Calling Scientists, Science Lovers, and Reasonable People to the Yard

Last night I witnessed the most magnificent expression of one's beliefs on Facebook. I will be posting the conversation over a short duration today. While I am not suggesting it is appropriate to mock others, I am hopeful this will illuminate how one might dialogue about science with deniers and why it matters in public and private schools in America.

It began with this:

Fish out of H20: This may be the first August I've ever spent somewhere with lows in the 50's.

And so it went:

Creationist: Thank you, global warming, AHEM--I mean, climate change. :-)

Fist out of H20: Note to self: I am far less likely to make a fool of myself if I do not speak before I know all the facts.

Creationist: I'm sorry that you feel a person must agree with you or they don't know "all the facts". As I do educate myself on my opinions, I could counter that you do not have all the facts either. If global warming does exist, and we evil humans are causing it, why has the earth actually cooled over the past 10 years? Further, why did the earth have various periods of increased and decreased temperatures before CFCs and automobiles existed? The only thing that makes logical sense is that the earth operates in cycles. If you believe (which I'm sure you do) that the earth has been here for billions of years, it's kind of egotistical to think that it survived on its own for so long, and now we measly humans are able to destroy it with 50 years of CO2. I am willing to concede that periods of warming may exist, but only if periods of cooling also exist, which the evidence does show. (Please note this may be plagerized by C. off a webpage.!)

Goyim Scientist: The earth has cooled over the past ten years? News to me and everyone else in the scientific community. There can be no "if" about whether global climate change is real, nor can there be an "if" about whether human actions are its primary causative factor. We've been pumping carbon dioxide into the atmosphere for a hell of a lot longer than 50 years--try since the discovery that we could create fire on our own.

Creationist: When you made the comment above, it sounded as if you were implying that I didn't know all the facts and that I was making a fool of myself. Perhaps that's not what you were saying, but all of my statements still stand. :-)

Fist out of H2O: My point was that I'm now living in XXX. You know, at a higher altitude?

Creationist: Actually, there are plenty of "ifs" and questions. The problem is that the "scientific community" is no longer interested in real science. Real science is always questioning, always probing. However, the few real scientists left who "dare" to question certain "facts" are shut out of the scientific community and branded as idiots. It's a shame that so many individuals call themselves true scientists and yet value a certain ideology over the quest for what is true.

C links to the following websites here, here, here, and here.

Creationist: There are many credible scientists who question global warming, one of the most prominent being the founder of The Weather Channel. One would think that he might know what he was talking about. But because he doesn't automatically cave to the agenda, he is reviled as a kook.

Goyim Scientist: There are no "ifs" about global climate change. It is a fact. There are plenty of questions about how bad it is and whether or not it's progressed past the point where we can reasonably do anything about it, but no one not pushing a particular political agenda seriously disputes that it exists. I note that at least two of the "sources" you quote are associated with that particular political agenda. If you're interested in the actual data, I recommend having a look here:

Link here

That's from the first chapter of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's 2007physical science report. Notice that while there is a certain amount of statistical noise (as would be expected when drawing data from such a large number of different sources using different methodologies), there is no question but that the global average surface temperature is trending steadily upward, and has been since the 1950s.

Law School Flunkie: Climate Change Debate for Dummies:

1. The vast majority of scientists agree that climate change is a demonstrated phenomenon.

2.The vast majority of people who oppose the argument for climate change do so for political reasons....

3.The vast majority of people who argue about climate change are not scientists.

4.Scientists get smarter in a community, while the masses get dumber.

5.Trust the scientific community, not the politicians or the internets.


Creationist: Flunkie, Nice try. If, in fact, we should always regard the "experts" as completely knowledgeable, then I should now be regarded as the expert in econ and financial matters. If you would have us to believe that anyone who is an expert in a certain field is always correct, then fine--I will begin to bow down to what scientists tell me when you and all other liberals begin to regard me (as well as Ben Bernanke, Thomas Sowell, etc.) as the one to turn to on financial and economical matters. But the fact of the matter is that is not the way we operate. Al Gore and Jimmy Carter have won Nobel Prizes. Does that mean I should regard anyone who has won a Nobel Prize as being a god? Absolutely not. What you seem to be preaching is validity of a subject based on who is saying it, not on the evidence and the argument itself. I, rather, care not who says it, but rather what their argument is and what evidence they have.

Link

This link itself should make a person question the sanity of those who preach the gloom and doom of global warming. How can global warming cause both increases and decreases in harvests? How can GW cause both melanoma increase and a decrease in melanoma? Do you not see how crazy this is?

For your sake, I will not even go so far as to say that man-made global warming is false. What I will say is that the evidence, at best, points to cyclical warming and cooling. Which does not merit billions of dollars in spending to try to combat it.

Goyim Scientist: Way to conflate things which are not equal, Creationist. Climate change is variable. Harvests will undoubtedly increase in some parts of the world, even as they decrease in others. This is elementary logic. Climate change has nothing to do with the rates of melanoma, since melanoma is caused by exposure to ultraviolet rays (primarily), and has no correlation whatsoever with temperature.

Nor does any serious scientist question that there are natural climate cycles. Those, however, operate on timescales of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of years. Whereas the rise in global temperatures that we're concerned about is largely a product of the last half-century.

It's particularly interesting to see you riding Flunkie for appeals to authority when you yourself were guilty of it first. (See your comment about the "founder of the Weather Channel"--of whom there were two, by the by, neither of whom had a science degree: they were both journalists.)

Flunkie: Just because you have a degree doesn't make you an expert. To paraphrase from my field a bit, a scientific expert is one whose opinion is based on peer-reviewed research generally accepted by the scientific community. You are not a scientist, and your opinion is based on political ideology, so pardon me if I defer to people who actually know what the hell they're talking about, instead of people who argue with internet links.

Creationst: I am giving a name of a person that I happen to agree with, but not because of his name. I found after doing my own research and establishing my position that the founder happened to agree with me, but I did not base my decision on who made certain arguments. As I said, you are both saying that a person's argument can have no merit if they are not "scientists"; if that is the case, only those of us who have econ and finance degrees (which I do have) are intelligent enough to speak on economic and financial matters. I believe neither of those to be true. Is my opinion more valid just because I spent four years studying financial markets and the banking system? It might mean that I know more in-depth facts and inner-workings of the system, but it doesn't mean that every single opinion I have in that area is correct. In the same vein, I do not believe a person just because they have a degree in something.

I have done my own research, and I provided you with links from scientists who dared to disagree with the scientific community on this. I am sorry if you think I don't know "what the hell I am talking about", but other people agree with me. What's really sad here is that even though you profess to be a scientist, you really have no desire to find the truth, only to suppress any opposition. If only someone had been around to tell Newton and Galileo they were idiots from veering away from the scientific propaganda around them. Maybe you should watch Ben Stein's movie and see that there are scientists and mathematicians all over the world who don't believe this global warming stuff, and they have been shunned. That should cause you to at least raise an eyebrow about the intentions of your scientific peers.

To add one more thing, I have no political agenda here. I don't win anything by standing against global warming. However, you as well as other scientists do win if you stand for it--you keep your "credibility" and will retain whatever jobs and positions you hold in the scientific community.

Interesting link

I must let you know that I am not so far anti-global warming that I am unaware of sustainability issues. I am a huge proponent of recycling and reusing; I hardly ever throw anything away,especially if I can think of another way to use it. To me, this is just common sense--there is only so much land where we can only throw so much garbage, and it makes sense to recycle and reuse things whenever possible.

Update: The conversation was taken down by the owner of the Facebook page. I'm so sad. I wanted to get to the point where I called her out on her apologist agenda and suggested she go outside to pet puppies and smell daises. Dammit!

I may have them in deleted e-mail. Let me hunt and peck.