Global Warning/Climate Change

Things that are not part of politics happening presently and how we approach or address it as Anabaptists.
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Bootstrap
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

Post by Bootstrap »

PeterG wrote:
ken_sylvania wrote:
In his classic 1972 book, “Groupthink,” Irving L. Janis, the Yale psychologist, explained how panels of experts could make colossal mistakes. People on these panels, he said, are forever worrying about their personal relevance and effectiveness, and feel that if they deviate too far from the consensus, they will not be given a serious role. They self-censor personal doubts about the emerging group consensus if they cannot express these doubts in a formal way that conforms with apparent assumptions held by the group.
Yes, this clearly applies to people who do not agree with me.
I think this is a valid concern - and scientists clearly can be wrong. I also think that the earliest IPCC reports suffered from trying to force scientists to reach a single concensus on each finding.

It is far better to record the mainstream views that exist, the evidence for each, and our level of confidence, which is what the IPCC process now requires. And dissenting evidence should also be shown. Back to Climategate - one of the big controversies was that the East Anglia group exchanged emails saying that two papers skeptical of climate change were poor quality and should be excluded.
In one of the more controversial exchanges, UEA scientists sharply criticized the quality of two papers that question the uniqueness of recent global warming (S. McIntyre and R. McKitrick Energy Environ. 14, 751–771; 2003 and W. Soon and S. Baliunas Clim. Res. 23, 89–110; 2003) and vowed to keep at least the first paper out of the upcoming Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Whatever the e-mail authors may have said to one another in (supposed) privacy, however, what matters is how they acted. And the fact is that, in the end, neither they nor the IPCC suppressed anything: when the assessment report was published in 2007 it referenced and discussed both papers.
A literature review really does need to include all relevant published literature. So far, it really seems like it does.
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Robert
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

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Bootstrap wrote:And if you look at some of the claims people are making about Climategate, they often rely on taking quotes out of context to make them mean something different from what they mean in context.
I am sure. I also know both sides do this. You also quoted two very left leaning sites.

There is no crisis. We may need to be aware and alert, but there is no reason to overreact. So if this is the case, why are so many pushing for massive taxes and overreaction in technology and lifestyle? Why is pulling out of the Paris Agreement such a crisis?
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Bootstrap
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

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Robert wrote:
Bootstrap wrote:And if you look at some of the claims people are making about Climategate, they often rely on taking quotes out of context to make them mean something different from what they mean in context.
I am sure. I also know both sides do this. You also quoted two very left leaning sites.
Sometimes it feels like you think everything to the left of Breitbart is "very left leaning" ;->

To me, a "very left leaning site" looks like this: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/left-news/

And a "very right leaning site" looks like this: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/right-news/

According to Media Bias Factcheck, which has the most objective methodology I have seen so far, Factcheck.org is "Least Biased" with a "very high" factual reporting level, Nature is "Pro-Science" with a "very high" information level, and The Guardian has a slight to moderate liberal bias, with a "high" factual reporting level. That aligns with the image that Dan Z shared, too.

Perhaps the articles in Nature, Science, Scientific American, etc. are particularly relevant to this kind of question.
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

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Robert wrote:There is no crisis. We may need to be aware and alert, but there is no reason to overreact. So if this is the case, why are so many pushing for massive taxes and overreaction in technology and lifestyle? Why is pulling out of the Paris Agreement such a crisis?
I actually agree that overreacting would be a problem - but I think that scientists and nations need to be in a conversation about what kind of reaction is appropriate.

Now honestly, I have not read the Paris Agreement, but my impression was that nothing in it is legally binding, it is all voluntary:
The Paris Agreement has a 'bottom up' structure in contrast to most international environmental law treaties which are 'top down', characterised by standards and targets set internationally, for states to implement. Unlike its predecessor, the Kyoto Protocol, which sets commitment targets that have legal force, the Paris Agreement, with its emphasis on consensus-building, allows for voluntary and nationally determined targets. The specific climate goals are thus politically encouraged, rather than legally bound. Only the processes governing the reporting and review of these goals are mandated under international law. This structure is especially notable for the United States—because there are no legal mitigation or finance targets, the agreement is considered an "executive agreement rather than a treaty". Because the UNFCCC treaty of 1992 received the consent of the Senate, this new agreement does not require further legislation from Congress for it to take effect.
Does the Paris Agreement really require "massive taxes" or major changes to our lifestyle? I don't actually know what kinds of changes we need to make in any detail, that's not something I have studied much. I suspect that most Americans are not going to want dramatic changes to either taxation or our lifestyle, and that we should be looking for reasonable changes that make a difference if we want to get people to agree to make these changes.

But surely some things make sense. More electric cars? More renewable energy, including nuclear? I think this is like insurance: we should try to reduce the risk at a reasonable cost.
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

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Bootstrap wrote:Sometimes it feels like you think everything to the left of Breitbart is "very left leaning" ;->
I actually never read Breitbart and have little use for it.
Bootstrap wrote:I actually agree that overreacting would be a problem - but I think that scientists and nations need to be in a conversation about what kind of reaction is appropriate.
I do not really have an issue with that either. The challenge is anyone who views the issue in a lesser degree is blacklisted. This even happened to Bjorn Lomborg and he accepts global warming.
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

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Not sure that the Paris accord has anything to do with it but climate change is certainly being used as a major excuse for massive tax increases here in Canada. Think 20 cent extra on a gallon of gas for starters.
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

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Interesting article about the Pope and climate change. Note especially the comments.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2017/hurr ... ancis-poor
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

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lesterb wrote:Interesting article about the Pope and climate change. Note especially the comments.

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2017/hurr ... ancis-poor
An awful lot of this article is standard "anyone who disagrees with me is biased, a victim of groupthink" stuff that sounds like it is talking about how to evaluate scientific claims, but doesn't really give you any information on how to find reliable sources, and it only points to two sources of information on the scientific question. One of these sources is very flawed, the other is legit, but a single paper - I'll look at that at the end.

The article criticizes Francis for saying this:
For those who may have doubts on these matters, Francis counsels “go to the scientists… [who] speak very clearly…telling us which path to follow.”

However, there are scientists who come to very different conclusions.
If you focus on scientific associations, what is taught at universities, or what scientists who work in the field come up with if you lock them in a room and ask them to read all of the scientific literature and summarize what it says, I think Pope Francis is right. And the article ignores pretty much all of mainstream science.

There are always some scientists who come to different conclusions, which is why the debate among scientists is important. It points to two things to make its point. First ...
There are also the 31,000 climatologists, meteorologists, physicists and other scientists who signed the Global Warming Petition
But that petition (which we have seen before) is an Internet petition that is hard to verify. It requires only that you claim to have a bachelor's degree related to any field of science, and they didn't check even to make sure that your name is the name of a real person (as opposed to a Star Wars character or one of the other amusing names people slipped past them.) According to the people behind the petition, only 12% of the signers have degrees (of any kind) in earth, environmental, or atmospheric science, and there is no requirement to have read any scientific papers at all.

This is not even remotely like a debate among scientists who have all looked at the same data and are asked to summarize what it says. It is not a credible scientific source of any kind, it's just a website that does not tell you who funded it, promoted by a letter written by a man who spent a good bit of his career as a hired gun for the tobacco lobby.

The other scientific link is more interesting:

Solar activity predicted to fall 60% in 2030s, to 'mini ice age' levels: Sun driven by double dynamo.
A new model of the Sun's solar cycle is producing unprecedentedly accurate predictions of irregularities within the Sun's 11-year heartbeat. The model draws on dynamo effects in two layers of the Sun, one close to the surface and one deep within its convection zone. Predictions from the model suggest that solar activity will fall by 60 per cent during the 2030s to conditions last seen during the 'mini ice age' that began in 1645.
Results will be presented today by Prof Valentina Zharkova at the National Astronomy Meeting in Llandudno.
Science Daily is pro-science, and generally very factual. They are reporting on a paper that has not even been presented for the first time, so I really have no idea how other scientists responded to the paper. This is the kind of finding that other scientists need to debate and take into account. I have no idea how that paper was received. They are reporting on it before it even becomes part of the debate, when they are just announcing that they are going to tell a group of scientists their findings.

But I see nothing in the Crisis Magazine article that makes me question what Francis says: if you look at scientific associations, scientific journals, what is taught at the university, or what you find in literature reviews, it's pretty clear that mainstream science is saying global warming is real, manmade, and may have serious consequences.

So a lot of this boils down to basic media literacy. What kinds of sources are reliable for understanding the state of the debate on scientific questions? I don't think the Crisis Magazine article points us to anything at all that a scientist would consider a reliable source for answering that question.
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

Post by Bootstrap »

Incidentally, I think a lot of this is really about basic media literacy, so here is a much shorter, simpler version that asks just a few questions.

As a statement on science:

1. Does this appear in a scientific journal or something scientists would accept as the result of peer review? (no)
2. Does it reference that kind of publication (only once, and that was to a paper that had not yet been presented to other scientists)

As a statement on media literacy:

1. How do I know that the other side is the one guilty of groupthink and such, not the person writing the article?

As a statement on religion and the Pope, I think the questions are much harder:

1. When should a religious leader weigh in on how we should respond to warnings made by scientists?
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Re: Global Warning/Climate Change

Post by Wayne in Maine »

I'm surprised this news item has not entered this discussion yet: Climate Models Run Too Hot

It makes one lose faith in consensus science.

I have not read the article from Nature Geoscience (it's rather expensive) but I'm looking forward to seeing some of the details on which they based their conclusion.
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