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Read the rules in the OP before posting, please.In order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a re-read to refresh your memory! The vast majority of you are contributing in a healthy way, keep it up! NOTE: When providing a source, explain why you feel it is relevant and what purpose it adds to the discussion if it's not obvious. Also take note that unsubstantiated tweets/posts meant only to rekindle old arguments can result in a mod action. |
On February 07 2017 12:56 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:Show nested quote +As the press secretary for a president who's obsessed with how things play on cable TV, Sean Spicer’s real audience during his daily televised press briefings has always been an audience of one.
And the devastating “Saturday Night Live” caricature of Spicer that aired over the weekend — in which a belligerent Spicer was spoofed by a gum-chomping, super soaker-wielding Melissa McCarthy in drag — did not go over well internally at a White House in which looks matter.
More than being lampooned as a press secretary who makes up facts, it was Spicer’s portrayal by a woman that was most problematic in the president’s eyes, according to sources close to him. And the unflattering send-up by a female comedian was not considered helpful for Spicer’s longevity in the grueling, high-profile job in which he has struggled to strike the right balance between representing an administration that considers the media the "opposition party," and developing a functional relationship with the press.
"Trump doesn't like his people to look weak," added a top Trump donor.
Trump’s uncharacteristic Twitter silence over the weekend about the “Saturday Night Live” sketch was seen internally as a sign of how uncomfortable it made the White House feel. Sources said the caricature of Spicer by McCarthy struck a nerve and was upsetting to the press secretary and to his allies, who immediately saw how damaging it could be in Trump world.
Spicer on Monday was traveling aboard Air Force One from Florida to Washington, D.C., and gamely shrugged off the spoof that was playing in loops on cable news throughout the day.
McCarthy, he said, “needs to slow down on the gum chewing; way too many pieces in there,” he joked in an interview with Extra.
And on Monday, Spicer’s allies were trying to put a happy face on the incident. "He takes the job seriously but doesn't take himself that seriously," said a person close to Spicer, who said he also understood the instant-viral skit helped him reach a new level of fame. "He knows that put him up on the stratosphere of recognition on a level," this person said. "You've got to embrace it."
But on Tuesday, Spicer has the uncomfortable task of facing reporters once again in the briefing room — where the elephant in the room will be the unflattering McCarthy caricature. Source
As much as I like Alec Baldwin's impersonation of Trump, I would looooove a Muslim woman to parody Trump. That would be the hugest blow to Trump's ego ever.
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On February 07 2017 19:57 Slydie wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2017 17:03 nojok wrote:On February 07 2017 16:03 Buckyman wrote:
There is no single, canonical 'denialist' viewpoint. Just a bunch of people who found that their concerns about the consensus, legitimate or otherwise, could not be seriously discussed. Actual points of disagreement range from "the earth isn't actually warming" to "the warming is (mostly) caused by a variety of non-CO2 factors" to "warming is a good thing" to "the data isn't solid enough to draw conclusions from". All those claims are treated identically - they're insulted and otherwise ignored.
Insults aren't convincing to the people being insulted. What we need are debates up and down the entire chain of claims.
Those debats ended 15 to 10 years ago in the rest of the world, I remember when it was discussed a lot in the medias. At one point you have to move forward. The only reason this debate is still going in the US is because you have your weird lobby system. On the other hand, the US have been the the fastest country to use mass GMO without proper independant studies. That's all there is to it, you adapt fast or not in the US based a lot on lobbies' work at Washington. There is something else to this. Once the climate precaution start affecting you in unpleasent ways, we could not care less about them. This is equally true for countries, companies and individual. Remember we are talking about potential consequences in the future with a high degree of uncertainty. Even the most extreme climate activist I know flew to South-Africa for a gig. Once jobs in entire big industries are on the line, the CO2 emissions are forgotten about. When China has an unfair advantage by allowing more pollution, other countries need to do the same.
There's a very big difference between stating Anthropogenic Global Warming is real, but I don't give a shit about it, and stating Anthropogenic Global Warming is false.
One makes you a callous asshole, the other makes you an idiot. If your point is that callous assholes deny AGW in order to look like idiots, there may be something to it. It makes them lying callous assholes, but in practice indistinguishable from real idiots.
That said, many of us are hypocrits to some extent or another. I tend to spend a bit more money buying "green" products, but I don't reduce my travelling: I love it too much. Between travelling and my use of technology (and hence electricity), my footprint is about average for my country, which means it's about 4x what it should be. That probably makes me a callous asshole in the views of some. But at least I'm not an idiot 
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I still can't understand these double standards in politics. The hypocrisy in today's discussions is just so much that it puts me off instantly from having a meaningful conversation. Can anyone try to answer some questions without prejudices? Maybe in PM...
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On February 07 2017 20:15 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2017 19:57 Slydie wrote:On February 07 2017 17:03 nojok wrote:On February 07 2017 16:03 Buckyman wrote:
There is no single, canonical 'denialist' viewpoint. Just a bunch of people who found that their concerns about the consensus, legitimate or otherwise, could not be seriously discussed. Actual points of disagreement range from "the earth isn't actually warming" to "the warming is (mostly) caused by a variety of non-CO2 factors" to "warming is a good thing" to "the data isn't solid enough to draw conclusions from". All those claims are treated identically - they're insulted and otherwise ignored.
Insults aren't convincing to the people being insulted. What we need are debates up and down the entire chain of claims.
Those debats ended 15 to 10 years ago in the rest of the world, I remember when it was discussed a lot in the medias. At one point you have to move forward. The only reason this debate is still going in the US is because you have your weird lobby system. On the other hand, the US have been the the fastest country to use mass GMO without proper independant studies. That's all there is to it, you adapt fast or not in the US based a lot on lobbies' work at Washington. There is something else to this. Once the climate precaution start affecting you in unpleasent ways, we could not care less about them. This is equally true for countries, companies and individual. Remember we are talking about potential consequences in the future with a high degree of uncertainty. Even the most extreme climate activist I know flew to South-Africa for a gig. Once jobs in entire big industries are on the line, the CO2 emissions are forgotten about. When China has an unfair advantage by allowing more pollution, other countries need to do the same. There's a very big difference between stating Anthropogenic Global Warming is real, but I don't give a shit about it, and stating Anthropogenic Global Warming is false. One makes you a callous asshole, the other makes you an idiot. If your point is that callous assholes deny AGW in order to look like idiots, there may be something to it. It makes them lying callous assholes, but in practice indistinguishable from real idiots. That said, many of us are hypocrits to some extent or another. I tend to spend a bit more money buying "green" products, but I don't reduce my travelling: I love it too much. Between travelling and my use of technology (and hence electricity), my footprint is about average for my country, which means it's about 4x what it should be. That probably makes me a callous asshole in the views of some. But at least I'm not an idiot
Can't say I disagree with this. My lifestyle is at odds with living green unfortunately. At least where I live is powered exclusively by hydro so it's renewable, but definitely not green.
But even countries like China are working hard to try and minimize environmental impact, even though it'll take a cultural and generational shift to really get stuff moving.
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Throughout Donald Trump’s campaign and now into the first weeks of his presidency, critics suggested that he cool his incendiary rhetoric, that his words matter. His defenders responded that, as Corey Lewandowski said, he was being taken too “literally.” Some, like Vice President Pence, wrote it off to his “colorful style.” Trump himself recently explained that his rhetoric about Muslims is popular, winning him “standing ovations.”
No one apparently gave him anything like a Miranda warning: Anything he says can and will be used against him in a court of law.
And that’s exactly what’s happening now in the epic court battle over his travel ban, currently blocked by a temporary order set for argument Tuesday before a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit.
The states of Washington and Minnesota, which sued to block it, are citing Trump’s inflammatory rhetoric as evidence that the government’s claims — it’s not a ban and not aimed at Muslims — are shams.
In court papers, Washington and Minnesota’s attorneys general have pulled out quotes from speeches, news conferences and interviews as evidence that an executive order the administration argues is neutral was really motivated by animus toward Muslims and a “desire to harm a particular group.”
His words, the two states say in their brief filed with the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, show “that the President acted in bad faith in an effort to target Muslims.” The courts, they say, “have both the right and duty to examine” Trump’s “true motives.”
The states offer a multitude of exhibits, starting with a December 2015 release from the Trump campaign calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country’s representatives can figure out what is going on.”
They cite his August speech advocating screening out people “who believe that Sharia law should supplant American law.”
Another exhibit: His Jan. 27 interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network in which he said he wanted to give priority to Christians in Syria.
They even hauled out Rudolph W. Giuliani’s comment on Fox News that Trump wanted a “Muslim ban” and requested he assemble a commission to show him “the right way to do it legally.”
In response, government lawyers are trying to have Trump’s rhetoric treated, so-to-speak, as inadmissible and irrelevant. It is inappropriate and contrary to precedent, they say in their brief, for the court to “‘look behind’ the stated basis for the Order to probe its subjective motivations.” The states, they complain, are asking “the courts to take the extraordinary step of second-guessing a formal national security judgment made by the President himself pursuant to broad grants of statutory authority.”
Words matter: Trump’s loose talk about Muslims gets weaponized in court against travel ban
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On February 07 2017 14:21 Danglars wrote:Are technica penning about as slanted a reply as Daily Mail in its initial write up, from scare-quoting the whistleblower on down. I congratulate Lamar Smith for his efforts on the matter. The pause quickly went from being explained away (even in this thread, that models accounted for a long halt) to there never having been a pause at all many years after the fact. That's a big enough deal in my opinion to look at. If this is science fact, there should be transparency on outside analysis, not claiming fishing expeditions and the like. Fact is, Trump's EPA pick is highly critical of how the issue has been handled governmentally up until now. The next four years will almost certainly have a doubter as head of the environmental protection agency. So everyone best get ready to convince rather than shut down debate. Especially talking from an economic perspective, because Perry Smith and Tillerson won't be crusaders on the issue.
uh what have you to say about the core facts of this dispute?
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On February 07 2017 17:01 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2017 15:16 ChristianS wrote:On February 07 2017 14:21 Danglars wrote:Are technica penning about as slanted a reply as Daily Mail in its initial write up, from scare-quoting the whistleblower on down. I congratulate Lamar Smith for his efforts on the matter. The pause quickly went from being explained away (even in this thread, that models accounted for a long halt) to there never having been a pause at all many years after the fact. That's a big enough deal in my opinion to look at. If this is science fact, there should be transparency on outside analysis, not claiming fishing expeditions and the like. Fact is, Trump's EPA pick is highly critical of how the issue has been handled governmentally up until now. The next four years will almost certainly have a doubter as head of the environmental protection agency. So everyone best get ready to convince rather than shut down debate. Especially talking from an economic perspective, because Perry Smith and Tillerson won't be crusaders on the issue. I don't think I've ever seen that debate be productive. The opposing side is denialist at its root - the whole anti-environmentalist movement is essentially bound together by disbelief of the scientific consensus, rather than belief in some alternative hypothesis which can be proven or disproven. What are the alternative explanations for the data? Sun cycles? Wobble in Earth's orbit? God toying with us? They're all either already disproven or unfalsifiable non-explanations. So instead of pushing another hypothesis the denialists prefer to watch the climate scientists and heckle when something goes differently than expected. Of course none of the unexpected developments actually disprove the consensus like they seem to think; it's like flat earthers celebrating because someone miscalculated the radius of the Earth. The evidence isn't actually more in their favor just because someone's climate model mispredicted something, but they figure if they sow enough doubt and mistrust about the science in general (notably without any effort to distinguish between the more speculative predictions and the more ironclad discoveries), they can convince an ill-informed public thru shouldn't trust anything the scientists say, regardless of evidence, no matter how emphatically they state their discovery. That "debate" has never been productive, at least not that I've seen. Well have fun the next four years. Denialist is coming to be the slur with no substance. If scientists cannot practice science with examination at this stage, they invite criticism and deserve incredulity. It's entirely the style of argumentation without consideration that tries to turn whistleblowers into pariahs and activists into saints. The latest was Shrodinger's Climate Pause: it's an explainable pause and a data artifact at the same time, and the field is so advanced it takes a decade of explaining away the data before the data suddenly changes to not need an explanation. Wake up and smell what reeks. A modern field with accepted explanations shouldn't need this level of CYA and blaming-the-whistleblower. Keep this up and the environment/climate change might drop to poll from 12th most pressing issue facing the nation to 13th-15th to 18th and below.
What does "if scientists cannot practice science without examination" mean? It's the very nature of the field to propose hypotheses, check them against evidence, modify them, collect more evidence, etc. Climate scientists are constantly adding new data from all over the world, which refine their models and improve their predictions.
You're fussing a lot about the brief apparent cooling, but the fact is best fit curves have a lot of uncertainty at the edge of a dataset. So if you want to know the trend from 1900-2000, and your data cut off in 2000, the data are going to look funny in the last few years of the graph. Add data up to 2010, and the 1900-2000 data now look fine but 1910-2010 looks funny. This has happened to me in lab classes with entirely agreed upon phenomena (Beer's law, for instance), it's just how best fit curves work.
So when it looked like the curve might show some cooling period, yeah, the scientists tried to come up with hypotheses for why that might be the case. At no point was anthropogenic climate change in question, because we knew that, for instance, CO2 levels were rising from human activity. Our prediction was this would monotonically raise temperatures, but we didn't know if maybe in the short term CO2 would increase cloud formation or something, and reduce global temperatures. Now that all the data for that period are in, looks like no, it does what we expected.
Denialist isn't meant as a slur, it's meant to point out that no alternative explanation is raised here. You're sniping at irregularities in their hypotheses, predictions, data, whatever, but you're not proposing another hypothesis. Buckyman listed a few, each of which can be analyzed relative to the data. And even with hindsight advantage, each one doesn't hold up. This is why usually critics don't bother proposing alternate hypotheses, they just try to poke holes in the consensus to sow indiscriminate doubt regarding scientific claims. The position is characterized by disbelief in (that is, denial of) a consensus, rather than any positive belief, so "denialist" applies.
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Just. Go. Away.
In a rare public statement since her loss in the 2016 presidential election, former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called on attendees at a women’s conference to continue to “be bold” amid concerns over “whether our rights, opportunities and values will endure.”
“Despite all the challenges we face, I remained convinced that, yes, the future is female,” Clinton said in a video address to the MAKERS conference, which kicked off Monday in California.
“Now more than ever, we need to stay focused on the theme of this year’s conference: be bold. We need strong women to step up and speak out. We need you to dare greatly and lead boldly,” she continued. “So please, set an example for every woman and girl out there who’s worried about what the future holds and wonders whether our rights, opportunities and values will endure.”
The video was first published online by the Associated Press, The Guardian and others.
Clinton, the first woman ever to secure the nomination of one of the two major political parties for president, has mostly kept quiet since her surprise loss in last year’s presidential election. She has delivered just a handful of speeches and has willingly taken photos with supporters on hiking trails and in grocery stores near her home in New York.
While she did not mention him by name, Clinton seemed to allude in her remarks to President Donald Trump, whose language towards women in the past ignited multiple campaign controversies but did not ultimately cost him the election. In her video address, Clinton lauded the “amazing energy” shown by protesters who gathered for womens’ marches in cities across the country and around the world on the day after Trump’s inauguration.
“Remember, you are the heroes and history-makers, the glass-ceiling-breakers of the future,” she said. “As I’ve said before, I’ll say again: Never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world.”
Source
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Cayman Islands24199 Posts
*cackle*
User was warned for this post
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So Melania Trump is suing the Daily Mail for defamation...and claiming one of the harms of their defamation was hurting her prospects at launching multi-million dollar brands as First Lady. You can read the suit itself in the article, it's very clearly about a multi-year period so it isn't about the period running up to the election (since the defaming article was released in August 2016). Isn't that kind of not supposed to be allowed?
Or is this another "rules don't apply because she's already rich so we can't expect her not to make more money?"
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Global warming deniers are way bottom of barrel for intellectual thought. There are basic mechanics and so many measurable facts that you have to ignore before making random stuff up to convince even yourself.
I'd think creationists would be given more credibility scientifically then deniers.
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On February 07 2017 23:57 Sermokala wrote:
I'd think creationists would be given more credibility scientifically then deniers.
Thats because "creationism" is a very creative field, its actually some form of literature/philosophy/fiction :p.
You don't "disregard" Facts, you just create new ones up that work "together" with the actual Facts. Its "extra-special-creative-Facts" on top of "Facts".
Denial is just "alternative Facts".
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On February 08 2017 00:06 Velr wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2017 23:57 Sermokala wrote:
I'd think creationists would be given more credibility scientifically then deniers. Thats because "creationism" is a very creative field, its actually some form of literature/philosophy/fiction :p. You don't "disregard" Facts, you just create new ones up that work "together" with the actual Facts. Its "extra-special-creative-Facts" on top of "Facts". Denial is just "alternative Facts".
But still you can end up with a genuine shrug from someone who doesn't agree with creationists when you are both on the same page of facts. The big bang and dark matter are as faith based explination as saying a mythical god caused it and does it.
Global warming deniers have to explain away greenhouse gasses the greenhouse effect. A farmers almanac of numbers going in one direction from every source there is.
Debating a climate change denier is impossible beacuse there isn't anything to debate.
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Nope, they aren't.
The more out there/harder to proof scientific theories would logically fill in gaps according to the rest of our scientific knowledge.
Creationism is just making up bullshit that isn't blatantly contradictory to our most proven theories (well, it tries).
I agree with your point on discussing outright deniers. Its pointless. You can't argue with people showing you "snow" as proof.
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On February 07 2017 18:32 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2017 17:01 Danglars wrote:On February 07 2017 15:16 ChristianS wrote:On February 07 2017 14:21 Danglars wrote:Are technica penning about as slanted a reply as Daily Mail in its initial write up, from scare-quoting the whistleblower on down. I congratulate Lamar Smith for his efforts on the matter. The pause quickly went from being explained away (even in this thread, that models accounted for a long halt) to there never having been a pause at all many years after the fact. That's a big enough deal in my opinion to look at. If this is science fact, there should be transparency on outside analysis, not claiming fishing expeditions and the like. Fact is, Trump's EPA pick is highly critical of how the issue has been handled governmentally up until now. The next four years will almost certainly have a doubter as head of the environmental protection agency. So everyone best get ready to convince rather than shut down debate. Especially talking from an economic perspective, because Perry Smith and Tillerson won't be crusaders on the issue. I don't think I've ever seen that debate be productive. The opposing side is denialist at its root - the whole anti-environmentalist movement is essentially bound together by disbelief of the scientific consensus, rather than belief in some alternative hypothesis which can be proven or disproven. What are the alternative explanations for the data? Sun cycles? Wobble in Earth's orbit? God toying with us? They're all either already disproven or unfalsifiable non-explanations. So instead of pushing another hypothesis the denialists prefer to watch the climate scientists and heckle when something goes differently than expected. Of course none of the unexpected developments actually disprove the consensus like they seem to think; it's like flat earthers celebrating because someone miscalculated the radius of the Earth. The evidence isn't actually more in their favor just because someone's climate model mispredicted something, but they figure if they sow enough doubt and mistrust about the science in general (notably without any effort to distinguish between the more speculative predictions and the more ironclad discoveries), they can convince an ill-informed public thru shouldn't trust anything the scientists say, regardless of evidence, no matter how emphatically they state their discovery. That "debate" has never been productive, at least not that I've seen. Well have fun the next four years. Denialist is coming to be the slur with no substance. If scientists cannot practice science with examination at this stage, they invite criticism and deserve incredulity. It's entirely the style of argumentation without consideration that tries to turn whistleblowers into pariahs and activists into saints. The latest was Shrodinger's Climate Pause: it's an explainable pause and a data artifact at the same time, and the field is so advanced it takes a decade of explaining away the data before the data suddenly changes to not need an explanation. Wake up and smell what reeks. A modern field with accepted explanations shouldn't need this level of CYA and blaming-the-whistleblower. Keep this up and the environment/climate change might drop to poll from 12th most pressing issue facing the nation to 13th-15th to 18th and below. Well.. you're wrong. Just because the daily mail tried to put it like that, doesn't mean any scientist tried to say anything even remotely like that. You're conflating 3 different things to paint a disingenuous picture of climate science. Let's deconstruct. 1) First and foremost, there's the science itself. https://www.skepticalscience.com/global-warming-stopped-in-1998.htmNo pause. There is no Schrodinger's pause either. There was data, which seemed to indicate that atmospheric temperatures had stabilized, which obviously needed to be incorporated into models that also accounted for other temperatures (most notably sea) continuing to rise. The main effect, though, was a redoubled effort on data collection, because it mainly showed the sparsity of data we actually had. Turns out that the data was actually quite flawed, and a reanalysis showed the was no pause at all, even in atmospheric surface temperatures. The point is that: 2) Different scientists do, and say different things. People working on models use the available data. People working on data collection improve the available data. Different groups use different methods, and there is a lively discussion about what hypotheses are right. Generally every group is really good at a narrow area (such as modeling historical temperatures based on ice cores, or modeling the same temperature range based on tree rings). Eventually this all gets assimilated into "scientific progress". Taking a snapshot of the debate and claiming the is no consensus about climate change, because look at the debate ignores that the debate is about some technical details, and the vast majority of these scientists agree on almost everything, but disagree quite vehemently on a small part. Some people assumed the data was right and constructed models to account for a stabilized surface temperature. Others insisted the data must be wrong and went about reanalyzing the data, and collecting more. Progress in both areas (improved models and data) leads to an improved understanding, despite some wrong turns along the way. Which brings me to: 3) Scientific knowledge in 1998 was not the same it is now. We have had 18 years of progress in equipment, methodology and data. This has led to an improved understanding. Pointing to something that has recently shown that a hypothesis was wrong 10 years ago as evidence that scientists don't understand anything about what's going on is to misunderstand everything about how scientific progress works.
I do know how it should work. And I've seen the allegations that everything is fine and there's nothing to see here. I'm not here to give the impression that no innocent explanation exists (That would be stuff like Mann's hockey stick). I'm saying they've done deep damage by holding the NOAA doesn't have to release things it doesn't want to. And frankly you here too gloss over the claims. The data itself should be sacred, and claims that it's archiving and availability was impacted should cause consternation, especially to those who believe (with ample reason) that there is homogeneity in the various means of measuring average global temperatures and the rest.
On February 07 2017 22:39 oneofthem wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2017 14:21 Danglars wrote:Are technica penning about as slanted a reply as Daily Mail in its initial write up, from scare-quoting the whistleblower on down. I congratulate Lamar Smith for his efforts on the matter. The pause quickly went from being explained away (even in this thread, that models accounted for a long halt) to there never having been a pause at all many years after the fact. That's a big enough deal in my opinion to look at. If this is science fact, there should be transparency on outside analysis, not claiming fishing expeditions and the like. Fact is, Trump's EPA pick is highly critical of how the issue has been handled governmentally up until now. The next four years will almost certainly have a doubter as head of the environmental protection agency. So everyone best get ready to convince rather than shut down debate. Especially talking from an economic perspective, because Perry Smith and Tillerson won't be crusaders on the issue. uh what have you to say about the core facts of this dispute?
The behavior of climatologists and the IPCC has created an atmosphere of doubt about being able to trace a warming trend to human sources. The default should be that the earth has warmed slightly in the 20th and 21st centuries, but much more work repairing damaged reputations and rebuilding a foundation of science and not political activism should be undertaken. No reasonable person should advance massive business-killing policies purportedly to combat global warming in today's climate. I refer back to Smith's writing in National Review, the latest whistleblower, the hockey stick controversy, and the current portrayal in media and government discourse. If you can't see it and see why Americans do relegate the issue to low priority in what affects our nation (besides slandering their intelligence), then you might be more of a blind advocate than the worst warming skeptic.
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On February 07 2017 17:01 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2017 15:16 ChristianS wrote:On February 07 2017 14:21 Danglars wrote:Are technica penning about as slanted a reply as Daily Mail in its initial write up, from scare-quoting the whistleblower on down. I congratulate Lamar Smith for his efforts on the matter. The pause quickly went from being explained away (even in this thread, that models accounted for a long halt) to there never having been a pause at all many years after the fact. That's a big enough deal in my opinion to look at. If this is science fact, there should be transparency on outside analysis, not claiming fishing expeditions and the like. Fact is, Trump's EPA pick is highly critical of how the issue has been handled governmentally up until now. The next four years will almost certainly have a doubter as head of the environmental protection agency. So everyone best get ready to convince rather than shut down debate. Especially talking from an economic perspective, because Perry Smith and Tillerson won't be crusaders on the issue. I don't think I've ever seen that debate be productive. The opposing side is denialist at its root - the whole anti-environmentalist movement is essentially bound together by disbelief of the scientific consensus, rather than belief in some alternative hypothesis which can be proven or disproven. What are the alternative explanations for the data? Sun cycles? Wobble in Earth's orbit? God toying with us? They're all either already disproven or unfalsifiable non-explanations. So instead of pushing another hypothesis the denialists prefer to watch the climate scientists and heckle when something goes differently than expected. Of course none of the unexpected developments actually disprove the consensus like they seem to think; it's like flat earthers celebrating because someone miscalculated the radius of the Earth. The evidence isn't actually more in their favor just because someone's climate model mispredicted something, but they figure if they sow enough doubt and mistrust about the science in general (notably without any effort to distinguish between the more speculative predictions and the more ironclad discoveries), they can convince an ill-informed public thru shouldn't trust anything the scientists say, regardless of evidence, no matter how emphatically they state their discovery. That "debate" has never been productive, at least not that I've seen. Well have fun the next four years. Denialist is coming to be the slur with no substance. If scientists cannot practice science with examination at this stage, they invite criticism and deserve incredulity. It's entirely the style of argumentation without consideration that tries to turn whistleblowers into pariahs and activists into saints. The latest was Shrodinger's Climate Pause: it's an explainable pause and a data artifact at the same time, and the field is so advanced it takes a decade of explaining away the data before the data suddenly changes to not need an explanation. Wake up and smell what reeks. A modern field with accepted explanations shouldn't need this level of CYA and blaming-the-whistleblower. Keep this up and the environment/climate change might drop to poll from 12th most pressing issue facing the nation to 13th-15th to 18th and below.
By not offering an actual alternative explanation or theory regarding whether man made warming has occurred, you haven't actually moved the debate forward.
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On February 08 2017 00:13 Sermokala wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2017 00:06 Velr wrote:On February 07 2017 23:57 Sermokala wrote:
I'd think creationists would be given more credibility scientifically then deniers. Thats because "creationism" is a very creative field, its actually some form of literature/philosophy/fiction :p. You don't "disregard" Facts, you just create new ones up that work "together" with the actual Facts. Its "extra-special-creative-Facts" on top of "Facts". Denial is just "alternative Facts". But still you can end up with a genuine shrug from someone who doesn't agree with creationists when you are both on the same page of facts. The big bang and dark matter are as faith based explination as saying a mythical god caused it and does it.
That is because dark matter and the big bang are not "done science". You can use telescopes to look pretty far into the past, but once you get to about 13.3 billions of years ago, the universe is so full of stuff that you can't actually look through it anymore, so you can't look further back than that. You can, however, use the data you have from the points in time that you can see, and especially redshift data, to make a model that fits the stuff we can observe. And that model leads to a big bang.
Dark matter and Dark energy are similarly weird concepts that are used to make the things we observe fit to the laws of nature that we already know. Galaxies rotate in a way that can only be explained if there is a lot of matter that we can not observe. We don't know what that stuff is, but at this point, either our understanding of gravity is a bit off or there is stuff we can't see in space. A lot of that stuff. Both can be correct, but since no one has come up with a better theory of gravity that explains all the stuff we currently know, we now work of the assumption that there is this nebulous dark matter, and try to figure out what that stuff actually is.
Dark energy is something that is necessary to explain why the universe expands in the way we can observe it expanding. We have even less of an idea about it than about dark matter, but once again we either have dark energy, or something is fundamentally wrong with our understanding of how the expansion of space itself works. Since so far noone has had a better theory about how space expands, that explains both the stuff we know AND the effects currently attributed to dark energy, we try to figure out what that dark energy could be.
But these things are all far from scientific fact, and thus they don't really require faith. In fact, faith is counterproductive. They represent problems that we are in the process of trying to figure out.
We have models that explain the things that we can observe. Of course you can always explain everything with "god does it because god wants to do it". But that is not a very productive point of view, as there is no additional knowledge to be gained from it, nor can predictions be made using it. It is a completely nonfalsifiable theory, and thus we don't actually gain anything from it. Meanwhile, we gain a lot from trying to figure out what dark matter is, or if there is none, what else has the effect of galaxies not rotating in a way that is consistent to there only being the visible matter.
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On February 07 2017 22:56 ChristianS wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2017 17:01 Danglars wrote:On February 07 2017 15:16 ChristianS wrote:On February 07 2017 14:21 Danglars wrote:Are technica penning about as slanted a reply as Daily Mail in its initial write up, from scare-quoting the whistleblower on down. I congratulate Lamar Smith for his efforts on the matter. The pause quickly went from being explained away (even in this thread, that models accounted for a long halt) to there never having been a pause at all many years after the fact. That's a big enough deal in my opinion to look at. If this is science fact, there should be transparency on outside analysis, not claiming fishing expeditions and the like. Fact is, Trump's EPA pick is highly critical of how the issue has been handled governmentally up until now. The next four years will almost certainly have a doubter as head of the environmental protection agency. So everyone best get ready to convince rather than shut down debate. Especially talking from an economic perspective, because Perry Smith and Tillerson won't be crusaders on the issue. I don't think I've ever seen that debate be productive. The opposing side is denialist at its root - the whole anti-environmentalist movement is essentially bound together by disbelief of the scientific consensus, rather than belief in some alternative hypothesis which can be proven or disproven. What are the alternative explanations for the data? Sun cycles? Wobble in Earth's orbit? God toying with us? They're all either already disproven or unfalsifiable non-explanations. So instead of pushing another hypothesis the denialists prefer to watch the climate scientists and heckle when something goes differently than expected. Of course none of the unexpected developments actually disprove the consensus like they seem to think; it's like flat earthers celebrating because someone miscalculated the radius of the Earth. The evidence isn't actually more in their favor just because someone's climate model mispredicted something, but they figure if they sow enough doubt and mistrust about the science in general (notably without any effort to distinguish between the more speculative predictions and the more ironclad discoveries), they can convince an ill-informed public thru shouldn't trust anything the scientists say, regardless of evidence, no matter how emphatically they state their discovery. That "debate" has never been productive, at least not that I've seen. Well have fun the next four years. Denialist is coming to be the slur with no substance. If scientists cannot practice science with examination at this stage, they invite criticism and deserve incredulity. It's entirely the style of argumentation without consideration that tries to turn whistleblowers into pariahs and activists into saints. The latest was Shrodinger's Climate Pause: it's an explainable pause and a data artifact at the same time, and the field is so advanced it takes a decade of explaining away the data before the data suddenly changes to not need an explanation. Wake up and smell what reeks. A modern field with accepted explanations shouldn't need this level of CYA and blaming-the-whistleblower. Keep this up and the environment/climate change might drop to poll from 12th most pressing issue facing the nation to 13th-15th to 18th and below. What does "if scientists cannot practice science without examination" mean? It's the very nature of the field to propose hypotheses, check them against evidence, modify them, collect more evidence, etc. Climate scientists are constantly adding new data from all over the world, which refine their models and improve their predictions. You're fussing a lot about the brief apparent cooling, but the fact is best fit curves have a lot of uncertainty at the edge of a dataset. So if you want to know the trend from 1900-2000, and your data cut off in 2000, the data are going to look funny in the last few years of the graph. Add data up to 2010, and the 1900-2000 data now look fine but 1910-2010 looks funny. This has happened to me in lab classes with entirely agreed upon phenomena (Beer's law, for instance), it's just how best fit curves work. So when it looked like the curve might show some cooling period, yeah, the scientists tried to come up with hypotheses for why that might be the case. At no point was anthropogenic climate change in question, because we knew that, for instance, CO2 levels were rising from human activity. Our prediction was this would monotonically raise temperatures, but we didn't know if maybe in the short term CO2 would increase cloud formation or something, and reduce global temperatures. Now that all the data for that period are in, looks like no, it does what we expected. Denialist isn't meant as a slur, it's meant to point out that no alternative explanation is raised here. You're sniping at irregularities in their hypotheses, predictions, data, whatever, but you're not proposing another hypothesis. Buckyman listed a few, each of which can be analyzed relative to the data. And even with hindsight advantage, each one doesn't hold up. This is why usually critics don't bother proposing alternate hypotheses, they just try to poke holes in the consensus to sow indiscriminate doubt regarding scientific claims. The position is characterized by disbelief in (that is, denial of) a consensus, rather than any positive belief, so "denialist" applies.
I accept the science of the greenhouse affects, and everything else I learned in my own university training in chemistry and chemical engineering. I know the innocent explanations offered; I've been reading them in all my news sources from the NYT to WaPo to IPCC reports etc. I say if both linked articles lead you to believe all this is 'fussing,' then you and I look at the same evidence and come to two different conclusions, as ingrained as our predilections are.
Secondly, it takes a massive leap of faith to call 'Denialist' a non-slur. It's historical connection is to holocaust deniers. It's becoming a little passe in this thread to point it out, but I'll mention it here for anybody keeping track. You're being either disingenuous or ignorant to not know its connection. Climate change denier is what it is. A term springing from the believe that the science is settled on anthropogenic global warming (something you believe in), and the remaining skeptics should be treated like holocaust deniers or flat-earthers.
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On February 08 2017 00:40 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On February 07 2017 22:56 ChristianS wrote:On February 07 2017 17:01 Danglars wrote:On February 07 2017 15:16 ChristianS wrote:On February 07 2017 14:21 Danglars wrote:Are technica penning about as slanted a reply as Daily Mail in its initial write up, from scare-quoting the whistleblower on down. I congratulate Lamar Smith for his efforts on the matter. The pause quickly went from being explained away (even in this thread, that models accounted for a long halt) to there never having been a pause at all many years after the fact. That's a big enough deal in my opinion to look at. If this is science fact, there should be transparency on outside analysis, not claiming fishing expeditions and the like. Fact is, Trump's EPA pick is highly critical of how the issue has been handled governmentally up until now. The next four years will almost certainly have a doubter as head of the environmental protection agency. So everyone best get ready to convince rather than shut down debate. Especially talking from an economic perspective, because Perry Smith and Tillerson won't be crusaders on the issue. I don't think I've ever seen that debate be productive. The opposing side is denialist at its root - the whole anti-environmentalist movement is essentially bound together by disbelief of the scientific consensus, rather than belief in some alternative hypothesis which can be proven or disproven. What are the alternative explanations for the data? Sun cycles? Wobble in Earth's orbit? God toying with us? They're all either already disproven or unfalsifiable non-explanations. So instead of pushing another hypothesis the denialists prefer to watch the climate scientists and heckle when something goes differently than expected. Of course none of the unexpected developments actually disprove the consensus like they seem to think; it's like flat earthers celebrating because someone miscalculated the radius of the Earth. The evidence isn't actually more in their favor just because someone's climate model mispredicted something, but they figure if they sow enough doubt and mistrust about the science in general (notably without any effort to distinguish between the more speculative predictions and the more ironclad discoveries), they can convince an ill-informed public thru shouldn't trust anything the scientists say, regardless of evidence, no matter how emphatically they state their discovery. That "debate" has never been productive, at least not that I've seen. Well have fun the next four years. Denialist is coming to be the slur with no substance. If scientists cannot practice science with examination at this stage, they invite criticism and deserve incredulity. It's entirely the style of argumentation without consideration that tries to turn whistleblowers into pariahs and activists into saints. The latest was Shrodinger's Climate Pause: it's an explainable pause and a data artifact at the same time, and the field is so advanced it takes a decade of explaining away the data before the data suddenly changes to not need an explanation. Wake up and smell what reeks. A modern field with accepted explanations shouldn't need this level of CYA and blaming-the-whistleblower. Keep this up and the environment/climate change might drop to poll from 12th most pressing issue facing the nation to 13th-15th to 18th and below. What does "if scientists cannot practice science without examination" mean? It's the very nature of the field to propose hypotheses, check them against evidence, modify them, collect more evidence, etc. Climate scientists are constantly adding new data from all over the world, which refine their models and improve their predictions. You're fussing a lot about the brief apparent cooling, but the fact is best fit curves have a lot of uncertainty at the edge of a dataset. So if you want to know the trend from 1900-2000, and your data cut off in 2000, the data are going to look funny in the last few years of the graph. Add data up to 2010, and the 1900-2000 data now look fine but 1910-2010 looks funny. This has happened to me in lab classes with entirely agreed upon phenomena (Beer's law, for instance), it's just how best fit curves work. So when it looked like the curve might show some cooling period, yeah, the scientists tried to come up with hypotheses for why that might be the case. At no point was anthropogenic climate change in question, because we knew that, for instance, CO2 levels were rising from human activity. Our prediction was this would monotonically raise temperatures, but we didn't know if maybe in the short term CO2 would increase cloud formation or something, and reduce global temperatures. Now that all the data for that period are in, looks like no, it does what we expected. Denialist isn't meant as a slur, it's meant to point out that no alternative explanation is raised here. You're sniping at irregularities in their hypotheses, predictions, data, whatever, but you're not proposing another hypothesis. Buckyman listed a few, each of which can be analyzed relative to the data. And even with hindsight advantage, each one doesn't hold up. This is why usually critics don't bother proposing alternate hypotheses, they just try to poke holes in the consensus to sow indiscriminate doubt regarding scientific claims. The position is characterized by disbelief in (that is, denial of) a consensus, rather than any positive belief, so "denialist" applies. I accept the science of the greenhouse affects, and everything else I learned in my own university training in chemistry and chemical engineering. I know the innocent explanations offered; I've been reading them in all my news sources from the NYT to WaPo to IPCC reports etc. I say if both linked articles lead you to believe all this is 'fussing,' then you and I look at the same evidence and come to two different conclusions, as ingrained as our predilections are. Secondly, it takes a massive leap of faith to call 'Denialist' a non-slur. It's historical connection is to holocaust deniers. It's becoming a little passe in this thread to point it out, but I'll mention it here for anybody keeping track. You're being either disingenuous or ignorant to not know its connection. Climate change denier is what it is. A term springing from the believe that the science is settled on anthropogenic global warming (something you believe in), and the remaining skeptics should be treated like holocaust deniers or flat-earthers.
So what term should we use in your opinion?
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EPT
