Why should we believe the science communmity's consensus on climate change?

[Root of Jesse]

A question cannot be a "point," not really. Coffee and abortion are irrelevant to this discussion. If your point is the implied point in a question like "why should we believe it when we hear that anthropogenic global warming is happening at an unprecedented rate," then I believe it has been answered in post 135. As well as elsewhere.

The notion that Al Gore blew through a tremendous amount of time and effort to trick people into believing this in order to buy a beach house at a discount is, to my mind, not tenable. Al Gore has hundreds of millions of dollars. But more important, Al Gore is irrelevant to the matter at hand.

As @ViaCrucis has said, "Anthropogenic climate change is different than the slow climatological changes that have occurred over earth's long history; for two reasons: 1) It is human caused and 2) it is happening incredibly rapidly." That is why we cannot just wave our hands and say "well, squirrels contribute, too."

Well, since you're going to be picky, squirrels cannot cause "anthropogenic climate change". They could cause climate change, but I don't know that. What I'm saying is that there is no such thing as anthropogenic climate change.

The notion that "we might have to wear more or less clothes" (and that's it) does not fit what experts - people who aren't laypeople just talking on CF, but who dedicate their lives to careful study of these mattes - have agreed about.

There is no such consensus.

You know that some people who are babies now will be alive in a hundred years, right? And they will look at their great-grandchildren growing up in a wrecked world and wonder why their own parents didn't do something? And the excuse that you and I will have left them in a handwritten note will say "well, we didn't really want to believe there was a problem, and if there was, it wasn't our fault, or we hoped not, and also we didn't want 'the government' to tell us what to do, so it's ok with us if most world cities are destroyed, countless people die in extreme weather events, and so on."

No, they will know, by then, that the best we can do is conserve the planet, and hope nature treats us well.

If you can't accept the responses on this thread, okay, no one is making you accept them. As it seems to me, your arguments set you up as the arbiter of everything, and what you do with that power is simply to dismiss inconvenient information.

It's not just the responses in this thread-there's a lot 'out there' that don't believe in AGW. I'll provide more later. Hectic week now.

I know - it is scary. I also don't like everything about secular governments. But it cannot be addressed without addressing fairly "deep" causes that cannot be handled by individuals. Turning off the lights five minutes early and sometimes walking to the store is not going to cut it.

It used to be said that, if everyone does their part, the world will be a better place. And it remains true.

 

[Root of Jesse]

A question cannot be a "point," not really. Coffee and abortion are irrelevant to this discussion. If your point is the implied point in a question like "why should we believe it when we hear that anthropogenic global warming is happening at an unprecedented rate," then I believe it has been answered in post 135. As well as elsewhere.

The notion that Al Gore blew through a tremendous amount of time and effort to trick people into believing this in order to buy a beach house at a discount is, to my mind, not tenable. Al Gore has hundreds of millions of dollars. But more important, Al Gore is irrelevant to the matter at hand.

As @ViaCrucis has said, "Anthropogenic climate change is different than the slow climatological changes that have occurred over earth's long history; for two reasons: 1) It is human caused and 2) it is happening incredibly rapidly." That is why we cannot just wave our hands and say "well, squirrels contribute, too."

The notion that "we might have to wear more or less clothes" (and that's it) does not fit what experts - people who aren't laypeople just talking on CF, but who dedicate their lives to careful study of these mattes - have agreed about. You know that some people who are babies now will be alive in a hundred years, right? And they will look at their great-grandchildren growing up in a wrecked world and wonder why their own parents didn't do something? And the excuse that you and I will have left them in a handwritten note will say "well, we didn't really want to believe there was a problem, and if there was, it wasn't our fault, or we hoped not, and also we didn't want 'the government' to tell us what to do, so it's ok with us if most world cities are destroyed, countless people die in extreme weather events, and so on."

If you can't accept the responses on this thread, okay, no one is making you accept them. As it seems to me, your arguments set you up as the arbiter of everything, and what you do with that power is simply to dismiss inconvenient information.

I know - it is scary. I also don't like everything about secular governments. But it cannot be addressed without addressing fairly "deep" causes that cannot be handled by individuals. Turning off the lights five minutes early and sometimes walking to the store is not going to cut it.

OK, my schedule has cleared a bit. Here's an illustration of why I don't think we should just believe what climate scientists say. The parts about political motivation and skewed results I have highlighted, and that is why I don't trust "climate scientists".

Mitchell “Mitch” Taylor who has been studying polar bears since 1978. About a particular Polar Bear Report, he says:
It has become a lot more difficult to talk about polar bears since they became an icon for climate change as a cause. The information has become secondary to the mission for a number of people who were formerly chiefly concerned with research and management of polar bears. The mission is nothing less than saving the planet by saving the polar bears, and ironically the biggest obstacle to this initiative has been the polar bears themselves. The real story has been the extent to which polar bears have managed to mitigate the demographic effects of sea ice loss so far. In retrospect this is perhaps not so surprising because polar bears have been around since the Pliocene which means they have persisted through not only glacial cycles, but also through all the natural climate cycles during the glacial periods and interglacial periods.

Did Susan misrepresent the predictions from Amstrup’s “Belief Network”? Has she misunderstood the population estimates provided by the various technical committees and specialists groups? That is easy to check, because these paper are published. They are part of the record. I have been active in polar bears since 1978. I didn’t recognize 12 of the 14 names on the paper written criticizing Susan for publishing an article about polar bears because she does not have any direct experience in polar bear research or management. Does anyone need to point out how hypocritical this is? Since when does anyone need to tag a polar bear to compare what was predicted to what has happened, based on published information?

It is also germane that the IUCN Redbook authority was unwilling to continue listing polar bears as a “vulnerable” species based on current population estimates and Amstrup’s Bayesian Network model expectations. This was somehow not mentioned in the article criticizing Susan. Polar bears remain an IUCN “vulnerable” species, but now that is based on a Polar Bear Specialist Group (PBSG) polar bear population model that is driven by speculation but is also presented as “expert” predictive. The new guarantees that polar bears will decline was achieved by decoupling the model population projections from climate model forecasts of sea ice conditions … and just using the time-series regression of sea ice decline since 1980 to forecast sea ice (index for polar bear carrying capacity) forward. And the IUCN went for it.

There is an International Agreement for the Conservation of Polar Bears, and occasionally the parties to that Agreement (USA, Canada, Denmark-Greenland, Norway, and Russia) have a formal meeting. The signatory nations (parties) have no independent scientific advisors, and they take their information only from the IUCN/SSC Polar Bear Specialists Group (PBSG). If you don’t believe that climate science is settled, you can’t be a member of the PBSG, even if you started working on polar bears in 1978. Susan is also not a member.

There are two ways to get a scientific consensus. One is to present the data and the analysis in a manner that is so persuasive that everyone is convinced. The other way is to exclude or marginalize anyone who does not agree. This occurs so commonly now that it has become an accepted practice. The practice of science has become secondary to governments, NGOs, journals, and scientists who feel that the ends justify the means.

The response to Susan’s work is politically motivated, not an argument against her conclusions. The journal’s response to this article and to her complaint was also political. Sadly, BioScience not a credible scientific journal anymore. We have fake news and fake science. Is it really so difficult to see what the Amstup predictions were indexed to, to see if that index has changed, and see if the demographic data are consistent with Amstrup’s predictions or not? Susan has already done the work to show that the polar bear demographic data and sea ice data (all collected and reported by others) do not support the Amstrup et al. (2007) predictions.

If you can’t refute the argument, the only thing left is to discredit the author. Where did they get their funding? How many bears have they tagged? Are they in the club or not? … and if not in the club, what the hell are they doing voicing an opinion. How are right-thinking good people like us going to maintain the impression of omnipotent knowledge and scientific consensus if people like Susan are allowed to hold us accountable for what we publish? Bad enough that the IUCN won’t do as its told, at least not without a new crystal ball.

There are currently some valid indications that some polar bear subpopulations may be experiencing demographic impacts from reduced sea ice. There are also methodology issues and high variance associated with those studies. Much of the past work has become dated and much of the population work in the last decade is either agenda driven and unreliable, or compromised by data collection issues to the point that accurate population demography estimates are not possible. However, there are also many new studies that report their findings objectively. So just because some researchers and journals have lost perspective does not mean polar bears are not currently impacted by sea ice decline or never will be.

To me the loss of credible information is the real harm that has resulted from turning scientific inquiry into an agenda driven exercise … even for a good cause.

Some may see parallels within climate science world to the polar bear experience.
There are a number of crimes which have been committed by the climate alarmist establishment. Not the least of these is the damage these charlatans, cheats and bullies have done to the integrity of science and scientists.
Full article at Delingpole: Climate Alarmists Maul Inconvenient Polar Bear Expert