D.I.Y. Denialist-Style Science!

I've been trying to understand the high emotional investment climate change deniers give to their denial because, in most matters of arcane scientific inquiry most people don't care. Obviously the industries affected will produce propaganda that promotes their interest, but why does Joe Blow in the street give a damn?

The only thing that makes sense to me is that the deniers know, in their heart of hearts, that certain behaviors, e.g. operating a 12mpg SUV, have no ethical justification if climate change is real, yet operating a 12mpg SUV is an important aspect of their persona, their self-identity, and they'll be damned if faceless science will cast aspersions on who they are. So they don't just deny the whole thing, they deny it with all their energy, desperate to preserve their self-delusions.

 

The US is 4% of the world's population, has maybe 3% of the world's known oil, but uses 27% of the world's oil.

And the guy with the 12 mpg SUV see NO connection between HIS oil addiction and OUR national security and defense spending.

Talk about denial! And in the one moment in history (9/11) when everyone would have made changes and sacrificed, our leader told us to "go shopping". People will not change without a crisis, unfortunely Global Warming is too slow motion to be defined as a crisis. And when 100% of scientists agree GW is a problem, it will be too late.

 

If you get 97 out of 100 "climate scientists" to agree on anything....that's called a consensus. It doesn't necessarily mean it's good "science".
I'm an AGW agnostic.
Yeah...it's been a while since we've seen any saber tooth tigers or woolly mammoths (outside of the Pixar studios) so yeah.
It's warmer than it used to be.
I might be a little less AGW agnostic if my teachers didn't spend so much time trying to scare the crap out of me about the next overdue ice age back when I was in school.
Or....maybe if somebody could present their case without the sneers and flying spittle...that might help some too.

That's actually pretty easy to answer.
You like to fly----right?
How many GPH does your A/C of choice get????
Know any boaters?
iro·ny. noun \ˈī-rə-nē also ˈī(-ə)r-nē\. plural iro·nies. Definition of IRONY. 1. : A situation where someone who drives a gasoline powered automobile routinely uses an an automotive forum to deride drivers of gasoline automobile subtypes that don't get quite the efficiency that their car does....and then wonders why there's so much push-back against their AGW claims.
See also: Hypocrite.
OK....that's more ironic than irony....but you get the point.
Like I said. My giveacrap switch is lock-wired in the don't position.
I don't use enough fuel to really care much about how much it costs, and very nearly everything I own is paid for---so if they wreck the economy trying to outlaw gas I'll still be able to eat and sleep indoors.
I do sincerely care about things like stewardship, and I'm saving what I can where I can.....but the whole AGW fur ball seems to be more about who is going to win the argument than who is going to solve the problem.
That's just how I see it.
YMMV

 

op2:op2:

 

Fear of science, and fear of change.

 

OK I'll bite, you missed two classics:
> Rachel Carson foretold on DDT
> Rowland and Molina foretold on Ozone layer depletion by CFC's

The later case (ozone depletion) has some interesting implications with respect to AGW. In both of those cases, denialists were converted (or out-voted) and the problems were solved. Why not same for AGW? Food for thought.

 

They keep changing the name... helps keep interest up.

 

It seemed to me that the change from 'global warming' to 'climate change' was intended to include precipitation changes. This seems entirely sensical, with the caveat that current CC models generate much more variable results for precipitation than for temperature. So the former remains largely unpredictable. I don't think you'll find much dispute about that.

But in contrast, it seems that precipitation records are less controversial than temperature records. Probably because they can (at larger scales) be verified by river flows, floods and droughts, those sorts of things. There is no direct way to check the validity of your thermometer by measuring something else 'downstream'. Obviously, there are direct ways to check the calibration of any thermometer and you can bet that I hammer that into the grad students before they take the latest gadget out for field measurements.

All that aside, one might infer from media sources that terminology change from GW to CC was intended to include temperature decreases as well as increases. But this is not my perspective.

In the spirit of this thread (as I see it), there has been a longer list of issues raised through time by environmental wackos (if you like) that have been characterized as non-problems that are too expense to fix. They would hamstring free enterprise with needless regulations and lead to the down fall of (insert your industry name here). I do not offer the previous as a direct quote from anybody, but it could probably be done with some research. This would be necessary should anyone decide to write a book about claimed environmental disasters -> government regulatinons -> improved environment and new, profitable industries. I actually think that would be a book worth writing, and that reducing the carbon cost of the energy industry is poised as being the next example. Or counterexample ???

So I would add as examples, the (US) Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act as things that were strongly denialized at the time. But things changed, and now the US (and Europe) sells cleaning-up technology worldwide. Makin' good money at it, too.

I'm almost afraid to lift the lid on DDT, because it has been batted around at PriusChat previously. But one thing I'd like you to bear in mind that current insecticides are much better targeted. As a consequence it has become possible to use other insects (parasites and predators) as biological control agents against specific crop-damaging insects. This would not have been possible with higher background levels of DDT, or any other persistent, generally toxic chemical.

 

The 's' at the end of CFCs should alert you to the fact that it is plural. There are hundreds of CFCs, and more being invented all the time.

And many people would settle for just doing something about CO2. So now it should be easy, right? Just ban it.

 

It seems to me, that identifying 'deniers' can be done by observing whether someone is trying to construct a consistent world view or not. An argument that Mars is warming, so it can't be the case that humans burning carbon compounds is warming the Earth, is not an effort to understand what impact humans burning carbon compounds is having. If one thinks that the impact is zero, an argument needs to be constructed based on that carbon, and where it is going, and what it is doing. An understanding of Earth's temperature could well require looking at the temperatures on Mars, but one will never understand Earth's temperature by ONLY looking at Mars.

 

Is there a doctor in the house? I am turning blue.
Perhaps Sage will verify this, but in one sense we cannot ban CO2 because, of course, we have to breath. So this brings up one thing different about DDT and CFCs: they are synthetic chlorinated hydrocarbons not found in nature.

 

But their chemistry isn't exactly the same-some deplete ozone much more than others.

 

It's also a more accurate name to describe the observed phenomena. In response the changes being made to the chemical composition of Earth's atmosphere, the patterns of air and ocean currents are disrupted. While the overall planetary average temperature is increasing, not every geographical location will be warmer; some will be cooler, some dryer, some wetter...long established climates are changing.

Basing denial on "they keep changing the name" is very weak.

 

Only in the same sense that all hydrocarbons are basically the same thing. I'm sure you won't mind my substituting your C6H12O6 with C6H10O5.

 

Especially since, the name was (IMHO) changed in part to counter the objections by deniers, every time it got cold.