I made the recovered cherry coke ice crystals into alcohol-filled ICEE's with the magic bullet and some Kahlua. It tastes pretty much like what I expected: ok. But it enrages me when I drink my salvaged Coke smoothie and read on weather.com that a plurality of online voters, (39.4%) do not think that global warming is true.
Frankly, I'm surprised at this. I don't understand how this misconception is out there. I offer my armchair ruminations:
1. Shoddy science reporting. Even though our society is increasingly driven by technology and this technology relies on advances in science, the layperson has a very ill-informed view on science or how the scientific method works. Blame schools all you want, but I'm of the opinion that this is because people have very ill-informed views on just about anything not relating to their narrow experience. I may be really into environmental chemistry and air pollution control and measurement, but I don't know a whole lot about (say) livestock.
I feel like people have this too-perfect view of science. If a man with a white lab coat says it is true, it Must Be So. Furthermore, complicated variables, conflicting data, systematic and random error do not exist- everyone must agree on science. As a corollary, when two scientists disagree, the effect they are researching must not be very scientific. The jury's still out.
But it's not. There is a huge consensus that the Earth is warming. You may blame it on sun spots or random chance or volcanoes, but you don't get to blame it on the Jew-run media anymore.
2. Shoddy political work. Why is this even a political issue? Democrats are more likely to believe in global warming, Republicans are more likely to not believe in it. This might be a nefarious plot by the Republicans to Destroy the Planet, but I'm more apt to quote Upton Sinclair: "If a man's paycheck depends on his not understanding something, you can rely upon his not understanding it." Sorry, oil companies.
10 comments:
Ok, maybe I am blind, or just didn't read this carefully enough, but do you think global warming is true? Your post seems like it could go either way...
Global Warming (or, better phrased Global Climate Change) is true. My post indicates that people believe it could go either way. I chalk this up to two effects:
1. Science reporting where media reports on conflict and disagreement even when it does not exist. They may do this in a good-faith effort to present both sides of the story but forget about context, or they may do this because covering an argument is easier than sorting out good scientific answers.
2. Political tribalism. Democrats bad, Republicans good. Democrats believe in global warming, ergo global warming does not exist.
I think scientists have conflicting reports, because even though their studies are supposed to be "bias free," there is always a way to find the answers you want to find, rather than seeing the answers that actually exist.
As for the media, the more contradicting reports they circulate, the more people they hook. When "new discoveries" are made, either in support of global warming or against it, people are interested and will want to learn more.
Bias in scientific studies is surely a factor- companies that feel threatened by environmental regulation have actively funded research that lo and behold finds no warming trend. The same bad science was done on cigarette smoking. I know it sounds like a bad movie with the Chairman of the Board of Directors twirling his mustache, but it does happen.
However, I think more of the controversy regarding global climate change is actual controversy- people disagree about the validity of data, how that data is interpreted, there are feedback loops where increasing carbon dioxide levels increase temperature or decrease it, soot and ash may deflect more sunlight, and on and on. Opponents of global climate change don't have to be fabricated out of whole cloth by Conglomo Corp- they can exist and disagree in good faith.
But the problem lies in legitimacy and numbers. Those who disagree with the conclusions of global warming are in the minority and are getting smaller. It's just how science works, I'm afraid.
This post is much too general for critical examination, as is the question "Do you believe in global warming?" The average global temperature has increased roughly 1 degree Celsius over the last 100 years. It's an empirical fact. I am not exactly sure what the debate is here...
Global warming may be a fact, but that doesn't mean people are going to suddenly drop their point of view at the snap of your fingers. It's like when people thought that the earth was flat, even when someone proved that it was, indeed, round, people still lived their lives like it was flat.
Just because something is a known fact, doesn't mean that there can't and shouldn't be debate about it. If someone were to "prove" that during a 100 year span 5000 years ago the earth cooled 1 degree Celsius, should we not debate over the validity of the finding?
Everything is debatable.
Everything can be debated, but I'm not so sure if everything should be debated. A strawman mathematical exercise:
Say you have 100 Shrute-Bucks that represent the capital, labor, time, and effort of human enterprise. You can allocate them in three ways:
1. Debating whether or not global climate change exists.
2. Researching ways to combat global climate change.
3. Party!
Say there is a 95% chance that global climate change is true, and that each additional Shrute-Buck spent Debating changes that number just a little. How should you spend your mad cash?
my-poetic-soul, there is something quite obviously mistaken in your analysis. When the scientific community was debating whether the earth was round or flat, neither conclusions were simple empirical facts. Both conjectures were merely theoretical, i.e., based in some larger scientific theory. Now, the roundness is a simple empirical fact; one can observe the roundness of earth merely by looking at it from outer space, or (more reasonably) by looking at a picture of it. Though there are people who still believe the earth is flat, none are taken seriously and I would argue they should not be. Similarly, it seems of little value to have a debate about whether it is raining or the sun is shining despite the fact that people may have conflicting views over the issue. One would be better served to look outside to see whether, in fact, it is raining or not. Along the same lines, there really isn't much disagreement in the scientific community regarding the empirical fact that during the period of 1905 to 2005, the average global temperature has risen about one degree celsius. While there may be people who hold the view that this is not the case, their view is probably the epistemological equivalent to someone who believes that the earth is flat or that the sun revolves around the earth.
Your analysis, David, is also mistaken because it relies on a "Bayesian" prior probability of 95%, which is simply an arbitrary number you picked from the sky which you have no analytical justification for whatsoever. Furthermore, it assumes that (1) we are the cause of global climate change and (2) we are capable of reversing it by changing our ways. If the probability was significantly lower, for example 30%, it wouldn't make much sense to allocate scarce resources toward combating global warming, only to find out that it was all for naught. After all, we could allocate those resources toward feeding, clothing, providing shelter, education, etc. for the 1 billion people in the world living on less than $1 per day.
I still live like the earth is flat.
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