George Monbiot: This cold weather is caused by – you guessed it – global warming!

[LivingWordUnity]

Article from 2010 but still relevant since the extreme cold of prolonged winters doesn't appear to be going away. By the way, I'm posting this in the OBOB politics section because it's a hotly debated political issue, and the rules of OBOB require that political issues be posted in this section. Also, not believing in the global warming theory doesn't mean being for pollution.

Apparently, Britain is in a sort of wintry salient, squeezed between two hotter areas. It's all to do with sea ice reflecting the sun. You can read the full argument here.

For all I know, Monbiot may be right. It just seems remarkably convenient that any climatic trend is the fault of greenhouse gases . Getting hotter? Global warming! Getting cooler? Global warming! Average overcast October day? Gaea is on her last legs!

Although I am sceptical of some of the political schemes put forward in the name of the Rio-Kyoto-Copenhagen-Cancun agenda, I have so far refrained from entering into a debate about the meteorology, being acutely aware that I have no scientific qualification. But I'm starting to realise that this doesn't inhibit anyone else; possibly because, for partisans on both sides, it was never about the science in the first place.

Source

 

[LivingWordUnity]

Belief perseverance:

"The tendency to maintain beliefs even after they have been discredited."
- Social Psychology, p. 140, Kassin et al., 2014

"The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion (either as being the received opinion or as being agreeable to itself) draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects."
- Francis Bacon, English philosopher and author, 1620

 

[LivingWordUnity]

Beware of "scientific" graphs on highly partisan political issues like this one. Here's how one of these can fool the public:

Source:
Misleading Graphs and Statistics

 

[LivingWordUnity]

Confirmation bias – "ferreting favourable findings while overlooking opposing observations"

Confirmation bias

In psychology and cognitive science, confirmation bias (or confirmatory bias) is a tendency to search for or interpret information in a way that confirms one's preconceptions, leading to statistical errors.

Confirmation bias is a type of cognitive bias and represents an error of inductive inference toward confirmation of the hypothesis under study.

Confirmation bias is a phenomenon wherein decision makers have been shown to actively seek out and assign more weight to evidence that confirms their hypothesis, and ignore or underweigh evidence that could disconfirm their hypothesis.

As such, it can be thought of as a form of selection bias in collecting evidence.

Sources:
Science Daily
Science or not

 

[AMDG]

Are we STILL talking about Global Warming? I thought that was a "dead horse". Studies show the temperature hasn't risen in 17-18 YEARS and the owner of the Weather Channel has said that there is no such thing. It was just a scheme to separate us from the money we earned.

 

[LivingWordUnity]

Are we STILL talking about Global Warming? I thought that was a "dead horse". Studies show the temperature hasn't risen in 17-18 YEARS and the owner of the Weather Channel has said that there is no such thing. It was just a scheme to separate us from the money we earned.

Yep. Although the article in the OP is from 2010, they are trying to milk this money-making political cow for all it's worth. There was another alarmist doom and gloom article titled, "World losing battle against global warming" that just came out today. And, recently on one of the alphabet news channels, I even heard the liberals claiming that global warming is a bigger threat than terrorism.

 

[LoAmmi]

You know, I hope you're right. I hope that nothing happens and all of us who thought it was going to will have egg on our face.

If you're wrong however, there won't be an "I Told You So" sign big enough.

 

[LivingWordUnity]

You know, I hope you're right. I hope that nothing happens and all of us who thought it was going to will have egg on our face.

If you're wrong however, there won't be an "I Told You So" sign big enough.

They cleverly changed it to "Climate Change" so that no matter what happens they can still claim they were right.

 

[LoAmmi]

They cleverly changed it to "Climate Change" so that no matter what happens they can still claim they were right.

and by "they" you mean the media who reported on it?

 

[RKO]

I had anothernresponse to this, but in all seriousness, this and the denial of evolution are two arguments that are so embarrassing to me as a Christian that I just can't even engage. Carry on.

 

[Genersis]

Global Warming is called such due to it's effects causing the average global temperature to rise.
Global Warming is also accompanied by an increase in more extreme weather of all kinds including cold spells.

Both Climate Change and Global Warming are accurate terms for the phenomenon.
Both terms have been used for at least 40 years:
Climate Change: Critical Concepts in the Environment - Google Books
(Paper from 1975)

 

[MikeK]

I had anothernresponse to this, but in all seriousness, this and the denial of evolution are two arguments that are so embarrassing to me as a Christian that I just can't even engage. Carry on.

There is a reason who your logic is not mocked on a website called fundies say the darnedest things" while some other people's absurd "logic" is. I don't know if people who speak nonsense on these forums realize the harm they do, but I have to believe, in charity, that they are ignorant if it and that this is the best they are capable of. It's possible.

 

[LivingWordUnity]

I had anothernresponse to this, but in all seriousness, this and the denial of evolution are two arguments that are so embarrassing to me as a Christian that I just can't even engage.

I reject the liberal dogmas of global warming and evolution. And it makes zero difference in anyone's life if they believe in these or not except that with global warming people stand to lose a lot of money in taxpayer funded "research."

 

[Antigone]

Well, while we're in the realm of pseudoscience, it's bloody hot here.

 

[RKO]

I reject the liberal dogmas of global warming and evolution. And it makes zero difference in anyone's life if they believe in these or not except that with global warming people stand to lose a lot of money in taxpayer funded "research."

Turtles all the way down, eh?

 

[Fantine]

The NASA scientists disagree with Monbiot.

Frigid temperatures like these are sometimes used to refute the idea that the planet as a whole is getting warmer with each passing year. That's just not so, say NASA scientists, who point out that even on a warming planet, bitterly cold temperatures and harsh winter weather will still be possible and even commonplace.

One of the reasons they can coexist is a phenomenon known as , a phrase used to describe the interaction of the jet stream and Arctic air during the winter. It can cause unseasonably cold air masses to sweep over what are normally temperate latitudes, , making for unusually cold and severe winter weather across many parts of the U.S.

Cold Snaps, Global Warming Go Hand-in-Hand - weather.com

 

[faroukfarouk]

They should next invent a Nobel Prize for "Gobble baloney."

 

[Antigone]

They should next invent a Nobel Prize for "Gobble baloney."

Well, there's always the IGNobel-prize and the Darwin Awards.

 

[LoAmmi]

How about we start with some basics:

Who here believes that the Greenhouse Effect doesn't exist?

 

[faroukfarouk]

Who can deny that the tax raising proponents of global warming cannot even agree whether the globe is warming or not? this is why climate change is now their preferred term and of course raising taxes goes with it.