big fossils likes to preach its captive audience that if they go with alternatives, the 'big government gulags' will not be far behind. Stories that tell the truth may matter here: that alternatives are largely being fought by utilities which, as government-granted monopolies, are the very epitome of 'big government'. It should sway some minds to realize that Joe Libertarian, in fighting renewable power, is fighting on the same side as a state-sponsored monopoly that thinks it 'owns' the right to sell him electricity, to the exclusion of all other sources in an open market.
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bjchip at 05:18 AM on 18 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
I disagree that it is "fear" - at least to the degree that is presented.
If you consider at the same time that these people are almost entirely in the "extremely conservative" subset of humans, AND you add the knowledge that extreme views are often accompanied by supreme confidence in in ones own opinion - we can conclude that the contradictory evidence is being rejected out of hand because it would mean that the person at the extreme is in fact wrong and has to accept that they were wrong.
For most people this isn't a big deal. For someone on the extremes who relies on his/her own opinion and knowledge more, and on other people's opinions less, finding out they made a mistake is a near death experience.
So while there is a "fear factor" involved (as is likely )
We cannot discount the likelihood that it is fear of being wrong, in someone who cannot afford to have their worldview shaken in such manner.
Note that this sort of avoidance occurs in extreme liberals as well. Just not in the area of climate. Consider instead the arguments around nature vs nurture and the evidence for a genetic basis for intelligence.
It gets iffy out there on the edges. :-)
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ianw01 at 05:11 AM on 18 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
Fear is an interesting way to frame it, but to me it is not quite broad enough to catch those who are driven by pure short term economic self-interest or those with a natural predisposition to contradict experts just for the sake of it.
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wili at 04:42 AM on 18 July 2017Surrendering to fear brought us climate change denial and President Trump
I generally agree here...and with pretty much everything our wonderful JA has ever said or published '-). But the problem with dismissing political ideology or religion as a major factor here is the high correlation of those who deny GW with those who identify as politically conservative and religiously fundamentalist. Are those ideologies just more likely to have very fearful people in them? That's what you would seem to have to claim, as far as I can see. I'm not sure how one would independently test such a hypothesis, but it might be interesting to try.
And if John's hypothesis is true, what does that mean about Climate Communication? You can't really talk honestly for very long about the certain or even likely consequences of CC with out bringing up stuff that is going to make rational people somewhat or very afraid. Right?
Connected to the whole issue of the role of fear and CC communications:
Eric Holthaus writes, in part:
"My advice for climate journalists going forward:
1. Don't hold back. Readers can take it. (As long as it's rigorously grounded in the science, of course.)
2. The weird shit that climate change could cause—the tail risks, the megastorms, the blinking out of entire ecosystems—is compelling.
3. Climate journalists should find those stories—things scientists wouldn't bother with b/c they're unlikely—& report the hell out of them.
4. AND THEN (this is the most important part) you plant the seed of possibility at the end & invite the reader to become part of the story.Because that's the reality: We are all part of this story. This is our story, we are shaping it every day."
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Doug_C at 02:32 AM on 18 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
nigelj
I know Australia has been hit hard by wildfires in recent years with mass evacuations and loss of life as well as property. We haven't seen the loss of life yet, just hundreds of homes burned and many more to come.
Some of the fires have been caused by people, but the majority have been lightening strikes on very dry forests. An eyewitness account from someone driving south through the Cariboo District where most of these fires are said it a surreal experience as he saw lightening strike after strike that was followed by an immediate fire.
I'm just frustrated, I'm also semi-retired and have spent the last decade informing myself of the true dimensions of this subject learning as much as I could in a bunch of different subject including some quantum mechanics, atmospheric circulation, lots of biology, ocean currents and more. There's no question I find what is going on deeply distrubing, reading up on the Permian and other climate change related extinction events is sobering, now we're starting to connect them to what we doing on both scale and timeline is frightening.
I'm all for making changes in a way that doesn't turn society and the economy on its head creating its own form of disaster, the thing that really concerns me as a Canadian is that we're not even making any real attempt. Our PM went to the Paris climate conference - which James Hansen has called a fraud because it doesn't create the conditions to make all fossil fuels uneconomical - and because we were part of a political agreement to deal with issue acts as if the problem is solved. While having exactly the same emissions as the last federal government here which openly denied climate change, refused to be part of any international agreement, censored science and even went as far as to burn scientific libraries with data that went back over a century and were priceless in scientific terms.
Meanwhile much of this province burns and we're already being told here this is the new normal. Which is only going to get worse, James Hansen has stated explicitly that if the billions of barrels of tar sands crude is sent to market and burned then climate change will be unmanagable. But that is still the central policy of the Canadian government, the Alberta government and until the last election here this spring the BC government was in full compliance with allowing pipelines and tanker trains to carry over 1,000,000 barrels of bitumen through BC a day.
I don't know what the answer is, I've been coming to this site for years and truly believing that if people were presenting the science in such a clear and effective manner not just here but many other places then it must take effect soon.
But that isn't happening and now I'm watching much of what I've grown up calling home being burned up, climate change is very real here at this moment, it's not something abstract that will happen in a couple of decades.
BC is also highly dependent on the water provided by major rivers that originate with glacial melt in the Rookies. Not only will massive wildfires become a frequent summer event, in coming years we have water scarcity to look forward to as those too disappear.
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HK at 23:07 PM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming Digest #28
This may be off-topic, but it may also be related to global warming.
Last night I saw the brightest and most extensive noctilucent clouds I have seen so far this summer. Here in south-eastern Norway the sun is only about 8-9° below the horizon at midnight right now, so these very thin ice crystal clouds in the upper mesosphere (75-85 km altitude) remain illuminated by the sun throughout the night. It appears that these clouds, which were unknown to the science before 1885, have become more common during the 20th century (I have seen them several times in recent years), so they may be linked to global warming.
One possible link is that the increased greenhouse effect cools the stratosphere and mesosphere, making one of the necessary conditions (temperatures below -120°C) more common than before. Another possible link is increased amount of water vapour formed by the oxidation of methane, since methane can easily reach that altitude because it doesn’t condense anywhere in the Earth’s atmosphere.
The Wikipedia article has several nice pictures of noctilucent clouds, but the ones I saw last night were most similar to these from Estonia in July 2009:
BTW, this last night was also the first after summer solstice that I was able to barely see Polaris and several of the stars in the Big Dipper ("Karlsvogna" in Norwegian).
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carn at 19:16 PM on 17 July 2017It's too hard
@Eclectic 68
I have nothing in principle against subsidies; but too early and too much subsidy to have a technology on the market, that is too far away from cost efficiency, is a mistake.
For such technologies one only needs subsidies too such extent, that development continues.
Regarding hydro potential, i maybe have not specified enough, what i mean with chenging "ecological protection laws"; for example, i would want to have that thing:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marble_Canyon_Dam
in operation within 15 years. Forget about "The lower dam would have flooded a number of natural features, including Redwall Cavern and Vasey's Paradise." Human lives are at stake due to global warming, so nobody should care about that stuff.
Just look at all conservation areas; there is some potential for a hydro increase.
"the OECD and World Nuclear Association expect that they would achieve a "too little, too late" result by 2050 (in reducing world CO2 emissions)"
"Private company investors are running for cover, when it comes to the suggestion of financing nuclear power plants."
Based on current rules and handling, yes. Therefore they would have to change.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power#Development
"Installed nuclear capacity initially rose relatively quickly, rising from less than 1 gigawatt (GW) in 1960 to 100 GW in the late 1970s, and 300 GW in the late 1980s. Since the late 1980s worldwide capacity has risen much more slowly, reaching 366 GW in 2005."
Get the speed of the 60s and you have 150 GW per decade. Nuclear power was throttled late 70s onwards with superflous burden; of course with that superflous burden still mostly in place, OECD is correct to estimate, that nuclear cannot do much. Therfore, one needs to change things so that build up can again be done with the speed of the 60s.
"And similarly with large-scale solar plants. And solar power is cheap enough now for private individuals to install their own roof panels — again without subsidy."
From the calculations i know, no, not yet. Especially comparing generating electricity for one's own household to buying electricity with taxes, regulations and power grid costs, is an error. Solar is not more cost efficient than coal or nuclear. Its more cost efficient than taxes; not a useful criteria for technical efficiency.
"One guy I know says (only half-jokingly) that the entire costs of the USN Fifth Fleet over past decades should have been added to the per-gallon price of gasoline."
Fine, but do not forget to also calculate the cost increases caused by superflous envirmental regulations and activities. It is just completely crazy to pay billions and billions to backward regimes for oil and another billions and billions for military equipment to keep them in check, but leave a single drop of oil at home unused cause some birds or fish might die.
Effectively, US politics in part sacrificed human lives - mostly in the middle east - so ecos could be pleased at home and some animals saved. Despicable.
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nigelj at 16:53 PM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
Doug_C @20, numbers of forest fires certainly have increased in recent decades, in America and Canada as below:
www.dw.com/en/how-climate-change-is-increasing-forest-fires-around-the-world/a-19465490
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/10/161012141702.htm
So your suspicions are not just anecdotal or locally based. Somehow I doubt numbers of arsons have inceased, and anyway there are also changes in area and intensity. Looks mostly like global warming.
I'm not sure if this has happened in NZ, but we have seen increased levels of rainfall, in recent decades, according to our climate minotoring agency NIWA, and this has been mostly on the west coast, which is already very wet. It's not happening where it would be useful to agriculture or hydo power.
You ask why people can't see all this or are complacent? It's probably hard for people to get their heads around the full scale, or even keep up with it. I'm semi retired, so have a bit of time to read.
Maybe people also feel overwhelmed. I feel torn in two directions, one direction that we should actually be a bit alarmist about it, the other that too much alarmism, catastrophising, and despondency won't help.
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Doug_C at 16:21 PM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
Here's what a realy hot summer can look like where I live.
The town of 11,000 where I grew up has been evacuated and there are major fires all around it. That is just one small area of central BC which is covered in fires.
I stopped thinking that climate change was an academic issues years ago, watching this happen is like being in a disaster movie as a participant not a spectator. Talking on the phone with my elderly mother, she suddenly began weeping for all that is being lost.
It's insane that we're all basically sitting back and watching this happen... and keep in mind this is the opening stages in a process that will become increasingly catastrophic taking out entire ecosystems. Coral reefs are already well on their way to being mostly gone, likely by mid century.
How is it more people don't get that at some point this wave will wash right over them. In Florida it was an unspoken rule created by the governor that public employees not mention climate change because of the implications of a rising sea level for a state much of which is barely above sea level now.
Warmer summers is just the tip of this "iceberg"...
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anticorncob6 at 15:05 PM on 17 July 2017Those 80 graphs that got used for climate myths
Can someone explain why the blue line in the first graph (with reconstruction) does not show warming?
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nigelj at 14:12 PM on 17 July 20172017 SkS Weekly Climate Change & Global Warming News Roundup #28
I would just add the lakes issue, and other permafrost issues, sinkholes, etc all do definitely look like troubling developments.
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