Mod+ 234. GLOBAL WARMING, CLIMATE CHANGE AND OUR ILLUSION OF CONTROL

Another video from Dr Shaviv on this issue. 2015.

Here's another from Ben, highlighting the difference in IPCC solar forcing and the latest research. The effect is minimal, well yes if you only include irradiance. At least we have defined what the actual issue here is.
More recent.
 
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Cook's paper, which he speaks briefly about in the video below, is nonsense

That's odd. I had read the paper in the past, and found it to be - as best I could tell - solid. I certainly didn't notice any big errors in it. So, I looked up the paper again and skimmed through it, searching for the relevant bits.

Here's a comparison of the way your pundit describes the categories in the paper versus the way the paper describes them, with his description of the categories he wants to exclude from consideration as endorsing AGW bolded:
  1. The paper: "Explicit endorsement with quantification": "Explicitly states that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming". Your pundit: "explicitly endorse the idea that more than 50% of global warming is manmade".
  2. The paper: "Explicit endorsement without quantification": "Explicitly states humans are causing global warming or refers to anthropogenic global warming/climate change as a known fact". Your pundit: "explicitly endorse the idea that there is global warming but refrain from any claim that it is predominantly manmade".
  3. The paper: "Implicit endorsement": "Implies humans are causing global warming. E.g., research assumes greenhouse gas emissions cause warming without explicitly stating humans are the cause". Your pundit: "implicitly endorse the notion of manmade global warming but make no claim regarding humans’ contribution vs. natural contributions (e.g., solar minima/maxima, and ocean events such as El Nino and La Nina)".
  4. The paper: "No position / Uncertain": "Does not address or mention the cause of global warming / Expresses position that human's role on recent global warming is uncertain/undefined". Your pundit: "take no position at all regarding global warming, natural or manmade".
  5. The paper: " Implicit rejection": "Implies humans have had a minimal impact on global warming without saying so explicitly E.g., proposing a natural mechanism is the main cause of global warming". Your pundit omits this category. I am not sure why.
  6. The paper: "Explicit rejection without quantification": "Explicitly minimizes or rejects that humans are causing global warming". Your pundit: "reject or minimize manmade global warming but proffer no percentage of change from natural or manmade causes".
  7. The paper: "Explicit rejection with quantification": "Explicitly states that humans are causing less than half of global warming". Your pundit: "explicitly reject or minimize AGW as being less than 50% of global warming".
Notice that for category #2, your pundit adds in a component of authors actively "refraining" from claiming that human contributions outweigh natural contributions, as if, for this category, the authors of the papers were actively withholding judgement on whether humans were predominantly to blame, whereas the paper's description makes it clear that for this category, the key is that the papers explicitly state that humans are causing global warming (or that they refer to AGW as a known fact) - i.e., that the authors of papers in this category are actively endorsing AGW, even if they do not bother to state outright that human contributions to warming predominate over natural factors (presumably because that much is assumed by both author and reader of the papers alike).

Similarly, for category #3, your pundit spins it so as to make it seem that authors of papers in this category are actively refraining (they "make no claim") from expressing a view on the relative weight of human contributions versus natural factors, whereas the paper's description of this category again makes it clear that for this category, the key is that the papers actively imply that humans are causing global warming, even if, again, they don't bother to state outright that human contributions to warming predominate over natural factors.

The paper gives examples from the abstracts that it analysed. The examples it provides for categories two and three are as follows:

For category #2: 'Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate change'.

For category #3: '...carbon sequestration in soil is important for mitigating global climate change'.

It is clear that those two categories can't be excluded from the AGW-endorsement count as your pundit wants to do. Papers in those categories either explicitly or implicitly endorse humans as causing global warming; that they do not explicitly quantify human contributions as more significant than natural factors is beside the point.

how about this 13-minute one, then, which I've posted before

I don't know why I would care about Stefan Molyneux's position on climate change. I'm not aware of anything that would privilege his opinion over anybody else's; certainly not over those who study the climate professionally.

That said, we don't know the truth, about anything, really. I see from another thread that you're an NDE believer, contra the apparent Western consensus, whilst with CAGW you go with the apparent Western consensus

I think that that's a misleading way to frame it. Why does it matter what "the Western consensus" is? The majority of people in the West have no expertise that makes their opinion on either of these topics relevant to consensus. A more representative framing is this: I believe that NDEs are a real phenomenon, consistent with the consensus of those scientists who specialise in studying NDEs, just as I believe that human behaviour is causing the planet to warm in a way that will very likely become (and has already to an extent become) problematic, consistent with the consensus of those scientists who specialise in studying the climate.
 
It is clear that those two categories can't be excluded from the AGW-endorsement count as your pundit wants to do.

Another way to look at the paper's data is this: of those 4014 papers it found which expressed a position either way, only 78 of them (those in categories 5, 6, and 7) either implicitly or explicitly minimised human contributions to global warming, i.e., only 1.9% of all position papers actively rejected the consensus.
 
I think that that's a misleading way to frame it. Why does it matter what "the Western consensus" is? The majority of people in the West have no expertise that makes their opinion on either of these topics relevant to consensus. A more representative framing is this: I believe that NDEs are a real phenomenon, consistent with the consensus of those scientists who specialise in studying NDEs, just as I believe that human behaviour is causing the planet to warm in a way that will very likely become (and has already to an extent become) problematic, consistent with the consensus of those scientists who specialise in studying the climate.

About NDE studies... Here come two problems.

1) A sizable portion of the NDE researchers are not scientists in the strict sense, but rather medical doctors and nurses, philosophers and humanitarian scholars, or even layperson enthusiasts who made a contribution to the field (the same works for parapsychology). For example, "Self Does Not Die", with its precious summary of the cases of externally verified NDEs, is written by three non-scientists - one philosopher (Titus Rivas) and two laypersons (Rudolf "Smithy" Smit, late Anny Dirven) - yet the absence of the scientific credentials of its authors does not make their findings less valid.

2) The very field of near-death studies lies outside of the current scientific consensus - as well as parapsychology. According to mainstream consensus, there is simply nothing real to study there, and thus no need to do so; so anyone who does research in this areas (apart from the hostile "skeptical debunking"), rejects "wide expert consensus" and becomes a heretic.

P. S. And what about antipsychiatry / postpsychiatry / critical psychiatry? In this case, there is a wide expert consensus that "coercive" (read: violent) biomedical psychiatry is perfectly legitimate, both intellectually and morally. It is the people who reject this consensus and defy the expertise of "coercion"-approving biomedical psychiatrists - which includes you (and me) - who commit a heresy.
 
A sizable portion of the NDE researchers are not scientists in the strict sense, but rather medical doctors and nurses, philosophers and humanitarian scholars, or even layperson enthusiasts who made a contribution to the field

Fine - I don't think that that invalidates my position. They are specialising in studying NDEs using the scientific method. That's good enough for me.

The very field of near-death studies lies outside of the current scientific consensus

Again: the only scientific consensus I'm concerned about is amongst those who actually study the subject. The rest aren't qualified to be part of the consensus.

P. S. And what about antipsychiatry / postpsychiatry / critical psychiatry?

I don't consider psychiatry to be a science; it is instead a treatment modality, although it makes use of science to study, for example, the effectiveness of its treatments given some stipulated treatment criteria.

A better example would be evolutionary science, where I genuinely am skeptical of the mainstream view. I am not well-versed in the area though. [Edit: to elaborate, I'm not entirely sure what the scientific (as opposed to popular) consensus is when it comes to evolutionary science]
 
That's odd. I had read the paper in the past, and found it to be - as best I could tell - solid. I certainly didn't notice any big errors in it. So, I looked up the paper again and skimmed through it, searching for the relevant bits.

Here's a comparison of the way your pundit describes the categories in the paper versus the way the paper describes them, with his description of the categories he wants to exclude from consideration as endorsing AGW bolded:
  1. The paper: "Explicit endorsement with quantification": "Explicitly states that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming". Your pundit: "explicitly endorse the idea that more than 50% of global warming is manmade".
  2. The paper: "Explicit endorsement without quantification": "Explicitly states humans are causing global warming or refers to anthropogenic global warming/climate change as a known fact". Your pundit: "explicitly endorse the idea that there is global warming but refrain from any claim that it is predominantly manmade".
  3. The paper: "Implicit endorsement": "Implies humans are causing global warming. E.g., research assumes greenhouse gas emissions cause warming without explicitly stating humans are the cause". Your pundit: "implicitly endorse the notion of manmade global warming but make no claim regarding humans’ contribution vs. natural contributions (e.g., solar minima/maxima, and ocean events such as El Nino and La Nina)".
  4. The paper: "No position / Uncertain": "Does not address or mention the cause of global warming / Expresses position that human's role on recent global warming is uncertain/undefined". Your pundit: "take no position at all regarding global warming, natural or manmade".
  5. The paper: " Implicit rejection": "Implies humans have had a minimal impact on global warming without saying so explicitly E.g., proposing a natural mechanism is the main cause of global warming". Your pundit omits this category. I am not sure why.
  6. The paper: "Explicit rejection without quantification": "Explicitly minimizes or rejects that humans are causing global warming". Your pundit: "reject or minimize manmade global warming but proffer no percentage of change from natural or manmade causes".
  7. The paper: "Explicit rejection with quantification": "Explicitly states that humans are causing less than half of global warming". Your pundit: "explicitly reject or minimize AGW as being less than 50% of global warming".
Notice that for category #2, your pundit adds in a component of authors actively "refraining" from claiming that human contributions outweigh natural contributions, as if, for this category, the authors of the papers were actively withholding judgement on whether humans were predominantly to blame, whereas the paper's description makes it clear that for this category, the key is that the papers explicitly state that humans are causing global warming (or that they refer to AGW as a known fact) - i.e., that the authors of papers in this category are actively endorsing AGW, even if they do not bother to state outright that human contributions to warming predominate over natural factors (presumably because that much is assumed by both author and reader of the papers alike).

Similarly, for category #3, your pundit spins it so as to make it seem that authors of papers in this category are actively refraining (they "make no claim") from expressing a view on the relative weight of human contributions versus natural factors, whereas the paper's description of this category again makes it clear that for this category, the key is that the papers actively imply that humans are causing global warming, even if, again, they don't bother to state outright that human contributions to warming predominate over natural factors.

The paper gives examples from the abstracts that it analysed. The examples it provides for categories two and three are as follows:

For category #2: 'Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate change'.

For category #3: '...carbon sequestration in soil is important for mitigating global climate change'.

It is clear that those two categories can't be excluded from the AGW-endorsement count as your pundit wants to do. Papers in those categories either explicitly or implicitly endorse humans as causing global warming; that they do not explicitly quantify human contributions as more significant than natural factors is beside the point.

All that is proven here is that people with different biases and agendas, prejudices and preconceptions, sympathies and antipathies, intents and desires etc. would not just interpret, but very literally perceive things differently from each other. And this is exactly the reason why we should look at all sides of the conflict, and why the objectivity of science rests on the polylogue rather than monologue, the controversy rather then unanimity. Science is fundamentally the intellectually adversarial approach- that, however, should not bleed into personal enmity and attack (the basic demand of the scientific ethics).

Yet the modern academia has it directly opposite way - the enforcement of intellectual conformity combined with promotion of hostility and character assassinations toward the one who refuses to conform.
 
Fine - I don't think that that invalidates my position. They are specialising in studying NDEs using the scientific method. That's good enough for me.



Again: the only scientific consensus I'm concerned about is amongst those who actually study the subject. The rest aren't qualified to be part of the consensus.



I don't consider psychiatry to be a science; it is instead a treatment modality, although it makes use of science to study, for example, the effectiveness of its treatments given some stipulated treatment criteria.

A better example would be evolutionary science, where I genuinely am skeptical of the mainstream view. I am not well-versed in the area though. [Edit: to elaborate, I'm not entirely sure what the scientific (as opposed to popular) consensus is when it comes to evolutionary science]

Well, Laird, I think one can describe you as "mind-research heretic" - you are tending toward the dissensus positions in the areas of study where mind - in the wide sense, from consciousness-as-such to social (dis)order and morals - is somehow involved, from papsychology to antipsychiatry to intelligent design.

Yet you are tending toward the consensus position in the areas of strict natural science and medicine, such as CAGW or statins-cholesterol controversies.

Well, you are not alone in such approach. My best direct - e.g., offline - partner in debates holds the similar position. He thinks that materialism is wrong, that science should be freed from physicalism imposed on it when mind-related topics are concerned, and is currently enthusiastically studies theology - yet is getting angry each and every time when I start challenging consensus on the strictly physical areas, or harshly criticise the academic community in general.

Yet, as much as you, he is a very polite and self-reflective person who accepts what we can agree to disagree. Which we do.

Well, eveyone has one's own limits of heresy - limits which tends to be flexible and differ according to topics being discussed and personal decisions of the heretic. I go very far in my heretical social defiance and intellectual autonomy, and do so in many directions and areas simultaneously, moving away from the approved zones farther and bolder than most would dare... even if definitely not far and bold enough to develop an interest in Flat and / or Hollow and / or Young Earth stuff, or Icke's reptilians; in such a quest, one should maintain a clear and critcal mind and not allow oneself to be drown in absurdity (as many extreme heretics did). Some of my positions will indeed seem brazenly radical for the most people nowadays. Yet I understand that no one is obliged to repeat my quests beyond the limits of respectability, and can accept if one states: "here I stop". Or even one decides to disavow heresy in some particular topic, and support the orthodoxy - after all, who said that orthodoxy is necessarily wrong? We heretics are driven to challenge it, and encourage others to do so - such as both our will and our accepted social role - but we should accept that our challenges are neither necessarily correct nor universally appealing.
 
All that is proven here is that people with different biases and agendas, prejudices and preconceptions, sympathies and antipathies, intents and desires etc. would not just interpret, but very literally perceive things differently from each other.

Well, it's not the only study to find a high degree of consensus on global warming; there are several, using different methods, including surveys using more explicit questions. This paper provides an overview.

The consensus that humans are causing recent global warming is shared by 90%–100% of publishing climate scientists according to six independent studies by co-authors of this paper. Those results are consistent with the 97% consensus reported by Cook et al (Environ. Res. Lett. 8 024024) based on 11 944 abstracts of research papers, of which 4014 took a position on the cause of recent global warming.
 
Another way to look at the paper's data is this: of those 4014 papers it found which expressed a position either way, only 78 of them (those in categories 5, 6, and 7) either implicitly or explicitly minimised human contributions to global warming, i.e., only 1.9% of all position papers actively rejected the consensus.

And here's yet another way: of those 73 papers which explicitly stated a quantified position as to whether or not humans were causing more (or less) than 50% of global warming (those in categories 1 and 7), 64 of them, or 87.7%, stated that humans were causing more than 50%.

It's not 97%, but it's still an overwhelming majority.
 
Probably, the two most important, life-and-death crucial principles that I had formulated in my counless quests outside of the mainstream limits: the principle of self-doubt / self -reflexivity, and the principle of non-dehumanisation (or non-demonisation). To summarise them:

1) Do not fall to belief that the positions that you constructed are "self-evidently" or "undeniably" true and / or good and / or beautiful. They only appear such to you, based on your perceptions, interpretations and evaluations, which are never perfect or incontrovertible. Your positions are never fully shared by others, who inevitably differ from you.

2) Never believe that one, who disagrees with you on matters of evidence and / or argumentation and /or values, do so because one is "malicious", or "insane", or "ignorant", or all at the same time; most probably (s)he is just the persons who have seen and tasted the world from different angles that you did, and came to different conclusions. Even the strongest principal disagreement does not require perceiving the opponent as devil incarnate.
 
2) Never believe that one, who disagrees with you on matters of evidence and / or argumentation and /or values, do so because one is "malicious", or "insane", or "ignorant",

I disagree Vortex, including but not limited to the the constraint 'Never'. In general, we give our casual discussion partners the benefit of a doubt of course. However...

A. There is a US Court defined standard, which constitutes the litmus for maliciousness, particularly on the part of a party pretending to represent science. It was reiterated as precedent in Superior Court of the State of California, for the County of San Francisco: Case No. CGC-16-550128, Dewayne Johnson, Plaintiff, v. Monsanto Company, Defendant. The following is extracted and condensed from that case.

Malice and Oppression in the Name of Science
/philosophy : the law : high crimes : oppression/ : malice which results in the oppression of a targeted segment of a population is measured inside three litmus elements.
First, is the population at risk able to understand and make decisions with regard to the science, technology or any entailed mechanism of its risk?
Second, has an interest group or groups crafted the process of science or science review and communication in a unethical fashion so as to steer its results and/or interpretation in a desired direction?
Third, has a group sought to attack, unduly influence, intimidate or demean various members of society, media, government or the targeted group, as a means to enforce their science conclusions by other than appropriate scientific method and peer review.
I. Have a group or groups targeted or placed a population at other than natural risk inside a scientific or technical matter
a. who bears a legitimate stakehold inside that matter
b. who can reasonably understand and make self-determinations inside the matter
c. whom the group(s) have contended to be illegitimate stakeholders, or as not meriting basic human rights or constitutionality with regard to the matter?
II. Have these group or groups contracted for or conducted science methods, not as an incremental critical path means of investigation, rather only as means to
a. promote a novel technology, product, service, condition or practice which it favors, and
b. negate an opposing study or body of research
c. exonerate the group from reasonable liability to warn or protect the stakeholders at risk
d. exonerate the group from the burden of precaution, skepticism or followup scientific study
e. cover for past scientific mistakes or disadvantageous results
f. damage the reputation of dissenting researchers
g. influence political and legislative decisions by timing or extrapolation of results
h. pose a charade of benefits or detriment in promotion/disparagement of a market play, product or service
i. establish a monopoly/monopsony or to put competition out of business?
III. Have these group(s) enlisted officers, directors, or managing agents, outside astroturf, undue influence, layperson, enthusiast, professional organization or media entities to attack, intimidate and/or disparage
a. stakeholders who are placed at risk by the element in question
b. wayward legislative, executive or judicial members of government
c. dissenting scientists
d. stakeholders they have targeted or feel bear the greatest threat
e. neutral to challenging media outlets
f. the online and social media public?

B. In addition, as a former Director in Intelligence I can tell you that not everyone who stirs a point of view is operating from mere bias and difference of opinion. Some people serve as inchoate or paid activists for specific causes, organizations and movements which support the delineated set of activities court-defined by A above. They don't give a damn about the subject, don't give a damn about you nor your family - they are there to push a specific agenda or political movement, punish specific stakeholders, and harm specific opposing forces - supported usually by an entity who either will not be impacted by the decision, or serves to benefit from the decision - to the harm of the stakeholders involved.

C. There are those who just are out to hurt people who are different from them, or whom they have targeted for injury or extinction. They want to see the world or specific cultures burn. They throw rocks at police attempting to save a life. They will put on any costume in this process. Virtue, justice, environment. goodness. But their fruits rarely match the costume. These are the malicious and purposefully ignorant.

D. Finally, if I am a bricklayer - and I am arguing with a person of influence who is neither 1. an at-risk stakeholder in the structure being made, and 2. has never even touched a brick in their life. And they pretend that their opinion is just as valid as the bricklayer's in how the bricks should be stacked and employed - and this results in harm...

... this is activist-ignorance which can be defined as malicious in its derivation - the point at which maliciousness and incompetence become one ethical entity in a court's eyes. It is a standard called 'scienter' - orchestrating in advance, a normally perfunctory set of events such that they are arranged to cause harm to a targeted entity, through fraud or disruption of a normal praxis.

Agency versus Bias

Bias is the Titanic's habit of failing to examine its ice berg alerts.
Agency is the Titanic telling the ship issuing ice berg alerts to 'shut up'.
If all we suffered from was mere bias, things might even work out fine.
But reality is that we are victims of agency, not bias.
 
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And here's yet another way: of those 73 papers which explicitly stated a quantified position as to whether or not humans were causing more (or less) than 50% of global warming (those in categories 1 and 7), 64 of them, or 87.7%, stated that humans were causing more than 50%.

It's not 97%, but it's still an overwhelming majority.

Incidentally, this is the more correct way to conduct the analysis if, as Michael's pundit did, we are to reject the second two categories as genuine endorsements of AGW: in that case, we must, too, reject the fifth and sixth categories since they, too, do not provide quantification, and we must remove the second, third, fifth, and sixth categories from the total count of papers considered to be expressing a view. So, whereas Michael's pundit found 64/3,974 = 1.6%, he ought to have found 64/73 = 87.7%. A not insignificant error...

(And a by-the-by: given that the paper indicates that of category four, 40 were "uncertain", the total of 3,974 is not quite correct; the correct figure is 3,974 + 40 = 4,014).
 
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And here's yet another way: of those 73 papers which explicitly stated a quantified position as to whether or not humans were causing more (or less) than 50% of global warming (those in categories 1 and 7), 64 of them, or 87.7%, stated that humans were causing more than 50%.

It's not 97%, but it's still an overwhelming majority.
Yes, but that overestimates the unanimity among scientists. Think for a moment about ψ, where we all probably agree.

Scientists clearly find damaging to their career to report results that are suggestive of ψ. For example, Dean Radin used totally standard equipment to do his presentiment experiments, so he guessed that presentiment is probably present in data that was gathered for other reasons. He managed to persuade a few people to send him their raw data, and indeed he did detect presentiment in this way, but he didn't exactly get a flood of people presenting their data for this analysis. Presumably they simply did not want to be associated with presentiment.

Some of the more notorious emails in the email hack from the CRU concerned discussions about threatening a journal editor with removal from his post if he published certain papers. In another instance the threat was to withhold a PhD from someone who wanted to publish such a paper!

Also, scientists have a tendency to stone wall against evidence that proves they were wrong. That is a basic human instinct, but people naively assume that SCIENTISTS are too noble to do that. Science as a whole can develop a position on something, and then they will do anything rather than admit a mistake. What do you think it would take for Dr John Fischer to turn round and agree that NDEs were a probable indicator of life after death and another reality?

A further problem is that people who hold a contrary position, may simply give up and leave for a less contentious area of study.

For all these reasons, it is essential that people hear both sides of any scientific argument.

David
 
Yes, but that overestimates the unanimity among scientists.[remainder snipped by Laird for brevity]

Well, you've got an hypothesis there, for which you've given reasons to think it's at least plausible. But you haven't tested it as of yet. (Or have you? Or has anybody else?)
 
Here's an alternative hypothesis:

The study underestimates the unanimity among scientists because (1) the fossil fuel industry provides financial and other incentives for scientists who are willing to reject it, (2) the political bias of scientists, where it exists, affects their conclusions on this topic far more for those who are conservative or libertarian than for everybody else (i.e., conservatives and libertarians are by nature skewed against the consensus; everybody else is not so affected by political bias). If I spent more time I could probably think up other reasons. Point being: these are just hypotheses, and are unproven.
 
Yup. It all comes down to belief in the end. To support our beliefs, we draw on evidence. It's a question of whether or not we accept or reject evidence based on our prior beliefs, or in spite of them.
Agreed, but this goes for all 'sides' and the attachment to 'sides' is pertinent and hugely distracting, which may be a convenient intention.
Meanwhile, the earth burns, freezes and becomes uninhabitable in ways that require addressing..
 
That's odd. I had read the paper in the past, and found it to be - as best I could tell - solid. I certainly didn't notice any big errors in it. So, I looked up the paper again and skimmed through it, searching for the relevant bits.

Here's a comparison of the way your pundit describes the categories in the paper versus the way the paper describes them, with his description of the categories he wants to exclude from consideration as endorsing AGW bolded:
  1. The paper: "Explicit endorsement with quantification": "Explicitly states that humans are the primary cause of recent global warming". Your pundit: "explicitly endorse the idea that more than 50% of global warming is manmade".
  2. The paper: "Explicit endorsement without quantification": "Explicitly states humans are causing global warming or refers to anthropogenic global warming/climate change as a known fact". Your pundit: "explicitly endorse the idea that there is global warming but refrain from any claim that it is predominantly manmade".
  3. The paper: "Implicit endorsement": "Implies humans are causing global warming. E.g., research assumes greenhouse gas emissions cause warming without explicitly stating humans are the cause". Your pundit: "implicitly endorse the notion of manmade global warming but make no claim regarding humans’ contribution vs. natural contributions (e.g., solar minima/maxima, and ocean events such as El Nino and La Nina)".
  4. The paper: "No position / Uncertain": "Does not address or mention the cause of global warming / Expresses position that human's role on recent global warming is uncertain/undefined". Your pundit: "take no position at all regarding global warming, natural or manmade".
  5. The paper: " Implicit rejection": "Implies humans have had a minimal impact on global warming without saying so explicitly E.g., proposing a natural mechanism is the main cause of global warming". Your pundit omits this category. I am not sure why.
  6. The paper: "Explicit rejection without quantification": "Explicitly minimizes or rejects that humans are causing global warming". Your pundit: "reject or minimize manmade global warming but proffer no percentage of change from natural or manmade causes".
  7. The paper: "Explicit rejection with quantification": "Explicitly states that humans are causing less than half of global warming". Your pundit: "explicitly reject or minimize AGW as being less than 50% of global warming".
Notice that for category #2, your pundit adds in a component of authors actively "refraining" from claiming that human contributions outweigh natural contributions, as if, for this category, the authors of the papers were actively withholding judgement on whether humans were predominantly to blame, whereas the paper's description makes it clear that for this category, the key is that the papers explicitly state that humans are causing global warming (or that they refer to AGW as a known fact) - i.e., that the authors of papers in this category are actively endorsing AGW, even if they do not bother to state outright that human contributions to warming predominate over natural factors (presumably because that much is assumed by both author and reader of the papers alike).

Similarly, for category #3, your pundit spins it so as to make it seem that authors of papers in this category are actively refraining (they "make no claim") from expressing a view on the relative weight of human contributions versus natural factors, whereas the paper's description of this category again makes it clear that for this category, the key is that the papers actively imply that humans are causing global warming, even if, again, they don't bother to state outright that human contributions to warming predominate over natural factors.

The paper gives examples from the abstracts that it analysed. The examples it provides for categories two and three are as follows:

For category #2: 'Emissions of a broad range of greenhouse gases of varying lifetimes contribute to global climate change'.

For category #3: '...carbon sequestration in soil is important for mitigating global climate change'.

It is clear that those two categories can't be excluded from the AGW-endorsement count as your pundit wants to do. Papers in those categories either explicitly or implicitly endorse humans as causing global warming; that they do not explicitly quantify human contributions as more significant than natural factors is beside the point.



I don't know why I would care about Stefan Molyneux's position on climate change. I'm not aware of anything that would privilege his opinion over anybody else's; certainly not over those who study the climate professionally.


I think that that's a misleading way to frame it. Why does it matter what "the Western consensus" is? The majority of people in the West have no expertise that makes their opinion on either of these topics relevant to consensus. A more representative framing is this: I believe that NDEs are a real phenomenon, consistent with the consensus of those scientists who specialise in studying NDEs, just as I believe that human behaviour is causing the planet to warm in a way that will very likely become (and has already to an extent become) problematic, consistent with the consensus of those scientists who specialise in studying the climate.

Not much to comment, except:

1. Anyone wanting to study the Cook paper in detail from the sceptical viewpoint can easily do a search on WUWT for John Cook and decide for themselves.

2. Pity you didn't watch Stefan Molyneux's video. Had you done so, you'd have seen that his presentation wasn't based on his views, but those of Dr. David M.W. Evans, who "consulted full time for the Australian Greenhouse Office (now the Department of Climate Change) from 1999 to 2005, and part time 2008 to 2010, modeling Australia’s carbon in plants, debris, mulch, soils, and forestry and agricultural products. "

3. Your argument about why you accept one opinion (about CAGW) and not another (about NDEs) seems like special pleading. Do no sceptical scientists "specialise" in climate science? Do no sceptical scientists "specialise" in the study of NDEs? I doubt it; there's a list of some of the former here, but whilst I can't find a list of the latter on the Web, I'd be quite surprised if there weren't at least some specialists who don't accept the reality of NDEs.

What precisely is a climate scientist? Is John Cook one? Is he qualified to evaluate climate science papers? According to my search, he's "a research assistant professor at the Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University, researching cognitive science."

Then again, what is "expertise"? Do only people with a PhD in a very specific area qualify as "experts"? Or does anyone with a phD in any subject qualify as more expert in any field that is not their specialty than anyone without a phD? Is John Cook more of a specialist in climate science than Steve McIntyre, who as far as I know doesn't have a phD? (My verdict, incidentally, is that Steve McIntyre has forgotten more about the statistical analysis of climate data than John Cook will ever know.)
 
Agreed, but this goes for all 'sides' and the attachment to 'sides' is pertinent and hugely distracting, which may be a convenient intention.
Meanwhile, the earth burns, freezes and becomes uninhabitable in ways that require addressing..

So what are you saying? That you are exempt? That the world actually is burning (or freezing)? If so, you know this how, precisely? If not, I don't get your point. What is your position on this matter -- pro, con, agnostic? A sniper on the sidelines? What?
 
Your argument about why you accept one opinion (about CAGW) and not another (about NDEs) seems like special pleading.

I'm not sure of the contrast you're trying to draw. What is the "one opinion" that I accept and "the other" that I don't? As I told you, I accept the consensus of scientists working in the area in both cases. Re your other questions, a consensus needn't preclude the existence of a dissident minority opposed to the consensus.

Your questions about climate scientists and expertise look like a rhetorical ploy, to which I see no point in responding except to say this: John Cook was not evaluating climate science papers on their scientific merits. He simply categorised them based on the position, if any, that they expressed in their abstracts. It doesn't take an expert in climate science to do that. In any case, he got the same results when he questioned the authors of the papers directly.
 
I'm not sure of the contrast you're trying to draw. What is the "one opinion" that I accept and "the other" that I don't? As I told you, I accept the consensus of scientists working in the area in both cases. Re your other questions, a consensus needn't preclude the existence of a dissident minority opposed to the consensus.

Your questions about climate scientists and expertise look like a rhetorical ploy, to which I see no point in responding except to say this: John Cook was not evaluating climate science papers on their scientific merits. He simply categorised them based on the position, if any, that they expressed in their abstracts. It doesn't take an expert in climate science to do that. In any case, he got the same results when he questioned the authors of the papers directly.

But for him to evaluate the papers, it would surely help if he understood their science. And, I feel sure that had someone on the sceptical side produced the paper and come up with the opposite interpretation, the first thing to have been looked at would have been whether or not the person was a climate scientist. If not, I think it would have been given very short shrift.

As for "rhetorical ploys": pot, kettle, black comes to mind...
 
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