Most YouTube Climate Change Videos 'Oppose the Consensus View' (theguardian.com) 369
The majority of YouTube videos about the climate crisis oppose the scientific consensus and "hijack" technical terms to make them appear credible, a new study has found. From a report: Researchers have warned that users searching the video site to learn about climate science may be exposed to content that goes against mainstream scientific belief. Dr Joachim Allgaier of RWTH Aachen University in Germany analysed 200 YouTube videos to see if they adhered to or challenged the scientific consensus. To do so, he chose 10 search terms: Chemtrails, climate, climate change, climate engineering, climate hacking, climate manipulation, climate modification, climate science, geoengineering, and global warming.
The videos were then assessed to judge how closely they adhered to the scientific consensus, as represented by the findings of reports by UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 2013 onwards. These concluded that humans have been the "dominant cause" of global warming since the 1950s. However, Allgaier found that the message of 120 of the top 200 search results went against this view.
The videos were then assessed to judge how closely they adhered to the scientific consensus, as represented by the findings of reports by UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) from 2013 onwards. These concluded that humans have been the "dominant cause" of global warming since the 1950s. However, Allgaier found that the message of 120 of the top 200 search results went against this view.
Of course (Score:4, Interesting)
All the hard data is behind paywalls of academic publishers.
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All the hard data is behind paywalls of academic publishers.
This is a damn good point. Scientific evidence is mostly institutionally hidden by academia. Crackpots and whackjobs are mostly on YouTube. Guess which one the average person has access to?
I don't think this issue is YouTube's fault, for once.
Re:Of course (Score:5, Insightful)
Scientific evidence is mostly institutionally hidden by academia. Crackpots and whackjobs are mostly on YouTube. Guess which one the average person has access to?
Is there any evidence that anyone with both the electronic and mental equipment to make use of the data has had any trouble getting their hands on the data?
I don't think this issue is YouTube's fault, for once.
No. It's the broken condition of public education in America, and elsewhere (but let's face it, much of this kind of content is coming from the good old U S of A.) That's where the fault lies. YouTube is exacerbating the condition, however.
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Is there any evidence that anyone with both the electronic and mental equipment to make use of the data has had any trouble getting their hands on the data?
There is a ton of evidence, but it's all behind a paywall.
wrong : no paywall for citizen using library (Score:5, Insightful)
The "it is behind a paywall" is bullshit, most people would not make the EFFORT to really source those paper, or even have the skill to comprehend them. Those who DO have the skill have no excuse if they really want to read those paper.
Re:wrong : no paywall for citizen using library (Score:4, Insightful)
Then people will take the path of least resistance and get their information on science from sources like Youtube.
Don't complain when that happens.
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Yet science educators are treated with disdain and suspicion. It's been shown that the literally some of the same actors who created FUD around the tobacco health risks have done the same in the Climate Change Debate with the result being public sentiment moving away from the scientific consensus. This is a problem in journalism that treats propaganda as comparable to scientific fact.
Re:Of course (Score:5, Informative)
The IPCC report does a pretty good job at summarizing the science. You can download that for free.
Re:Obligatory link... (Score:4, Informative)
Since I didn't see this elsewhere in the comments, the user "Potholer54" is an excellent resource on YouTube for climate science. In real life, Peter Hadfield is a science journalist with 3+ decades of experience. His video playlist [youtube.com] is well sourced and does a balanced job of refuting hyperbole and misinformation on both sides of the debate. Highly recommended viewing.
Re:Of course (Score:4, Informative)
And a lot of researchers post their research on their personal pages. As an author they're generally allowed to do that.
A bigger problem is the underlying data. There's a very good chance that a) it's measured in gigabytes, b) it's in some unconventional structure that is the nightmare spawn of the instruments used to collect it combined with the characteristics of the data itself combined with the intended use of the data, and c) it likely needs to be QAed and fixed before it's usable.
Regarding "b", climate scientists spend a very large amount of time just getting the data into some sort of useful format. Anyone in the "show me the data you liars" frame of mind shouldn't be ok with the cleaned and formatted data, so they're on the hook for doing that sort of work. It's not trivial. Just understanding the instrumentation limitations is a task. Doing proper statistical techniques around those limitations is something that a lot of scientists continuously get wrong.
Regarding "c", all instruments need bias correction. All data needs to have flaws in it corrected. The location you're collecting data from may suffer from seasonal impacts which are detrimental to understanding what's being studied. The instrument itself may have well known and well studied limitations where beyond those spurious data is collected. While anytime anyone on the lunatic fringe hears that scientists are correcting data they get all spazzy, they also get all self-righteous pointing out that thermometers in urban areas read hotter because of the urban heat island effect. Yes sparky, that's what the data correction is there for!
So while on one hand I agree that we should make the data available to everyone, without a deep understanding of the data, instruments, limitations, biases, etc., it's really not useful to anyone. You can't just take biased data and run an analysis on it and claim to have discovered something. And the danger in letting people do that is that is that they can then "prove" that the scientists are messing with the data. Which they are, and if they'd take the time to read a paper or two, they'd find out exactly why and how. Throwing out all the data beyond the limits where an instrument is known to be reliable isn't a conspiracy - it's proper methodology.
Then it becomes a matter of the scientists having to spend their time proving to the crackpots why that data needs to be corrected before it can be used. That's not a good use of their time, especially since said crackpots aren't going to care anyway. And if the scientists are wrong, the crackpots can't explain why or how. That's why it almost always takes someone who knows the science, instruments, and data really well to point out the methodological flaws that other scientists are using. And that shit gets peer reviewed and published.
I don't really see a constructive way forward other than saying, "If you're honestly interested in the subject, go get a master's degree in it." Two or three years of intense focus on a subject surrounded with experts and being given access to all the tools and knowledge you need to understand it inside and out is really what's required to be able to say, "this is what you're doing wrong, and this is why". A textbook example is Richard Muller [nytimes.com]. He was a climate skeptic who thought that the climate scientists were doing sloppy work, so he pulled together a team of researchers and cranked through the data over a year and change.
If you think the scientists are lying, that's the sort of effort it takes to make an honest attempt to demonstrate that. It's not the sort of thing you do over a weekend to post to youtube the next week. There isn't a really good reason to make data available to general public, and there are a lot of bad ones.
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Anecdotally Iâ(TM)ve been able to find most papers, but itâ(TM)s not easy.
Anecdotally, all the times (three) that I've contacted one or more authors of a paper, they've sent me a free copy. Sometimes it was of a recent draft, and not the final published version, because of publishing agreements. But that's good enough for my purposes (ranting on Slashdot.)
One major obstacle is the title of the paper makes sense only if you understand the technical jargon which most lay persons wonâ(TM)t get.
People in a position to comprehend the paper are generally either versed in the language, or in a position to google the terminology and study it. If not, they will have to wait for the paper to be misinterpreted by a news outle
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Scientific evidence is mostly institutionally hidden by academia.
Actually it's hidden by private companies who pretty much force scientists and acadamia to deal with them to get published at all, and then use that to leech money off anyone wanting to see the results... even when that research was paid for by taxpayers. There should be a federal law that says any research paid for in portion by the taxpayers cannot be sequestered for profit like this.
Re:Of course (Score:5, Informative)
All the hard data is behind paywalls of academic publishers.
This is a damn good point.
Not really:
http://www.realclimate.org/ind... [realclimate.org]
http://rainbow.ldeo.columbia.e... [columbia.edu]
http://wise.web.unc.edu/teachi... [unc.edu]
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Another reason might be that people don't usually talk about things that are obvious to most of us, like vaccinating your kids keeps them healthy, the earth is a sphere and so on. For most peple it is now also clear that climate change is real and caused by the stuff that comes out of all humanity's exhaust pipes. So only flat earthers, anti-vaxxers and the climate change deniers are still active on YouTube.
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I don't think that your average person looking up Climate Change information on YouTube is going to bother reading those academic level papers anyway. They're probably looking for more of a Wikipedia level summary of the subject, unless they're a conspiracy theorist or something.
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Even if true (it's not) that doesn't seem like much of a hurdle to me; The chances that the average schmuck is going to understand the papers is pretty dire. The problem is people are too lazy to find and/or lack the required technical background to understand the research directly, so they go to YouTube which is much easier and have others whom they presume are credible give them the layman's version.
The best ones will provide detailed citations and even links to the papers cited. The worst ones will just
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I wish it wasn't true.
I should point out, though, that if you went to a decent university, you can join their alumni association, usually that includes access to the scientific journals via the library.
I don't think that's the issue (Score:5, Interesting)
What I'm saying is you don't need hard science, pop sci is fine.
Rather, there is a _lot_ of money being spent to oppose climate change action. A few reasons for this:
1. Tackling climate change is global, and that means government action, and that means taxes. The middle and lower class are doing so hot right now, so you're not gonna get that money from them. That leaves the wealthy.
2. Gov't action likely means a large scale jobs program (e.g. a "Green New Deal") as people are employed to make the changes needed to address the problem. And that means millions of new gov't jobs with good pay and benefits. That'll put pressure on the private sector to raise wages and benefits and, again, there's the wealthy again.
3. The wealthy benefit from the negative consequences since, as the owners of most of the land and capital, they become wealthier as resources become scarcer and more valuable. Short of an extinction event they come out ahead, and as far as I know nobody's really talking extinction, just mass famine and war. That suits the ruling class just fine.
In short, dealing with Climate Change is all downsides for our ruling class and no upsides. I mean except for making the world a better place [duckduckgo.com]. But then again CEOs tend to be more successful when they're psychopaths [businessinsider.com]...
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Your camera retroactively modifies the raw sensor data too. Do you moan about that as well?
Let's censor them! (Score:2, Insightful)
Not really, but we all know that's the next step after such a study. And it would be a fucking stupid idea to do because it's not as if stamping out such videos will quiet the opposition ( and that's if you believe the opposition has no inherent value, which is of course nonsense ), merely drive them further outside of your control.
If they truly want to silence such opposition, they need to make the science more accessible. I'm a pretty smart guy, but if I'm being honest I can't say I'm 100% behind anthro
Re:Let's censor them! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: Let's censor them! (Score:5, Interesting)
Because he has unearned knowledge, we all do. Previously if someone ask a person say, the speed of x-rays in a vaccum, if a person knew the answer they most likely had a basic understanding of science and physics and had at least paid some attention in high school... now its a google search. As a result, subconsciously people start to question why someone would waste time and resources studying any subject when the answer to everything is only a click away... these guys aren't so smart i can debunk everything they are saying by reading an article on theblaze... this, i think, is the main reason for the "death of expertise" journalists have been writing about since 2016. Climate change denial, flat earth, etc these are all just symptoms of this same phenomenon.
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Are you not 100% behind consumer technology? Medicine? Genetics? Space travel?
All of that stuff is frequently misapplied, for personal profit. Well, not so much space travel, that's only infrequently misapplied. Mind you, I support the consensus view on global warming, but there's lots of reasons to be distrustful of consensus views. Ironically, medicine is one of the primary ones. There's shit-tons of malfeasance in medicine, especially as pertains specifically to medication.
I'm not 100% behind any of those things as they are currently practiced.
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That's the beauty of science. It doesn't matter if you're behind it or not.
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Re:Let's censor them! (Score:4, Insightful)
I can't answer for the original poster, but my answer would be "Which science — the actual scientific studies that say that humans are warming the planet, or the low-quality news stories that try to simplify that to a level where the average people can understand it, and end up being nothing more than a pile of alarmist predictions that always turn out to be wrong?"
I believe that humans are warming the planet. I have serious doubts about whether that change actually matters in the grand scheme of things. In particular, most of the alarmist concepts that are so popular with the pseudo-scientific press, such as the concept of a "runaway greenhouse effect" are almost certainly pure nonsense. We're comically far away from the highest concentration of greenhouse gases the planet has experienced in its history, and if that were going to happen, we can reasonably assume that it would have happened billions of years ago. Therefore, the fact that we have people to cause anthropogenic global warming in the first place is pretty strong evidence that such an outcome is extremely unlikely.
Mind you, I'm not expecting zero effect. We may see more serious storms. We will see areas that have not historically gotten enough rainfall to be farmed become arable, and previously arable land become desert. We will see some areas become more livable and other places become less livable. People will have to adapt, but not that much.
And, of course, we can expect sea levels to rise anywhere from none to a couple of meters. Of course, IMO, anybody claiming to actually know how much sea levels will rise is basically pulling numbers out of his/her backside. The best anyone can do is try to extrapolate based on the numbers obtained so far, but that may or may not yield valid results, because the final outcome depends on a whole lot of geological and hydrological systems that we don't fully understand, such as the extent to which melting ice will reduce the mass of continents and cause them to float higher on the underlying magma and the oceans to float lower, the extent to which greater ocean surface area, decreased ocean salinity, and higher air temperatures will lead to more moisture remaining in the atmosphere for longer, etc.
The real problem is that I have zero faith in the scientific media to cover such complex subjects in a way that an average person can understand, because I've seen too much evidence to the contrary. :-( And as long as that is true, I'm highly skeptical about every single global warming story I read, and about everything reported in them, even though I have little doubt that anthropogenic global warming is occurring.
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I see this happening in the climate science arena, and they could absolutely benefit from outside analysis, especi
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Re:Let's censor them! (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you talking about? A scientist publishing results that contradict 'established' thinking is exactly the type of thing they would love to do, as that is how instantly gain recognition in a field. Think Einstein when he overturned our understanding of physics with General Relativity.
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It's not that understanding the details is a requirement to belief in something someone else says, it's a trust issue.
Re:Let's censor them! (Score:4, Insightful)
I call "bullshit" on your claim that you're a scientist. Any scientist would just read the IPCC reports, and the tens of thousands of supporting reports. Any "world ending catastrophes" that you're aware of are from the mass media, not from any scientific papers.
taking that and running it down the field crying wolf the entire time
Again, not what scientists do.
Complicating this is the fact that global warming started life as a political cause
Absolutely false. It is a scientific discovery, based on decades of scientific research that indicates a problem that governments will have to solve.
So yes; making climate science more accessible is the only way to properly address anyone who expresses skepticism.
More accessible, how, exactly? https://www.ipcc.ch/ [www.ipcc.ch]
Re:Let's censor them! (Score:5, Interesting)
Any scientist would just read the IPCC reports, and the tens of thousands of supporting reports.
As long as you're reading the Technical Summary, and not the Summary for Policymaters. The SPM is revised from the Technical Summary in governmental approval sessions, where delegates from more than 190 countries go over the Technical Summary, and requires approval from all the delegations for content from the Technical Summary to appear in the SPM. The delegations have consistently demonstrated that they will object to any text that they considered inconsistent with their interests and positions; in the example of Section SPM.5.2 from Working Group 3, almost 75% of the text was deleted due to objections from one or another of the delegations -- under IPCC rules, the dissent of a single country will bring the whole approval process to a halt. As a result, the Summary for Policy Makers is no longer a scientific document, it's a political one. But it's the SPM that is trotted out as the final word from the IPCC on the state of the climate 'crisis',
Re:Let's censor them! (Score:4, Insightful)
What narrative? You're the one that's saying that global warming "requires faith". You're the one that lied and said that global warming started as a political cause. You're the one lying and saying that the models are "flawed". You're the one with the narrative, and yours is clearly that global warming isn't good science, and even if it was, nobody can understand it because the science is somehow "hidden".
Accessible as in; data accessibility, in terms that non-specialists can grok.
Unless you live in Fox News Land, the information is everywhere. Literally, everywhere. I don't think that accessibility is a problem.
Re:Let's censor them! (Score:5, Informative)
Global warming was predicted by basic science by the late 19th century, well before any politics were involved. By the 1960s/1970s a majority of climate papers were already predicting global warming, again way before any politicians were aware of the issue. It only became a political issue in the last 30 years.
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The reality is that the IPCC models match reality very very accurately, and are improved with each iteration, which is why they are considered usable to predict the future.
Re:Let's censor them! (Score:4, Interesting)
However, a scientist evaluating AGW who notices that models are wrong should try to figure out where the missing heat is, not whether or not AGW is real.
This is a basic concept. We know the heat flux of the Earth is slowed by atmospheric carbon, and the most important feedback loop of relative humidity vs. temperature.
If the model is wrong, the Earth is sequestering heat somewhere, and that makes it even scarier.
That's the difference between a scientist analyzing a problematic model vs. some asshole online who's only beliefs and opinions are fed to him by people he presumes to be credible.
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For the sake of argument, lets assume you're right that a lot of models have never matched the data. Lets just take models off the table entirely. What is your take on the observable evidence all around us of a warming planet? Things like the acceleration of glacier and polar melt worldwide, more frequent and intense heatwaves, rising sea level, things like pine beetles moving to higher altitudes because the winters arent as cold as before, etc. Are all those coincidental and have nothing to do with the fac
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in fact, I am a scientist.
Na, you're not. Good try, though.
If you were, you'd be amazed that people deny the end result of a fire because models aren't perfect at predicting exactly when the 23rd floor will catch fire.
It's not rocket science. (Score:3)
Increasing greenhouse gasses will increase the greenhouse effect.
We've increased the greenhouse gasses
We should expect an increase in greenhouse effect
This has, indeed been measured.
Re:Let's censor them! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Let's censor them! (Score:4, Insightful)
I understand that. It's worth pointing out that I'm not in one camp or another. I'm not anti-climate change, I'm not pro-climage change. I simply don't know. And that's a perfectly valid position to take, but as you can see I'm being ostracized for it nevertheless.
What does that tell you? Does that tell you that supporting climate change is a rational positions it's supporters are taking, or an emotional one? Mind you, the flaws of it's supporters does not negate the science itself.
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When general relativity of or quantum mechanics demand resources from me, you can bet I'll want to understand the data behind it.
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However, the problem is real and existential, and it will demand resources from you or your children. So now is the time to start educating yourself and sifting through the political nonsense.
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Bwahaha I hope he answers this.
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Interesting, we need to make people more aware of how the same old playbook has been used again and again in the past to keep it from repeating itself.
It's also very interesting that if Thomas Midgley had invented a slightly different version of the original CFC, it would've worked just as well as a refrigerant but it would've also completely destroyed the ozone layer before anyone even had a clue it was happening 8-(
To use Nick Bostrom's balls-in-an-urn analogy, we luckily missed a very dark gray ball ther
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the oil companies have launched a massive astroturf campaign to introduce doubt into anthropological global warming. It is exactly the same thing they did when scientists were screaming about leaded gas poisoning people [agu.org]. The same exact sentiment that you are expressing here is what the doubters expressed back when scientists were ringing the alarm bells about leaded gas.
Oil company money is *nothing* compared to the amount of government funding aimed at pushing an alarmist view of climate change for purpose of power concentration and tax collection.
If we've learned anything from history it is that governments tend to hide big problems so they don't upset whatever racket that's working for them at the time. Yet now they are pushing this doom and gloom so hard, they even trod out children to do it for them. Never in history has something been pushed so hard by virtually all
Re:Let's censor them! (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a pretty smart guy
Apparently you are not. There's lot of stuff you don't have a problem with supporting that you don't understand. You've been fooled into thinking you need to understand climate change to "get behind it," whatever the fuck that means.
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Its very simple. 99% of people much smarter than you believe its happening. Doesn't take a rocket scientist to take that to the next level.
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I've read what I can but there's just too much stuff that is beyond my understanding.
That's fair.
There's no need to do a deep dive. The heavy lifting is identifying scientists you trust -- maybe even a consortium of scientists you trust.
Then read the material written by scientists who can communicate well with the lay.
Look for equivalents to Asimov, Sagan, and Tyson in the climate science fields.
You don't need to be an expert. Those people are.
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I'm pretty much convinced that we have global warming driven by humanity but I can see a polarization where a heterogeneous group of skeptics don't trust the mainstream movement. I don't know what a climate denier is but the spectrum I've found goes from denying that things are warming over denying that it's got a human cause to denying that it is worthwhile to take dramatic measures against it.
It is true that there is considerable group think in the mainstream, and that there is a lot of bad science as a r
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I don't know what a climate denier is but the spectrum I've found goes from denying that things are warming over denying that it's got a human cause to denying that it is worthwhile to take dramatic measures against it.
The first two are climate deniers (or more accurately, climate conspiracy theorists), the last is a climate policy obstructionist.
It is true that there is considerable group think in the mainstream, and that there is a lot of bad science as a result,
This is a vague and unfounded assertion that is incorrect by any reasonable measure. Anyone who mistakenly thinks there's "a lot of bad science" in climatology has already started their fall down the denialist rabbit hole.
From there it's an easy step to be very dismissive about the claims. Or to put it differently, it's an obvious step to put your trust in the smarter skeptics instead of in mainstream science.
And this is a recipe for runaway tinfoil hattery, for the value of "skeptics" we're discussing. People who've made it to this point have made a number of mistak
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The vast majority of the "bad science" on wattsupwiththat and other denialist blogs isn't bad science, it's bad pseudoscientific interpretations of perfectly good science, so if you see it as bad science you've already been misled, that's my point. Plus there's the fact that you have to go to a denialist blog to see it collected together for you.
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I'm a pretty smart guy, but if I'm being honest I can't say I'm 100% behind anthropological global warming
Good, you're a smart guy, so I'll point you in the direction where you can easiest confirm AGW is a thing.
Spectral absorption of CO2, Atmospheric water retention vs. temperature, spectral absorption of water, carbon cycle, and planetary net heat flux.
Everything else is quibbling over details. Denying AGW is ignorant, period. There's no fucking debate about whether it's happening. Physics we understood a hundred years ago says it *has* to happen given our carbon cycle alteration.
As I said, the only debate
Flatearth (Score:4, Insightful)
There are probably more YouTube videos about "flat earth" than there are "the earth is round" too.
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There are probably more videos about "Flat earthers are bad mmmmkay" than there are "Flat earth is a thing" too.
At least that I've seen. I've never actually seen a Flat Earther. I've seen many Flat Earth Debunkers though.
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The summary is silly/misleading.. (Score:5, Insightful)
..because it conflates the results for "chemtrails" and "climate". The source data makes it clear that mostly you get crazy results if that's what you're looking for:
https://www.frontiersin.org/fi... [frontiersin.org]
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Deniers are _____. (hint: crazy)
It's a filter (Score:2, Interesting)
The proportion is to be expected. (Score:2)
Most people are inspired to act when they think something is wrong. Climate change is adopted by the majority of the population as fact and those people feel like you don't really need to say much on the matter. Those who deny climate change is fact want to exhibit their distrust and convince others, so they write memes, blog posts, and make videos.
How many "Trump is Great" Youtube videos are there? And how many "Trump is the WORST" videos?
Pro-Obama? Anti-Obama?
People speak up when they think something is b
Selection problems (Score:2)
I wonder how the results would change if your search terms were more like "climate change, ted talk, peer reviewed climate research, etc"...
Youtube is a sewer (Score:4, Insightful)
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The problem with that logic is that there are a lot of adults who watch this crap on YouTube and then make voting decisions with it. We almost need to treat toxic misinformation on YouTube like a plague, and try to irradiate it before it infects even more morons and causes them to make bad decisions.
Otherwise, you'll end up with someone burning down an apartment building and killing a lot of people because they saw a fake YouTube video of someone "fast charging" their iPhone by putting it into a microwave.
Here's the way to look at it: (Score:3)
There are two major groups involved:
1.) Those talking about and
2.) Those doing something about it.
Among those doing the talking are the scientists and the deniers.
Those doing something are getting out of the Paris Climate Agreement or building wind farms off NY and banning concrete in Europe.
We've all been following this subject since Al Gore and the rhetoric is getting dull. The science is in. Conspiracy theorists, those who have assets to protect, and the undereducated will never stop talking. Science has never been a good listener.
It's Galileo and evolution theory all over again.
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Those doing something are getting out of the Paris Climate Agreement or building wind farms off NY and banning concrete in Europe.
This is problematic because offshore wind is very expensive. More expensive than nuclear power, which we supposedly cannot afford because it's just too expensive.
http://www.renewable-energysou... [renewable-...ources.com]
Wind produces more CO2 per energy output, as well as being more dangerous.
http://cmo-ripu.blogspot.com/2... [blogspot.com]
Wind also gets less return on energy invested than nuclear.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j... [forbes.com]
I like wind power, onshore wind power. It's cheap, simple, and so long as we don't have to go overboard on storage o
Isn't denial a somewhat common result of fear? (Score:2)
Sure, some people deny climate change for political reasons and such.
But is it wrong to think that some people deny climate change because they are afraid of the reality of it, so they prefer to deny that it's actually happening as a sort of self-comforting mechanism?
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Sure, some people deny climate change for political reasons and such.
I agree, I believe that people would deny dangerous anthropogenic climate change for political reasons. Would it not also follow that people could exaggerate this threat of global warming for political ends? Perhaps even go so far as to create it from pseudoscience by correlating increasing CO2 output from human activity with natural cycles in climate? Correlation is causation, right?
If I am to accept that denying dangerous anthropogenic global warming is a possibility then I must also accept the possibi
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Or, maybe, just possibly, some people like to make anti-AGW videos just to yank other people's chains?
Face facts - you don't have to believe something to make a video about it on Youtube.
And anyone who thinks that Youtube videos are a major source of scientific thought really need to get out and visit the worl
Science From YouTube (Score:3)
Borg... (Score:2)
You shall be assimilated in to the collective. Thinking is Futile. Resistance is Futile.
To benefit from YouTube ... (Score:2)
... people need common sense. It's a mishmash of informative material and pure crap.
Regarding climate change, deniers enter the portal through one door and activists through another.
Each group grabs popcorn and Sugar Babies and pick the plot line that feeds the endorphin in their pituitary glands.
That really is the purpose of escapism. They are in a comfortable place.
The state of New York is building a wind farm and specifically spinning it as an effort to mitigate climate change.
None of those involved in t
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Good points.
The solution to climate change (if you believe that it is a thing) will be advanced by scientists and engineers. They will build wind and solar farms. They will solve the battery problem. They will shut down coal plants and replace them with gas, hydro and nuclear.
The average person will continue to plug in their toaster regardless of the energy source. They don't have to understand what the experts are doing behind the curtain to provide that power. They don't have the capacity to do so.
Unle
What do you expect (Score:2, Insightful)
When essentially the 'mainstream' view (which isn't nearly as mainstream as they like to say: https://www.nationalreview.com... [nationalreview.com])
In a previous /. post, essentially the climate-change proponents declared that everyone agrees. (They don't) The only comment was that anyone opposing this idea must be a shill for the petrocompanies.
I dared to assert that I think I'm basically a reasonably well-informed person, with an amateur science backgronud. I don't work for nor have investments with petro companies. Yet I
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BWAHHAHA!
As for "everyone agrees (they Don't)", show me even 30% of formal academic articles on climatology that disagree with the 99.91% that AGW is real.
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Sorry, they do. http://ipcc.ch/ [ipcc.ch] Tends of thousands of studies involving hundreds of thousands of scientists.
My science ... (Score:2)
My science [metoffice.gov.uk] trumps your ill informed opinion.
I have a down to earth Question. (Score:3)
Which Humans?
A blanket statement is obviously not valid.
Maybe lets eliminate those not contributing to the crap causing Global Warming
Aborigine tribe of Austrialia, or remote islands not using commercial polluting products.
American Indians living on reservations, etc.
And about the rest of us, what product choices have commercial and industrial product producing companies given us that are not polluting , i.e. petro transportation?
So that is why of my question, Which Humans?
Re: This is useful to know (Score:2)
Do you have any evidence to support your view? If not we can.just assume you are a shill.
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Do you have any evidence to support your view? If not we can.just assume you are a shill.
Does it take a shill to point out that the first job of any organization is to preserve it's existence?
The UN IPCC has one job. That job is to study, and provide advice to prevent, dangerous anthropogenic global warming. If there is evidence to show that there is no anthropogenic global warming, or that it is not dangerous, then they don't have a job. If somehow the people in this organization come to conclude that there is no dangerous anthropogenic global warming then the powers that be in the UN will
Re: This is useful to know (Score:3)
A simple 'no, I have no evidence' would have been sufficient, thanks.
Re: This is useful to know (Score:5, Insightful)
then the powers that be in the UN will simply restock this organization with people that believe that global warming exists, it is caused by human activity, and it is dangerous
The IPCC is simply summarizing the already existing science, done independently of the IPCC itself. They can't just make up the science when it disagrees with any of their goals you think they have.
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The IPCC is simply summarizing the already existing science, done independently of the IPCC itself. They can't just make up the science when it disagrees with any of their goals you think they have.
I expect you've heard of the three kinds of lies? Lies, damned lies, and statistics.
I expect that you've been told that the data will confess to anything if you torture it long enough.
I'm not saying that the data from the IPCC is necessarily wrong, only that it is necessary to carry suspicion of the data and their conclusions.
The conclusions the IPCC draws on how to address the threat of global warming almost always involve the taking of money from wealthy nations and giving it to poorer nations. If they
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scientific, technical and socio-economic information relevant to understanding the scientific basis of risk of human-induced climate change, its potential impacts and options for adaptation and mitigation.
It literally ignores any non-human-induced climate change, and as a result we end up with things like CO2 sensitivity is at least twice what it really is [judithcurry.com]. To a large degree, the IPCC goes in "knowing" the answer, and tries to find data to support the foregone conclusion.
Re: IPCC is not a scientific organization. (Score:2)
Show us the evidence to back up your statement.
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JonmyCalcutta says>"Show us the evidence to back up your statement."
You can do that yourself: search the web for "ipcc a political organization".
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Also try searching for "earth is flat" to find evidence for a flat earth.
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Climate change is happening inside my house.
That's funny, because I have aurora borealis in my kitchen.
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W T F (Score:3)
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There is a growing body of scientific evidence showing that solar patterns are more significant variables for our climate than man-made emissions
Solar output only has a 0.1% variation, and we're actually at a low point in that range, so I call bullshit on your claim.
Feel free to present some evidence though.