Dak
mentat
On the outset I apologize for the cutting and pasting for simplicity of reply if you feel that it created some false presentation or understanding of your intent.
I'll more fully try to explain my position below, but I want to address this in saying that by caveats I mean the variation in contribution and effects as well as the distance between predictions and outcomes.
I want to be clear that I don't have significant doubt that the earth is in a warming trend, nor that human activity has some contribution. My doubt is somewhat in the clear causality or contingency, and definitely regarding the hysteria surrounding it.
As someone living and operating within the religiosity of academia, and knowing what the file-drawer problem is, I have extreme skepticism across science that can't produce reliable predictions or replication, which is what climate science is unable to do on both counts for different reasons. Before you respond with "well it predicts warming, which is what we have", note that predicting warming vs cooling is winning a coin flip.
You are correct that I have an ideological, likely geneti-cultural aversion to policy "solutions". This is where my point comes in about my ho-humming of warming. Not that it isn't occuring, not that it may not have human contributions, but that it A. Is SUPER BAD and B. CAN BE SOLVED WITH TYRANNY(tyranny used for dramatic effect).
I'm not sure what this has to do with warming, but I have no reason to doubt this.
I don't know what else to say other than that's not really true anymore. Or if it's true, the consensus pretty much outweighs the caveats. At some point it has to.
I'll more fully try to explain my position below, but I want to address this in saying that by caveats I mean the variation in contribution and effects as well as the distance between predictions and outcomes.
The Arrhenius equation and Keeling curve both point to the impact of industrialization and other human factors in continual global warming. Those were before any religion or associated cottage industry. Honestly, denying the influence of the human population bomb is pretty outrageous at this point in history.
That doesn't automatically lead to arguments about blame or fault, but it should direct us toward certain regulatory principles.
I'm not defending journalists though. I am defending appeals to scientific consensus, because if consensus isn't enough to justify widespread assumptions and expectations about climate change, then we're stuck in a stalemate.
This is why the principle of falsification isn't the be-all end-all of cutting edge science. When it comes to complex systems like climate there will always be data and factoids that don't play by linear rules. We've reached a point in the development of climatological studies where such anomalies are too inconsistent to represent any significant challenge to the overwhelming evidence that climate change is experiencing a warming trend and that human industry plays a significant role in that warming.
For what it's worth, if we're taking ideological jabs, I don't think your skepticism of human influence in climate change has anything to do with some triumph of reason or intellect, and everything to do with your political objections to regulatory measures. I don't see how you can largely ignore the wealth of literature on climate change and privilege the something like two or three percent of outliers, many of whom are backed by special interest groups that oppose policies to combat global warming.
I want to be clear that I don't have significant doubt that the earth is in a warming trend, nor that human activity has some contribution. My doubt is somewhat in the clear causality or contingency, and definitely regarding the hysteria surrounding it.
As someone living and operating within the religiosity of academia, and knowing what the file-drawer problem is, I have extreme skepticism across science that can't produce reliable predictions or replication, which is what climate science is unable to do on both counts for different reasons. Before you respond with "well it predicts warming, which is what we have", note that predicting warming vs cooling is winning a coin flip.
You are correct that I have an ideological, likely geneti-cultural aversion to policy "solutions". This is where my point comes in about my ho-humming of warming. Not that it isn't occuring, not that it may not have human contributions, but that it A. Is SUPER BAD and B. CAN BE SOLVED WITH TYRANNY(tyranny used for dramatic effect).
There have been studies suggesting that water magnifies or intensifies the rate of plastic decay due to its exposure to sunlight (similar to why having wet skin makes us more prone to sunburn).
I'm not sure what this has to do with warming, but I have no reason to doubt this.