Climate Change!

Intended for constructive conversations. Exhibits of polarizing tribalism will be deleted.
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bryan
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by bryan »

Ignoring current events, where lies are presented as "alternative facts", one could say that "the pint glass is half empty" is an alternative fact to "the pint glass is half full."

Or if you have a pint glass and claim that it is half full (the liquid comes up about half the height of the glass) but someone else claims it is _not_ half full since it clearly does not contain one-half pint of liquid. Who is right? Both have the facts on their side but the statements of hypotheses were not narrow enough, thus it is up for debate as to who's fact is more correct and who's fact is "alternative". Maybe the bartender will be the one to judge, and set the precedent, for what a half-full pint glass looks like (oh look, common law).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative. Alt-rock is still rock, alt-comics are still comics. Alt-news is still news.

Both are facts but either could be used towards some ends.

And to bring recent events back into the fold, the lies from US gov have simply been taken to a new level. I guess we could have expected as much considering the lies presented as facts on social media leading up to the election and "fake news," but the US gov hasn't had such obvious lies akin to showing us a picture of a dog and telling us it's a cat.

I'd never considered an alt-fact to be an alternative universe fact :lol:

7Wannabe5
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

@jacob: Gotcha. Seems a lot less fun than old school lively debate. Sigh.

steveo73
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by steveo73 »

Is is really possible to simplify the AGW alarmists argument to being about people who can't read books ? I personally don't believe that this is the case. I think that alarmists can read. I think they just choose to ignore the facts.

I think that there is also insufficient and poor data coupled with limited science. I think when you add this fact to my theory on a broad section of human beings wanting to believe that humans are ecologically bad then we have this political/sociological movement.

I bet it'd be pretty easy to disprove the theory regarding AGW alarmists not reading books. I accept that they can't look at the facts and if we were using the scientific method they would have to concede that the theory is really looking extremely shaky. For the record I think that is already occurring. I linked to an article by an AGW proponent who clearly stated that the idea that extreme weather events were occurring could not be validated by the scientific data/maturity that we currently have.

I think the alarmist theories that a lot of people hold too are really just from people that only want to believe in my theory about mankind being an ecological disaster. I don't think many scientists are taking the alarmist line anymore. I think all they are going to state is the precautionary principle. So I think in essence it's not as bad as some want to make out.

jacob
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by jacob »

@bryan - Yes, one could say that but that was obviously not how I used to word and it does not relate the problem being discussed above either, nor does it relate to why it's considered such a problem in current events.

If the pint glass is half empty and people can go and look at the glass and see how much water is in there, then an alternative fact to saying that it's half empty/half full (any reasonable person would consider this to be the same thing) is to say that "the pint glass is completely full" or "empty"---which is indisputably wrong to anyone looking. The problem at issue here is not one of nitpicking for lack of word definitions either; something which would be an entirely sophomoric discussion. If that was the problem, one can easily ask for clarification, for example:

Fact: "The boiling point of water is 100 degrees at one atmosphere"
Question: "Fahrenheit or Celcius?"
Clarification: "Celcius"
Question: "Whose atmosphere? Earth or Mars"
Clarification: "Earth or 101325Pa"
Question: "What do you mean by BP?"
Clarification: "When the water turns to steam"
Question: "More exactly?"
Clarification: "When the vapor pressure of the liquid equals the surrounding pressure"

While one may ask for ever more clarification, it seems that at some point there would be sufficient agreement on the definitions. Then reasonable people (<- people using reason as a heuristic) should be able to agree. Actually, I would rather that people "just be adults about it" and get on the same page about basic conventions (like what words mean in the dictionary or common parlance) sooner rather than later. I think it should be possible to infer the technical context based on the 'Fact' as stated based on that alone ... so we avoid wasting time on the technical definitions because ultimately they don't matter to the 'Fact' as stated. IOW ... if it's not clear wrt this 'Fact' that I'm operating under the metric system on planet Earth ... then you're almost surely just being argumentative for the sole purpose of being argumentative.

Alternative fact: "I agree with all the clarifications but I say the boiling point is 700 degrees or infinitely tremendous".

To which a reasonable person would ask: "What planet are you on?" because it's clearly not this one. There's just no way to get 700 under the constraints/definitions specified above; because we will all share a common reality sooner or later.

The point here is that "alt-news" is not news insofar that news refers to things that actually happened. If news becomes redefined to refer to random stories one comes across ... then sure, alt-news is news, but then "news" under the new definition (made up stories) doesn't really mean the same as news under the old definition (things that actually happened). In other words, alt-news is properly classified under "entertainment" ... it has nothing to do with news classified as information even if "news" shares four letters with "alt-news".

Same deal with the word fact... EITHER fact means "a statement that can be verified with experiments or another commonly accepted method" (like the boiling point of water) OR fact just means "random statements that anyone can make which doesn't need true or in any way connected to reality" which pretty much renders the word fact meaningless. Those two are definitely not equivalent under any measure. Very different standards apply.

Anyone who thinks reality is irrelevant eventually suffers the consequences of that belief when the real world catches up.

The very reason that everybody is now talking about "alternative facts" is of course that some people have used the word "fact" in the latter sense a little too much/freely. Therefore some other people now desire to create a new word to distinguish the two [very different] concepts. Whereas yet other people now think the two concepts are the same. I expect the last two groups to further separate/stop talking to each other going forward. At that point each will be in their own boat but still on the same sea. It'll be interesting to see how that goes. A lot of people are starting to wash their hands of the other side on both sides. DSKla's rightly, I think, pointed out that the policy-recommendations in Mann's book were half-assed. I kinda agree with that. There's almost no way that we're actually going to achieve the 2C goals that are being pushed. In between the physics and the politicians (the executive summary), things get translated into what politicians think they can sell... there's a gap between where the world is going in reality and where it's willing to go politically. So the people trying for reconciliation is understandably some of the more optimistic amongst the highly informed ones thinking that politics will eventually snap into reality somehow. The rest are more inclined to look out for #1 being disgusted with the whole process---Which is also where I side/plan for.

@7wb5 - In the old days there were a lot more checks and balances demanding that people "had to be at least this smart to ride this ride". Therefore debates were more stratified ensuring that people were interacting/debating with people more or less within their own [intellectual] "weight class". Previously, in order to discuss science at a high or current level, you pretty much had to be a senior grad-student or beyond because it took that long to work your way into the required level of complexity (3000+ hours)---and you'd be talking to profs and other grads. Undergraduates would discuss it at a mid level usually lagging 2-3 decades behind current research because it hadn't made it into the textbooks yet. (So 100 hours/class) They'd talk to other undergrads, etc. and indulgent profs. High-schoolers would talk popularized non-fiction (Brian Greene and string theory anyone?) with lots of opinion substituting for equations or scientific arguments (resembling this thread---the original climate thread was slightly better but still focused on repeated debunking of bs arguments some of which were decades old, the record being just over a century :? :roll: ) (10 hours). And laymen just had a vague idea that the subject existed (10 minutes -- 1hr).

Now, social media has connected everybody with everybody. And google et al has made it easy to search for an opinion or factoid given a few keywords and appear that one knows what one is talking about, at least to non-experts (meta or domain). So discussion became open-weight, at least for a while (~1985-2015 ... from 100% in the early days to 0% towards the end --- about one generation's worth, specifically GenX/Boomer who were the two dominant species on the internet in these years). In my case, I eventually grew frustrated with this. On the other hand, that was a new skill to learn. I've started a few threads in the past 2-3 years about Mt Stupid, Dunning-Kruger, etc. which mostly reflected this learning process for me. So the idea was/is pretty much to quickly learn who you're talking to when lacking the old sorting framework. I have a system with two axes now. On one axis, I have expertise from -1000 to 10000+ hrs---I also allow for negative-hours now in the sense that the person may be actively misinformed having spent time learning things that are wrong. The other axis ranges from propensity of or for "learning" to "debating". Just like always, assessing where someone is makes interacting with them much more effective because one knows how to talk to them ... what they respond to, what they ignore, etc. I asses the Wheaton level ... both in terms of willingness to change one's mind (learn vs debate) and technical acumen. If it's too far removed ... I ignore. I don't think I'm the only one who figured this out. In fact, I think I was rather slow at it. It's not like debate or scientific discourse disappeared ... it's just when it comes to climate science, it's not found on this forum. It's found elsewhere. The level of debate in this thread so far is much closer to the climate science analogy of whether water ever boils at all if it's heated far enough. Or equivalently if everybody from planet Krypton can fly.

bryan
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by bryan »

Well, I stopped watching/reading "news" (as defined "at some point there would be sufficient agreement on the definitions") years ago because I discovered it was (not-so-entertaining) entertainment...

This refinement/clarification clearly does not happen at large. I agree it could (I did with some friends recently around what they mean when they say "Nazi punching is good/bad") but it mostly doesn't since it gets lost in the noise of snap judgements and ephemeral views.

BRUTE
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by BRUTE »

7Wannabe5 wrote:Since most human beings are not built like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Iskra Lawrence, BMI is well-correlated to various health risks associated with visceral fat deposits.
somewhat strange examples - the Austrian Oak was the prime example of anabolic steroid abuse in his time, adding absurd amounts of muscle mass at extremely low body fat. Iskra Lawrence is not particularly muscular, and has pretty high body fat levels. brute doesn't know her height/weight, but would be surprised if she wasn't in the overweight BMI category, and not because of surplus muscle.

7Wannabe5
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

I wrote:
Since most human beings are not built like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Iskra Lawrence, BMI is well-correlated to various health risks associated with visceral fat deposits.


Brute replied: somewhat strange examples - the Austrian Oak was the prime example of anabolic steroid abuse in his time, adding absurd amounts of muscle mass at extremely low body fat. Iskra Lawrence is not particularly muscular, and has pretty high body fat levels. brute doesn't know her height/weight, but would be surprised if she wasn't in the overweight BMI category, and not because of surplus muscle.
Right. The estimation of internal central body fat deposits provided by BMI is limited by the fact that it assumes uniform distribution of mass over height squared. It was developed as a tool for population studies, not for use in evaluation of individual risk, because it is so simplistic, it is "stupider" than information that can readily be gathered by simple visual inspection of an individual human. It is not a metric like blood pressure which can reveal a truly hidden useful piece of data for an individual. Waist-to-height ratio or waist-to-hip ratio are better gauges of central body fat risk because they are inherent of one more degree of complexity.
Last edited by 7Wannabe5 on Wed Jan 25, 2017 4:49 am, edited 1 time in total.

BRUTE
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by BRUTE »

example far fetched; how would brute talk with Iskra sitting on his face?

7Wannabe5
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

888

Gilberto de Piento
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

Recently I heard a podcast about the parallels between the fossil fuel industry creating doubt about climate change and the tobacco industry creating doubt about the dangers of smoking. There's a good summary at the link below, including:
- secretly funding biased science
- documentation of plans to sow doubt
- forged letters to congress
- industry pretending to be grassroots groups

http://www.ucsusa.org/sites/default/fil ... ssiers.pdf

Obviously the source is a group that is against climate change but I think this is the most detailed summary I've seen and includes documentation.

steveo73
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by steveo73 »

Gilberto - I really don't think that the fossil rule industry are politicising this debate or if they are they are doing a really terrible job of it.

There is overwhelming political pressure to comply with the current acceptable political viewpoint of climate change alarmism. Just look at this thread. Look at the facts that are presented and the political arguments that are utilised.

This is clearly a political debate with the pro-alarmist viewpoint being shoved down everyone's throats. The political pressure on that side is about 10 billion to one. It's where the money is.

ducknalddon
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by ducknalddon »

@steveo hasn't your city just had it's hotest day on record?

Solvent
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by Solvent »

steveo73 wrote:Gilberto - I really don't think that the fossil rule industry are politicising this debate or if they are they are doing a really terrible job of it.

There is overwhelming political pressure to comply with the current acceptable political viewpoint of climate change alarmism. Just look at this thread. Look at the facts that are presented and the political arguments that are utilised.

This is clearly a political debate with the pro-alarmist viewpoint being shoved down everyone's throats. The political pressure on that side is about 10 billion to one. It's where the money is.
Given that the Treasurer in Australia's Government just brought a lump of coal to the House of Reps and told everyone to admire it, there seems to be a lot of dissonance between your opinion and reality steveo.

steveo73
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by steveo73 »

I think clearly anyone stating that the predominant political viewpoint isn't pro-alarmist AGW suffers from a massive amount of cognitive dissonance. In Australia we even have prime ministers boldly stating that AGW is a fact and making fun at anyone who speaks up against the predominant socially accepted viewpoint.
Last edited by steveo73 on Sun Feb 12, 2017 4:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

steveo73
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by steveo73 »

ducknalddon wrote:@steveo hasn't your city just had it's hotest day on record?
I don't know if this is the case but it's definitely been hot.

Here is the interesting point - no knowledgeable person would state that this is because of AGW. If anyone believes that it is I suggest that you realise that person does not have an understanding of climate including the greenhouse effect at all.

I can't wait for the day when we can discuss this topic without the poor arguments that the pro AGW crowd seem to love. I think I'll be waiting a long long time.

ducknalddon
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by ducknalddon »

steveo73 wrote: Here is the interesting point - no knowledgeable person would state that this is because of AGW.
Nobody did, I just thought it was an interesting point.

ducknalddon
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by ducknalddon »

steveo73 wrote:I can't wait for the day when we can discuss this topic without the poor arguments that the pro AGW crowd seem to love. I think I'll be waiting a long long time.
That works both ways, we have heard plenty of assertions from you but no facts. Meanwhile the evidence is available if you are open to it.

steveo73
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by steveo73 »

Go read this thread. I've given a tonne of facts. This argument doesn't cut it anymore. It's actually pretty one sided. I get political arguments against what I state.

The evidence that you state is not one sided and you need to start recognising the complexity of the issue. When that starts happening it will be a lot lot easier to discuss the topic because we will be on a firmer footing. The over the top confidence that AGW is proven and we are heading towards the Earth being destroyed is nonsense.

George the original one
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by George the original one »

Meanwhile the wildfires continue to burn, fueled by ever hotter temperatures and drier summer seasons.

Campitor
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Re: Climate Change!

Post by Campitor »

steveo73 wrote: The over the top confidence that AGW is proven and we are heading towards the Earth being destroyed is nonsense.
I'm not worried about the Earth being destroyed. Earth has survived countless asteroid impacts and 5 major extinction events. It's humans that I'm worried about. Regardless if you believe in AGW or not, there is no denying that we are slowly but surely poisoning ourselves with the amount of pollutants we keep pumping out. I'd like clean energy because I love fresh air and smog free skies. I want less mercury in the ocean and beaches that don't coat your toes in petroleum if you sink your feet into the sand. I want to walk into a forest and not see plastic bags floating on trees or smell excrement on the tide because the waste facility was overwhelmed with flash flooding and had to dump raw sewage into the ocean. I'm sure there are lots of financial interests that want to see the AGW money wagon pick up speed. But you don't have to believe in AGW to see the worldwide distress that we as humans are inflicting on ourselves and other species. We don't need AGW as a reason to reduce emissions of every kind.

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