THE WAR ON (CLIMATE) SCIENCE
When climate deniers are posing as "sceptics" and says stuff like the science is never settled and "science have been wrong before", its not because they are concerned about the quality of the science or the scientific method or that the holes in our understanding hopefully can be filled. Their motivation is to undermine the science because, to them, this will reduce the probability of certain "unwanted" scientific findings to be true, such as the climate science of AGW.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/oct/08/the-trump-administration-has-entered-stage-5-climate-denial?fbclid=IwAR25rf0d8V6BOwkYvud-IOKlni2bCa19B1PsZJmBtJ5UStllZqkngE8iRbE
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/sep/16/climate-change-contrarians-5-stages-denial?fbclid=IwAR1Xzh-kS1CBB30F0Q7nhDVzkLfqb-YjZo948s3irrbywYrle01mgFAxSps
The denial of science is a true religion, for its acolytes deny evidence and physics based on no evidence and no physics.
En skeptisk tilnærming er å kritisk evaluere oppfatninger og påstander, egne inkludert, på grunnlag av empiriske observasjoner. Det er ikke det samme som å være prinsipielt kritisk til etablerte sannheter som ikke passer ens eget verdensbilde. Klimaskeptikere er frekke nok til å påstå at de blir "ekskludert" fra den seriøse forskingen. At vitenskapen "har tatt feil før" og at "nye ideer må få sjansen til å bli hørt".
Greit nok.
Men, klimaskeptikere "produserer" ikke nye bevis for å forbedre den eksisterende klimavitenskapen. I stedet søker de etter feil i andres forskning og tåkelegger klimasaken for å så tvil.
Klimaskeptikerne endrer ikke syn når de presenteres med nye bevis fordi deres ståsted ikke er et resultat av konklusjoner fra den åpne vitenskapelige forskningen, men fra sterke ideologiske overbevisninger.
Når amatørklimafornektere poserer som "skeptikere" og sier ting som at vitenskapen er aldri avgjort og "vitenskapen har tatt feil før", er det ikke fordi de er bekymret for kvaliteten på vitenskapen eller den vitenskapelige metode eller håper at hullene i vår forståelse av verden forhåpentligvis kan fylles.
Deres motivasjon er å undergrave vitenskapen og så tvil om den fordi dette vil, for dem liksom, redusere sannsynligheten for at enkelte "upassende"vitenskapelige funn er sanne, for eksempel teorien om de menneskeskapte klimaendringene
Smearing scientists and undermining"unwanted" science that comes into conflict with ideology and powerful self interests is part of the denial propaganda machine.
Cynicism about the motives of public servants, including government-backed climate scientists, can be traced to a group of neoliberals and their ‘toxic’ ideas.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/sep/15/the-idea-that-climate-scientists-are-in-it-for-the-cash-has-deep-ideological-roots?
The War on Science is an attempt by a vocal anti-science minority to directly or indirectly attack science through modified school curricula, uncertainty tactics, and discrediting of the scientific methods. Any person or organization that promotes their ideology over scientifically-verified evidence is a partisan in favor of the antiscience position in the War on Science. If a position or theory is pro-science (a.k.a. "science"), as opposed to antiscience, it will follow the scientific method, be potentially refutable, peer-reviewable, reproducible, and open to change if the position comes in conflict with observed fact. An antiscience position will violate one or more of these thresholds, in addition to likely being incoherent. In other words — "is it science?"
Antiscience positions are promoted especially when political ideology, moneyed interests (e.g. the petroleum industry), and/or religious dogma conflict with actual science.
While it is highly likely that antiscience positions are the result of ideological positions, it is important to note that holding a particular ideological position does not automatically make an individual guilty of being antiscience, or vice versa.
Specific examples include attempts to ban the teaching of evolution, attempts to spread global warming denialism, attempts to ban vaccines, attempts to label or ban GMOs, and attempts to promote or deregulate alternative medicine.
The War on Science is carried out by several different groups, with largely different motives. All these groups feed a growing generic distrust among lay people of science and scientists.
Skeptics often claim that the science of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is not “settled”. But to the extent that this statement is true it is trivial, and to the extent that it is important it is false. No science is ever “settled”; science deals in probabilities, not certainties. When the probability of something approaches 100%, then we can regard the science, colloquially, as “settled”.
The skeptics say that results must be double-checked and uncertainties must be narrowed before any action should be taken. This sounds reasonable enough – but by the time scientific results are offered up to policymakers, they have already been checked and double-checked and quintuple-checked.
"One single proof" is a deceptive rhetorical flourish used primarily by denialists designed to apparently negate a preponderance of circumstantial evidence by claiming that without a specific key proof, the whole argument is invalid. The effectiveness of the technique is dependent on a sort of distortion of Occam's razor whereby any evidence that does not provide the whole answer is ignored.
The fallacy often rests on the idea that without a particular key bit of information, the entire system will fall apart. While this is sometimes the case, particularly when dealing with mathematical proofs, forensic arguments often make use of large quantities of circumstantial evidence in such a way as to point directly to a cause without a single smoking gun.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/One_single_proof
Scientists have been predicting AGW, with increasing confidence, for decades (indeed, the idea was first proposed in 1896). By the 1970s, the scientific community were becoming concerned that human activity was changing the climate, but were divided on whether this would cause a net warming or cooling. As science learned more about the climate system, a consensus gradually emerged. Many different lines of inquiry all converged on the IPCC’s 2007 conclusion that it is more than 90% certain that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are causing most of the observed global warming.
Some aspects of the science of AGW are known with near 100% certainty. The greenhouse effect itself is as established a phenomenon as any: it was discovered in the 1820s and the basic physics was essentially understood by the 1950s. There is no reasonable doubt that the global climate is warming.
And there is also a clear trail of evidence leading to the conclusion that it’s caused by our greenhouse gas emissions. Some aspects are less certain; for example, the net effect of aerosol pollution is known to be negative, but the exact value needs to be better constrained.
The scientific method does not produce, nor is meant to produce, absolute truths and knowledge, but increased knowledge. Such is the case - and so it must be - in climate research as for all other research. Major theories are generally always based on a large amount of smaller scientific findings. Becuase these little discoveries are made through the implementation of the scientific method, they makes the major scientific theories so robust and credible. In other words, there are infinite many filters, tests, corrections and objections until one gets a conclusion.
THE MISUSED GALILEIO ARGUMENT
A skeptical approach is to critically evaluate perceptions and statements, including ones, based on empirical observations. It's not the same as being fundamentally critical of established truths that do not match your own worldview.
Climate skeptics are rude enough to claim that they are "excluded" from the serious research. That science has "been wrong before" and that "new ideas must be given the chance to be heard". Fair enough, but in this context the point is completely turned up side down. Galileo's conclusions derive from observations and logic.
Galileo's evidence-based and logic-based method of investigation was later known as the scientific method. Modern researchers - including climate researchers - follow the evidence-based scientific method that Galileo was a champion of. Skeptics who oppose scientific findings threatening their ideology are far closer to Galileo's faith-based critics in the Catholic Church.
Today there are climate skeptics, flat earthers and creationists who make up these critics. Unlike Galileo and modern researchers, they do not change their views when presented with new evidence because their point of view is not the result of conclusions from open scientific research but from strong ideological beliefs.
Climate skeptics do not "produce" new evidence to improve existing climate science. Instead, they are looking for errors in other people's research and fog climate matters to create doubt. You do not find climate-skeptical "science" within the serious science for the same reason as you do not find the creationist "science" or flat-earth "science" there.
____________________________________________________
Climate denialism is a movement sponsored by the fossil fuel industry and their wealthy free marked fundamentalist donors who have an aim of discrediting science to enhance their pocketbooks.
The hysterical, polemic, paranoid conspiratorial and desperate feigned "us against them" conservative alt-right wingnut ideological free marked fundamentalist libertarian Ayn Rand anti-government anti-regulation tax alarmism demagogy junk with its mandatory and predictable attacks on unwanted (climate) science and smear against scientists and competing green energy, filtered through think tanks and astroturf orgs by their wolf pack attackers, Opinion Piece writers, fake experts and their media-accomplices, all recycled by echo chamber denier blogs and You-Tube-videos by amateur deniers and boys room conspiracy drivlers and web-trolls,
-are really only a
sewer stream of cynical polluters industry self interests,
camouflaged as a political right / left struggle -drag queened in a convulsively socialist witch hunt, posing like its about the "people on the street", the workers (their gullible sheeple) and "the poor people of the world",
but the real agenda is
to legitimize the right to pollute for oil, gas and coal companies, and to argue for ever more tax cuts for the free marked fundamentalists who created them so they can continue to make shitloads of money by ruining public health and add to the damages of CC.
Private corporations take the profit while the environment and public health takes the bill.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/War_on_Science
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Science_was_wrong_before
https://skepticalscience.com/settled-science.htm
I honestly don’t know why uneducated conservatives think their opinions are valuable in discourse about things they know nothing about.
Your inability to understand science is not an argument against it.
When climate deniers are posing as "sceptics" and says stuff like the science is never settled and "science have been wrong before", its not because they are concerned about the quality of the science or the scientific method or that the holes in our understanding hopefully can be filled. Their motivation is to undermine the science because, to them, this will reduce the probability of certain "unwanted" scientific findings to be true, such as the climate science of AGW.
Scientists are working on the details and are improving the knowledge database every day. New findings and corrections are happening on a daily basic. This is science at work, it doesn't mean the main theory is wrong.
The scientific method does not produce, nor is meant to produce, absolute truths and knowledge, but increased knowledge. Such is the case - and so it must be - in climate research as for all other research. Major theories are generally always based on a large amount of smaller scientific findings. Becase these little discoveries are made through the implementation of the scientific method, they makes the major scientific theories so robust and credible. In other words, there are infinite many filters, tests, corrections and objections until one gets a conclusion.
That humans contribute most to climate change with our C02 emissions is such a conclusion.
There is a difference between honest skepticism — something that is not only valuable but necessary for the progress of science — and pseudo-skepticism, i.e. denialism posing as “skepticism” for the sake of obscuring, rather than clarifying, what is known. (Michael E. Mann)
https://rationalwiki dot org/wiki/War_on_Science
There is a difference between honest skepticism — something that is not only valuable but necessary for the progress of science — and pseudo-skepticism, i.e. denialism posing as “skepticism” for the sake of obscuring, rather than clarifying, what is known. (Michael E. Mann)
When climate deniers are posing as "sceptics" and says stuff like the science is never settled and "science have been wrong before", its not because they are concerned about the quality of the science or the scientific method or that the holes in our understanding hopefully can be filled. Their motivation is to undermine the science because, to them, this will reduce the probability of certain "unwanted" scientific findings to be true, such as the climate science of AGW.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2018/oct/08/the-trump-administration-has-entered-stage-5-climate-denial?fbclid=IwAR25rf0d8V6BOwkYvud-IOKlni2bCa19B1PsZJmBtJ5UStllZqkngE8iRbE
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2013/sep/16/climate-change-contrarians-5-stages-denial?fbclid=IwAR1Xzh-kS1CBB30F0Q7nhDVzkLfqb-YjZo948s3irrbywYrle01mgFAxSps
The denial of science is a true religion, for its acolytes deny evidence and physics based on no evidence and no physics.
Does Poor Understanding of Physical World Predict Religious and Paranormal Beliefs?
Summary
Although supernatural beliefs often paint a peculiar picture about the physical world, the possibility that the beliefs might be based on inadequate understanding of the non-social world has not received research attention. In this study (N = 258), we therefore examined how physical-world skills and knowledge predict religious and paranormal beliefs. The results showed that supernatural beliefs correlated with all variables that were included, namely, with low systemizing, poor intuitive physics skills, poor mechanical ability, poor mental rotation, low school grades in mathematics and physics, poor common knowledge about physical and biological phenomena, intuitive and analytical thinking styles, and in particular, with assigning mentality to non-mental phenomena. Regression analyses indicated that the strongest predictors of the beliefs were overall physical capability (a factor representing most physical skills, interests, and knowledge) and intuitive thinking style. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Summary
Although supernatural beliefs often paint a peculiar picture about the physical world, the possibility that the beliefs might be based on inadequate understanding of the non-social world has not received research attention. In this study (N = 258), we therefore examined how physical-world skills and knowledge predict religious and paranormal beliefs. The results showed that supernatural beliefs correlated with all variables that were included, namely, with low systemizing, poor intuitive physics skills, poor mechanical ability, poor mental rotation, low school grades in mathematics and physics, poor common knowledge about physical and biological phenomena, intuitive and analytical thinking styles, and in particular, with assigning mentality to non-mental phenomena. Regression analyses indicated that the strongest predictors of the beliefs were overall physical capability (a factor representing most physical skills, interests, and knowledge) and intuitive thinking style. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
En skeptisk tilnærming er å kritisk evaluere oppfatninger og påstander, egne inkludert, på grunnlag av empiriske observasjoner. Det er ikke det samme som å være prinsipielt kritisk til etablerte sannheter som ikke passer ens eget verdensbilde. Klimaskeptikere er frekke nok til å påstå at de blir "ekskludert" fra den seriøse forskingen. At vitenskapen "har tatt feil før" og at "nye ideer må få sjansen til å bli hørt".
Greit nok.
Men, klimaskeptikere "produserer" ikke nye bevis for å forbedre den eksisterende klimavitenskapen. I stedet søker de etter feil i andres forskning og tåkelegger klimasaken for å så tvil.
Klimaskeptikerne endrer ikke syn når de presenteres med nye bevis fordi deres ståsted ikke er et resultat av konklusjoner fra den åpne vitenskapelige forskningen, men fra sterke ideologiske overbevisninger.
Når amatørklimafornektere poserer som "skeptikere" og sier ting som at vitenskapen er aldri avgjort og "vitenskapen har tatt feil før", er det ikke fordi de er bekymret for kvaliteten på vitenskapen eller den vitenskapelige metode eller håper at hullene i vår forståelse av verden forhåpentligvis kan fylles.
Deres motivasjon er å undergrave vitenskapen og så tvil om den fordi dette vil, for dem liksom, redusere sannsynligheten for at enkelte "upassende"vitenskapelige funn er sanne, for eksempel teorien om de menneskeskapte klimaendringene
Smearing scientists and undermining"unwanted" science that comes into conflict with ideology and powerful self interests is part of the denial propaganda machine.
Cynicism about the motives of public servants, including government-backed climate scientists, can be traced to a group of neoliberals and their ‘toxic’ ideas.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2017/sep/15/the-idea-that-climate-scientists-are-in-it-for-the-cash-has-deep-ideological-roots?
The War on Science is an attempt by a vocal anti-science minority to directly or indirectly attack science through modified school curricula, uncertainty tactics, and discrediting of the scientific methods. Any person or organization that promotes their ideology over scientifically-verified evidence is a partisan in favor of the antiscience position in the War on Science. If a position or theory is pro-science (a.k.a. "science"), as opposed to antiscience, it will follow the scientific method, be potentially refutable, peer-reviewable, reproducible, and open to change if the position comes in conflict with observed fact. An antiscience position will violate one or more of these thresholds, in addition to likely being incoherent. In other words — "is it science?"
Antiscience positions are promoted especially when political ideology, moneyed interests (e.g. the petroleum industry), and/or religious dogma conflict with actual science.
While it is highly likely that antiscience positions are the result of ideological positions, it is important to note that holding a particular ideological position does not automatically make an individual guilty of being antiscience, or vice versa.
Specific examples include attempts to ban the teaching of evolution, attempts to spread global warming denialism, attempts to ban vaccines, attempts to label or ban GMOs, and attempts to promote or deregulate alternative medicine.
The War on Science is carried out by several different groups, with largely different motives. All these groups feed a growing generic distrust among lay people of science and scientists.
Skeptics often claim that the science of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is not “settled”. But to the extent that this statement is true it is trivial, and to the extent that it is important it is false. No science is ever “settled”; science deals in probabilities, not certainties. When the probability of something approaches 100%, then we can regard the science, colloquially, as “settled”.
The skeptics say that results must be double-checked and uncertainties must be narrowed before any action should be taken. This sounds reasonable enough – but by the time scientific results are offered up to policymakers, they have already been checked and double-checked and quintuple-checked.
"One single proof" is a deceptive rhetorical flourish used primarily by denialists designed to apparently negate a preponderance of circumstantial evidence by claiming that without a specific key proof, the whole argument is invalid. The effectiveness of the technique is dependent on a sort of distortion of Occam's razor whereby any evidence that does not provide the whole answer is ignored.
The fallacy often rests on the idea that without a particular key bit of information, the entire system will fall apart. While this is sometimes the case, particularly when dealing with mathematical proofs, forensic arguments often make use of large quantities of circumstantial evidence in such a way as to point directly to a cause without a single smoking gun.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/One_single_proof
Scientists have been predicting AGW, with increasing confidence, for decades (indeed, the idea was first proposed in 1896). By the 1970s, the scientific community were becoming concerned that human activity was changing the climate, but were divided on whether this would cause a net warming or cooling. As science learned more about the climate system, a consensus gradually emerged. Many different lines of inquiry all converged on the IPCC’s 2007 conclusion that it is more than 90% certain that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are causing most of the observed global warming.
Some aspects of the science of AGW are known with near 100% certainty. The greenhouse effect itself is as established a phenomenon as any: it was discovered in the 1820s and the basic physics was essentially understood by the 1950s. There is no reasonable doubt that the global climate is warming.
And there is also a clear trail of evidence leading to the conclusion that it’s caused by our greenhouse gas emissions. Some aspects are less certain; for example, the net effect of aerosol pollution is known to be negative, but the exact value needs to be better constrained.
The scientific method does not produce, nor is meant to produce, absolute truths and knowledge, but increased knowledge. Such is the case - and so it must be - in climate research as for all other research. Major theories are generally always based on a large amount of smaller scientific findings. Becuase these little discoveries are made through the implementation of the scientific method, they makes the major scientific theories so robust and credible. In other words, there are infinite many filters, tests, corrections and objections until one gets a conclusion.
THE MISUSED GALILEIO ARGUMENT
A skeptical approach is to critically evaluate perceptions and statements, including ones, based on empirical observations. It's not the same as being fundamentally critical of established truths that do not match your own worldview.
Climate skeptics are rude enough to claim that they are "excluded" from the serious research. That science has "been wrong before" and that "new ideas must be given the chance to be heard". Fair enough, but in this context the point is completely turned up side down. Galileo's conclusions derive from observations and logic.
Galileo's evidence-based and logic-based method of investigation was later known as the scientific method. Modern researchers - including climate researchers - follow the evidence-based scientific method that Galileo was a champion of. Skeptics who oppose scientific findings threatening their ideology are far closer to Galileo's faith-based critics in the Catholic Church.
Today there are climate skeptics, flat earthers and creationists who make up these critics. Unlike Galileo and modern researchers, they do not change their views when presented with new evidence because their point of view is not the result of conclusions from open scientific research but from strong ideological beliefs.
Climate skeptics do not "produce" new evidence to improve existing climate science. Instead, they are looking for errors in other people's research and fog climate matters to create doubt. You do not find climate-skeptical "science" within the serious science for the same reason as you do not find the creationist "science" or flat-earth "science" there.
____________________________________________________
Climate denialism is a movement sponsored by the fossil fuel industry and their wealthy free marked fundamentalist donors who have an aim of discrediting science to enhance their pocketbooks.
The hysterical, polemic, paranoid conspiratorial and desperate feigned "us against them" conservative alt-right wingnut ideological free marked fundamentalist libertarian Ayn Rand anti-government anti-regulation tax alarmism demagogy junk with its mandatory and predictable attacks on unwanted (climate) science and smear against scientists and competing green energy, filtered through think tanks and astroturf orgs by their wolf pack attackers, Opinion Piece writers, fake experts and their media-accomplices, all recycled by echo chamber denier blogs and You-Tube-videos by amateur deniers and boys room conspiracy drivlers and web-trolls,
-are really only a
sewer stream of cynical polluters industry self interests,
camouflaged as a political right / left struggle -drag queened in a convulsively socialist witch hunt, posing like its about the "people on the street", the workers (their gullible sheeple) and "the poor people of the world",
but the real agenda is
to legitimize the right to pollute for oil, gas and coal companies, and to argue for ever more tax cuts for the free marked fundamentalists who created them so they can continue to make shitloads of money by ruining public health and add to the damages of CC.
Private corporations take the profit while the environment and public health takes the bill.
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/War_on_Science
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Science_was_wrong_before
https://skepticalscience.com/settled-science.htm
I honestly don’t know why uneducated conservatives think their opinions are valuable in discourse about things they know nothing about.
Your inability to understand science is not an argument against it.
When climate deniers are posing as "sceptics" and says stuff like the science is never settled and "science have been wrong before", its not because they are concerned about the quality of the science or the scientific method or that the holes in our understanding hopefully can be filled. Their motivation is to undermine the science because, to them, this will reduce the probability of certain "unwanted" scientific findings to be true, such as the climate science of AGW.
Scientists are working on the details and are improving the knowledge database every day. New findings and corrections are happening on a daily basic. This is science at work, it doesn't mean the main theory is wrong.
The scientific method does not produce, nor is meant to produce, absolute truths and knowledge, but increased knowledge. Such is the case - and so it must be - in climate research as for all other research. Major theories are generally always based on a large amount of smaller scientific findings. Becase these little discoveries are made through the implementation of the scientific method, they makes the major scientific theories so robust and credible. In other words, there are infinite many filters, tests, corrections and objections until one gets a conclusion.
That humans contribute most to climate change with our C02 emissions is such a conclusion.
There is a difference between honest skepticism — something that is not only valuable but necessary for the progress of science — and pseudo-skepticism, i.e. denialism posing as “skepticism” for the sake of obscuring, rather than clarifying, what is known. (Michael E. Mann)
https://rationalwiki dot org/wiki/War_on_Science
https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/War_on_Science
The spectrum of ‘persuadability’
After several years of reading, responding to, and cataloging the discourse around climate change, I now see a pattern becoming clear: Not every person offering pushback is doing so for the same reason. Sure, some people are itching for a fight, but myriad others have genuine questions, hold only tentative beliefs, or are in-sync with the mainstream science but not inclined to do anything about it. Gauging someone else’s underlying position can help focus one’s attention on whether – and how – to engage.
