Gary Whitta used anecdotal evidence on the podcast to show "global warming" is real. I'm really disappointed with Will Smith for not calling him out on it. Consensus I guess...
I really doubt anyone really cares what I have to say. They'll just believe what they want, and refuse to change, or question, etc. So I put the bottom line up front (BLUF)
Introduction to Global Warming and Climate Change
Global warming refers to an increase in the global average surface temperature of the Planet Earth. Unfortunately, there is quite a bit of confusion about whether "Global Warming" means any increase in the average temperature of the Earth or specifically only temperature increases that are due to human activities. We can measure changes in the global average temperature of the Earth's surface with some accuracy (and we find that the average temperature has increased recently), but we cannot determine very well how much of the temperature change is caused by human activities and how much is part of a natural fluctuation not related to human activity. You need to be clear on this point whenever discussing this issue. For example, if someone were to ask me if I "believe" in global warming, I would say yes the measured global average surface temperature has increased over the last 100 years so in that sense I agree. However, if someone were to ask me if I "believe" that the increase in global average surface temperature is mostly caused by human activities, then the best answer I can give is that I am unsure that the measured temperature changes are mostly the result of human activity.
Many human activities may contribute to global warming or other climate changes, such as anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (enhancing the natural atmospheric greenhouse effect) or anthropological changes in land use (for example, deforestation or city-building). We usually include any climate response to the anthropogenic forcing in this discussion. For example, if the average global surface temperature goes up, this will shift weather patterns causing some areas to warm, some areas to cool, some areas to become wetter, and some areas to become drier. No one expects that all areas will be affected in the same way by anthropogenic perturbations. Perhaps it would have been better to use a term such as "anthropogenically-induced climate changes" rather than global warming, which seems to imply that everywhere will get warmer by the same amount.
This issue, whether or not human activity is causing global warmining and what, if anything, we should do about it, is hotly debated and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Some of you may find yourself in a position either in government or industry where you will have to make a decision that takes into account how human activities may affect the environment in which we live (both short-term and long-term changes). Even if all you do is vote for a particular issue or candidate based on the their stance about global warming, I think it is important that you can all make informed decisions. Too often, we are only told part of the story, especially by those who would like to sway opinions over to their point of view. If you don't know better, their arguments can be quite convincing. You need to understand this issue well enough to be able to make up your own mind about how to act.
As we go along, I will try to point out some common misconceptions about global warming. One that I would like to mention at the outset is that global warming and the ozone hole are not the same thing. They are two separate issues.
What is Climate Change?
We will define climate change as any significant shift in the atmospheric component of the climate system, which occurs at the spatial scale of a regionally-defined climate zone. We will take climate change to include both changes due to natural causes and changes due to human activities. Keep in mind that many people define climate change as a change in climate caused by human activity. Again when discussing this issue we need to be clear about what we mean by climate change.
We need to clearly define the spatial scales that will be used to determine climate change. Many times we are presented with data that shows only a change in the global average surface temperature. Although this may be relevant for something like global changes in sea level, a change in global average surface temperature is not enough to tell us about how life may be affected in smaller climate zones where organisms spend the majority of their lives. To understand the possible impacts of climate change, we need to look at smaller regions. An example of a climate classification system for the Earth is the Koppen map of world climates (linked from Wikipedia). We could say that climate change would mean a change in the distribution of the defined climate zones in this classification system. But even this would sometimes be too restrictive. For example, note that in the Koppen system the deserts of the southwestern United States and Mexico are classed in the same category as the Sahara Desert (warm, desert climate). However, we know that the climates are different, the Sahara is in general both hotter and drier. If the deserts of the southwestern United States became like the Sahara that would be a huge climate change locally, but would not change the Koppen class.
Keep in mind that some talk about climate change only in terms of the changes in the average surface temperature of the Earth. You may have heard predictions such as "the global average temperature is expected to increase by 4°C over the next 100 years." The change in global average temperature is only part of the story. A change in the global average surface temperature does not mean all regions of the Earth will experience the same change in temperature. In some areas, the average temperature may change drastically, while in other areas, no changes may occur. Also keep in mind that temperature is only one component of climate as discussed above. There are many different climate zones around the Earth. It is the regional changes in a particular climate zone that are most important to the inhabitants of that area, not the change in global average temperature. The ultimate question is will the inhabitants of a particular ecosystem be able to adapt to the changes? This is why for these posts we will define climate changes as occurring on small regional scales, like a moderately-sized ecosystem, as opposed to the entire planet Earth.
While I believe it best to define climate changes at the regional scale, increases in greenhouse gases caused by human activity do alter the composition of the atmosphere globally because once those gases are released they spread quickly around the globe. Thus, if the increase in greenhouse gases do significantly alter the natural global system, then we should expect that most climate zones will be affected worldwide. In addition, some issues like changes in global sea level, are tied to changes in the global average temperature. For these reasons, some prefer to define climate change as any long-term alteration in global weather patterns ... though ultimately changes in global weather patterns will result in climate changes within many individual climate zones.
It is not just changes in the average temperature for a region that determines climate change. Other examples of climatic components were listed in the previous lecture page. The distribution and frequency of extreme events is more important in determining what type of life can exist in a given ecosystem than the average conditions. Note that the distribution of extreme events can change even if the average conditions do not. You should also realize that even a relatively small change in the average conditions can correspond to relatively larger changes in the frequency of extreme events, since most climate variables fall into a Gaussian shaped distribution. This is important to understand because many people do not realize that a seemingly small change in say the average temperature in a climate zone can rather have a large impact on the life that lives there. An illustrative diagram is shown below.
The big questions today are (1)how are human activities affecting climates? and (2)what, if anything, should we do about it? Because the climate system is so complex and by no means fully understood, we are forced to try to address the latter question before we can definitively answer the first. The basic issue with the first question is that we are unable to separate natural climate changes from human-caused climate changes and we should not expect a definitive answer to that question in the near future. However, if human activity is responsible for detrimental climate changes, the longer we wait to act the worse the situation is likely to become. There will be no way to quickly reverse climate changes. Another issue associated with the second question is that to be effective action will require global scale cooperation. This because once greenhouse gases are emitted they spread around the globe. So just moving emission from one place to another will not have much effect.We know that all regions of the Earth have experienced climate changes throughout history and that until recently, all of these changes were due to natural as opposed to human causes. We can explain some of the reasons for past climate changes (for example, ice age cycles are probably related to slight variaitions in the Earth's orbit about the Sun), but we certainly cannot explain everything because the climate system is so complex. We also know that past climate changes have had a significant impact on the distribution evolution of the various forms of life on the planet. This works both ways though because life itself also helps to determine climate.
This uncertainty makes it hard for people to come to an agreement. On one extreme some believe that humans should make drastic changes to minimize our influence on climate (either as a precautionary measure or based on a belief that all human meddling is bad), while on the other extreme some say don't worry at all, who cares if we are causing climate changes, human beings and other life will just have to adapt to the changes (life on Earth has survived large climate shifts in the past). I think most people fall somewhere between these two extremes. In this course, we will discuss what we know for certain about how human activities are affecting climate and what we do not understand about the potential influence of human activities. This will then help each of you to individually decide what, if anything, should be done.
Interesting read. When I first started reading your post, my humors started to get all out of balance because I thought this was going to be some conservapedia drivel- but it wasn't. I'm glad I stuck through to the end.
The only issue I have with the concern about global warming is the downright scary potential of people to profit off of it. Carbon credits as the main example. While I believe the Earth is going through a heating cycle, and humans have contributed to it in some way, I don't like the fact that new markets and trading systems on credits to emit pollutants have been started up and corporations or people have the potential to make ridiculous amounts of money in profit off of it.
Agreeing on man-made global warming wasn't even at issue there. The conversation was about how people on both sides of that argument agree that pollution is bad.
That being said, I think that man made warming is questionable at best. The climate has always been a cycle, and it'll get hotter and it'll get colder. Just how it works. Regardless of that, I hate seeing trash in the streets, run off in my water, and smog in the air.
I found this episode of Skeptoid to be really interesting on the whole climate change debate. Nothing to do with the facts but the political hot potato that it is.
Why would Will "call him on it"? It's a podcast, not an academic journal of record. It's incredibly poor form to "call out" panelists on a discussion show unless the format has specifically been framed as a debate, or formal discussion. This Is Only A Test is an entertainment podcast. Gary is entitled to his views, and he's hardly alone in feeling that way. If everyone on a podcast was required to back up everything they said with citations, nothing would ever get done. At least half of the assertions made on Podcasts are either untrue or on shaky ground, but it's okay because really it's thoroughly unreasonable to expect people to be fact-checking all the way through a recording, especially one which is basically conducted live to tape.
Setting that aside though, as I said, Gary is entitled to his viewpoint. You found a source which disagrees*, doubtless he has seen other sources which would dispute the conclusion of your own. The fact that he (reasonably) did not feel it necessary to cite them during a podcast in no way invalidates his point.
*Actually, it doesn't even do that, the text you've quoted without sourcing (That task was left to thabigred) is a three year old academic essay which draws no conclusion whatsoever, instead only injecting doubt. It reads like scientific FUD to me, but it also seems to be a fragment of a much larger body of work (Following the link from thabigred seems to confirm this, there are links to further pages albeit with broken images) so I imagine it is much more reasonable and balanced placed in its complete context.
Did you know, by the way, that selective quoting of even an academic source is at least as bad as citing anecdotal evidence? Frankly I'd make the case that it's worse, since it's flat-out intellectual dishonesty. Especially since the citation of the source was, as noted above, left out (Itself an example of academic dishonesty). Don't start an argument about pseudo-academic ethics if you're not prepared to adhere to them completely yourself.
@Jensonb Since you mentioned me, I'm waiting for games to download on Steam(which means I'm bored and have nothing better to do) and the forums are dead I'll respond to what you said.
As for the 'scientific FUD'. The original poster in this thread did what most people on the internet would do when someone says that doesn't jive with them but they don't have the intellectual initiative to construct their own argument. He went and copy & pasted an article he probably didn't bother to read(I did) that agreed with his opinion. You called the article an "academic essay which draws no conclusion whatsoever, instead only injecting doubt." I kind of laughed at this, I'm no physicist but my rudimentary understanding of Albert Einstein's Theory of relativity is that what you said could equally be applied to that, or at least every time I heard Sagan or Neil DeGrasse Tyson talk about Einstein's work, that's how they seemed to describe it in layman's terms so I think you're being a bit unfair.
This being said I think you hit the nail on the head. The original poster by being lazy shot down any argument he could make to criticize Gary for his anecdotal evidence. I even think Gary has made comments showing he understood along with Will/Norm in far back episodes talking about the difference between climate/weather when it came to climate change. I don't think Gary would challenge this fact, don't mean to speak for him or anyone else but I think I remember them talking about this. I have problems with the climate change community, I am skeptical of some of their arguments they put forward but there are facts, which I will call facts because that's what they are, which go in their favor. If anyone wants to have an actual intelligent discussion about climate change I'm down.
My skepticism I've mentioned before on this forum when it comes to climate change basically consist of two arguments. Firstly of confirmation bias as a result of better recording equipment and secondly that nature is somehow perfect(which seems to be an overarching abstract & romantic theme throughout a lot of climate change literature because of it's symbolic [religious] nature). If anyone wants to challenge me on these points I would love to turn this bad thread around and have a reasonable discussion with you guys.
@Jensonb 1. Across many sciences it is no secret
that as recording equipment becomes more accurate that what to look out for
both in terms of danger and benefit change drastically. This is very obvious
when one looks into medical sciences with saturated fats famously and disastrously.
New equipment came along, showed that saturated fats existed, and some
scientists made rash decision that was later shown to be wrong. But because of
the initial findings the government told us saturated fats were bad, and
because governments are by their design faith based institutions, people lost
faith in the sciences along with government. I think this problem may exist in
the climate change debate, it's no secret that recording processes for
researching climate change are getting better everyday. I read articles about
it all the time and I assume these people writing about it know what they're
talking about. How long until a new process comes along and tells us that
carbon isn't actually bad for the ozone and that it's actually something else
we're doing to cause this problem? I don't feel comfortable making drastic
policy decisions when we could all be wrong about this, even though despite all
of what I said above, I believe the earth is warming and I believe that the
climate is changing for the worse.
2. There is no perfect ecology. So
romanticizing the past when there were fewer humans and things were less
'artificial' sounds good when you're reading Theocritus, Henry David Thoreau,
or John Muir but do little but distort facts that we now know about nature
because of science. I love all three of those writers, especially Muir, I find
his writings to be moving in many things he said but a literal or anecdotal way
of viewing nature is wrong. Because their views on nature like many climate change
supporters based on symbolic messages, it makes their support of the cause
reactionary. Like any reactionary argument, you need a starting off point to
say times were perfect ‘back then’. There is only the ecology we have today,
this ecology is dynamic and empirical. These are the facts as we know them
through science. If we want to change nature to be more beneficial to humans I
think understanding that nature is not perfect is the right way of looking at
this problem, & thinking there was a perfect starting point only serves to
make you sound at best a reactionary who does not understand science and at
worst a religious person who does not understand science.
If you guys don't
want to argue this, that's fine but at least let's all rewatch the tour de
force and all around badass that is one of Tested's new owners, Adam fucking
Savage, showing us all the proper way to make a reasonable argument.
@Jensonb Since you mentioned me, I'm waiting for games to download on Steam(which means I'm bored and have nothing better to do) and the forums are dead I'll respond to what you said.
As for the 'scientific FUD'. The original poster in this thread did what most people on the internet would do when someone says that doesn't jive with them but they don't have the intellectual initiative to construct their own argument. He went and copy & pasted an article he probably didn't bother to read(I did) that agreed with his opinion. You called the article an "academic essay which draws no conclusion whatsoever, instead only injecting doubt." I kind of laughed at this, I'm no physicist but my rudimentary understanding of Albert Einstein's Theory of relativity is that what you said could equally be applied to that, or at least every time I heard Sagan or Neil DeGrasse Tyson talk about Einstein's work, that's how they seemed to describe it in layman's terms so I think you're being a bit unfair.
I should explain, the issue was not with the work in question but with the way it was presented. In its wider context it, as I noted, is part of an entirely balanced academic look at the issue. My point was that, as presented, it came across as FUD. This is not because the author was intending it as FUD or even unconsciously wrote it that way, it's the way it was presented here by the OP as if the quoted text alone stood as a valid argument against Gary's stated view, since all the quote is is an exploration of the topics which are up for debate, rather than actual debate about any one or more of them.
There's nothing inherently wrong with that, since it's actually an introduction, but presented as an entire argument as it was here, it would be FUD - the cynical creation of fear, uncertainty and doubt and to discredit an opposing idea, strategy, project etc; characterised by simply asking leading questions or presenting conflicting statements without supplying evidence.
In this way the OP, not the author, is who I meant was guilty of trying to spread FUD. It's an issue of discourse. The science is only of tangential interest for me.
Gary Whitta used anecdotal evidence on the podcast to show "global warming" is real. I'm really disappointed with Will Smith for not calling him out on it. Consensus I guess...
I really doubt anyone really cares what I have to say. They'll just believe what they want, and refuse to change, or question, etc. So I put the bottom line up front (BLUF)
Introduction to Global Warming and Climate Change
Global warming refers to an increase in the global average surface temperature of the Planet Earth. Unfortunately, there is quite a bit of confusion about whether "Global Warming" means any increase in the average temperature of the Earth or specifically only temperature increases that are due to human activities. We can measure changes in the global average temperature of the Earth's surface with some accuracy (and we find that the average temperature has increased recently), but we cannot determine very well how much of the temperature change is caused by human activities and how much is part of a natural fluctuation not related to human activity. You need to be clear on this point whenever discussing this issue. For example, if someone were to ask me if I "believe" in global warming, I would say yes the measured global average surface temperature has increased over the last 100 years so in that sense I agree. However, if someone were to ask me if I "believe" that the increase in global average surface temperature is mostly caused by human activities, then the best answer I can give is that I am unsure that the measured temperature changes are mostly the result of human activity.
Many human activities may contribute to global warming or other climate changes, such as anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases (enhancing the natural atmospheric greenhouse effect) or anthropological changes in land use (for example, deforestation or city-building). We usually include any climate response to the anthropogenic forcing in this discussion. For example, if the average global surface temperature goes up, this will shift weather patterns causing some areas to warm, some areas to cool, some areas to become wetter, and some areas to become drier. No one expects that all areas will be affected in the same way by anthropogenic perturbations. Perhaps it would have been better to use a term such as "anthropogenically-induced climate changes" rather than global warming, which seems to imply that everywhere will get warmer by the same amount.
This issue, whether or not human activity is causing global warmining and what, if anything, we should do about it, is hotly debated and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Some of you may find yourself in a position either in government or industry where you will have to make a decision that takes into account how human activities may affect the environment in which we live (both short-term and long-term changes). Even if all you do is vote for a particular issue or candidate based on the their stance about global warming, I think it is important that you can all make informed decisions. Too often, we are only told part of the story, especially by those who would like to sway opinions over to their point of view. If you don't know better, their arguments can be quite convincing. You need to understand this issue well enough to be able to make up your own mind about how to act.
As we go along, I will try to point out some common misconceptions about global warming. One that I would like to mention at the outset is that global warming and the ozone hole are not the same thing. They are two separate issues.
What is Climate Change?
We will define climate change as any significant shift in the atmospheric component of the climate system, which occurs at the spatial scale of a regionally-defined climate zone. We will take climate change to include both changes due to natural causes and changes due to human activities. Keep in mind that many people define climate change as a change in climate caused by human activity. Again when discussing this issue we need to be clear about what we mean by climate change.
We need to clearly define the spatial scales that will be used to determine climate change. Many times we are presented with data that shows only a change in the global average surface temperature. Although this may be relevant for something like global changes in sea level, a change in global average surface temperature is not enough to tell us about how life may be affected in smaller climate zones where organisms spend the majority of their lives. To understand the possible impacts of climate change, we need to look at smaller regions. An example of a climate classification system for the Earth is the Koppen map of world climates (linked from Wikipedia). We could say that climate change would mean a change in the distribution of the defined climate zones in this classification system. But even this would sometimes be too restrictive. For example, note that in the Koppen system the deserts of the southwestern United States and Mexico are classed in the same category as the Sahara Desert (warm, desert climate). However, we know that the climates are different, the Sahara is in general both hotter and drier. If the deserts of the southwestern United States became like the Sahara that would be a huge climate change locally, but would not change the Koppen class.
Keep in mind that some talk about climate change only in terms of the changes in the average surface temperature of the Earth. You may have heard predictions such as "the global average temperature is expected to increase by 4°C over the next 100 years." The change in global average temperature is only part of the story. A change in the global average surface temperature does not mean all regions of the Earth will experience the same change in temperature. In some areas, the average temperature may change drastically, while in other areas, no changes may occur. Also keep in mind that temperature is only one component of climate as discussed above. There are many different climate zones around the Earth. It is the regional changes in a particular climate zone that are most important to the inhabitants of that area, not the change in global average temperature. The ultimate question is will the inhabitants of a particular ecosystem be able to adapt to the changes? This is why for these posts we will define climate changes as occurring on small regional scales, like a moderately-sized ecosystem, as opposed to the entire planet Earth.
While I believe it best to define climate changes at the regional scale, increases in greenhouse gases caused by human activity do alter the composition of the atmosphere globally because once those gases are released they spread quickly around the globe. Thus, if the increase in greenhouse gases do significantly alter the natural global system, then we should expect that most climate zones will be affected worldwide. In addition, some issues like changes in global sea level, are tied to changes in the global average temperature. For these reasons, some prefer to define climate change as any long-term alteration in global weather patterns ... though ultimately changes in global weather patterns will result in climate changes within many individual climate zones.
It is not just changes in the average temperature for a region that determines climate change. Other examples of climatic components were listed in the previous lecture page. The distribution and frequency of extreme events is more important in determining what type of life can exist in a given ecosystem than the average conditions. Note that the distribution of extreme events can change even if the average conditions do not. You should also realize that even a relatively small change in the average conditions can correspond to relatively larger changes in the frequency of extreme events, since most climate variables fall into a Gaussian shaped distribution. This is important to understand because many people do not realize that a seemingly small change in say the average temperature in a climate zone can rather have a large impact on the life that lives there. An illustrative diagram is shown below.
The big questions today are (1)how are human activities affecting climates? and (2)what, if anything, should we do about it? Because the climate system is so complex and by no means fully understood, we are forced to try to address the latter question before we can definitively answer the first. The basic issue with the first question is that we are unable to separate natural climate changes from human-caused climate changes and we should not expect a definitive answer to that question in the near future. However, if human activity is responsible for detrimental climate changes, the longer we wait to act the worse the situation is likely to become. There will be no way to quickly reverse climate changes. Another issue associated with the second question is that to be effective action will require global scale cooperation. This because once greenhouse gases are emitted they spread around the globe. So just moving emission from one place to another will not have much effect.We know that all regions of the Earth have experienced climate changes throughout history and that until recently, all of these changes were due to natural as opposed to human causes. We can explain some of the reasons for past climate changes (for example, ice age cycles are probably related to slight variaitions in the Earth's orbit about the Sun), but we certainly cannot explain everything because the climate system is so complex. We also know that past climate changes have had a significant impact on the distribution evolution of the various forms of life on the planet. This works both ways though because life itself also helps to determine climate.
This uncertainty makes it hard for people to come to an agreement. On one extreme some believe that humans should make drastic changes to minimize our influence on climate (either as a precautionary measure or based on a belief that all human meddling is bad), while on the other extreme some say don't worry at all, who cares if we are causing climate changes, human beings and other life will just have to adapt to the changes (life on Earth has survived large climate shifts in the past). I think most people fall somewhere between these two extremes. In this course, we will discuss what we know for certain about how human activities are affecting climate and what we do not understand about the potential influence of human activities. This will then help each of you to individually decide what, if anything, should be done.
Interesting read. When I first started reading your post, my humors started to get all out of balance because I thought this was going to be some conservapedia drivel- but it wasn't. I'm glad I stuck through to the end.
EDIT: This guy looks like a goober.
The only issue I have with the concern about global warming is the downright scary potential of people to profit off of it. Carbon credits as the main example. While I believe the Earth is going through a heating cycle, and humans have contributed to it in some way, I don't like the fact that new markets and trading systems on credits to emit pollutants have been started up and corporations or people have the potential to make ridiculous amounts of money in profit off of it.
You should maybe source your original post duder, not to look like a goober.
@thebigred Good find, i remember doing a quick check on this when it was posted but oddly i did not get a hit.
Agreeing on man-made global warming wasn't even at issue there. The conversation was about how people on both sides of that argument agree that pollution is bad.
That being said, I think that man made warming is questionable at best. The climate has always been a cycle, and it'll get hotter and it'll get colder. Just how it works. Regardless of that, I hate seeing trash in the streets, run off in my water, and smog in the air.
I found this episode of Skeptoid to be really interesting on the whole climate change debate. Nothing to do with the facts but the political hot potato that it is.
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4309
Why would Will "call him on it"? It's a podcast, not an academic journal of record. It's incredibly poor form to "call out" panelists on a discussion show unless the format has specifically been framed as a debate, or formal discussion. This Is Only A Test is an entertainment podcast. Gary is entitled to his views, and he's hardly alone in feeling that way. If everyone on a podcast was required to back up everything they said with citations, nothing would ever get done. At least half of the assertions made on Podcasts are either untrue or on shaky ground, but it's okay because really it's thoroughly unreasonable to expect people to be fact-checking all the way through a recording, especially one which is basically conducted live to tape.
Setting that aside though, as I said, Gary is entitled to his viewpoint. You found a source which disagrees*, doubtless he has seen other sources which would dispute the conclusion of your own. The fact that he (reasonably) did not feel it necessary to cite them during a podcast in no way invalidates his point.
*Actually, it doesn't even do that, the text you've quoted without sourcing (That task was left to thabigred) is a three year old academic essay which draws no conclusion whatsoever, instead only injecting doubt. It reads like scientific FUD to me, but it also seems to be a fragment of a much larger body of work (Following the link from thabigred seems to confirm this, there are links to further pages albeit with broken images) so I imagine it is much more reasonable and balanced placed in its complete context.
Did you know, by the way, that selective quoting of even an academic source is at least as bad as citing anecdotal evidence? Frankly I'd make the case that it's worse, since it's flat-out intellectual dishonesty. Especially since the citation of the source was, as noted above, left out (Itself an example of academic dishonesty). Don't start an argument about pseudo-academic ethics if you're not prepared to adhere to them completely yourself.
@Jensonb Since you mentioned me, I'm waiting for games to download on Steam(which means I'm bored and have nothing better to do) and the forums are dead I'll respond to what you said.
As for the 'scientific FUD'. The original poster in this thread did what most people on the internet would do when someone says that doesn't jive with them but they don't have the intellectual initiative to construct their own argument. He went and copy & pasted an article he probably didn't bother to read(I did) that agreed with his opinion. You called the article an "academic essay which draws no conclusion whatsoever, instead only injecting doubt." I kind of laughed at this, I'm no physicist but my rudimentary understanding of Albert Einstein's Theory of relativity is that what you said could equally be applied to that, or at least every time I heard Sagan or Neil DeGrasse Tyson talk about Einstein's work, that's how they seemed to describe it in layman's terms so I think you're being a bit unfair.
This being said I think you hit the nail on the head. The original poster by being lazy shot down any argument he could make to criticize Gary for his anecdotal evidence. I even think Gary has made comments showing he understood along with Will/Norm in far back episodes talking about the difference between climate/weather when it came to climate change. I don't think Gary would challenge this fact, don't mean to speak for him or anyone else but I think I remember them talking about this. I have problems with the climate change community, I am skeptical of some of their arguments they put forward but there are facts, which I will call facts because that's what they are, which go in their favor. If anyone wants to have an actual intelligent discussion about climate change I'm down.
My skepticism I've mentioned before on this forum when it comes to climate change basically consist of two arguments. Firstly of confirmation bias as a result of better recording equipment and secondly that nature is somehow perfect(which seems to be an overarching abstract & romantic theme throughout a lot of climate change literature because of it's symbolic [religious] nature). If anyone wants to challenge me on these points I would love to turn this bad thread around and have a reasonable discussion with you guys.
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@Jensonb 1. Across many sciences it is no secret that as recording equipment becomes more accurate that what to look out for both in terms of danger and benefit change drastically. This is very obvious when one looks into medical sciences with saturated fats famously and disastrously. New equipment came along, showed that saturated fats existed, and some scientists made rash decision that was later shown to be wrong. But because of the initial findings the government told us saturated fats were bad, and because governments are by their design faith based institutions, people lost faith in the sciences along with government. I think this problem may exist in the climate change debate, it's no secret that recording processes for researching climate change are getting better everyday. I read articles about it all the time and I assume these people writing about it know what they're talking about. How long until a new process comes along and tells us that carbon isn't actually bad for the ozone and that it's actually something else we're doing to cause this problem? I don't feel comfortable making drastic policy decisions when we could all be wrong about this, even though despite all of what I said above, I believe the earth is warming and I believe that the climate is changing for the worse.
2. There is no perfect ecology. So romanticizing the past when there were fewer humans and things were less 'artificial' sounds good when you're reading Theocritus, Henry David Thoreau, or John Muir but do little but distort facts that we now know about nature because of science. I love all three of those writers, especially Muir, I find his writings to be moving in many things he said but a literal or anecdotal way of viewing nature is wrong. Because their views on nature like many climate change supporters based on symbolic messages, it makes their support of the cause reactionary. Like any reactionary argument, you need a starting off point to say times were perfect ‘back then’. There is only the ecology we have today, this ecology is dynamic and empirical. These are the facts as we know them through science. If we want to change nature to be more beneficial to humans I think understanding that nature is not perfect is the right way of looking at this problem, & thinking there was a perfect starting point only serves to make you sound at best a reactionary who does not understand science and at worst a religious person who does not understand science.
If you guys don't want to argue this, that's fine but at least let's all rewatch the tour de force and all around badass that is one of Tested's new owners, Adam fucking Savage, showing us all the proper way to make a reasonable argument.
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@thabigred said:
I should explain, the issue was not with the work in question but with the way it was presented. In its wider context it, as I noted, is part of an entirely balanced academic look at the issue. My point was that, as presented, it came across as FUD. This is not because the author was intending it as FUD or even unconsciously wrote it that way, it's the way it was presented here by the OP as if the quoted text alone stood as a valid argument against Gary's stated view, since all the quote is is an exploration of the topics which are up for debate, rather than actual debate about any one or more of them.
There's nothing inherently wrong with that, since it's actually an introduction, but presented as an entire argument as it was here, it would be FUD - the cynical creation of fear, uncertainty and doubt and to discredit an opposing idea, strategy, project etc; characterised by simply asking leading questions or presenting conflicting statements without supplying evidence.
In this way the OP, not the author, is who I meant was guilty of trying to spread FUD. It's an issue of discourse. The science is only of tangential interest for me.
Not to rain on your parades but he just made an off handed jest, you can put down your eco friendly pitch forks now.
@YoThatLimp: You're my new favorite.