Why are conservative arguments so often irrational?

Correlation is not the same as causation. That being said, I have no doubt that human are contributing to warming trends-- the extent of it is to be determined though.

It is an appeal to caution. Scientists throughout the ages have been convinced they were right. Like I said, I think the margin of error is narrowing as measurement improves and the body of knowledge is amassed.

We still don't know what we don't know. Einstein made room for God, maybe we all should.

 

These are working definitions that you bring to the argument. Isn't it you who is The Brain Wave King? How is that not definitional?

You impose a death sentence on the child; how quickly you forget... or just don't consider. That ain't beautiful...

This is the way you take on THE MOST INSURMOUNTABLE ARGUMENT?

 

And people who foolishly believed differently from scientists without any logic at all, or because of their religion, or because they were easily influenced by people who had a vested interest in denying what the scientists were saying.

Others looked at the data, and actually believed the scientists.

Which group do you think you are in, giddy?

 

I know one thing that's definitely irrational...

getting into a "debate" with giddyup.

 

Data must be interpreted... and in the end you've just reduced it to BELIEF yourself!

Every group has an agenda that they promote.

Not sure who you are talking about "disagreeing with scientists." A subset of scientists thinks that there is excessive global warming due to human contribution. That is not a universal conclusion. There are some scientists who think there is global warming that is just part of the natural cycle.

 

Will you please highlight ONE unequivocally irrational thing I've said here. Betcha can't...

 

The science is pretty air tight. Natural warming and human warming occur very differently and in different parts of the atmosphere. The increase in tempertures has not been day time highs which would be expected in a natural warming trend...it has been in nighttime highs - or a result of light being trapped during the day, being absorbed by the ground and clouds...the water vapor...and warming that up...where at night it emits the heat and thus you see the tempertures rise only near the ground at night, and only in thick cloud layers.

In other words - it ain't natural buddy.

Now you can believe whatever you want. You can lie to yourself. That's your right.

You can say there are two facts. Sure. But there is only one truth. And if you want to see it, then go investigate for yourself and find it. But you aren't doing that. You are throwing casual things you've read in some blog or whatever as the rationale. "Science has been wrong in the past, so it might be wrong now". That is not a path to seeing the truth. It's a path to lying to yourself.

The reality is, we're going through the fastest warming cycle in earth's history. The last time the temperature increased 4 degrees in 100 years - 90% of life was wiped out on this planet.

We're going to see the ice caps gone. We're going to see massive droughts. We're going to see ocean life collapse - because it depends on cold arctic waters to bring nutrients down to different layers.

We are in for a rough ride. And there ain't no way to change it - even if mankind completely stopped all CO2 production, the planet is in a positive feedback loop - it's too late. Your great grand children will be living in a brutal brutal world - if they get to live for long. (better hope for fusion power).

Lie to yourself, or see the truth. But I am tired of you fools.

 

Wrong. Something like 98% of the scientists believe it is at least in part due to human activity. You're also wrong that every group of scientists has an agenda that they promote unless that agenda is the scientific method based on testable data.

I didn't reduce the conclusions to belief. I mentioned what people believe. The conclusions are the same whether or not people will believe it.

So do you find yourself in the group that feels they know better, and will disagree with almost every single scientist who has studied it?

 

Just to insert myself into this argument for a second, I think there are two different issues that often get mixed up in the climate change debate. The first is whether or not the Earth is warming due at least in part to human activity. I think any reasonable person looking at the evidence accepts this part.

The second part is climate modeling that tries to predict what will happen in the future if we continue down this path. This is the part that I (a scientist myself) have absolutely no confidence in. These models are too noisy and uncertain to believe, IMO.

 

This is all I'm saying. I have no doubt that humans are contributing to warming but I hesitate about the projections of impact.

 

This is the point though that I made that the math behind predicting the election is essentially the same basis as the math behind predicting the election results. These are probabilities not certainties but it is irrational to just dismiss those probabilities. It is basically the same as those who argued that Nate Silver was completely wrong and that Romney not only would win but would win in a landslide because it didn't fit their world view.

 

It doesn't seem like that's all you were saying when you kept pointing out about cycles of warming have always been part of the earth's history.

That sounds like you're trying to downplay the effect man has on current climate change.

That's different than trying to predict the future.

 

Climate forecasting and election forecasting are quite different, though. Silver discusses both at length in his book "The Signal and the Noise," which I would highly recommend.

 

Thanks I might check it out. I will admit to not being very knowledgeable about either but my understanding is that both are relying upon statistical sampling and the weighting of samples based upon other factors. While they deal with very different inputs of data it is essentially the same process of predicting.

Bottom line though is while there is a lot of noise in regard to climate forecast we are looking at probabilities. In this case just because there is a minority viewpoint that doesn't invalidate the majority viewpoint regarding the forecast. The greater likelihood has to be considered if you are going to base policy upon such for forecast.

 

Is it me downplaying or others over-stating?

 

I haven't dismissed anything. It is equally irrational to run too far with it.

Even Silver's final election "Obama Wins prediction" was only made with 75% certainty as I recall.

 

It was 91%, actually. The numbers are still up on his site.

 

Again it seems like you're downplaying. 98% of scientists looking at the data agree that it's conclusive.

giddy, either you agree with 98% of the scientists, or you don't.

Also you already claimed a few posts ago that you were only talking about the future predictions being made, not the current data, and that man is responsible for a significant part of current global warming.

 

It's fairly credible to conclude that at the very least it's going to have 3 impacts:

1. Ocean levels will rise by many feet. How many is unknown, but a 5 foot increase in sea level is going to have massive economic impact and some of the models are predicting a 40 foot increase in the worst case scenarios. A 40 foot increase would put displace billions of people.

2. Weather will be impacted significantly - a warmer arctic will change the way the jet stream works.

3. Oceans will be significantly impacted. Changing temperture will impact ocean currents and significantly alter sea life.

 

Will Katy need to be evacuated?