Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
I have a niece who is an undergraduate student at Rutgers University. Aside from offering her such intellectually stimulating fare as learning from Snooki and dodging bullets, there appears to be a professor at Rutgers who is interested in offering her something to learn.
My niece is an environmental studies major. Naturally I've had a few sleepless nights worrying about what the left might do to her fecund curiosity, not only by what they tell her, but by what they might withhold from her.
To my delight, her assignment this week is to ask "Climate Change Skeptics" why they are skeptical. I assume the assignment refers to "man-made climate change" since it is uncontroverted, even in Academia, that world climates went through many changes long before Henry Ford made his planet destroying machine masked as the Model T automobile.
On Thursday, her class will begin to discuss what the students found from interviewing skeptics. Rather than give her one man's view, I thought I'd enlist the services of the entire Ricochet noosphere on climate change skepticism, to give Rutgers a more complete image of it, posted right here to Al Gore's Internet.
I have my reservations about the assignment. I hope the challenges to claims of man-made climate change are presented in university classrooms by scientists who are skeptical, and not limited to opinions of lay people like me. But it's a start.
So post your best. There are young minds at stake!
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Comments:
Jul '10
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
I thought We were "climate change deniers."
Aug '10
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
Buy a book: Bjorn Lomborg tripped across the truth awhile ago.
Heck ! Buy two books .
Edited on April 26, 2011 at 1:32amMay '10
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
Climatologists are not scientists, they just play them on teevee. Putting on a white coat and adding an -ologist to the end of your hobby is not science. If it were, I'd be a miniskirtologist.
To qualify as a scientist, you should employ the scientific method. Step one: form a hypothesis. Step two: test the hypothesis with data. Step three: assess the validity of your hypothesis and adjust if needed to retest the new one.
Climatologists stop at Step one, make up data for Step 2, and try to shut up anyone who goes to Step 3. This is not science. The fact that they continually move the goalposts, change the rules, and just want the world to be run by themselves also breeds understandable skepticism of their motives and methods.
Edited on April 26, 2011 at 1:36amMay '10
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
So the professor wants her to interview a majority of the nation? This sounds like one of those NYT anthropology studies of flyover country.
Apr '11
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
I'm skeptical primarily of the proposed solutions to it, not to the existence of climate change itself. I think the scientific case for climate change is actually pretty solid, anthropogenic climate change only slightly less so. But the case for massive international efforts in response is very weak.
Look at it this way: at some point, we'll have burned all the fossil fuels we can extract. This will return the Earth's CO2 levels to some point they already were at some point in the past. At those levels, there will probably be some climate change. It might be tough on us humans. But it's not going to end all life, or all human life, nor will it likely even cause serious problems in most places. There may be a few areas that are very badly harmed, but there may also be a few areas that are very greatly helped (say, central Asia, which could have enormously greater crop yields).
This future is pretty much inevitable, since even if we stopped consuming all fossil fuels today, there's no way we'll convince developing countries to do so.
Feb '11
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
Because the warmists keep getting caught lying.
That's enough for me.
I'm thinking of the hockey stick graph that was bogus, the leaked emails that demonstrate fraud and intimidation of critics, and the predictions that never came true but are never discussed by the warmists.
Also, the temperature monitoring stations that somehow happen to be right next to air conditioning unit exhausts or asphalt parking lots. Amazingly, they show warming. Not only that but I've read about climate change "scientists" deleting rural temperature monitoring station data which doesn't show warming.
That sort of thing isn't science. It's fraud.
Apr '11
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
There are several people I've followed on this subject. Whether or not they would consider themselves skeptics varies. What they are not is part of the "consensus" as described by the IPCC: Steve McIntyre, Ross McKitrick, Anthony Watts, Richard Lindzen, Lord Monckton, Roy Spencer.
Warren Meyer has good summary material at his http://www.climate-skeptic.com/ site. I have a Powerpoint PPT of his with the filename "Climate Presentation Annotated 1-1-2010.ppt".
Richard Lindzen's congressional testimony can be found here http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/11/18/profess-richard-lindzens-congressional-testimony/
JoNova has a nice basic summary in her skeptic's handbook: http://joannenova.com.au/global-warming/
Jul '10
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
To add to Xennady's comment, the fact that they dropped "global warming" for "climate change" is enough for Me. "Climate change" happens around the clock regardless, always has.
Aug '10
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
Because the whole idea was hijacked by individuals and groups with political and/or economic agendas who engaged in gross exaggeration across the board.And didn't the anarchists and the anti-globalisation,even the anti-Israel,mobs go very quiet when it looked like climate change codology was the enabler of World dominance? And havn't they put back on their old garb increasingly since Climategate? The terrible thought is that by overstating their case they may have ruined a reasonable case about the possibility of a correlation between human activity and climate.I'm not sure, but I think I know snake-oil when I see or smell it.
Nov '10
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
Because between mad cow disease, global cooling, autism-causing vaccines, the ozone layer, peak oil, mass starvation, SARS, genetically-modified foods, , cell phone radiation, swine flu, and Fukushima, alarmism has a terrible track record.
P.S. Rutgers is the only place in the world I've ever seen a solar-powered recycling can/trash compactor. (Your tax dollars at work, New Jersey.) Your niece has her work cut out for her.
Edited on April 26, 2011 at 2:05amOct '10
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
Amusing, Hope it plays out well.
Not to be forgotten are the Anti Sementic brochures in the gloveboxes of each Model T purchased. So the world goes round....
Even if Fossil fuel consumption stopped today, the results would be minimal in the overall. Mankind would move on, save at a stone age level....Who wants this ?
Feb '11
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
I believe there is a new phrase which they conveniently call "Climate Disruption" . This covers just about every weather event that ever existed.
May '10
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
Two big reasons:
Lack of predictive validity + experience-defying positive feedback + questionable data collection methods + faked data + threats to dissenters + at-stake research dollars + basic statistical errors + redistributive politics = a bunch of hooey
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
Tommy, I prefer to switch the assignment around: Interview catastrophic anthropogenic global warming enthusiasts and inquire what data, if any, they would view as dispositive in disproving their pet hypothesis? I've never had any of the "believers" name anything specific that would shake their faith. Record cold weather? Nope, all included in "climate change." Faked data and conspiratorial efforts? Uh uh, ClimateGate, the biggest evidence fabricating scandal in the history of science, barely ripples the surface. "Accidentally" repeating September temperature data into October to declare record warming (James Hansen)? Mistakes happen. And so on.
A non-disprovable hypothesis is no hypothesis at all.
Oh, and the fact that the entire "science" of anthropogenic global warming is based upon long-term predictions of climate models that are doing a spectacularly poor job at shorter term predictions should mean something, shouldn't it?
My favorite accessible book on the topic is Unstoppable Global Warming: Every 1500 Years by Singer & Avery.
My favorite one-stop-shop on the web is Anthony Watts' excellent "Watts Up With That?" blog.
I hope this helps.
Dec '10
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
First, what Kennedy Smith said about the scientific method.
Then, buy her a subscription to Pragertopia and have her listen to Dennis Prager's interview of Roy Spencer, Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and author of The Great Global Warming Blunder: How Mother Nature Fooled the World's Top Climate Scientists. This podcast was replayed as a Best of Prager Hour on 4/19/11.
An important point Spencer makes in the interview is most "climatologists" are not meteorologists,as he is, but come to the science of Earth's climate from another tangentially related field, as Hansen of NASA does (atmospheric physicist initially studying Venus). And most meteorologists are anthropogenic global warming (AGW) skeptics. Don't miss what he says about the science of clouds, which is neglected because of all the emphasis on CO2.
For graduate-level work, she should follow the community of skeptics established by meteorologist Anthony Watts at Watts Up With That. His site has the most intelligent robustly scientific civil discussion of the topic I've found, allowing for opinions from proponents and skeptics, but forbidding trash talk. Kind of the Ricochet equivalent for AGW skeptics.
Dec '10
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
The PR reason: Telling people to shut up and sit down does not end arguments. In my experience, the side wanting to prevent any discussion has something to hide, and maybe another agenda to support.
That leads to the Social reason: All the solutions to AGW are recycled elements leading to social nirvana. Every action requires bigger and more intrusive government. Every action likewise reduces the freedom of the individual.
The Embarrassing reason: Climategate. Over a thousand alleged but unforgeable emails showing intent to massage data sets to make the argument more convincing and to divert or stonewall suspicion.
The Science reason: The steps of the scientific method are: Ask a Question - Do Background Research - Construct a Hypothesis - Test Your Hypothesis by Doing an Experiment - Analyze Your Data and Draw a Conclusion - Communicate Your Results.
Notice the word "consensus" isn't used. Not even to shut people up who seem determined to ask contrary questions.
Feb '11
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
"I assume the assignment refers to "man-made climate change" since it is uncontroverted, even in Academia, that world climates went through many changes long before Henry Ford made his planet destroying machine masked as the Model T automobile."
Not so. Purveyors of AGW have denied the existence of both the Medieval Warm Period (AD 950 to 1250 +/-) and the Little Ice Age (AD 1500-1750 +/-) Their 'science' conveniently omits any historical evidence that conflicts with their hypothesis.
Climatology is a perfectly valid science. The problem is that it has been taken over and perverted by individuals and groups with primarily political agendas. Today, your average geologist knows more valid climatology. Climatology is a cross discipline field encompassing geology, meteorology, physics, biology, solar astronomy and a host of other disciplines. It does not lend itself to the sort of simplistic computer models that purport to demonstrate AGW.
For those without meteorological or climatological background, a good place to start is 'Heaven and Earth: Global Warming, The Missing Science' by Ian Plimer. Also see 'Why Most Published Research Findings Are False.' The later deals with medical research but most of the conclusions apply to climatology, and most other disciplines, as well.
Oct '10
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
Predict for me within a single tenth of a degree the exact daily high temperature in my city everyday for a month. One year in advance. And if you cannot explain to me why and what the limitations are on the model? And then why do these same reasons not apply when the time frame is decades or centuries?
Throughout the eons of the climate changing on this planet, we have evidence of much much warmer times transitioning to ice ages all without anthropomorphic influence. And even though we have techniques and science to extrapolate as best we can temperature records through the millenniums, we have only been keeping accurate temperature records at best for about 300 years.
To be skeptical of man-made global climate change is to acknowledge the very candid limitations in our knowledge when it comes to the weather and the climate. It is often much easier to purport your own expertise than acknowledge your shortcomings.
Even historic astronomers in their universal reorientation from geocentrism to heliocentrism backed their claims up with predictions. And if their predictions were wrong, they used the setback to reveal the greater truths of the universe. Let climatologists do the same.
Mar '11
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
Originally, there was a scientist that wondered if the ice cores whose carbon dioxide levels were so low could be due to carbon dioxide in the air bubbles being measured being absorbed by the ice surrounding them. He conducted an experiment, gathered data, and interpreted the results: the three legs of scientific inquiry. He was assailed, not on his methodology, his data, or his interpretation, but on his motivation. I kept waiting for the real critique of what he had done, but somehow it never managed to get to me.
For all I know, it was challenged by someone for legitimate reasons. It's been a while ago, and I do not remember the name of the scientist. The general tendency of the supporters of the theory has remained constant. The Climategate memos seemed to indicate that this kind of attack was not only common, but the initial response to anyone questioning the theory.
The place I am currently living was under approximately 6000 feet of ice about 10,000 years ago. So yes, the climate changes, but I've seen nothing to convince me that my hibachi is at fault.
Mar '11
Re: Hey Ricochet! Help An Undergrad: Why Are You A Climate Change Skeptic?
Because climate change is normal over the last 6-10,000 years; let alone what Geologists make up about the last million or more. It does not correlate with the industrialization of the world which is very recent in either case. Just look at all the evidence for global and local catastrophes as historical markers; the easiest to prove are volcanic eruptions which darkened skies for months to years and clearly affected, no obliterated the climate of the day.
Because as Xannedy said, they can't tell the truth about their data because they so want us to believe their conclusions.
Because God already said the earth is due for a renovation, and that by fire.