Contradictory denier arguments
A key reason why I refuse to call deniers skeptics, is because they are not skeptical of claims which they think support the notion that global warming is not real. Or is not a problem. Any claim that supports this notion is accepted without any critical thought, even if it contradicts other claims they have accepted before.
This was recently highlighted by a commenter who said:
In closing, let me simply recommend to them that they read the works of people like Dr. Lindzen (MIT), Dr. Plimer (Australia)who are among the elite of academic scientists in the academic/scientific realms that matter, and who scoff at the notion of AGW.
They also present mutually exclusive theories (more on this later), and Plimer in particular has been heavily criticized for huge inaccuracies in his book. Lindzen may not make such obvious mistakes, but his Iris hypothesis has yet to be confirmed by the data, and may in fact turn out to be a positive feedback rather than a negative feedback as he claims. Also the results of his most recent paper are highly dependent on the start and end points. Or in other words, his results are dependent on a cherry-pick.
But back to the contradiction. Plimer’s argument boils down to a high climate sensitivity (though he seemingly doesn’t realize this). Why you ask? Well he spends a great deal of time emphasizing the fact that climate has changed drastically in the past (and this is true). The only way for this to happen is if the climate was sensitive to forcing, thus having a high sensitivity.
As Wallace Broecker wrote in Nature in 1995: “The paleoclimate record shouts out to us that, far from being self-stabilizing, the Earth’s climate system is an ornery beast which overreacts even to small nudges.“, and as the third video in my above comment makes perfectly clear.
Which brings us to Lindzen. His iris hypothesis is an argument for low climate sensitivity. He argues that increased sea surface temperature in the tropics would result in reduced cirrus clouds and thus more infrared radiation leakage from Earth’s atmosphere. This would act as a negative feedback and lower climate sensitivity close to zero.
These arguments are mutually exclusive. The fact that you list both of them supports my notion that you don’t really understand the issue and just grasp on to anything that says not-the-ipcc. Or in other words you are making a political argument.
But scientific arguments require more than that. They require consistency.
In one sentence the commenter argues for two mutually exclusive theories of why climate change is not happening. He either doesn’t understand the arguments he is presenting, or doesn’t care. As long as they come to the conclusion he wants he will accept them both.
This is decidedly not scientific, and not skeptical. This is denialism pure and simple, and while it may be the norm in political debates, it simply doesn’t cut it for matters of science.
UPDATE: The Blob, over at Climate WTF has a great list of other denier contradictions:
-Those darned climate scientists have deliberately fudged the surface temperature records so that they support manmade global warming!
-The early 20th century warming in the surface records disproves manmade global warming!-Computers can be made to say anything! Those darned climate scientists have written the climate models so that the output supports manmade global warming!
-The climate models disprove manmade global warming because the output shows a hotspot that doesn’t exist!-The early 20th century warming in the surface records disproves manmade global warming!
-We can’t believe the surface records. They are far too inaccurate!-The ice core co2 records show co2 lags temperature, not the otherway round!
-The ice core co2 records are inaccurate due to co2 diffusing through the ice so we can’t believe them!-Low Climate Sensitivity!
-The Climate has changed a lot in the past! [SD: This is the contradiction shown above]-Mankind’s resourcefulness and ingenuity will allow us to easily adapt to any change in climate or sea level
-A carbon tax will have a catastrophic effect on our economy and civilization
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I’ve seen the outraged comments from deniers whining about being compared to Holocaust deniers (if the shoe fits…) when really they are sceptics searching for the truth. They don’t/can’t/won’t understand that a true sceptic seeks the truth, no matter how painful. Hmm, kinda like…scientists.
Tangentially related for your amusement.
Dan this is really evident at these denialists conferences. There you’ll find dozens of wizards, each promoting their pet theories that are generally inconsistent, even contradictory. It used to be when you had two dozen people, each with a different reality, you called it an asylum.
Hi there Dan.
I know, I know, I promised to go away, but you put up such juicy targets:-)
I think that your calling us “deniers” is quite comparable to our calling you “believers,” even though you believe that you have logic on your side. So do we !
Let me try again why we “non-believers” do not believe you “believers.”
The fact that Lindzen and Plimer may (according to you) doubt AGW for different (indeed even contradictory) reasons is no reason to dismiss either or both. What we (or at least I) believe is that a field of “science” in which two of the leading thinkers and voices both dismiss the conclusion of AGW (regardless whether their theories differ) is clearly a world in which there simply are no conclusive data. That is what all of us “non-believers” are trying to get you “believers” to see.
Let me try to give a parallel example.
Suppose that one group of folks were claiming that the mercury in vacines could cause autism in certain predisposed children and another group claimed that could not happen.
If Department heads of toxicology, neurology, mental health, and epidemiology departments around the world all weighed in on different sides of this issue, what would be one certain conclusion ? (Never mind political groups like UN and IPCC and the Damocratic Party, etc)
The inescapably conclusion would be there must not be conclusive data available !
Few of us really care what theories are championed regarding the mechanisms by which mercury might (or might not) cause autism. Nor would any intelligent person be persuaded by ANY of the theories.
The only thing that matters, in the end, is the data.Do the data show a real effect or not ?
Inasmuch as the CRU and others are finally admitting that the climate data are simply not definitive (hence, see the Lindzens and Plimers still theorizing all over the map), none of us “non-believers” is going to be convinced by either side. Parsimony, of course, dictates “no crisis.”
Get back to us in a decade or so. If the record cold, regrowth of cover ice and glaciers, lack of storms, and so forth have abated, and we are once again headed to another Medieval Warm period, we can talk.
PS:
I had to giggle when I read the “proof” of AGW which was based on the premise that “believer” academics could “get rich much faster” by some other means than towing the party line and hitting up the granting agencies and CO2 swaping funds for their salaries and research dollars. Trust me, Dan. I have spend decades in academe and decades in business. Only a minescule fraction of academics could succeed at anything outside their highly protected and sheltered worlds. Get ricch another way ? Not so much !
@ goodtalviking
First of all, I explain why I call deniers, deniers in the first link in this post. And acceptance of a mainstream scientific theory is not belief, it is the opposite of belief.
I see you still don’t quite get the point I am trying to make. First it is a mistake to assume that Plimer and Lindzen are leading thinkers. They are not at least not by any rational definition I am aware of. Plimer is not a even climatologist, he is a geologist. And as I mention in my response to you his book on climatology is filled with errors.
Lindzen does study climate, but again as I explained above his hypothesis has not held up, and his most recent paper has been shown to be seriously flawed.
So what we have are two outliers. Every scientific discipline has them, but this does not change the fact that the overwhelming majority of those why study climate (and every relevant scientific society) agree that our GHG emissions are the cause.
Outliers don’t present a serious challenge to mainstream science. What is needed, is for one of these theories to gain enough prominence to challenge our current thinking. And that is no easy task, because our current thinking of climate fits very well with our larger understanding of the natural world. Any new theory would also have to fit well with everything else we know.
But the mere existence of outlier ideas does not demonstrate that mainstream science is wrong.
Please read this essay by John Mashey for a more detailed explanation, especially the Great Wall of Science metaphor.
Your comparison to vaccines is especially interesting, because the anti-vaxers act in a similar fashion to you. The evidence is against them (Wakefield’s paper was recently withdrawn), yet they persist in their denial (yes denialism exists in other realms).
But lets look at your specific example:
Fair enough, but that is not what happened in regards to vaccines, or climate.
On climate change the scientific community has been quite clear. A recent survey found 97% of publishing climatologists agree that our GHG emissions are causing the earth to warm. A conclusion shared by the IPCC the National Academies of Science from Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, the Caribbean, China, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Russia, South Africa, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the USA, the American Meteorological Society, American Geophysical Union, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Geological Society of London, the Geological Society of America, the Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society, thousands of peer-reviewed journals. In fact no scientific body of national or international standing is known to reject the basic findings of the human influence on the recent climate.
Also take a look at Jim Prall’s database of climate authors.
If that isn’t a consensus I don’t know what is.
So according to your own example one must conclude that there must be conclusive data available to support AGW!
@ Chris
That is hilarious, especially this part:
@ MoS
hehe, yet many people (including our viking friend) think that the mere existence of fring ideas (many of which are obviously wrong to experts in the field), think they present a serious challenge to mainstream science. Can you imagine if they applied that logic to every area of science?
Not to be pedantic but I think denialist is a more accurate term than denier, what with denialism being a political movement. It’s also not unusual for a political movement in the early stages to issue contradictory manifesto’s, as more and more talking heads jump on the bandwagon.
Glad you liked it. For several years now I’ve been saying that if you’re not reading Phila at Bouphonia you’re missing some of the best the blogosphere has to offer.
The question I always want to ask deniers is: Are you willing to bet your progeny on the very long odds that >98% of scientists are wrong? If so, why? Show your work.
And, no, poopyhead is not an acceptable scientific term.
As Eli said about a year ago, denialism is reduced to throwing spaghetti against the wall and hoping that something sticks which leads to claiming that every one of a set of mutually contradictory papers are just wonderful. This came out again recently (at least when the Rabett was in attendance) in comments Open Mind.
ScruffyDan,
Thanks for keeping up the good work, and maintaining a more reasoned and reasonable response than I ever could. But then, goodtallviking is such a classical example of his species.
Oh, and welcome back, and where’s the pictures ?
@ Scott
Denialist may be more accurate, but for better or worse denier is the term that stuck. Climategate may have been an inaccurate description of what happened (swifthack seems more accurate to me), but it is not the term that stuck. For better or worse those are the terms we are stuck with, as those are the terms that people type into google.
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet
@ Chris
I sometimes as a similar question, but not for climate. I go for cancer. Suppose you go to the doctor and he says you have cancer. What do you do? I’d see a specialist. Suppose he also says you have cancer, what do you do? Maybe get a second opinion from another specialist. What happens after you have seen 100 specialist, and all but one has said you have cancer and need treatment? Do you get treatment? Or do you stick with the diagnosis of the specialist who says you don’t have cancer?
So why don’t you do the same for climate?
Some of the answers are truly amazing, usually listing the many times that medical science has made errors. While completely missing the point. The issue isn’t that a consensus eliminates uncertainty (nothing does), but rather that it increases certainty. Your certainty of the original diagnosis increases each time a specialist confirms it, but the uncertainty never quite goes away.
Another interesting question is to ask (and to think about yourself) is what would change their mind on climate change, and why. If nothing will change their mind, then surely they are not rational and not worth your time. If they demand unreasonable levels of certainty, then ask them if they feel the same way about other areas, and of not why. These questions go a long way in separating those worth talking to from those who are just wasting your time.
@ Eli
What you said over at Open Mind:
is great, and something that I think needs to be emphasized. Science works towards an understanding of how the world works. It is consistent with itself, and where it isn’t it means we are missing part of the picture.
@ Grim
Your welcome. Typically I would have stopped letting Mr Viking post here, but I have allowed him to continue because he brings up issues that I think my readers can learn about. Usually my tolerance for such comments is lower. I spent the first few years blogging engaging such people and found that none of them ever did more than state and restate their points while not even bothering to respond to what I had written. Eventually after a particularly nasty series of comments I clamped down. Responding to these comments was wasting a huge amount of time, and yielding nothing but noise in my comments sections.
I am more than happy to help people understand the issue, or at least point them in the right direction (I am no expert), but they have to show that they are willing to learn.
Don’t worry the pics are coming soon, I took way to many pictures, and am now working through them. Hopefully they will be up by the weekend.
But here are some that I really like:
Nice pics. I’m looking forward to your ‘best of’ selection.
Eli’s comment in Open Mind is, of course, an adpation of Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen who could “believe six impossible things before breakfast” (which I expect you knew). I’m intrigued, however, by Eli’s halving of the number (is this an apperceptive comment on the limited mental capacity of deniers ?) and his addition of “mutually contradictory” which is something even the Red Queen never attempted. But then, maybe that’s because she had a really excellent memory that worked in both directions: maybe if you can remember the future, you’re less susceptiple to self-contradiction.
As to others being “willing to learn”, I assume you’ve seen the lastest piece in RealClimate, and here’s another viewpoint (in case you haven’t seen it yet) that is worth a read:
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2010/03/08/the-unpersuadables/
@ Grim
I did know that, but that info was burred somewhere deep and didn’t surface till you pointed it out.
Re: Monbiot
I actually ask that question (it is in my comment policy) to anyone who denies climate change if I foresee a long exchange of comments between us. Anyone who absolutely wont be convinced no matter what, or who’s standards for evidence are absurdly high (like being to explain every climate shift in great detail going back 4.5 billion years) is irrational and not worth your time
But it is worthwhile to answer that question in reverse as well. What would it take to for you to stop accepting the consensus view on climate change? For me (a non-expert) it is substantive debate within the scientific community. If that happens I’d say the science is no longer certain.
For those of you still reading here are the rest of my pics.
Hey Dan. Have you had a chance yet to pick up Hansen’s new book “Storms of My Grandchildren”? After all the reports and studies he’s written this is his first book and it’s pretty good.
The long and short of it – we can control global warming – just – but (and this is a gigantic “but”) we in the industrialized West have to completely abandon all coal fueled plants within 10-years with the rest of the planet doing likewise by 2030.
If we don’t, he sides with Lovelock who today said we might as well enjoy ourselves because we don’t have a chance remaining of avoiding catastrophic global warming. That’s right – Lovelock has finally thrown in the towel.
Git yer ass in a muscle car and start laying down some serious rubber!
I have not read it, and I am not sure I will have time to do so. Ultimately I doubt it will say anything I haven’t heard before (not because it is a bad book, but because I spend way too much time immersed in this topic, and have read several reviews which highlighted the interesting bits).
As for Lovelock, he has said some wacky things of late which to me indicate he is not keeping up with the issue as much as he should if he wants to make such statements.
In fact he reminds me a little of Freman Dyson, though he had taken the opposite stance. Both are very intelligent, but both say things that aren’t supported by the science.