Discussion > What do Entropic Man and Raff really believe.
......
Martin A
Martin; if they did not want to write in here then they would demonstrate a desire to talk about EVERYTHING at the same time as believing NOTHING.
Dung
That is an easy one to answer: that we are all wrong. No evidence need be required, and certainly precious little is provided. However, Martin does have a valid point.
Radical Rodent
In fact, I posted a comment intended to be humorous but I realised it wasn't very funny and I decided to delete it. Then I realised that you can edit your posts but you can't delete them. The dots that I had type did actually seem a little bit funny so I left them..
But I think the question might be a little bit too open. Maybe EM and/or Raff would prefer to repond to a questionairre. Here is my off-the-cuff attempt.
Raff, EM - do you feel willing to respond to the following?
[A] When do you think human caused climate change is likely to become widely noticed as a reality?
(1)----- Never
(2)----- ~10 years from now
(3)---- ~100 years from now
(4)---- ~1000 years from now
(5)----- ~15 years ago
[B] What do you think are the things that provide firm evidence that human caused climate change will be a serious problem?
(1)---- There is no such evidence
(2)-----The output of GCM's
(3)---- The trend in measured temperatures
(4)---- It's obvious because CO2 is a greenhouse gas and we are pumping it out.
(5)----- The results from proxy temperature estimates
(6)---- Radiative forcing calculations
(7)----- Other_________________________
[C]- The readers and commenters on BH are motivated by:
(1)---- Love of the truth
(2)----Stupidity
(3)----They've been brainwashed by sinister organisations
(4)----They are afraid to face reality and it's comforting to them to pretend it does not exist
(5)----They do it for money
(6)----Other____________________________
[D]- What is your guess at the probability that climate change will have truly catastrophic consequences within the lifetime of anybody now living:
(1) - Better than 50%
(2)---- 10%
(3)---- 1%
(4)---- 1 in 1000
(5)---- 1 in 100,000
[E] Why do you comment on BH?
(1) ---- To expose the stupidity here
(2)----- In the hope that some readers may see that what is often posted here is rubbish
(3)-----It makes me feel I have done my duty
(4)---- I think CAGW is hogwash and I do it to make true believers look stupid
(5)-----I think CAGW is very real and I do it to make skeptics look stupid
(6) Other_____________________________
Martin A
Entropic believes that the Only Truth is to be found in peer-reviewed academic papers by 'professional scientists' and that anybody outside of that self-chosen few is incapable of thought.
He also believes that we are all under water due to sealevel rise and are our flesh is being burnt off by the acidic seawater as predicted by some obscure climactivist in an even obscurer journal
And until somebody publishes a paper saying it ain't happening he'll continue to do so.
Latimer Alder
I just want to know which human being it is that is going to cause the CAGW? I mean we could get rid of him now and save ourselves a lot of problems.
Dung
Martin A
I'm not sure I would give the same options if I were writing the questionnaire, but I' ll do what I can.
A) is too simple. For some aspects such as rising temperatures 5)----- ~15 years ago would be appropriate. The final equilibrium state for the whole system would be (4)---- ~1000 years from now. Other effects will become apparent over various timescales in between.
B)(2)-----The output of GCM's
(3)---- The trend in measured temperatures
(5)----- The results from proxy temperature estimates
(6)---- Radiative forcing calculations
(7)----- Other
C) What is truth? RR and I pull radically different truth out of the same paleotemperature data. Geronimo and I did calculations from similar formula and got widely different answers.
What is a sinister organisation? One dictionary definition is "Suggesting or threatening harm or evil" we probably both regard the more extreme Greenpeace propganda as harmful. I would regard the Heartland Institute's propaganda as harmful. I doubt anyone on either side regards participants in the debate as evil.
Lacking a window into other men's souls I would suggest that you could probably find contributors to both sides of the debate who might fit any of your options.
D) Define catastrophic. If you and your family die in a record- breaking typhoon amplified by climate change that is as catastrophic as it gets and it has probably already happened., so the chance is 100%
If you define catastrophic as making it difficult to keep a world civilisation functioning I would choose 2) 10% , increasing thereafter.
E) (2)----- In the hope that some readers may see that what is often posted here is rubbish
(6) Other_____________________________
Entropic man
EM
Why don't you just come right out and say what you believe and give us the proof, you do not have a sense of humour and you do not believe anything, a holiday might work?
Dung
There should be a question about "What do you hope to learn from this blog?".
My political views are in the minority here so I can learn a lot about how those whom I disagree with think. But only because I am willing to.
But what do Raff, Entropic Man or And Then There's Physics hope to learn?
M Courtney
Dung , Latimer Alder, M Courtney
Scientist don't do belief. They do probability.
Perhaps an analogy would be courts. Civil courts decide on the "balance of probabilities". Criminal courts decide " beyond reasonable doubt".
For scientists the equivalents are less than 5 % probable to falsify, over 50% probable to use a working hypothesis and over 95% probable to pomote a hypothesis to a theory.
I do prefer peer reviewed papers. They have been through at least some quality control. "Some bloke on a blog" has had no quality control at all.
What do I hope to learn? I hate the prospect of damaging climate change, but find no convincing evidence that we can avoid it. I originally came here hoping to find such evidence. None has been forthcoming (The common BH delusion that only one side should contribute evidence to a debate does not help.), but I still enjoy the debate.
I keep an eye out for peer reviewed papers arguing against AGW. They tend to be rare and of poor quality. I interpret the absence of evidence for alternatives to AGW as indicating that there is no scientifically valid alternative to AGW.
Entropic man
M Courtney
They are not here to learn, but to convert. What you do is unusual if you are in "we're all doomed" camp.
SandyS
@ M Courtney
I doubt that any believer in CAGW ever comes here willing or able to learn anything and anyway the only thing we think we know is that CAGW is bunk hehe.
We do get people who have sort of got half way to our views on their own and are then ecstatic to find there are people like us who do not believe the mainstream media or that there is a consensus (and we think we can prove what we believe) about CAGW.
Why are your political views in the minority, this is a fairly broad church politically?
Dung
EM
Science is not all about probability thank god. A rock I pick up from the ground is a fact not a probability and it can divulge many facts that are relevant to our debate.
You continue with the delusion that the onus is on us to provide proof (which by the way we are more than willing to do). Your lot have made predictions about impending disaster but you can not prove it whereas we CAN disprove it :)
Dung
Dung
"Why don't you just come right out and say what you believe and give us the proof,"
Less of this "belief""kick, and this delusion that science can prove anything.
I expect, with at least 50% probability, that a combination of overpopulation, resource depletion and climate change will collapse our current global civilisation into a few industrialised enclaves surrounded by failed states. This will be well under way by 2100.
Evidence? AR5 and subsequent papers for climate change; African and Middle Eastern failed states and the current European migrant crisis for overpopulation; the current fashion for extreme and expensive fossil fuel production methods for resource depletion.
Entropic man
'Scientists don't do belief. They do probability'
And there''s me thinking that scientists did 'experiments'. Perhaps I misremember my long ago days as a Chemistry undergraduate, but I'm sure we spent a very long time in places called 'laboratories' doing them.
Strangely enough, the famous Richard Feynman seems to agree with me
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b240PGCMwV0
The folks specialising in probabilities were called 'bookmakers'.
Latimer Alder
Science can NOT prove anything hehe, I would have thought that my being a skeptic would prove that was my position ^.^
"I expect, with at least 50% probability, that a combination of overpopulation, resource depletion and climate change will collapse our current global civilisation into a few industrialised enclaves surrounded by failed states. This will be well under way by 2100."
If you came to me with a 50% probability that any of those disasters would actually happen then I would bin your ideas and ask why you were wasting my time.
If I was a political leader why would I respond to a 50/50 threat with positive action on just one option?
Mr Alder
10/10 for logic and 11/10 for humour hehe.
btw are you the Latimer Alder I had a beer with in London many years ago??
Dung
@dung
Indeed I am
Older, wiser but still the suave debonair sceptic-about-town that you remember. We met at the grauniad's Climategate debate. You carried a hockey stick IIRC
Just about the time that the tide of opinion began to turn from 'the most important problem humanity has ever faced' to 'so what?' and the subject drop into well-deserved obscurity.
Latimer Alder
Truly happy that we are both still around Mr Alder ^.^
Dung
EM (6:17) - thank you for the interesting answers.
For [A], I wish I had made it clearer that I had in mind when those things might be noticed and talked about by the average bricklayer.
Martin A
SandyS and Dung. I am a left-wing climate change sceptic.
SandyS, Yes, that is possible.
Dung, see from the previous comment that this political broad church is far more vocal on the right and somehow that wing seems to have persuaded itself that only they exist (in numbers). They have also persuaded me of that - about the relative numbers at least.
M Courtney
Entropic Man, you have come here to learn why the world isn't ending?
But that reverses the null hypothesis. It assumes that CO2 is the dominant factor in the climate. Yet we should always assume that something is insignificant until proven otherwise.
Else we can assume anything is the dominant factor in the climate.
We could assume that dragons or UFOs or the Lost Atlanteans are the dominant factor in the climate too. Prove it false. Prove the negative.
No. That's not how science works. I'm afraid it is the people who are predicting the end of the world who need to provide the evidence.
And without evidence, the probability is that you have faith in nonsense.
M Courtney
@m courtney
Wonderful post. You have hit the nail on the head!
In the last 50 years nothing much about climate has really changed, despite a one third increase in CO2. If we hadn't by chance happened on computers at roughly the same time, nobody would actually have noticed anything.
Even the effects that may actually exist are so slight and insignificant as to need huge amounts of statistical sleight of hand to be detectable at all. And some of the doommongers favourite 'evidence' are purely artefacts of the methods not of the data. As an example consider that last decade's talismanic indicator, (Mann's Hokey Stick) is now no longer spoke of in polite climosociety.
After that debacle, EM and his cohorts will need to do a lot more work, and really get in some super heavyweight wishful thinking to suggest that today's near imperceptible trends are infallible signposts along our road to imminent climatastrophe. People just don't believe them any more.
Latimer Alder
They seem to believe we are not merely wrong but evil ghouls, willingly prostituting our souls to help the world end in a grand climate apocalypse because we failed in our earlier efforts to have everyone die from smoking caused cancer.
hunter
Interesting that “objective” EM can consider catastrophe to be so subjective; the loss of ones loved-ones, from whatever means, will always be “catastrophic” for most individuals, despite their neighbours not even being aware of the event. My own idea of “catastrophic” is an event that has long and far-reaching effects for a large number of people – the longer the time of the effect, the level of impact of the effect, the number of people involved and the greater the geographical spread of the impact determining the level of the catastrophe. Thus, a “record-breaking typhoon”, regardless of provenance (though quite how it could ever be shown to be “amplified by climate change” would have to remain debatable, as even the IPCC [to which you so avidly refer when it suits, EM] admits that no single weather event could be attributed to climate change – but, I guess you just cannot resist ramping up the fear-factor, can you?), would be regarded as a local catastrophe; an earthquake and subsequent ocean-wide tsunami would be a regional catastrophe; a major asteroidal collision that wipes of entire nations would be a global catastrophe.
Now, EM, what damage that can be attributed to climate change have we had, so far, and what damage do you feel is soon to become evident?
Referring to “E) (2)----- In the hope that some readers may see that what is often posted here is rubbish” many readers will quite happily accept that what is often posted on here IS rubbish – and I have no shame that much of what I have posted is such. It is only by posting such rubbish that we learn to differentiate between what is rubbish and what is not; it is part of a learning process from which most of us (i.e. the realists) benefit. Sadly, I do hate to disillusion you, but there are precious few on here (if, indeed, any) who think that you are casting pears before swine; most will acknowledge that much of what you post is rubbish, with just the occasional nugget of interest.
As for peer-review, I have already shown good examples of how poorly that label can be relied upon, yet you still cling to it, and to the many, many other examples of your flawed logic that others have revealed. You claim not to believe, yet show every trait of a fully-committed believer.
Finally – M Courtney, Latimer Alder is quite correct, and you have humbled me while I was preparing this. You, too, are now on my hate list – you have been warned! (As a Freudian aside, I originally mis-typed that as “you have been warmed”! My, how I laughed…)
Radical Rodent
It would be nice if this could become a reference point for all those who would like to know what evidence the warmista base their beliefs on, what those beliefs are and why they behave like trolls?
Come on guys and give us both barrels?