I don’t think this is a fair assessment. I was a global warming supporter up until I saw that awful movie by Al Gore; his inept, unscientific presentation drove me to start looking into the situation.
What I found was a great deal of controversy over the figures—some of the charts cited by Gore tended to suggest the opposite of his thesis (assuming he even had a thesis—that man’s all over the place); that CO2 follows warming, rather than triggers it.
After looking into it further—and hearing a dozen different sets of conflicting data—I eventually gave up on understanding. I don’t know enough about the subject matter to make an accurate judgement, and various sources on all sides of the debate have proved themselves to be biased or incompetent. Alcor I trust to lay out factual information on ‘vitrification’ - whatever the hell that is. The IPCC on the other hand has a political motivation, as (probably) do many of the scientific skeptics.
As a rough estimate, I’d assign a 60% chance that global warming is occuring, while maybe a 10% chance that the climate’s cooling. This is completely ignoring the probabilities of it A) being man made, B) being catastrophic (or even bad), and C) of being correctable by current policies.
Unless if you’re a climatologist or a meteorologist, I’d be very suspicious of strong stances on the matter. Perhaps a better test would be whether somebody supports A) cap-and-trade or B) using a ‘science fiction’ solar-umbrella satellite to cool off the earth.
After looking into it further—and hearing a dozen different sets of conflicting data—I eventually gave up on understanding. I don’t know enough about the subject matter to make an accurate judgement, and various sources on all sides of the debate have proved themselves to be biased or incompetent.
I sympathize. Frankly, most of us don’t know anywhere near enough (nor should we, realistically) about climate science to truly assess the evidence ourselves, particularly when the models necessary for prediction are so complex. What to do in this case? I think we should consider the weight of opinion of actual experts. If you do this, the balance tips markedly towards AGW.
What about vested interests, you say? Well they exist on both sides, but on one side we have the fossil fuel lobby and on the other… conflict of interest wrt research grants (which is not just a problem in the case of global warming!).
Bottom line: If you can’t assess the evidence directly yourself, delegate wisely.
I generally agree with your heuristic—eg: arguing “this light should be green for longer to improve traffic efficiency” is ridiculous—but when money or politics get involved it tends to break down. For money, “Red light cameras are there to improve traffic safety, not as cash cows, and the various municipal-funded studies can be relied upon.” For politics, “We have to have a speed limit on the highway, even if it’s irregularly enforced, because allowing people to drive whatever speed they want is just crazy—it’d never work! The cops ticketing speeders are just protecting us from ourselves.”
A better corollary than the traffic issue however, would be medicine; while the majority of us on LW (I suspect) will blindly accept the broad-strokes declared by the medical community, while simultaneously distrusting the rationality of most doctors; when it comes to a specific treatment for a serious condition most of us would be researching it ourselves This goes doubly for the psychiatric field, and area as dominated by the politics of popular thought as it is by the pharma dollars.
This is why I remain dubious about AGW (let alone Catastrophic-AGW). On the one hand we’ve got the oil lobbyists, and living in oil country I hear constant anecdotes about how slimy they are; but on the other side you’ve got the IPCC, a group of technocrats with a prior commitment to big government who are in charge of directing the research. There’s a political bias at work, which I find even more frightening than the oil companies’ profit motive.
As for the rest of the scientists, which ones have actually done the research, and how many are just following the conventional wisdom? Medical doctors still recommend a diet which was created by George McGovern, and I’d be surprised if more than fifty percent of them actually understand evolution (rather than just believe it) - a ridiculously simple theory when you study it.
Several prominent candidates pop up when you consider the IPCC’s bias—are they anti-1st world (Carbon Credit transfers to the 3rd)? Anti-free market (heavy regulation and monitoring for all)? Or—and I think this is a major component of most green activists—are they just simply anti-car? I can imagine the plastic hippies living in the University bubble hating people for driving, and what better way to justify that hatred than arguing that CO2 is a pollutant? We never hear anything about the effects of methane on the climate—except from the low-status vegans.
When things become this jumbled, I’d say it’s better to point out a third way—say ‘I don’t know’, and pre-emptively cut the legs off of the soldier-like arguments of both sides. I’m wary of picking one side of advocates, when both groups are known, as a matter of fact, to regularly molest baby animals before having their first cup of coffee in the morning—in a way it reminds me of voting.
I don’t think this is a fair assessment. I was a global warming supporter up until I saw that awful movie by Al Gore; his inept, unscientific presentation drove me to start looking into the situation.
What I found was a great deal of controversy over the figures—some of the charts cited by Gore tended to suggest the opposite of his thesis (assuming he even had a thesis—that man’s all over the place); that CO2 follows warming, rather than triggers it.
After looking into it further—and hearing a dozen different sets of conflicting data—I eventually gave up on understanding. I don’t know enough about the subject matter to make an accurate judgement, and various sources on all sides of the debate have proved themselves to be biased or incompetent. Alcor I trust to lay out factual information on ‘vitrification’ - whatever the hell that is. The IPCC on the other hand has a political motivation, as (probably) do many of the scientific skeptics.
As a rough estimate, I’d assign a 60% chance that global warming is occuring, while maybe a 10% chance that the climate’s cooling. This is completely ignoring the probabilities of it A) being man made, B) being catastrophic (or even bad), and C) of being correctable by current policies.
Unless if you’re a climatologist or a meteorologist, I’d be very suspicious of strong stances on the matter. Perhaps a better test would be whether somebody supports A) cap-and-trade or B) using a ‘science fiction’ solar-umbrella satellite to cool off the earth.
I sympathize. Frankly, most of us don’t know anywhere near enough (nor should we, realistically) about climate science to truly assess the evidence ourselves, particularly when the models necessary for prediction are so complex. What to do in this case? I think we should consider the weight of opinion of actual experts. If you do this, the balance tips markedly towards AGW.
What about vested interests, you say? Well they exist on both sides, but on one side we have the fossil fuel lobby and on the other… conflict of interest wrt research grants (which is not just a problem in the case of global warming!).
Bottom line: If you can’t assess the evidence directly yourself, delegate wisely.
I generally agree with your heuristic—eg: arguing “this light should be green for longer to improve traffic efficiency” is ridiculous—but when money or politics get involved it tends to break down. For money, “Red light cameras are there to improve traffic safety, not as cash cows, and the various municipal-funded studies can be relied upon.” For politics, “We have to have a speed limit on the highway, even if it’s irregularly enforced, because allowing people to drive whatever speed they want is just crazy—it’d never work! The cops ticketing speeders are just protecting us from ourselves.”
A better corollary than the traffic issue however, would be medicine; while the majority of us on LW (I suspect) will blindly accept the broad-strokes declared by the medical community, while simultaneously distrusting the rationality of most doctors; when it comes to a specific treatment for a serious condition most of us would be researching it ourselves This goes doubly for the psychiatric field, and area as dominated by the politics of popular thought as it is by the pharma dollars.
This is why I remain dubious about AGW (let alone Catastrophic-AGW). On the one hand we’ve got the oil lobbyists, and living in oil country I hear constant anecdotes about how slimy they are; but on the other side you’ve got the IPCC, a group of technocrats with a prior commitment to big government who are in charge of directing the research. There’s a political bias at work, which I find even more frightening than the oil companies’ profit motive.
As for the rest of the scientists, which ones have actually done the research, and how many are just following the conventional wisdom? Medical doctors still recommend a diet which was created by George McGovern, and I’d be surprised if more than fifty percent of them actually understand evolution (rather than just believe it) - a ridiculously simple theory when you study it.
Several prominent candidates pop up when you consider the IPCC’s bias—are they anti-1st world (Carbon Credit transfers to the 3rd)? Anti-free market (heavy regulation and monitoring for all)? Or—and I think this is a major component of most green activists—are they just simply anti-car? I can imagine the plastic hippies living in the University bubble hating people for driving, and what better way to justify that hatred than arguing that CO2 is a pollutant? We never hear anything about the effects of methane on the climate—except from the low-status vegans.
When things become this jumbled, I’d say it’s better to point out a third way—say ‘I don’t know’, and pre-emptively cut the legs off of the soldier-like arguments of both sides. I’m wary of picking one side of advocates, when both groups are known, as a matter of fact, to regularly molest baby animals before having their first cup of coffee in the morning—in a way it reminds me of voting.