How is that a conspiracy theory?
It's not. It's an accurate description of a range of excuses deployed by climate deniers.
I don't think anyone is adverse to discussing the science, but unfortunately the "skeptic" comments on the science in this thread so far, as is sadly typical, have been of the "What's the email for the president of physics?" ilk.
Trust me, if you happen upon an actual, valid or even plausible criticism, there will be no dearth of people to discuss it with you. If you're raising issues with the science and being ignored, you are probably falling prey to one of the iron laws of the internet:
"The amount of time it takes to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude greater than the time it takes to spout it."
RMc wrote:The AGW zealots position, boiled down.
It's so funny how poor your imitation of a neutral party is. You can't avoid sounding like the closeted denier that you are for five seconds.
Wasn't trying to. I was merely trying to point out you aren't doing a good job of getting out your message. You do want to get your message out, right?
Again, you haven't said why "getting out the message" is my problem. If you believe the science, it's your problem too. But you don't, really, do you?
You just don't want to face the reality here that you climate deniers -- like racist bigots, like flat earthers, like vaccine deniers, like young-Earth Creationists -- are a tiny minority that neither I nor anyone else not responsible for Republican fund-raisers has to appease.
Dyno wrote:How is understanding the methodology used to arrive at 97% ignorance?
Instead of just saying random things are facts, can reassure me that you understand the methodology used to obtain that figure, rather than just religiously citing it as an article of faith?
I can, but should I? Your own numbers prove that what you claim was used to derive the figure cannot have been done.
Cook et al is a peer-reviewed scientific paper. The burden on you is to show where it's flawed, which you've utterly failed to do.
To be clear: I have donated many hundreds of hours of my time, and will donate many more, to explaining climate science. But there is no point in banging my head against a brick wall of motivated reasoning. If I thought you actually wanted to know and were capable of accepting the information, I'd happily run through the methodology of Cook et al. But you are very far from convincing me that that would be a good use of my time.
*Kat* wrote:And, if you have time could you please give the non-science-y people among us a for Dummies overview of what has y'all so utterly convinced that
1) The Climate is changing.
2) This change is man-made.
3) This change can be reversed.
4) Also, what happens if we don't reverse it? You keep implying dire consequences but haven't enumerated any of them.
This is a sincere request. I'm not stupid but as I've said before, I'm not a science person. I'm a history and anthropology person. Historically the Earth has warmed and cooled many times over the millennium of human's existence. Anthropologically there is a tendency among Man to blame problems we can't solve on things that we can control. In the distant past Global Warming would of been attributed to unhappy gods which in turn would of been blamed on inadequate worship
First of all +1 to everything Diadem said.
Point the second, you can easily persuade yourself that the climate is changing. Look at sea level rise, mass balance of the ice sheets, habitat change, melting of permafrost, or just look at temperatures:
Point the third, we know the change is man-made for
many reasons, but the simplest is that we know we are raising the levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and we know -- and have known for over 200 years -- that this warms the climate:
The changes are mostly not reversible, but it's not a binary process, it's analogue. More greenhouse gases, more problems. Less, better. It's that simple.
Your final point is what the comic is about. I could enumerate to you all of the terrible consequences we can anticipate from 4.5C of warming, but in fact, you can demonstrate the problem to yourself much more simply than that. Are we dependent on the climate to live? Yes, among other things we have to grow our food. In the time we have been living in cities and growing our food, has the world ever seen a temperature swing like this, in two centuries from +0 to, as Munroe puts it, +1IAU? No, not even close. We don't know exactly how that world will unfold, but it cannot possibly be a safe thing to try.
"Reasonable – that is, human – men will always be capable of compromise, but men who have dehumanized themselves by becoming the blind worshipers of an idea or an ideal are fanatics whose devotion to abstractions makes them the enemies of life."
-- Alan Watts, "The Way of Zen"
