Facebook Creates Fact-Checking Exemption for Climate Deniers (popular.info) 257
Facebook is "aiding and abetting the spread of climate misinformation," said Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist at Drexel University. "They have become the vehicle for climate misinformation, and thus should be held partially responsible for a lack of action on climate change." From a report: Brulle was reacting to Facebook's recent decision, made at the request of climate science deniers, to create a giant loophole in its fact-checking program. Last year, Facebook partnered with an organization, Science Feedback, that would bring in teams of Ph.D. climate scientists to evaluate the accuracy of viral content. It was an important expansion of the company's third-party fact-checking program. But now Facebook has reportedly decided to allow its staffers to overrule the climate scientists and make any climate disinformation ineligible for fact-checking by deeming it "opinion."
The organization that requested the change, the CO2 Coalition, is celebrating, E&E news reported on Monday. The group, which has close ties to the fossil fuel industry, says its views on climate change are increasingly ignored by the mainstream media. Now it plans to use Facebook to aggressively push climate misinformation on the public -- without having to worry about fact checks from climate scientists. A column published in the Washington Examiner in August 2019 claimed that "climate models" were a "failure" that predicted exponentially more warming of the earth than has occurred. The piece, co-authored by notorious climate science denier Pat Michaels, was quickly shared more than 2,000 times on Facebook. There was just one issue: It wasn't true. This is exactly the kind of mess that Facebook's network of independent fact-checkers is supposed to solve.
The organization that requested the change, the CO2 Coalition, is celebrating, E&E news reported on Monday. The group, which has close ties to the fossil fuel industry, says its views on climate change are increasingly ignored by the mainstream media. Now it plans to use Facebook to aggressively push climate misinformation on the public -- without having to worry about fact checks from climate scientists. A column published in the Washington Examiner in August 2019 claimed that "climate models" were a "failure" that predicted exponentially more warming of the earth than has occurred. The piece, co-authored by notorious climate science denier Pat Michaels, was quickly shared more than 2,000 times on Facebook. There was just one issue: It wasn't true. This is exactly the kind of mess that Facebook's network of independent fact-checkers is supposed to solve.
Maybe because (Score:4, Insightful)
Predictions of the future are not "facts".
Re:Maybe because (Score:5, Insightful)
More likely because climate change denial is worth lots of money to Facebook. It's big business, backed by big money.
Re:Maybe because (Score:5, Insightful)
This is true. The irony is the climate change deniers always claim the promoters are in it for the money, but there's no money studying climate change - it's happening and you only get grant money out of it.
Climate change denial though has major backing from oil companies and oil producing companies (who are VERY rich), as well as many traditional companies. And since fewer scientists are working on it, there's only a few people chasing literally trillions of dollars. You want lucrative, you be a denier and have billions of dollars to do whatever the heck you want.
Better than doing the whole climate change thing and only chasing half a million dollars now and again.
Re:Maybe because (Score:4, Insightful)
there's no money studying climate change - it's happening and you only get grant money out of it.
For a lot of scientists, getting grant money is literally the largest part of their job.
Re:Maybe because (Score:5, Insightful)
But you don't get into science for the grant money. Grant money is what lets you keep working for low pay and bad job security. You don't get rich off research grants.
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The US government spends around 15 billion a year on climate related research (including clean energy, climate, carbon management, etc).
That isnt exactly poor funding, and is well worth chasing, wouldnt you agree?
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The US also spends [wikipedia.org] $10B on space, $30B on health science, and $65B on military research, so there's plenty of lucrative grants in other areas.
And on the other side, $15B looks pretty tiny next to the roughly $2,500 billion [offshore-technology.com] in annual revenue from the top ten fossil fuel companies, so there's certainly no shortage of money in denial.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
More likely because climate change denial is worth lots of money to Facebook. It's big business, backed by big money.
None of this conspiracy stuff ever seems to have any supporting facts.
Mod it up and believe it without question though.
Re: (Score:2)
But the right wings are saying how all these scientists are getting all this big bucks to hide the truth.
Re: Maybe because (Score:2)
Re: Maybe because (Score:4, Informative)
They publish to journals. The public and the media cite those journals.
Your suggestion that anyone publishes original research only to Facebook is unfounded.
Re: Maybe because (Score:5, Insightful)
They publish to journals. The public and the media cite those journals.
And if they cite correctly and accurately the truth, then there is no problem. But the media doesn't cite anything correctly or accurately unless that action feeds the hype and clickbait factor that is now required for every "news" article. All media now has a P&L center wrapped around it. So they're no longer delivering news. They're selling it.
Your suggestion that anyone publishes original research only to Facebook is unfounded.
Not really sure how you got that from my comment, but Facebook is not a resource for truth or facts. On any topic. That was my entire point buried in that tongue-in-cheek comment, and I sure as hell hope there are no Climate Scientists on Facebook talking shop.
Re: Maybe because (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: Maybe because (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but I really don't think creating a double-blind experiment to settle the case of anthropomorphic climate change is really an option here. I mean, at what level would you be satisfied of the outcome? Find a planet similar to Earth and observe? Both the 'similar planet' and its sun a slightly different. Ok, be the mice and create a second Earth - exactly the same as this one - down to every last dinosaur bone and fjord. Place it exact same orbit, inclination, rotation, etc., but opposite us from the sun. Populate it with humans, but don't let them have access to such niceties as fire and wheel.
Seriously, dude - I get what you're getting at, but there is a point that even the Royal Society (notice propper caps), Union of Concerned Scientists, etc. say that some experiments cannot, and even should not, be conducted for moral, ethical, and financial reasons. Not every experiment get's a nice and tidy control. In short, science, for all it's grandiose platitudes and capabilities, is messy at times.
As such, a smaller, more constrained and contained set of observations is utilized as a proxy for the grand global 'experiment' currently being conducted. Agreed, that some scientists, and their data, have biases and misinterpretation. It's when you take ALL the data from ALL the sources (tree rings, ice cores, temp records, first bloom dates, snow pack melt, glacier melt, solar activity, etc. etc. ad nauseum) and, ALL of it is saying 'Something bad is happening.' maybe it's time to get off of your ivory tower and quit quibbling over whether it's science'y enough and start saying we need to do something about it.
In short, dumb *sses like you are just as bad as actual climate deniers. Yes, there's debate around a) how bad it's going to get and b) how to fix it. There is no debate that it's 1) not happening and that 2) something needs to be done.
I'm not trusting anyone - I'm observing as well. I live in central US (northern IL). As a kid I didn't start mowing the lawn regularly, usually until mid-end of May and trimming the bushes was a something I did with my dad on Father's day weekend. Over the last couple of years I've gotten two to three mowings in by the end of April now and bushes now have to be done before Mother's day.
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The fact of the matter is that climate science is exactly not that: science. There is a scientific method. One needs to create an experiment. That is, create a hypothesis, conduct an experiment, institute a control to confirm the hypothesis, and generate a conclusion based on the results of experimentation.
I disagree that climate science is not science. As you correctly point out, the science is the process of applying the scientific method. The flaw is in assuming that the scientific method is limited solely to double-blind controlled experiments or experiments that always yield results than can only be interpreted in a single way. This is obviously not the case, as the vast majority of science would fail to qualify as science under such a narrow definition.
It saddens me that "scientists" today reach "consensus".
Consensus is inherently neither good nor bad, so
Re: (Score:3)
...I'm not sure why that would sadden you.
I am pretty sure that climate science (like most other science) is now part of the American culture wars.
Anyone who does not agree with my worldview must be part of the other team, and therefore my enemy.
Re: Maybe because (Score:5, Informative)
That is not true. In the scientific method, there are other ways to test hypotheses. For example, one may test an hypothesis using simple observation of phenomenon. In this way, an hypothesis may be confirmed, warranted or falsified. You needn't create a solar system in a lab to test your hypothesis that the Moon orbits the Earth.
http://www-personal.umd.umich.... [umich.edu]
This is nothing new. It is the same inductive method described by Sir Francis Bacon way back around 1600.
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It saddens me that "scientists" today reach "consensus".
Yes, where are the physicists challenging gravity? The biologists disputing that viruses exist? The chemists proving that all benzene rings are inert? It's a terrible state that science is in...
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Re:Alarmists' conflict of interest (Score:5, Informative)
No, turns out that there's plenty of work for scientists doing atmospheric modelling-- climate isn't even near the top of the list in terms of dollars. Turns out weather prediction is the multi-billion dollar industry [globenewswire.com]. Accuweather alone is has annual revenues that exceed $100 million. [forbes.com]
Hurricane modeling and path prediction is also an area that is well funded, since it's responsible for a multi-billion dollars of loss every year.
Climate modeling is small potatoes. Even in academic research, a lot of the climate research isn't going toward predicting greenhouse warming; it's doing things like modelling paleoclimate and comparing predictions against ice cores.
doesn't say that [Re:Alarmists' conflict of in...] (Score:5, Interesting)
...Let me give you an example. Have a look at this article from 2011 [newscientist.com], predicting a 20 meter (60 ft in retard units) rise of sea level for each degree centigrade. If you now look here [nasa.gov], you'll see that, compared to the 70s, we have already seen an increase.
Except that the article you link doesn't say that. What it says is that we don't know how fast the sea level will rise. Here is the direct quote:
How alarming depends on how quickly the great ice sheets melt in response to warming – and that is another big unknown.
That's the opposite of a prediction. If you click on the "next article" link in the link you give, it is even more explicit about the "we don't know how fast sea levels will rise": https://www.newscientist.com/a... [newscientist.com]
(The whole series, "Climate change: What we do – and don’t – know“ [newscientist.com] in fact looks pretty useful.)
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Except that the article you link doesn't say that.
Except that it does exactly that:
Studies of sea level and temperatures over the past million years suggest that each 1ÂC rise in the global mean temperature eventually leads to a 20-metre rise in sea level.
But, here's the thing. When I took an accounting course, I learned that reasonable people can differ on a reasonable level about the reasonable value of things. One example mentioned is the value of a 10 year old office building. Is it worth 1 million, or 1.1 million? Both estimates seem reasona
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Actually the 2011 article predicts a 29 cm rise in sea level by the year 2100. No idea where you got the 20 m by 2020 prediction from.
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Not if you have a Delorean.
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Predictions of the future are not "facts".
The climate scientists are not predicting when there is going to be flying cars or when a COVID vaccine will arrive.
They are using science, trends and models based upon data to predict the eventual outcome of our current trajectory. I remember when this was originally brought up in the early 1980s. And everything that was predicted has come true - and even worse.
Here is an example from planetary science. The long held hypothesis many decades ago was that the planet Venus would be relatively cold consideri
America is reducing CO2 (Score:2)
But because we withdrew from the Paris nonsense we are BAD. China and Europe are increasing CO2, but they say things you agree with so they are GOOD.
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Predictions match the measurements [Re:Maybe...] (Score:5, Informative)
Except that this is not the case. Climate predictions were published; they're in the literature, we can go back and look at them and see how they did.
Here's an article from Forbes about the very first modern climate model, Manabe and Wetherald 1967. Since it's the first, it's the one that's had the longest run to compare prediction to reality, 50 years: https://www.forbes.com/sites/s... [forbes.com]
Or a more detailed discussion here: https://climategraphs.wordpres... [wordpress.com]
Probably the most outspoken climate modeler, the name you're most likely to have heard of, is James Hansen. He did one of the early predictions. His model looked at a high, medium, and low scenarios for climate, with the "medium" one, Scenario B, labelled “perhaps the most plausible of the three cases,” And: the "medium" case pretty much matches predictions: https://www.bloomberg.com/opin... [bloomberg.com]
And, here's an article comparing a lot of models: https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Climate predictions were published; they're in the literature, we can go back and look at them and see how they did. Here's an article from Forbes about the very first modern climate model, Manabe and Wetherald 1967.
Thank you! I just read through your links. They were interesting. Much appreciated.
Re: (Score:3)
They don't [nasa.gov]. Your super-biased source [skepticalscience.com] verus NASA, I'll take NASA every time.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes. And they are obviously guilty as charged. I vote for life sentences without parole for the lot of them!
Ad Hominem (Score:4, Informative)
Lo and behold. Phrase has nothing to do with altitude.
Your arguments would be rather more persuasive if you could spell. But when I hit the spelling error(s), I automatically start wondering what else you're wrong about....
And when people resort to cheap rhetorical attacks and ad hominems and other logical fallacies, it always means that they have no logical counter argument.
Believe it or not, many see though it.
And I would rather make an honest spelling mistake than resort to such sleazy unethical dishonest arguments that work quite well, unfortunately, with stupid people.
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Your life would be worth something if you weren't a jackass who can't tell the difference between spelling a word incorrectly and choosing the wrong word.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ok. I'll hit you round the head with a baseball bat. I'm 99.9999% sure that it's going to hurt you. It's not a fact, but the sheer weight of probability given all past evidence, the prediction is on sound footing. That's what scientific consensus is. It's not a bunch of people sitting round and saying "Oh, we think this, therefore it must be this", it's when nobody can actually refute (yet) the proposal. And that's what predictions on climate are. The best that humanity can do, following trends and h
...but facts are (hopefully) involved (Score:2)
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Re:Maybe because (Score:4, Insightful)
Whoa, there.
"The climate is changing at an unprecedented rate in human history due to humans pumping too much CO2 into the atmosphere. That's a fact."
Not quite; that statement involves some analysis. The facts are this:
1) The climate is changing in an unprecedented rate in human history.
2) Humans are pumping a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere.
3) Many (but not all) scientists believe that (1) and (2) are related.
How science works [Re:Maybe because] (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, this is true, and even insightful.
You might add, however:
4) Scientists have proposed the hypothesis that the change in climate is due to the "greenhouse effect", a well understood consequence of radiative physics. This hypothesis allows predictions to be made.
5) The predictions have, so far, matched the measurements.
6) Alternate models which do not incorporate the greenhouse effect warming do not match the data.
7) 5 and 6 together serve to rule out the null hypothesis.
8) Therefore, since the null hypothesis is ruled out, the greenhouse effect is currently (incorporated in) the consensus model of the Earth's climate.
9) But: as with any scientific hypothesis, this one can be replaced if a better model is proposed that better fits the measurements, or explains other measurements that the current model does not fit. (So far such an alternate model has not yet been found.)
Predictions have been pretty good [Re: How sci...] (Score:3, Informative)
The predictions have, for the most part, been pretty good.
I gave some links in a previous post.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/s... [forbes.com] https://climategraphs.wordpres... [wordpress.com] https://www.bloomberg.com/opin... [bloomberg.com] https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
Re: Maybe because (Score:2)
Science is fact-driven prediction.
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Climate denial is also about things that have happened in the past, and are happening in the present.
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I predict that, if you throw a sheet of paper into a fire, barring some extreme situation/intervention, it will catch fire and burn.
So: is that "fact" or just a "prediction" that is open for "opinion"?
Science is all about "predictions" that are based on actual facts and other, well, science. And as the facts accumulate and the foundation of facts grows, these "predictions" increase in accuracy. For example, the science of predicting earthquakes and volcanic eruptions has grown considerably and is now very u
Re: (Score:2)
No, but whether past predictions did or did not predicte more warming that actual measurement show is a fact.
And, the fact is, they didn't.
Not a single prediction ever predicted more warming than a measurement?
That's not remotely believable.
Re:Maybe because (Score:4, Informative)
No, but whether past predictions did or did not predicte more warming that actual measurement show is a fact.
And, the fact is, they didn't.
Not a single prediction ever predicted more warming than a measurement?
I take it you didn't read the article we're discussing [popular.info].
No, the piece being discussed didn't say there was just "a single prediction that predicted more warming than a measurement."
On the average, the greenhouse warming predictions have been just about on target.
Re: Maybe because (Score:2)
Iâ(TM)m sure someone will find predictions that were too high. Same with too low.
But this should be expected. The goal of science is to achieve better predictions. A small number of failures should never overshadow the successes, nor the process of getting better.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Why not state it that way in the first place? If you make clear statements you don't have to go back and revise them to say what you originally meant.
That's a big part of the problem with the past predictions versus current measurements issue. Some statement turns out exaggerated, and then the defense is that that statement was the exaggerated version and the version that no one knows much about supposedly wasn't originally exaggerated.
Everyone remembers the press saying snowfalls are a thing of the past.
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But most model predictions have been correct.
https://climate.nasa.gov/news/... [nasa.gov]
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The author of that website is rather questionable.
https://www.skepticalscience.c... [skepticalscience.com]
He is a signatory of this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org] which declares that God wouldn't let humans mess up the climate because God is in control of it.
And he has been caught doing an awful lot of cherry picking for example this article shows how Spencer tested several models and only picked the ones that fit his story, and then this article debunks some of the bunk Spencer came up with: https://web.archive.org/web/20... [archive.org]
Re: (Score:2)
And? You may not like his personal beliefs, but his scientific credentials are impeccable. He's been NASA's science team leader for the AQUA satellite for 26 years. Are you saying that NASA leaves bad scientists in team lead positions? And the page I showed you lists the IPCC-accepted models.
As far as Dessler's paper, here is a lot follow-up between Dessler and Spencer [drroyspencer.com], and the result is that Spencer shows that you cannot use a linear regression to fit the data - it doesn't work. And thus Dessler's con
Re: Maybe because (Score:2)
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Show me the model(s) that you agree with that correctly predict the warming we have seen.
Here is some more that disagree with you
https://www.nature.com/article... [nature.com]
Summary here: https://www.theguardian.com/en... [theguardian.com]
in case Nature is pay walled for you, I was assuming you have access though since you cited a nature study earlier. I don't imagine you will like the guardian as a source, let me know if you want me to try to track down a copy of the nature article for you.
Here is another one that disagrees with you.
ht [wordpress.com]
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On the average, the greenhouse warming predictions have been just about on target.
I don't know what you're citing here. Nature disagrees with you, though [washington.edu].
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That is a commentary piece in nature, not a study.
And NASA disagrees with you: https://climate.nasa.gov/news/... [nasa.gov]
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Re:Maybe because (Score:5, Interesting)
This doesn't seem to make sense. In ordinary parlance, a "fact" is a statement about the past or the present (something that happened, or something that can be objectively verified as true at the moment). A prediction, on the other hand, is a statement about the future (sometimes derived from a model that is backed up by facts).
The facts serve to fuel the model that makes the prediction. That doesn't make the prediction itself a fact, it is the outcome of what someone does with facts.
Re: (Score:2)
Some insight required to participate. You seem to be lacking.
Re: (Score:2)
You were babbling incoherently there. Maybe start over?
Did you mean "it's a fact that someone made a prediction"? Sure, but not a very interesting one. Try trading stocks some time, you'll see there's simply no end of predictions, a never ending stream of them, and just like someone usually wins the lottery, some of those predictions are usually true. Doesn't mean anyone had a system that worked, just that there were a lot of predictions.
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You're talking about different things.
Yes, a prediction, in itself, is a fact: "Model X made prediction Y in year Z."
If the facebook post that is being held as exempt from fact-checking says "climate modelers made prediction Y in year Z", that is a fact, and that fact can be fact checked.
Facebook (Score:2)
Facebook Inc. = Facists Inc.
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Because they are wrong. (Score:5, Insightful)
The organization that requested the change, the CO2 Coalition, is celebrating, E&E news reported on Monday. The group, which has close ties to the fossil fuel industry, says its views on climate change are increasingly ignored by the mainstream media.
Of course, because they are lying to protect their business and profits. They have no data what-so-ever to back up their views. Therefore, their opinions should be ignored and ridiculed. Those people would rather see the World burn than see their profits decline in the short term.
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That's funny. Really, really funny. But only if this is the 1600s.
Re: (Score:2)
You should stick to funny. If you're serious, you're dangerous.
If, however, you're being funny, you sold past the close.
Robert Brulle ... (Score:2, Insightful)
A "environmental sociologist" that just hurts my head. How about they find a real scientist instead of these critical theory pretenders and get back to us.
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It seems to me that the impact of social networks on the public's perception of environmental issues is *squarely* in an environmental sociologist's wheelhouse.
Good information (Score:5, Informative)
After looking in on this thread I just reaffirmed my longstanding position of not getting involved in the usual shitshow that happens when climate science hits an Internet forum.
If you are interested in climate science I would say a very online source you can find is realclimate.org [realclimate.org]. There are other good sources but that one is maintained by properly trained scientists. You can take what they have to write over there seriously and it is much better use of your time than trying to respond to the usual ignorance, trolls and bad actors you see on display here.
A what? (Score:5, Insightful)
"Facebook is "aiding and abetting the spread of climate misinformation," said Robert Brulle, an environmental sociologist at Drexel University".
WTF is an "environmental sociologist"? Someone who studies the social interactions of the environment with itself?
Certainly not a scientist, in the sense of someone who has a strong understanding of physics, ecology, atmospheric behaviour,solar radiation, etc.
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I'm assuming it's someone who was primarily a sociologist, who then specialized in how the "socios" relate to their environment. So, a roundabout way of saying "ecologist". Maybe he doesn't meet the bar to be called an ecologist, in someone's opinion?
Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, et al (Score:2)
Should not be involved in "Fact Checking" or Gate Keeping in the first place.
IF people want to believe dumb stuff that is their problem.
The Truth is available if your not too lazy to consume it.
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The big problem for Facebook is that if they're going to take a stand, it has to be the right stand. Based on Cluckerberg, it seems they've been half-hearted about the endeavor all along.
When people point out that Facebook is an intellectual shithole, they run some ads to make it look like glee club for professional whistlers. They start this fact checking program. It's all just branding - a few months later they're carving out exceptions for what they call "special interests" in the political sphere - the
So they're getting money from the oil men. (Score:2)
fact vs opinion. (Score:2)
fact - something that remains true or false without reference to the observer. ( The temperature of the room is 65 degrees F)
opinion - a statement who's truth value changes with reference to the observer. (The room is uncomfortable).
facts commonly confused with opinions
- God exists ( or doesn't)
- i have a legal right to [xyz] or you don't have a legal right too [xyx].
- [condition] highly correlates to [outcome]
opinions often called fact:
we must [xyz] for the sake of
Does it matter? (Score:2)
I just saw an ad on Facebook about electrons being conscious. I doubt their fact checking on anything is going to be all that useful.
Sounds factual to me (Score:2)
Climate models WERE failures and DID project exponentially more warming than we actually experienced.
Unless he said "all" climate models, then he's right. Very little climate denial is based on made up facts. It's based on framing and projection, which are not concepts that can be "factual". They can be "fact-based", and they largely are.
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Climate Deniers? (Score:2)
That's not science (Score:2)
On it's very face the story is fatally flawed as it presumes that a given scientific viewpoint is right, and that the other is wrong (fact checks?). That is not science, as science is by its very definition not settled. We don't consider something settled until it has become a law of physics. Science is a process, it is never a set of facts.
You present a hypothesis, conduct experiments, gather data and present your results. If you do your job right you'll discover new science even if it isn't what you were
*sighs* (Score:2)
Climate Deniers
Climate CHANGE denier. Climate denier is a stupid, lazy phrase that creates more ambiguity. One cannot deny a climate, one can deny in the face of evidence climate change. IT's just 1 word, and one word that makes or breaks how sensible the phrase is... don't be lazy.
Whoever first thought it a good idea to "shorten" "climate change denier" in this way needs to be slapped with a fish Monty Python style. ~_~
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The results of mainstream climate models have been pretty accurate going back to even early models from the 80s, although a little on the conservative side. The results just get get garbled in the press and even more so on social media.
For example, I believe IPCC model under the worst case RCP 8.5 scenario give a mean date for First Ice-Fre Arctic Summery Year (FIASY) of 2042. But notice that's the *average* result. The range of model results spanned fourty-two years. Since the general media is more inte
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Roy Spencer is also a proponent of intelligent design, i.e., a crackpot. Which you can probably tell by looking at his website.
Which is OK. There's a place for crackpots in science, but you can't take their claims as authoritative. Actually models have had a remarkable record of success [wiley.com], and it's even more impressive when you factor in things like ENSO that introduce short term variations.
The bottom line is that physics works. Even the relatively primitive models from the 1980s did a pretty good job of p
Re: OUTRAGEOUS (Score:3, Insightful)
Some models are better than others. The fact that we have models of various things that yield different results should be eye opening to anyone who thinks of models as anything more than an educated guess.
If all this shit wasn't incredibly complex we wouldn't need models, we'd just know the answer and there'd be o
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[quote.If all this shit wasn't incredibly complex we wouldn't need models, we'd just know the answer and there'd be only one answer.[/quote]
That's rather simplistic. You can only know the one answer when the question necessarily has only one answer. Most questions do not and so you need some kind of model, even if that is a data base with some interpolation. So, "What will the weather be tomorrow?" has many many answers depending on which tomorrow we are talking about. "what was the weather yesterday" needs
Re: OUTRAGEOUS (Score:5, Insightful)
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Both are extremely well understood cases. Just in COVID, the input variables needed tweaking as more data was understood about it.
Average climate is very well researched. Perfectly understood? Not yet, but that's why there are error bars.
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no, actually it works this way:
Here is the right's idea of the scientific method
Experts are all elites who are out of touch with the real world.
Everyday 'mericans know more then these hoity toity elites.
Find the 'mericans who agree with you and form a troll party.
Bombard the internet with inane parroted nonsense trying (in vane) to poke holes in solid research
Claim that your opinion is just as valid as thousands of research papers that disagree with you because we have to tell both sides of the story.
Re:Predictions that are always off (Score:5, Insightful)
[quote]So, keep on preaching that climate change is fully understood. Itâ(TM)s not.[/quote]
What does this "fully understood" mean? We don't fully understand most things. We don't fully understand how long this year will be, or how the planets move. We do understand them really, really well though.
With climate change, we understand the mechanisms, the magnitude and some of the effects pretty well. Certainly well enough to actually consider doing something about it. In fact, more than well enough to consider actually doing pretty drastic things about it.
Re: (Score:3)
first hit on a quick search found your answer: https://www.iflscience.com/env... [iflscience.com]
It is called committed warming because they CO2 cycle (think water cycle, but for CO2) is hundreds of thousands of years long, so the carbon we have emitted so far will continue to cause imbalance for a very long time. Emitting a little less this year (but still more then we emitted in 1990) is not going to magically stop AGW.
I am not saying every detail is understood, that is not what science does and is not how it works, expec
Re: (Score:2)
Re: Predictions that are always off (Score:2)
Tens of thousands of climate scientists!? Hah
tens of thousands of scientists (Score:2)
Yes, you can read a few tens of thousands of papers over at https://www.ipcc.ch/ [www.ipcc.ch]. The last major report came out in 2013. It cited 9,200 studies. The one before that in 2007 cites more than 6000. The next one is due out 2022.
So I'm sorry, I was wrong. Hundreds of thousands of scientists, tens of thousands of papers.
Re: (Score:3)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
How about "Global Warming deniers"
AGW [wikipedia.org] deniers was a fairly standard term. Until the AGW disciples switched from warming to something else (not sure what they are hustling these days). If, as they claim, "the science is done", surely they could nail down a useful acronym for their dogma. We will wait patiently. [relatably.com]
Re: "Climate Deniers" (Score:2)
Now it's more like Atmospheric Carbon Effect deniers. Everything else has been swept under the rug. All anyone ever talks about is carbon.
Air quality and greenhouse gases produced by anything but oil have been ignored by "environmentalists" since Al Gore got into the propaganda business.
Re: A win for conservatives (Score:3)
Globalization is the primary driver of income inequality.
Think about it. If you can't outsource your labor and pollution to the third world effectively, you have much higher expenses by producing domestically.
And globalization is a neo-liberal policy.