Climate Change

Sandwich · October 2016

I didn't really want to post this in the mess that is the Trump thread so I'm making my own.

I know there are people here who deny climate change. I really want to know why. With so much clear evidence for climate change the only reason I can see for denying its existence is willful ignorance. So again, why?

Sandwich · October 2016

Deathmobs said:
The point isn't whether climate change exists, it obviously does, the point of contention is whether or not climate change is influenced by mankind and, most importantly, whether any level of irrational fear/hysteria is justified.

Most people don't even believe in climate change because they've been LIED TO again and again and again. Largely as a result of fear mongering hysteria. I mean just look at Al Gore's original propaganda video making insane level claims about how the whole planet should have been destroyed YEARS ago... and yet... here we all are! You can only lie to people so many times before you start to lose their trust.

On the whole though, a return of the Holocene Climatic Optimum is not something anyone should be afraid of... in fact, it would be a VERY GOOD THING! Unfortunately we're no where even close to getting back to it. We'd have to increase greenhouse gas emissions by upwards of 500% and even then it would likely take several hundred years to actually reach that point...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum

Would be nice to get back the Sahara rain forest though!

Holocene Climatic Optimum sounds pretty cool. Yet... that would still bring the plethora of issues climate change has placed on our doorstep.
It's really not about fear or hysteria though, it's just about the facts. Climate change is going to cause some major problems in years to come, partly because of mankind, and partly due to nature. When people deny it exists or refuse to address the problem (especially politicians like Donald Trump) it's making things worse for everyone.

Edit: Reading a little more about the Holocene Warm Period, it's hard to apply it to current events, because the Holocene had very different causes than today's climate change. Holocene was mostly caused by orbital forcing. In other words, the gradual change in the orbit of Earth around the Sun changed the amount of solar radiation reaching Earth. What we observe today has much more to do with humans. In fact, scientists calculated that if we lived in the same conditions as the Holocene period today, it would actually be even hotter than it was then.

LiquidMetal · October 2016

Deathmobs said:
The point isn't whether climate change exists, it obviously does, the point of contention is whether or not climate change is influenced by mankind and, most importantly, whether any level of irrational fear/hysteria is justified.

Most people don't even believe in climate change because they've been LIED TO again and again and again. Largely as a result of fear mongering hysteria. I mean just look at Al Gore's original propaganda video making insane level claims about how the whole planet should have been destroyed YEARS ago... and yet... here we all are! You can only lie to people so many times before you start to lose their trust.

On the whole though, a return of the Holocene Climatic Optimum is not something anyone should be afraid of... in fact, it would be a VERY GOOD THING! Unfortunately we're no where even close to getting back to it. We'd have to increase greenhouse gas emissions by upwards of 500% and even then it would likely take several hundred years to actually reach that point...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum

Would be nice to get back the Sahara rain forest though!

Bringing up the obviousness of the fact that the climate changes is belittling the other side because "climate change" has particular connotation and when someone uses "climate change" as a noun, it almost always refers to anthropological climate change nowadays.

I've never seen the Al Gore film, but I nevertheless doubted your statements about the claims of earth being destroyed by now and I ended up finding this quote from yahoo answers

" I’m racking my brains to think of the last time that a skeptic accurately quoted someone, I can’t think when it was, must have been a long time ago.

As any reasonable person would expect, Al Gore didn’t state that we only have 10 years left…

The quote you attribute to Gore was actually made by Larry David on 25 January 2006.

It was made the morning after the world premier of Gore’s movie An Inconvenient Truth. Larry David was asked about Al Gore and commented “Al is a funny guy. But he is also a very serious guy who believes humans may have only 10 years left to save the planet from turning into a total frying pan.”

Trevor · 2 years ago "

Maybe the people being lied to shouldn't be so gullible and get their news from anti-climate change propaganda?

Sandwich · October 2016

Deathmobs said:
Well, the thing you need to understand is that when talking about climate change you're talking about a geological time scale... meaning things won't change overnight and as things slowly change, we'll automatically adapt regardless.

That's really not true though. Our infrastructure isn't going to adapt to anything when the sea levels rise. Venice isn't a very good example either since it was basically built on water in the first place. They can much more easily make smaller adaptations to water levels than can the average city.

The affects it will have on us are not going to be so slow that they'll hardly be a problem.(Honestly no matter how slow they were this would still be a problem) This is by no means saying "WE HAVE THREE YEARS TO BUILD NOAH'S ARC", but we will see the effects and they are going to be serious issues.

The most obvious effect is the Earth's water cycles being thrown way off. Humans have already crowded Earth, and rising water levels only make it worse. We lose land, for living, and land for production, which is serious. Melting ice and higher oceans also means more evaporation, and more violent weather. The shift of climates will affect habitats of many animals, and may lead to the collapse of ecosystems. Farmers are having problems keeping up with increasingly unpredictable weather patterns, and the increasing heat is making the world more habitable for disease and pests.
I could name some more, but the idea is that climate change will have an impact on us and we're not just going to adapt it away so easily.

SwordBoss · October 2016

"yeeoo dude climate change is like sooo totes not real the science guys who thought that its real are just joshin you bro like freal mannnn its just another plan that the mannnn is trying to carry out dude faar outt"

LiquidMetal · October 2016

Deathmobs said:
It's really funny that you guys actually think that science is somehow all honestly and truth... when it's just the OPPOSITE!

Science generally follows the money. Right now every scientist who isn't stupid is riding on in the bandwagon due the fact that the US government (amongst others) are shelling out countless BILLIONS of dollars in research grants...

So we should be skeptics of the scientists because they need research grants to do their research, but you want us to eat what the propaganda being paid for by oil company ceos that make 6 figure salaries with a spoon? That's the dumbest thing I've heard and its also insulting to scientists who spend 4,6,5,10 years in school studying what science just so "they can ride the bandwagon". Research grants are money awarded to pay for conducting experiments they're not a salary. If you think scientists go to school doing hard work just so they can make a quick dollar on climate change, you should seriously rethink your life.

Also its not surprising at all that you ignored my two comments in my last post. That's the typical procedure for "skeptics" they will spew off facts and when confronted with something they will just jump to their next point and try to strafe you with information so you can't address everything one by one.

And one last thing, those experiments while highly unethical were no junk experiments just because you people in the1950s should have know what you think you know about brain drug interactions. The heart of the scientific method is to learn from failed mistakes and make new hypothesis.

Arlong · October 2016

Deathmobs is absolutely right saying science follows the money. That's not to say that you can never trust it at all but there was a very famous example recently where it was revealed that the sugar industry paid off Harvard scientists to make the claim that fat, not sugar is bad for you when in reality it's the other way around. People believed it because science says it; that means it must be true. For a long time now scientists have had a sort of intellectual authority and much like religion was in the middle ages, it's almost seen as heretical to question it. Except nowadays we call people who question science and scientists as anti science or conspiracy theorists - modern day version of heresy. Also a big part of the scientific method is to question and that includes questioning our own common sense or what we believe to be common knowledge such as anthropomorphic climate change that everyone assumes as fact because we have been told it was so our whole lives. I don't remember ever being taught, until this university class I'm in right now which coincidentally enough environmentalism is an upcoming topic, but I've never been taught the other side of the argument, never taught the merits of fossil fuel or legitimate questions against climate change. You probably haven't either. And the reason people automatically assume anthropomorphic climate change is real and defend it so much is not that they know it to be true, but they perceive it to be true because it is the only reality they know of. Curious thing about the human mind is that once an idea has entered our thoughts, especially since youth, we tend to defend it. It's why for the most part, people do not change their religion. Environmentalism is an ideology, and just like every other ideology it relies on accepting certain things to be true that you cannot question and then following the logic of said accepted truths. Skepticism is completely in line with science. I would argue being unskeptical is unscientific.

Frankly I don't care about the science behind it. But let's assume it is true that anthropomorphic climate change really is occurring. So what are we going to do about it then? Because everything we use, everything we built is brought about by fossil fuel. Unless you want to live an Amish lifestyle we need energy to power our machines. Not only do we need a lot of energy but it needs to be produced cheaply in order that it may economically viable. And so far fossil fuels is the only way we can do that. Nuclear is a good option too. Nuclear is actually cleaner than solar when you look at their energy produced compared to how much toxic waste it produces. The point is that even if it is true that climate change is real and we are making a big affect on it, the benefits we get from fossil fuel outweigh the potential bad we could face.

I wouldn't listen to anything Al Gore says, he is just as much of a clown as Jim Inhofe. He said 10 years ago that there would be no more ice caps in 10 years. Well it's been 10 years and we still got em. I've seen people argue that there's less now, I've seen people argue there are more ice caps now, I'm not going to argue on that.

Humans have not overcrowded the Earth. You could put everyone in the state of Texas and give each family a house to live in. We have enough space.

Good videos by Prager U. Here's an actual atmospheric physicist explaining the reality of the debate and not some nameless youtuber. None of these people have been paid off by oil companies.

And here's Patrick Moore, PhD in ecology and cofounder of Greenpeace

Another video by Alex Epstein disproving the whole 97% of scientist claim you mentioned in my mess of a thread. I'm actually have his book but haven't read it yet. Source by David Henderson in the video

http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2014/02/david_friedman_14.html

I'm not arguing whether anthropomorphic climate change is true, I'm saying even if it is true, we get so much out of the fossil fuels that it is worth it. You can make all the environmental catastrophe predictions you want but the statistics show that humans, ever since the industrial revolution, have died less from starvation and weather. Sure we still get problems with droughts and hurricanes and flooding and none of that is ever going to go away, though you can make the argument it could become more common but the stats don't show that either. Environmental problems were deadlier in the past without energy to deliver people and supplies quickly in order that it doesn't cause it to lose more lives. Now that we have the energy from fossil fuels to deliver people and supplies quickly, sure hurricane Matthew is still a scary thought and it has killed many people mostly in Haiti, but imagine how many more people would have died if there was no fossil fuels.

Sandwich · October 2016

Deathmobs said:
Wait... wut? Why would sea levels rise? You do know that water EXPANDS when FROZEN and CONTRACTS in a LIQUID state... right? You know like when your pipes freeze in the winter. If all that ice at the poles suddenly melted we'd see a bit of a DROP in sea levels... not a rise.

Even if you somehow took the entire Greenland ice sheet, melted it and then moved it straight into the ocean you would only get maybe 10 or 20 feet worth of sea rise at max... but even that wouldn't happen because if it melted most of it would go into the GROUND and the rest would go up into the air and then get dumped all over the land... that's how we get the Sahara rain forest back.

Some 9,000 years ago it was WAY hotter than it is now... but the sea level was pretty well exactly the same as it is now (within about 5 to 10 feet).

Water levels actually would rise, not mainly because of melting ice, but because the increasing temperature causes water to expand, increasing the total volume.

And when we talk about scientists that don't support climate change, we have to recognize they are an extreme minority. When we've got the vast majority of the scientific community, upwards of 90%, I'm going to listen to what the majority of the experts say, especially when it makes perfect sense. You can find scientists saying that the Earth is flat, that evolution is a lie, and just about any other bundle of ignorance.

Saying that the reason climate change is supported so heavily is because of money is ridiculous. While it's true that scientists are not always truthful, and that they are not always right, does not mean it is not to be taken seriously. Scientists don't just pull statistics out of thin air. They do real research and experimentation, and fabricating evidence or lying about results is a huge mistake and will almost guaranteed end someone's career as a scientist.

Not to mention the fact that this idea of scientists only supporting global warming because of money makes this really ignorant assumption that funding doesn't go out to people who look for reasons to say global warming isn't happening.

But above all, there's little evidence to suggest that such a massive number of scientists are by large, fabricating evidence.
It's really not a sound argument at all.

I'd also like to add that fossil fuels are not the only source of energy humans can use, Arlong.

Arlong · October 2016

Watch the video I linked and read the article I linked about the whole "97% of scientists" thing. That claim came from John Cook, and David Henderson who is an economist debunked that claim using Cook's own data. Read my entire comment and watch the videos I linked. His claim of 97% of scientists makes severe incorrect assumptions about the scientific papers he drew from to make the 97% claim. He combined all papers that suggested human activity were one of several causes that contributed to global warming with the minority of papers (1.6%) that claimed human activity was the main cause. The true "extreme minority" is climate scientists that believe humans are the main cause of global warming. Nobody is denying cliamte change is happening, it is. But only a minority of climate scientists believe that humans are the main cause. I'm not the one against science here, you are.
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.ca/2014/02/a-climate-falsehood-you-can-check-for.html

I'm well aware there are other energy sources, I mentioned solar and nuclear in my comment. I have a brain, and I used to be pro green, pro wind and solar energy. I'm well aware that other sources of energy exist. I'm aware they produce energy but the problem is that it isn't enough. You could cover the entire planet with solar panels and you wouldn't have enough energy production to power everything we need.

Sandwich · October 2016

Arlong said:
Watch the video I linked and read the article I linked about the whole "97% of scientists" thing. That claim came from John Cook, and David Henderson who is an economist debunked that claim using Cook's own data. Read my entire comment and watch the videos I linked. His claim of 97% of scientists makes severe incorrect assumptions about the scientific papers he drew from to make the 97% claim. He combined all papers that suggested human activity were one of several causes that contributed to global warming with the minority of papers (1.6%) that claimed human activity was the main cause. The true "extreme minority" is climate scientists that believe humans are the main cause of global warming. Nobody is denying cliamte change is happening, it is. But only a minority of climate scientists believe that humans are the main cause
http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.ca/2014/02/a-climate-falsehood-you-can-check-for.html

I'm well aware there are other energy sources, I mentioned solar and nuclear in my comment. I have a brain, and I used to be pro green, pro wind and solar energy. I'm well aware that other sources of energy exist. I'm aware they produce energy but the problem is that it isn't enough. You could cover the entire planet with solar panels and you wouldn't have enough energy production to power everything we need.

I'm not too sure about that PragerU video, because looking around at their other videos they seem extremely biased towards conservatism... Thanks for the other ones though, they were pretty interesting.

Anyways, about John Cook. I've found a somewhat recent response (compared to the 2014 article you linked at least), about his paper and the accusations of falsehood thrown at him. He published a second one recently.

Cook said:

"The research paper you're referring to is our 2013 paper that looked at scientific papers on global warming:
http://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024024/meta
We didn't make any assumptions about what scientists thought - rather, we looked at their published words in the abstracts of their scientific papers. If the abstract stated a position on human-caused global warming, then we noted whether it endorsed or rejected it. We found that among the ~4000 abstracts stating a position, 97.1% endorsed human-caused global warming.
On top of that, we also wanted the scientists who authored those papers to speak for themselves so we sent out an invitation to the authors to categorise their own papers. 1200 scientists responded. Among papers self-rated as stating a position on human-caused global warming, 97.2% endorsed the consensus.
This is an important result - inviting the scientists who authored the papers to self-rate their papers provided an independent confirmation of the 97.1% consensus we obtained through rating the abstracts.
So the false accusation that we never consulted the authors is a misleading attempt to smear our research. Ironically, the blog post that made this accusation bases it on asking a handful of scientists (all known to reject the consensus) what they thought about our research and of course they expressed a dim view of our 97% consensus, given their existing beliefs. But the blogger only consulted with a handful of hand-picked contrarian scientists and failed to consult with the much broader community of scientists, while we canvassed the views of 1,200 scientists.
-- John Cook"

The argument against the 97% statistic rides on a fundamental misunderstanding of how the figure was obtained.

WillScarlet · October 2016

You know... I can understand people doubting religion as it cannot be proven... but people doubting a SCIENCE OF ALL THINGS?
WOW...
what is next claiming earth is flat and that Earth is actually center of universe and sun moves around the earth instead of earth moving around the sun?

LiquidMetal · October 2016

>Scientists are wrong and do it for the money
>Here watch this PragerU video to learn the truth

Jokes over. Thread closed.

Arlong · October 2016

Conservative does not equate to inaccurate. I saw your video you linked and "looking around at their other videos they seem extremely biased towards liberalism." I'm aware Prager is biased. The point is that you have to be willing to listen to other perspectives even if they disagree with you. Only a fool only looks at sources they already agree with and goes "well that proves it, I'm right" while rejecting anything by 'conservatives' on the basis that it is conservative. Every source is biased and every source is open to inaccuracies. It is equally foolish to only look at conservative sources and claim liberal sources are extremely biased and automatically rejecting it. It is more informational for you to look at things that disagree with you rather than only exposing yourself to things you already agree with,

Look closely at his wording. "among the ~4000 abstracts stating a position, 97.1% endorsed human-caused global warming." This excludes the papers that do not have a position, which are the majority 66.4%. Which means right off the bat the majority of scientists are excluded from the statistic because they did not state a position on the issue. That 97.2% is among the 33.6% that stated a position. So it's really more like 30% of scientists agree with the consensus. And that's just based on his words, there is nothing in that response that answers the distinction between humans action being the main cause and human action being a cause among several.

WillScarlet · October 2016

Deathmobs said:

WillScarlet said:
You know... I can understand people doubting religion as it cannot be proven... but people doubting a SCIENCE OF ALL THINGS?
WOW...
what is next claiming earth is flat and that Earth is actually center of universe and sun moves around the earth instead of earth moving around the sun?
Ironic, since believing that the earth was flat WAS actually considered to be "scientific fact" at one point in history... it was SKEPTICS who proved that notion wrong... not the sheeple minded followers.

and ironic is that you are using so-called "rotten scientists" works to explain it like here

We'll also be looking at more use of hydrogen, largely produced via solar pumped lasers and then incorporated into either inert hydrosilicate liquid/gel compounds or compressed into a super cooled, liquid hydrogen fuel, both for use in hydrogen fuel cells. Both of which are also very safe (no danger of potential explosion).

You should not be even using the word Hydregon if you distrust scientists ... how can you tell "hydrogen" is even a real and not some sort of "conspiracy" created by scientists... and scientists who came up with the term were "paid" to create the term hydrogen?

Sandwich · October 2016

Deathmobs said:

Incorrect, thermal expansion would be effectively canceled out by other factors/variables (largely evaporation). We're talking a collective temperature change of only around 5 degrees at most. To get any significant level of thermal expansion you'd be looking at having to increase the temperature by upwards of FIFTY degrees.

Again, you're already proven wrong by history. 9,000 years ago during the Holocene Climatic Optimum the world was not largely underwater, there was hardly ANY difference in the amount of land mass from that period of time, to this one.

And again, you're using that random label "scientists"... who, exactly, are you referring to? And what specific criteria are you using to gauge that label? I mean, take Bill Nye for example, one of the most overly vocal proponents for climate change hysteria... and yerhtet he only has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Cornell. On top of that though he has six HONORARY degrees... meaning he was just given titles/pieces of paper without putting in any actual level of effort or showing any level of actual skill, understanding, research, etc.

And, on the flip side, you could take me, I only have a B.S. in computer science... but collectively, amongst six different colleges I have enough credits to make almost any degree I like. You can do that you know. You can get a bunch of extra degrees often by just taking a quarter or two worth of classes on top of your regular load.

It's certainly NOT ridiculous either to say that climate change hysteria is driven largely by money... I mean that's like purposefully ignoring the multi-BILLION dollar sized ELEPHANT in the room. You don't start throwing around BILLIONS of dollars and then claim that they're not having an outward influence on whatever they're being directed at. You can't possibly be THAT naïve and ignorant.

It really is correct. Water levels will rise. They have been rising and are still rising now. The evidence doesn't back up your claims that thermal expansion is canceled out.
http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-sea-level-rise/
Just read it.

And in case you missed what I said about the Holocene Climatic Optimum, it really is hardly relevant to today because it was caused by orbital forcing. There is evidence to say that if we lived under the same conditions today it would be hotter than it was at that time.

I don't know where you're getting this idea that anyone can do a little experiment and call themselves a scientist. That's not how it works. Scientists go through complicated processes to put credible work out there into the scientific community, and people who fail to meet the standards won't be taken seriously. It takes a lot of evidence, explanation, and hard work for someone to actually be a scientist.

WillScarlet · October 2016

Sandwich said:

Deathmobs said:

Incorrect, thermal expansion would be effectively canceled out by other factors/variables (largely evaporation). We're talking a collective temperature change of only around 5 degrees at most. To get any significant level of thermal expansion you'd be looking at having to increase the temperature by upwards of FIFTY degrees.

Again, you're already proven wrong by history. 9,000 years ago during the Holocene Climatic Optimum the world was not largely underwater, there was hardly ANY difference in the amount of land mass from that period of time, to this one.

And again, you're using that random label "scientists"... who, exactly, are you referring to? And what specific criteria are you using to gauge that label? I mean, take Bill Nye for example, one of the most overly vocal proponents for climate change hysteria... and yerhtet he only has a B.S. in mechanical engineering from Cornell. On top of that though he has six HONORARY degrees... meaning he was just given titles/pieces of paper without putting in any actual level of effort or showing any level of actual skill, understanding, research, etc.

And, on the flip side, you could take me, I only have a B.S. in computer science... but collectively, amongst six different colleges I have enough credits to make almost any degree I like. You can do that you know. You can get a bunch of extra degrees often by just taking a quarter or two worth of classes on top of your regular load.

It's certainly NOT ridiculous either to say that climate change hysteria is driven largely by money... I mean that's like purposefully ignoring the multi-BILLION dollar sized ELEPHANT in the room. You don't start throwing around BILLIONS of dollars and then claim that they're not having an outward influence on whatever they're being directed at. You can't possibly be THAT naïve and ignorant.
It really is correct. Water levels will rise. They have been rising and are still rising now. The evidence doesn't back up your claims that thermal expansion is canceled out.
http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/critical-issues-sea-level-rise/
Just read it.

And in case you missed what I said about the Holocene Climatic Optimum, it really is hardly relevant to today because it was caused by orbital forcing. There is evidence to say that if we lived under the same conditions today it would be hotter than it was at that time.

I don't know where you're getting this idea that anyone can do a little experiment and call themselves a scientist. That's not how it works. Scientists go through complicated processes to put credible work out there into the scientific community, and people who fail to meet the standards won't be taken seriously. It takes a lot of evidence, explanation, and hard work for someone to actually be a scientist.

Not to mention that scientific community is constantly changing and evolving... to fit with new findings everyday AND they debate each other on their findings...
also nearly every credible Scientists go through education in universities and earn many degrees, Masters and Phds to be called crediable scientists... only a fool do not trust the findings from Phd scientists...

Sandwich · October 2016

Arlong said:
Conservative does not equate to inaccurate. I saw your video you linked and "looking around at their other videos they seem extremely biased towards liberalism." I'm aware Prager is biased. The point is that you have to be willing to listen to other perspectives even if they disagree with you. Only a fool only looks at sources they already agree with and goes "well that proves it, I'm right" while rejecting anything by 'conservatives' on the basis that it is conservative. Every source is biased and every source is open to inaccuracies. It is equally foolish to only look at conservative sources and claim liberal sources are extremely biased and automatically rejecting it. It is more informational for you to look at things that disagree with you rather than only exposing yourself to things you already agree with,

Look closely at his wording. "among the ~4000 abstracts stating a position, 97.1% endorsed human-caused global warming." This excludes the papers that do not have a position, which are the majority 66.4%. Which means right off the bat the majority of scientists are excluded from the statistic because they did not state a position on the issue. That 97.2% is among the 33.6% that stated a position. So it's really more like 30% of scientists agree with the consensus. And that's just based on his words, there is nothing in that response that answers the distinction between humans action being the main cause and human action being a cause among several.

I still looked through your sources. I wouldn't be discussing this with you if I wasn't interested in hearing the other side.

And of course it excludes the papers that don't have an opinion. The stat comes from the percentage of those who had an opinion on climate change based on those who stated a position on it. He didn't assume anyone's position.

WillScarlet · October 2016

Deathmobs said:
Oh, also, history has proven you wrong time and time again on the money front. Like back in the 90s with the "cold fusion" hysteria... nearly EVERY so called "scientist", at the time, was claiming it was definitely possible, absolutely no question, they were GOING to make it work... with billions upon billions of dollars being collectively shelled out into a kind of pseudo energy arms race amongst various nations (primarily China, India and the US).

It took said governments nearly TEN YEARS to figure it out that they were being bamboozled and, sho'nuff, the very second all those billions of dollars dried up those VERY SAME scientists all suddenly changed their tune, with every last one of them claiming it was impossible and was never even a possibility to begin with.

You ask ANY so called scientist right now if cold fusion energy is possible and you'll likely get laughed out of the room... but not even two decades ago EVERY scientist on the planet was claiming it was GOING to work, that it was a SURE THING.

you know that Scientists are humans right? did you expect them to get it right 100% of times? They make mistakes... BUT they are willing to learn from that mistakes and add it to their knowledge.
they adapt to ever changing world and they learn. STOP DISTRUSTING PEOPLE WHO HAVE STUDIED AND HAVE QUALIFICATIONS!
That is like not trusting doctors to do your surgery just because some doctors are crooks.

Sandwich · October 2016

Deathmobs said:
Oh, also, history has proven you wrong time and time again on the money front. Like back in the 90s with the "cold fusion" hysteria... nearly EVERY so called "scientist", at the time, was claiming it was definitely possible, absolutely no question, they were GOING to make it work... with billions upon billions of dollars being collectively shelled out into a kind of pseudo energy arms race amongst various nations (primarily China, India and the US).

It took said governments nearly TEN YEARS to figure it out that they were being bamboozled and, sho'nuff, the very second all those billions of dollars dried up those VERY SAME scientists all suddenly changed their tune, with every last one of them claiming it was impossible and was never even a possibility to begin with.

You ask ANY so called scientist right now if cold fusion energy is possible and you'll likely get laughed out of the room... but not even two decades ago EVERY scientist on the planet was claiming it was GOING to work, that it was a SURE THING.

You're drastically overstating this cold fusion thing.
https://www.asme.org/engineering-topics/articles/nuclear/cold-fusion-25-years-later

Scientists discover source of clean, unlimited energy! In March 1989, the news rocked the world. Two respected chemists from the University of Utah: Martin Fleischmann and Stanley Pons, told a receptive media they had solved the biggest physics problem of the atomic age. Their compelling claims of room-temperature nuclear fusion in a jar were cast as the solution to the world’s colliding environmental and energy crises.

The meltdown hit just weeks later when the claim was nuked by mainstream scientists who couldn’t reproduce their results and were unsatisfied with the team’s explanations. The cold fusion field has been on ice ever since. Whether considered a scandal, a screw-up, or a scientific character assassination by hot fusion advocates, the cold fusion episode is a case study for those who caution against the “science of wishful thinking.”

It only took weeks for the scientific community to shoot it down when the results couldn't be reproduced, and the team originally touting the idea was unable to provide suitable explanation.

WillScarlet · October 2016

seriously people like deathmob is NOT doing conservatives any favour... they just make other conservatives look like distrusting jackass who will not trust any info unless they can see it with their own eyes... I will bet they don't trust even university professors.

Arlong · October 2016

And only a fool places 100% trust in anything and everything a scientist says. The scientific method is not about finding evidence that supports your claim. The idea of the scientific process is to try and disprove your claim so that the only other possibility is that your claim is right. If your claim is that all swans are white then you don't go about proving it by finding a bunch of white swan and go "there, see." You go about it by trying to find any other color swans that would contradict your claim. The same goes anthropomorphic climate change or anything else. It is unscientific to go "well every scientist agrees with me, that means I must be right." You don't need a fancy degree to be a scientist. A scientist is merely someone that follows the scientific method. So long as you use the method, for whatever it may be, you are being a scientist.

Your entire argument is predicated on the the illusion that the majority of scientists agree with you. You even said it, the stat comes from the percentage of those who expressed an opinion. But the majority of scientists did not state a position, so that majority group is not represented. So to say that 97% of scientists agree with man-made climate change is false because not every scientist was equally taken into consideration, only those that expressed an opinion which are the minority. And again, it still didn't make the distinction between humans being the main cause and humans being a cause. I would love to hear from the ones who says that humans are not the main or even a cause. Don't you think that's more interesting and informational than hearing that humans are the main cause which you've already heard a thousand times? I don't even have to rely on the appeal to popularity fallacy for this.

Climate Change

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