Is Global Warming a Hoax?

[a500lbgorilla]

Don't listen to Dilbert-guy. He ran some blog recently about how scientists *have* to believe in global warming, that climate science wasn't like regular science, where you can triumph through the strength of your ideas, and if you don't go with the flow, you'll be out of the field.

Don't listen to people who aren't doing the actual work.

Remember, he knows persuasion. And persuasion can convince people America never landed on the Moon.

[wufwugy]

Don't listen to Dilbert-guy. He ran some blog recently about how scientists *have* to believe in global warming, that climate science wasn't like regular science, where you can triumph through the strength of your ideas, and if you don't go with the flow, you'll be out of the field.

Don't listen to people who aren't doing the actual work.

Remember, he knows persuasion. And persuasion can convince people America never landed on the Moon.

I haven't been reading Dilbert's opinions on climate. If what you say he says is what he says, he's not wrong. Academia is full of its religions and global warming is one of them. Academics are supposed to follow the evidence where ever it leads and to view evidence with little bias, but that's not entirely what happens these days. Scientists have come nowhere close to demonstrating anthropogenic global warming with severe consequences, yet if you wanna get places as an academic, you'd best act like they have.

[MadMojoMonkey]

Scientists have come nowhere close to demonstrating anthropogenic global warming with severe consequences, yet if you wanna get places as an academic, you'd best act like they have.

This is not false only because the phrase "nowhere close" and the word "severe" are ambiguous.

***
All this nay-saying of scientists is prattle.

Yes, there are excellent and ridiculously bad people in every profession and the scientific professions are no different.
Yes, I agree that there are incompetent scientists who say what they feel is the right thing to say, and have not pursued any research on many topics and simply blindly follow appeals to authority. This is a thing.

That is not characteristic of good, or even most, scientists.

There are undoubtedly some id10T errors in science, but it's unreasonable to assume that ALL accredited climatologists are publishing false claims and false repeatability studies.

Furthermore, if you suspect this is the case, then let me invite you as a member of the wider scientific community to come and blow the lid off these charlatans and bring respect back to the field.

[wufwugy]

This is not false only because the phrase "nowhere close" and the word "severe" are ambiguous.

***
All this nay-saying of scientists is prattle.

Yes, there are excellent and ridiculously bad people in every profession and the scientific professions are no different.
Yes, I agree that there are incompetent scientists who say what they feel is the right thing to say, and have not pursued any research on many topics and simply blindly follow appeals to authority. This is a thing.

That is not characteristic of good, or even most, scientists.

There are undoubtedly some id10T errors in science, but it's unreasonable to assume that ALL accredited climatologists are publishing false claims and false repeatability studies.

Furthermore, if you suspect this is the case, then let me invite you as a member of the wider scientific community to come and blow the lid off these charlatans and bring respect back to the field.

I'm suggesting that there is a zeitgeist in academia (as there is everywhere) and that when things are open to interpretation, the opinion of scientists converge towards certain sets of opinions.

Here's an example from the field I understand the best: every economist at my university is a Keynesian. Is Keynesianism the only credible field of thought in economics? Not by a long shot. In fact, the second most influential economist of the modern era (Milton Friedman, a monetarist) was not a Keynesian and some subsets in economics (like central banking) are more influenced today by monetarism than by Keynesianism. Today, the innovation at the central banking level is coming from market monetarism.

In my money economics class last semester, I did a project that pulls greatly from market monetarism. My professor had no problems with the credibility of my argument. She told me many times that she disagrees with my argument, but that it is economically credible, meaning that I didn't argue anything she could say was wrong. When she found out I'm a Friedman fan, I got a big eye roll and smirk. This would be like a physicist rolling his eyes when a student speaks highly of Einstein or Feynman. The economists at my university have little respect for anything not Keynes. They teach other stuff because they have to in order to maintain their credibility as a university, but they often flat out say during lecture that those have been debunked (which is false) or they speak of the schools of thought in distasteful ways.

Academic economics has little respect for everything non-Keynesian. Why? Well, if I had to guess, it's because the zeitgeist in academia is very pro-government, and Keynesianism is the only credible economic school of thought in which the case for more government can pretty much always be made.

So far, I'm getting a very one-sided education in economics from my university. In the project I mentioned, my professor was excited that I was doing it because it was from a school of thought that is barely addressed in the syllabus and the other students would only get exposure to it through my work. This shows how the professors are being pulled from different directions at once. To move up in academia, they have to be Keynesians. The natural selection has made it so they are all actually Keynesians by now. But even so, even though they teach little non-Keynesianism and they speak poorly of the material when they do, they still know that non-Keynes economics are scientifically credible.


To relate this to global warming, the data doesn't definitively tell us humans are causing a rise in global temperatures, yet the vast majority of climate scientists believe humans are causing a rise in global temperatures. Interpreting the data other ways is getting weeded out of academia.