An Old Report which is Nonetheless Instructive
In 1978, the Office of Consumer Education commissioned a report to find out exactly how advertising and marketing were affecting US society. The result was a study entitled Impact of Advertising: Implications for Consumer Education by Zena Cook et al, and the report was interesting because of what it found but also because of how it framed the discussion in terms of “consumer sovereignty,” which is the right of consumers to have their wants and needs respected by the market. The intention was, in fitting with the economic theory of supply and demand, that consumer needs and wants would determine what the market produced, instead of the other way around. Implicit in this idea, as a theme running through the report, is that consumers need to be accurately informed about the choices confronting them. The study’s authors note frankly, “Consumers are today faced with a very serious information problem: obtaining and understanding reliable information about the great multitude of commodities and services they consume is, at best, difficult and, at worst, impossible” (12). They note the problems of information deficiency (when people are uninformed) and commercial misinformation (when people are misinformed), and state that, “As advertising replaces useful information with non-informational elements, the processing of factual information is delayed and often ignored” (13). They worry that, “The intellectual foundation of the ‘free enterprise’ or market system depends on freedom from influence over consumer preferences and choice, and advertising to create ever greater markets tends to destroy that freedom” (17). Finally, while trying to spare you a lecture on economics, I will note that they suggested that increased advertising would cause us to save less and buy goods more, while at the same time causing a decrease in spending for the public good, such as parks, schools, and libraries. The report goes into a level of macroeconomic detail that we don’t need to go into here; however, it establishes the difference between unbiased public information and information (or misinformation) that is meant to influence you to buy something or, perhaps, to buy INTO something.
But what does this have to do with information literacy?
For starters, they recommend that consumers, ie. YOU, need to be better informed about your purchases, and they suggest that you evaluate advertising and marketing materials using unbiased sources such as product-rating periodicals, libraries, public consumer agencies, Public Broadcasting Company, and National Public Radio. Then, the authors apply their research more broadly to suggest that, “Our choice is not a zero sum choice, but it does involve questions of priorities, the understanding of which we have to grasp in order to make educated choices about the future” (44). In other words, inasmuch as information literacy is a key component of making informed decisions for yourself and of being a cognizant participant in a democratic society, understanding the prevalence and effects of advertising is important.
A Question of Focus
Many years ago I dated a woman who had a four-year-old son who was smart, gentle, and all-around wonderful. We took him to the Illinois State Fair, and we eventually found our way to the FFA (Future Farmers of America) petting zoo. All proceeded normally until we reached the end, where a shorn lamb had been marked up and labeled into his cuts of meat. The boy fed the lamb, who licked his hand. He petted his head and asked, “Why did they color him like that?”
How to explain? Well, we didn’t, which might have been a failure of parenting, but one rarely expects to see a transgression that confuses our compartmentalization like that: animals are our friends, except for the ones we eat. When we are forced to simultaneously confront this dichotomy, it causes the uncomfortable feeling of cognitive dissonance. Sticking with this example, here are some tricks that advertisers use to misdirect your attention from one idea to another, thus helping maintain this tidy compartmentalization:
Interestingly, the video itself is a bit of sleight of hand, as the presenter is not actually a marketing consultant but an actress, and it is clear that the video is meant to convince you that factory farming is cruel. Regardless of its slant, it makes some interesting points about how things are sold to us in a way that minimizes our discomfort.
Going back to the notion of public information, as a culture, we sort of expect to be manipulated by advertisers, and we put our guard up when the ads play. Yet we feel safe while watching the news or reading the newspapers because those places are not supposed to be trying to sell us something. But the same forces that shape the messages of our marketing also subsidize and support the places where we go to get our information. Consider that the main newspaper in Memphis, where I lived for a while, is called The Commercial Appeal. I saw Ralph Nader speak there once and he got the biggest kick out of that. He said something like, “They aren’t even trying to hide it anymore!” He meant that their purpose was to sell advertisements, not to inform the public.
This concept of public spaces is handily explained in Consumer Resistance in a World of Advertising Clutter: The Case of Adbusters by Joseph D. Rumbo. J. Habermas states that, “The public sphere is a hypothetical non-governmental arena where private citizens can meet to engage in rational discourse designed to reach a consensus over issues of mutal importance….” (as cited in Rumbo 128). That is, in a society there is supposed to be a free exchange of ideas—even those that are critical of the status quo. However, Rumbo laments that, “Extending to envelop public space (e.g. sites of consumption) and discursive space (e.g. mass media and fora for social and political debate), advertising is the main propagandist for the pervasive logic of consumerism” (128). This is a pretty serious charge: that the national discourse is essentially corrupted by the agents of hyper-consumerism. But I am not sure that it is entirely unwarranted a charge.
The effect is a pervasive thread in our culture that is pro-industry and pro-business. While there is nothing wrong with industry and business, if those forces do not work for the benefit of humanity, overall, then their modus operandi might need to be investigated. However, and here is the crux, that kind of scrutiny is indeed very difficult if those very same interests have been allowed to define the parameters of the discussion. By allowing for such aggressive and truth-averse marketing and advertising, that is exactly what we have conceded. Because, as Cook et al suggest, the message has impacts beyond which soda you buy at the grocery store. It seems to seep into broader culture, coloring the presentation of information supposedly in the public sphere. Here is a wonderful example I stumbled upon at the Museum of Science and Industry, which my kids and I love, but which in some ways uncritically accepts the messages of industry. Thinking about the video on advertising that we watched above, consider the wording of the following placard:
Hog Heaven. A pleasing place for hogs, and truthfully, a gentle reminder of where they are headed when we turn them into sausage.
Note how the language makes it seem like we are nothing more than benevolent caretakers of the animals. We offer them food and nutrition, and despite visual evidence to the contrary, plenty of sunshine, exercise, and strolls down to the creek to drink fresh water. We also protect them from predators…except us. Because bacon.
Conspicuously absent from the discussion is how many pounds of vegetable matter it takes to make one pound of animal matter, how much forest has been clear cut to support cattle for food, how the overuse of antibiotics is creating drug-resistant strains of diseases that could pose a nightmare for humanity, or, you know, how keeping animals in solitary confinement is sort of inhumane. In other words, the focus of the placard makes this read more like an advertisement than a museum exhibit meant to disclose important information.
For the sake of full disclosure, I will say that I have no particular agenda regarding vegetarianism or veganism. I am from Texas, and we ate meat 3 meals a day, 21 times a week, 1095 times a year. And then we had beef jerky for between-meal snacks. Now I eat meat much more moderately, mostly because of the meat industries’ deleterious effect on the environment, but also because it makes me feel like a jerk to kill an animal just because I am hungry. But my point is not to make you think about how you eat; my point is that if they can do this with food, they can do it with anything.
Environmental activist David Suzuki states in a 2013 speech at Power Shift that the environmental movement of the 1960s was ultimately a failure because it did not fundamentally change our conception about the relationship between human and planet. I admire his passion as much as I shudder at his naivete, because I think that is an unrealistic goal. Cultural anthropologist Marvin Harris suggested in his 1979 Cultural Materialism: The Struggle for a Science of Culture, that, of the many things a culture can argue about, the one thing that is off limits is its means of sustenance. If my society depends on whaling for its food, its economy, for its heating oil, and everything else, you better believe that my society will find a way not to discuss the killing-too-many-whales problem. In other words, it is hard to get people to realize that they need to protect the environment when their economic livelihood depends on not protecting the environment. I would expand on his premise to say that if we depend on the products of industry for our sense of prestige, for our sense of comfort, for our sense of purpose, then it is not surprising to see that we are willfully blind to the impact our decisions have. How many of us really want to own up to who makes our smart phones, what they get paid, and what their working conditions look like?
Marketers, of course, understand this, and as you saw above, count on our participation in the deception. There was a very effective marketing campaign in the 60s and 70s meant to confuse us about the correlation between smoking and cancer. The exact same playbook is being followed today to deny the link between burning fossil fuels and the warming planet. We have a powerful economic and cultural motivation to not see this link, though it is in our best interests to try to see the messaging with clear eyes.
Here is the exact same concept from Exxon-Mobil
Perhaps a quick Google search for Exxon safety record is in order. Using dates, concepts, and keywords you turn up via Google, look in the databases to see what kind of credible sources you can find that call into question the image they try to portray in the commercial.
Here is Chevron, calling for responsible shale-gas
Search in the databases for shale gas or fracking and environmental impact.
Have a Laugh:
This video is excellent at pointing out how images and sounds are meant to stir emotions and positive feelings that might not be entirely deserved.
But the issue is not just what the ads say and don’t say (or how they say it or don’t say it), it is how pervasive they are that gives them power to shape public discourse. Derren Brown, a British illusionist, wanted to show the influence that image placement and advertising can exert on people:
Some people have suggested that this video is about subliminal advertising. In fact, Mr. Brown refers to “subliminal persuasion” in the video. Between the 1960s and 1990s, there was quite a bit of hubbub in advertising, marketing, and psychology journals about this phenomenon. But Sheri J. Broyles’s Subliminal Advertising and the Perpetual Popularity of Playing to People’s Paranoia reviews 50 years of research on subliminal advertising and finds that, “No research has shown an effect that changed attitudes or impacted purchasing behavior.” Yet, people are obviously consciously suggestible, and advertisers work constantly to influence our behaviors, both in the private and public sphere of discourse. For instance, the media planning agency PHD did a study to find the dates, times and occasions when U.S. women feel their least attractive. The purpose?
The quantitative survey of women 18+ across the U.S was designed to identify when women feel most vulnerable about their appearance throughout the week in order to determine the best timing for beauty product messages and promotions. ‘Identifying the right time to engage with consumers with the right message is Marketing 101,’ says Kim Bates, who heads Brand Planning at PHD, ‘but when you are trying to connect with women on so personal an issue as appearance, it can be even more important to understand the wrong time as well.’
In other words, marketers are actively seeking to find when you are most vulnerable to suggestion and promotion. That may seem like a no-brainer, but what if they went even further and manipulated you into feeling vulnerable, and then marketed to you? You would have something like the experiment carried out by Facebook in which some 680,000+ users were unknowingly subject to having their newsfeeds tweaked to see if an emotional response could be garnered. In fact, it could be. The study found that when they manipulated which friend’s posts appeared on a user’s timeline that it had an affect on the kind of posts the user made. That is, if they decrease positive updates and posts and increase negative ones, the user’s posts will begin to reflect the tenor of the friends’s posts. They also found that the opposite was true: if they show you all your friends’ positive posts, you will feel better.
That’s really creepy.
Because despite the internet’s early promise of heightened discourse and freedom, it seems to have become another commercial space in which the influence of marketers and advertisements colors the discussion. These are potent forces in the world of information. Increasingly, there seems to be little public space for information, reflection, and discourse that is not somehow party to the messages of marketing forces. Indeed, when the messages of one side of a political or social debate are so interwoven into the fabric of a society, both in the private sphere or marketing and advertising, and the public sphere of discourse, it becomes increasingly difficult to evaluate information for credibility and bias.
UnofficialFactChecker 
Reblogged this on The Harold Lounge and commented:
Light reading on public and private discourse and the difficulty of determining bias when one’s job or lifestyle dictates that s/he not determine bias.
I was hoping to read an article that was scientifically based, reasoned from empirical fact, and followed with sound conclusions.
Yet again we see the pollution of discourse by ideology. Except this is a perfect case of the ideology of liberalism, environmentalism, and global warming run amok. The author questions the fossil fuel industry and the advertising industry while making the untenable assumption that the environmentalists, the global warming alarmists, and liberals in general are in fact correct about everything by default.
As someone who pursued graduate degrees and was successful at it, this type of one-sided ideological tripe disgusts me at a level I can’t even express. Science it is not, good research it is not, and no valid conclusions whatsoever can come out of it except the author shows a very high degree of unacknowledged bias. Ironic since he complains bitterly about it otherwise.
Environmentalists, global warming alarmists, and liberals in general fall prey to what has been called post modern thinking. This is characterized by the denial of empirical fact in favor of viewing reality as your ideology would dictate. This fault in reasoning goes far deeper than I shall discuss in this short reply. However pieces are starting to appear that discuss this very thing and one would be well advised to make it required reading
Let’s examine what this means. Global warming is the perfect postmodern bogeyman. It assumes human activity as the total cause for the change in climate.
One of the first things trotted out in support of anthropomorphic global warming is the supposed fact that 97% of scientists are in consensus. This is is a farce. Science does not operate by consensus – science operates by creating theories, gathering data, and then testing that theory. You will not hear that language used by any alarmist when debating AGW.
Why? Because it subjects the ideology of climate change, global warming, AGW, or whatever it’s called today to possible falsification or invalidation of the theory.
Let’s get back to that 97% consensus. It was created by a small study this supposedly looked at nearly 12,000 abstracts of published papers. I leave you with a quote from the abstract of the Cooke paper that supposedly found the consensus: “We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”
As one can clearly see, the study has been misquoted widely in support of AGW. When in reality 97.1% of 32.6% of the 11,944 under examination expressed consensus.
Let us say that another way; calculate out the percentage out and the number is 3780 expressed consensus out of the 11,944 stated in the abstract. So we see a clear pattern of lying if not fraud about this number. Because it’s quoted 97% of the scientists are in consensus. I stated before consensus is irrelevant but here we don’t even have a consensus. I leave it to the reader to look up the meaning of consensus.
Next we have the empirical fact that for nearly 20 years now there has been no warming. This in itself invalidates the complex models used by the global warming alarmists. Basic science dictates yet again–empirical data invalidates the models.
Yet global warming alarmists now say 50 years out our predictions will be right. This is so laughable to one educated in statistical forecasting it’s just beyond belief.
Statistical forecasting is one of those disciplines in which you can do your best to forecast and one single intervening variable can crash your whole prediction scheme. A perfect ongoing example is the continued predictions of stock market performance. How many times have we seen people in all confidence tell us it the stock market will continue to rise and it crashes.
On top of this IPCC uses forecasting principles 89 times and then proceeds to violate 71 of the forecasting principles to arrive at the answer they want – catastrophic anthropomorphic global warming. This is not science; it is pure opinion masquerading as science. One cannot purport to use forecasting principles and then ignore them.
A scholarly paper that examines IPCC’s forecasting. http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st308
Last but not least is Is the bogeyman of CO2. The assumption is is that it’s a poison, a pollutant, and man’s contribution must be stamped out forthwith by any means possible at any and all cost.
Let’s examine that assertion. What percentage of CO2 generated in the biosphere does man generate? I searched widely and it seems to be right around 29 Gt. While the biosphere’s total yearly production of CO2 is 795 Gt as of 2013.
Calculate this out and you come up with man’s contribution as approximately 3.8%. So what the alarmists are arguing is that man’s 3.8% causes the whole effect of climate change. On the face of it this argument is simply ludicrous. Furthermore the CO2 man generates is chemically indistinguishable from that which nature generates. It’s the same process one item of carbon is combined with two atoms of oxygen and the yield is carbon dioxide.
One of the rules in statistical analysis or regression theory if you wish to call it that is that a small percentage of it independent variable variation cannot be responsible for 100% of the variation in the dependent variable.
Furthermore when you have a model that has literally hundreds of independent variables, unknown interaction among those variables, and untenable assumptions built into the model you absolutely will find the wrong answer every time.
A basic rule in modeling is that once your number of independent variables exceeds about ten, your model is so lacking in validity that it is impossible to depend upon it for much of anything except the fact that you ran a regression. In other words, a decreasing amount of variation of the dependent variable is attributable to the independent variables you can measure.
Finally, let’s talk about CO2 as a pollutant. First and foremost it’s not. It’s an alarmist label put on a very small percentage of gas in the atmosphere that actually fuels the plant cycle that creates the oxygen we breathe and the food we eat.
Satellite imaging (empirical fact yet again) shows the globe greening from this very small percentage of CO2 increase. There are scholarly articles that note the extra tonnage of yields created by this extra plant food in the atmosphere.
Nowhere in the alarmist literature or the alarmist debate is the acknowledgment that atmosphere is a dynamic open system and the measure of CO2 varies all the time. A perfect example of this is one can enter a room, exhale and triple or quadruple the measure of CO2 in that room. Measurement of CO2 is a fundamental problem that has yet to be worked out in a manner that tracks the dynamic nature of the atmosphere.
I wrote this expecting the author of the piece I replied to would respond and attack on the grounds that I was a denialist.
If he does so the simple labeling casts serious doubt on global warming as a tenable theory. I challenge the author to refute on the basis of the empirical facts put forth rather than upon opinion, consensus, or anything else that does not resemble science.
Mr Easterling,
Thanks for stopping by to voice your concerns. As you have raised numerous points, please allow me to address them one by one instead of holistically. Please see my responses in bold.
I was hoping to read an article that was scientifically based, reasoned from empirical fact, and followed with sound conclusions.
Yet again we see the pollution of discourse by ideology. Except this is a perfect case of the ideology of liberalism, environmentalism, and global warming run amok. The author questions the fossil fuel industry and the advertising industry while making the untenable assumption that the environmentalists, the global warming alarmists, and liberals in general are in fact correct about everything by default.
This is an interesting opening salvo. You criticize me for being polluted by ideology and hold yourself up as an example of reason and fact. You try to establish a firm footing for the rest of your argument. Let’s see how it holds up!
As someone who pursued graduate degrees and was successful at it, this type of one-sided ideological tripe disgusts me at a level I can’t even express.
You try to establish your credibility here by asserting that you have completed advanced degrees, yet you do not say in what. Are you a scientist? Is your degree in a relevant field? How much time have you spent studying the relevant materials? I am not sure if I can really accept this as a testament to your credibility as you provide no real support.
Science it is not, good research it is not, and no valid conclusions whatsoever can come out of it except the author shows a very high degree of unacknowledged bias. Ironic since he complains bitterly about it otherwise.
I have acknowledged my bias elsewhere in my blog, and since you seem to be responding to global warming and not marketing and the public sphere, I am guessing you read some other post on my blog and meant to respond there.
Environmentalists, global warming alarmists, and liberals in general fall prey to what has been called post modern thinking. This is characterized by the denial of empirical fact in favor of viewing reality as your ideology would dictate. This fault in reasoning goes far deeper than I shall discuss in this short reply. However pieces are starting to appear that discuss this very thing and one would be well advised to make it required reading
Post-modernism, at least in literaure and art, does indeed place primary value on individual experience. You suggest that environmentalists and liberals take it even furher than that and simply deny reality in favor of their worldviews. Thus, your argument MUST be that the majority of the evidence about AGW supports your view that it is either not happening or that it is happening through natural means, and that anyone who thinks global warming is driven by man’s activities is a bitter-ender whose beliefs are so far out of whack with the science and evidence that they are clearly delusional. In a nutshell, you assert that empirical fact is entirely on your side. Let’s see how that claim holds up to scrutiny!
Let’s examine what this means. Global warming is the perfect postmodern bogeyman. It assumes human activity as the total cause for the change in climate.
Actually, no. This is a bit of a strawman. Scientists recognize that the earth gets its heat energy from the sun; however, it is established fact that CO2 prevents heat radiation from escaping out into space. The more CO2 we add to the atmosphere, the more heat we trap. Thus the global temperature increases. CO2 is not a bogeyman, as you say, it is a gas with certain properties.
One of the first things trotted out in support of anthropomorphic global warming is the supposed fact that 97% of scientists are in consensus. This is is a farce. Science does not operate by consensus – science operates by creating theories, gathering data, and then testing that theory. You will not hear that language used by any alarmist when debating AGW.
Your analysis here is a little faulty. No one is stating that science operates by consensus. Scientists have created theories, gathered data, tested their findings, and that process has led most scientists who are active in the field to draw the same conclusions about humanity’s effect on global temperature. That is to say that the findings point toward a consensus, not the other way around. To suggest the opposite is a drastic misunderstanding of the scientific method.
Why? Because it subjects the ideology of climate change, global warming, AGW, or whatever it’s called today to possible falsification or invalidation of the theory.
You are blurring the issue by throwing these different terms around, as if implying that the science behind it is fickle; however, regardless of what you call it, there is a roughly 200 year history of the study of climate science, all of it pointing us in the direction we are now headed. It is a nice rhetorical trick, but playing semantics with the terminology is a distraction whether than a clarification.
Let’s get back to that 97% consensus. It was created by a small study this supposedly looked at nearly 12,000 abstracts of published papers. I leave you with a quote from the abstract of the Cooke paper that supposedly found the consensus: “We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics ‘global climate change’ or ‘global warming’. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming.”
As one can clearly see, the study has been misquoted widely in support of AGW. When in reality 97.1% of 32.6% of the 11,944 under examination expressed consensus.
Let us say that another way; calculate out the percentage out and the number is 3780 expressed consensus out of the 11,944 stated in the abstract. So we see a clear pattern of lying if not fraud about this number. Because it’s quoted 97% of the scientists are in consensus. I stated before consensus is irrelevant but here we don’t even have a consensus. I leave it to the reader to look up the meaning of consensus.
They were quite clear that of the 4000 or so papers that expressed a judgment on the causes of global warming, 97% of them found the same cause: human activity. The other 8000 papers did not take a position on the matter. (ie., that was not what the papers were about). They looked through 12000 papers that mentioned global warming or climate change, not 12000 papers that tried to determine its cause. They were quite clear about that. What you seem to be attacking, then, is that they said they looked at 12,000 papers, in the first place. Would you be more sanguine had they written, “We looked at 4000 papers that ascribed a cause to global warming and found that 97% of them recognized humanity as the driving force?” If you still find fault with their methods, you might look into James Powell who found that of the 13,950 articles written about global warming between 1991 and 2012, only 24 rejected humnanity as the cause of global warming or offered some other driver of the temperature change.
For other studies that might be more convincing to you than Cooke’s, I recommend Anderegg’s “Expert Credibility in Climate Change,” Doran and Zimmerman’s “Examining the Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” and Oreskes, “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” all of which found similar results. My question now is who exactly is the one clinging to his worldview despite the facts? It certainly doesn’t look like the majority of the evidence supports your position.
Next we have the empirical fact that for nearly 20 years now there has been no warming. This in itself invalidates the complex models used by the global warming alarmists. Basic science dictates yet again–empirical data invalidates the models.
You are getting the 20 year figure from Christopher Monckton who is not exactly an impartial voice in this discussion. Here is the chart that he created: http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/10/14/article-2217286-157E3ADF000005DC-561_644x358.jpg and here is a chart that shows a much larger time frame: http://www.skepticalscience.com/pics/SkepticsvRealistsv3.gif It is pretty obvious that he selectively chose a small section of a much larger graph to try to draw a conclusion that supported his position.
Yet global warming alarmists now say 50 years out our predictions will be right. This is so laughable to one educated in statistical forecasting it’s just beyond belief.
Statistical forecasting is one of those disciplines in which you can do your best to forecast and one single intervening variable can crash your whole prediction scheme. A perfect ongoing example is the continued predictions of stock market performance. How many times have we seen people in all confidence tell us it the stock market will continue to rise and it crashes.
This is an apples and oranges comparison. But what reason do you have for thinking that temperature will decrease or stabilize? So far it seems that you don’t think temperature has increased, which is at odds with almost every scientific body in the world.
On top of this IPCC uses forecasting principles 89 times and then proceeds to violate 71 of the forecasting principles to arrive at the answer they want – catastrophic anthropomorphic global warming. This is not science; it is pure opinion masquerading as science. One cannot purport to use forecasting principles and then ignore them.
A scholarly paper that examines IPCC’s forecasting. http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st308
The NCPA has a well known libertarian bias, and confirming my suspicion, the language is meant to convince me of something, not to merely report the facts. Likewise, the tricks used to convince me are a bit cliché by now: For instance, the article begins with three predictions that appeared in the New York Times, not in peer-reviewed journals.
Last but not least is Is the bogeyman of CO2. The assumption is is that it’s a poison, a pollutant, and man’s contribution must be stamped out forthwith by any means possible at any and all cost.
Let’s examine that assertion. What percentage of CO2 generated in the biosphere does man generate? I searched widely and it seems to be right around 29 Gt. While the biosphere’s total yearly production of CO2 is 795 Gt as of 2013.
Calculate this out and you come up with man’s contribution as approximately 3.8%. So what the alarmists are arguing is that man’s 3.8% causes the whole effect of climate change. On the face of it this argument is simply ludicrous. Furthermore the CO2 man generates is chemically indistinguishable from that which nature generates. It’s the same process one item of carbon is combined with two atoms of oxygen and the yield is carbon dioxide.
Natural output was previously absorbed by natural sinks. CO2 above and beyond what the planet produces and what it can absorb is what is at issue here. About 40% of humanity’s CO2 is absorbed by various natural sinks, including the ocean and vegetation. The remainder of that amount is causing the problem by staying in the atmosphere.
One of the rules in statistical analysis or regression theory if you wish to call it that is that a small percentage of it independent variable variation cannot be responsible for 100% of the variation in the dependent variable.
Furthermore when you have a model that has literally hundreds of independent variables, unknown interaction among those variables, and untenable assumptions built into the model you absolutely will find the wrong answer every time.
A basic rule in modeling is that once your number of independent variables exceeds about ten, your model is so lacking in validity that it is impossible to depend upon it for much of anything except the fact that you ran a regression. In other words, a decreasing amount of variation of the dependent variable is attributable to the independent variables you can measure.
There are many chains of empirical evidence that prove AGW. It would be silly to make something up, build a model, and then base all future decisions on that model. The models are tested rigorously via hindcasting, and the ones that are used (because not all models pass muster) are very accurate. But beyond that, because as you say, there are many unknown inputs, empirical evidence is also gathered. The most important piece of the puzzle is that energy being trapped in the atmosphere corresponds exactly to the wavelengths of energy captured by CO2.
Finally, let’s talk about CO2 as a pollutant. First and foremost it’s not. It’s an alarmist label put on a very small percentage of gas in the atmosphere that actually fuels the plant cycle that creates the oxygen we breathe and the food we eat.
Satellite imaging (empirical fact yet again) shows the globe greening from this very small percentage of CO2 increase. There are scholarly articles that note the extra tonnage of yields created by this extra plant food in the atmosphere.
I will let Skeptical Science handle this one: http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-plant-food.htm
Nowhere in the alarmist literature or the alarmist debate is the acknowledgment that atmosphere is a dynamic open system and the measure of CO2 varies all the time. A perfect example of this is one can enter a room, exhale and triple or quadruple the measure of CO2 in that room. Measurement of CO2 is a fundamental problem that has yet to be worked out in a manner that tracks the dynamic nature of the atmosphere.
You say that the earth is an open system, but I am unaware of a mechanism by which CO2 can escape our atmosphere and float off into space. The carbon cycle relocates CO2 but never actually flushes it from the system.
I wrote this expecting the author of the piece I replied to would respond and attack on the grounds that I was a denialist.
If he does so the simple labeling casts serious doubt on global warming as a tenable theory. I challenge the author to refute on the basis of the empirical facts put forth rather than upon opinion, consensus, or anything else that does not resemble science.
Thanks for stopping by. I have enjoyed revisiting these arguments. I don’t expect you to change your mind about any of this, but I thought it only respectful to respond to your lengthy post.
I quite enjoyed reading your ripostes to my arguments. As I predicted nothing in anything you said is empirically based in fact and does not invalidate anything I asserted.
Your responses are riddled with fundamental intellectual errors, appeals to authority, and supposedly quoting someone that the alarmists don’t like.
Monckton actually is a better climate scientist than Gore, Hansen, Michael Mann, and most of the rest who deal in consensus rolled together.
Give me bit of time and I’m going to take each of your points and make the points I wish that enlarge upon the general that I’ve laid out in this short response.
I don’t have to refute anything you say, a new peer reviewed article decimates the agw lie and substantiates the points I originally made.
http://phys.org/news/2015-01-peer-reviewed-pocket-calculator-climate-exposes-errors.html
Among the errors of the complex climate models that the simple model exposes are the following –
The assumption that “temperature feedbacks” would double or triple direct manmade greenhouse warming is the largest error made by the complex climate models. Feedbacks may well reduce warming, not amplify it.
The Bode system-gain equation models mutual amplification of feedbacks in electronic circuits, but, when complex models erroneously apply it to the climate on the IPCC’s false assumption of strongly net-amplifying feedbacks, it greatly over-predicts global warming.
They are using the wrong equation.
Modellers have failed to cut their central estimate of global warming in line with a new, lower feedback estimate from the IPCC. They still predict 3.3 °C of warming per CO2 doubling, when on this ground alone they should only be predicting 2.2 °C – about half from direct warming and half from amplifying feedbacks.
Though the complex models say there is 0.6 °C manmade warming “in the pipeline” even if we stop emitting greenhouse gases, the simple model – confirmed by almost two decades without any significant global warming – shows there is no committed but unrealized manmade warming still to come.
There is no scientific justification for the IPCC’s extreme RCP 8.5 global warming scenario that predicts up to 12 °C global warming as a result of our industrial emissions of greenhouse gases.
Once errors like these are corrected, the most likely global warming in response to a doubling of CO2 concentration is not 3.3 °C but 1 °C or less. Even if all available fossil fuels were burned, less than 2.2 °C warming would result.
I see we are now at the “cut and paste things from other people’s websites” part of the discussion.
When they make my arguments more elegantly, than I can, yes. Again, you fail to refute any assertion I make or the authors make. Just a niggling sentence that is noise.
For starters, Monckton’s portrayal of IPCC’s (and others’) estimates is quite exaggerated. Given that, I don’t see much need to read the entire paper, as it is deliberately setting up a strawman to tilt at. This fits well within his MO, as well as the Heartland’s. If you want to believe what you believe, that’s fine. Seeking out sources that agree with you and applying a less stringent criteria for evaluation of those sources is known as confirmation bias. Note how last post you spoke at length about how models were no good, and yet, now that you find one that agrees with you, it is infallible.
So in other words you have nothing to offer in rebuttal. Typical of a religious acolyte. And not taking the article seriously is known as willful blindness which I remember you attempted to be quite glib about while ignoring its application to the left and its policy idiocy.
And I wish to add you seem to fail to understand science is based on hypothesis testing with real data which the article did. Using fake data generated by models is not sciene.
Also you seem incapable of reading a simple graph. Please explain how he is wrong in either instance. High schooler with pocket calculator can figure it out. I bet you might if you took your blinders off.
Please, let’s avoid name calling and keep this civil.
Monckton, is using incorrect figures. In fact, according to NOAA, the average global temperature of 2014 was .69°C > av, well above the figure on the Monckton chart, but right in line with both the 2007 and 1990 IPCC predictions.
The 2007 IPCC report summarizes: “Since the IPCC’s first report in 1990, assessed projections have suggested global averaged temperature increases between about 0.15 and 0.3°C per decade from 1990 to 2005.” Compare that range to the .2°C rise that actually occurred, and Mockton’s deception becomes clear. The IPCC does not provide a definitive number, but a range of possible numbers from the low end to the high end. The lower or higher on that scale a prediction is, the lower the confidence in that number. To take something from the high end and claim that it is the definitive conclusion of the IPCC is a drastic misunderstanding of the process. But this is neither a new approach for Monckton (see more http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2009/05/moncktons-deliberate-manipulation/) nor for his financiers at the Heartland, who employed the same tactics to deny the link between smoking and cancer for political and monetary benefit. The fact that you seem unaware of any of the history in this “debate” coupled with your somewhat hostile tone make me unwilling to continue our discussion. I wish you the best of luck in your studies.
I am more than aware of the history of Monckton and the heartland Institute. Both have been speaking truth to the global warming lie for quite a while. This history you speak of is made up lies and propaganda by the alarmist establishment that wishes to invalidate the findings of both or any publications put forth by both.
You fail yet again in that you did not even look at the article. The estimates created by the article were using the OBSERVED EMPIRICAL MEASURE of temperature.
That in and of itself is enough to invalidate most of what the alarmists propagandize.
The last 20 years has shown us that something else is going on for which the models cannot account. Simplifying models like Monckton et al. did is a sound science methodological analysis basis.
Furthermore, the equations he puts forth used make far more sense than any I was able to look at from the climate models. Climate models want to make use of positive feedback when in nature positive feedback exists hardly at all, so to put things in perspective negative feedback is more appropriate and that’s what Monckton programmed in when he wrote the equation for this model.
Also, when you use the empirical measurements of temperature, not the models creation of data, temperature has only risen .8° in 150 years. If you had any statistical knowledge whatsoever you would understand that this is statistically insignificant and means nothing given the noise in the signal (measurement error) which is several magnitudes larger than the supposed rise in temperature.
Like many other alarmist you will not or I would guess cannot rebut the science. From our conversation on here it seems you are intellectually unequipped to roughhouse in the debating world. When you can capture and control the debate you feel comfortable but when someone calls you on it you run for the hills.
This is not unexpected from someone like you, I have argued with your ilk for years and your patterns are very predictable, just like here.
I asked you to explain how Monckton was wrong in either instance of his graph, you were incapable of doing so. It’s use of observed data is the best case scenario and model use does not even come in a close second.
So take your proverbial little red wagon and head for the hills because it only shows the tactics alarmists and the left-wing choose to employ. So be it.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/jamestaylor/2011/05/11/nasa-funded-group-doctors-sea-level-data/
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/weather-climate/high-low-temps.html
http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/indicators/weather-climate/high-low-temps.html
http://www.amazon.com/Neglected-Sun-Precludes-Catastrophe-Independent-ebook/dp/B00I2O5WDQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422060382&sr=8-1&keywords=the+neglected+sun&pebp=1422060388541&peasin=B00I2O5WDQ
Your response is rather rude, and I would appreciate common courtesy. If you cannot abide by that I will not allow you to post here again. I will go through your points one by one again.
I am more than aware of the history of Monckton and the heartland Institute. Both have been speaking truth to the global warming lie for quite a while.
By your reasoning, do you also deny that smoking causes cancer?
This history you speak of is made up lies and propaganda by the alarmist establishment that wishes to invalidate the findings of both or any publications put forth by both.
You imagine a worldwide conspiracy of scientists from different organizations publishing in different journals, all conspiring in secret to convince us of a crisis completely made up out of whole cloth? By whom? Who is the ringleader? How does he get all those scientific journals to lie? (I assume it’s a guy who organized it, but between you and me I have never trusted that Condoleeza Rice. Is she part of it somehow?)
You fail yet again in that you did not even look at the article. The estimates created by the article were using the OBSERVED EMPIRICAL MEASURE of temperature.
You do not appear to be listening. The measurements shown on the Monckton chart are cherry-picked data. He has a long history of doing just that. You may call that “speaking the truth to the global warming lie,” but really, it, in and of itself is a distortion of the data. Here is an example of how it works: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5D7P2qbKCs
The last 20 years has shown us that something else is going on for which the models cannot account. Simplifying models like Monckton et al. did is a sound science methodological analysis basis.
Mockton does not have a “sound science methodological analysis basis” (sic). See how he works here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KTjaMxuAhUw.
Beyond which, the notion that the best solution for mapping a complex system is to simplify the model is sort of silly. That is like saying, “I didn’t understand my geometry homework, so I am going to turn in these addition problems instead.” The reason that air temperature did not rise as much as expected over the past few years is because the majority of the heat was trapped in the ocean. More, in fact, than original models had predicted would happen. That is, the models that had the highest degree of confidence were too conservative in their estimates. That is, it is worse than we thought. That is, taking ocean (and deep ocean) temperatures out of the model, as Monckton has done in his irreducibly simple model, is the exact opposite of what we need to be doing to get accurate measurements. Here is Scientific American on the
conundrum.
I think this will be useful to you: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/has-global-warming-paused/
One problem is that scientists had underestimated oceanic warming at depths greater than 2300 feet. That means we have to do more study of the ocean and more inclusion of that data in the models to insure accuracy. My understanding of the Monckton model is that he reduced the influence of the ocean, which would naturally skew the trend toward the low side since approximately 90% of the globe’s warming energy goes into the ocean. Another issue is that the polar regions warmed even faster than scientists had predicted and measurement in those regions is complicated because of fewer surface gauges. However, after using satellite data to measure the temperature, the greater warming was observed. These two issues pretty much explain the sum of the “global cooling for 20 years” issue to which you allude.
Furthermore, the equations he puts forth used make far more sense than any I was able to look at from the climate models. Climate models want to make use of positive feedback when in nature positive feedback exists hardly at all, so to put things in perspective negative feedback is more appropriate and that’s what Monckton programmed in when he wrote the equation for this model.
That just isn’t true. An example of a positive feedback is that when the globe warms, permafrost melts, and the methane adds to the problem of heat trapping. Another is that increased temperatures create increased water vapor which traps more heat, which creates more water vapor, which traps more heat. And there are many others. Your statement is indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of the subject.
Also, when you use the empirical measurements of temperature, not the models creation of data, temperature has only risen .8° in 150 years. If you had any statistical knowledge whatsoever you would understand that this is statistically insignificant and means nothing given the noise in the signal (measurement error) which is several magnitudes larger than the supposed rise in temperature.
Spreading the majority of the warming out over span of 150 years would indeed make it statistically insignificant. However, since most of that warming has occurred in the last 50 years, the .8 rise is significant. Likewise, there is reason to believe that .8 is an underestimate.
Like many other alarmist you will not or I would guess cannot rebut the science. From our conversation on here it seems you are intellectually unequipped to roughhouse in the debating world. When you can capture and control the debate you feel comfortable but when someone calls you on it you run for the hills.
You are not actually debating. You are making statements and when I refute them, you are not providing your OWN evidence to counterargue your claims, you are merely saying that I am wrong and that I have proven nothing. That’s kind of like saying, “Nuhuh!” If you have real, actual evidence that does not come from a libertarian think tank with an economic interest in pretending the globe is not warming, if you have credible evidence that it is not as bad as it seems, by all means share it. I would LOVE to hear some good news for my kids’ futures here. Monckton is a journalist and a provocateur, not a scientist. That you believe him over the mountain of evidence at which he so Quixotically tilts says more about what you want to believe than what the truth really is.
This is not unexpected from someone like you, I have argued with your ilk for years and your patterns are very predictable, just like here.
Glad you know me so well. This sort of thing hurts your credibility.
Be aware I have copied all of this page so I can post it to my page, showing the lack of ability to argue you are gifted with. I am betting you will delete my last post because there is too much truth in it.
Yeah, thanks for stopping by. I think that about does it for our correspondence.
Here is the refutation of your screed with cites.
“You imagine a worldwide conspiracy of scientists from different organizations publishing in different journals, all conspiring in secret to convince us of a crisis completely made up out of whole cloth? By whom? Who is the ringleader? How does he get all those scientific journals to lie? (I assume it’s a guy who organized it, but between you and me I have never trusted that Condoleeza Rice. Is she part of it somehow?)”
You have not a clue about what really goes on. Nor did I say any of what you allege. Just more alarmist BS. Evidence From the CRU Emails:
Manipulation of evidence:
I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (ie from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.
Private doubts about whether the world really is heating up:
The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.
Suppression of evidence:
Can you delete any emails you may have had with Keith re AR4?
Keith will do likewise. He’s not in at the moment – minor family crisis.
Can you also email Gene and get him to do the same? I don’t have his new email address.
We will be getting Caspar to do likewise.
Cite: http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100017393/climategate-the-final-nail-in-the-coffin-of-anthropogenic-global-warming/
“You do not appear to be listening. The measurements shown on the Monckton chart are cherry-picked data. He has a long history of doing just that. You may call that “speaking the truth to the global warming lie,” but really, it, in and of itself is a distortion of the data. Here is an example of how it works”
Here you demonstrate statistical illiteracy as well as no knowledge of the article you’re trying to critique. If you look Monckton used the same exact data that the IPCC except he did not use positive forcing for CO2, he used negative forcing which is in line with what actually happens in nature. And lo and behold he came up with an estimate of about 1° per century which is the natural heating they we’re undergoing since the last glacial period. This is been demonstrated by historical high cores that show this level of warming. There is variation within it that on average us about 1° per century.
“One problem is that scientists had underestimated oceanic warming at depths greater than 2300 feet. That means we have to do more study of the ocean and more inclusion of that data in the models to insure accuracy. My understanding of the Monckton model is that he reduced the influence of the ocean, which would naturally skew the trend toward the low side since approximately 90% of the globe’s warming energy goes into the ocean. Another issue is that the polar regions warmed even faster than scientists had predicted and measurement in those regions is complicated because of fewer surface gauges. However, after using satellite data to measure the temperature, the greater warming was observed. These two issues pretty much explain the sum of the “global cooling for 20 years” issue to which you allude.”
You contend that the oceans are warming, well there is no empirical proof to support this. The sampling error is so great and the sample is so small compared to the whole ocean and no sampling at great depths is only estimates with the word estimates in capital marks so it’s just a guess we do not know if there warming or cooling or exactly what’s going on. But my bets on stable.
Second you allege the polar regions are hotter–this is nothing but a bald-faced lie. Satellite data imaging shows the ice depth greater as well is the ice cover is larger and the temperatures not really changing. The changes occur with the cycle of winter–summer and fails to associate this natural variation is caused by man.
Both points debunked. Cite: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2738653/Stunning-satellite-images-summer-ice-cap-thicker-covers-1-7million-square-kilometres-MORE-2-years-ago-despite-Al-Gore-s-prediction-ICE-FREE-now.html
Oceans: http://ocean.mit.edu/~cwunsch/papersonline/heatcontentchange_26dec2013_ph.pdf
“That just isn’t true. An example of a positive feedback is that when the globe warms, permafrost melts, and the methane adds to the problem of heat trapping. Another is that increased temperatures create increased water vapor which traps more heat, which creates more water vapor, which traps more heat. And there are many others. Your statement is indicative of a fundamental misunderstanding of the subject.
Also, when you use the empirical measurements of temperature, not the models creation of data, temperature has only risen .8° in 150 years. If you had any statistical knowledge whatsoever you would understand that this is statistically insignificant and means nothing given the noise in the signal (measurement error) which is several magnitudes larger than the supposed rise in temperature.
Spreading the majority of the warming out over span of 150 years would indeed make it statistically insignificant. However, since most of that warming has occurred in the last 50 years, the .8 rise is significant. Likewise, there is reason to believe that .8 is an underestimate”
Yes I understand quite well what positive feedback is and its occurrence in nature is so few in so small that you can count them on the fingers of one hand. In other words in nature it just doesn’t happen even when you’re talking about climate there is always a process going on that damps whatever you’re looking at. Commonly known as negative feedback that which your thermostat uses to keep your room at a certain temperature. Even that simple principle should be discernible to global climate alarmists.
The majority of warming is spread across time it just didn’t happen in two decades. The data is been changed by NASA and NOAA which is been documented in so many places it’s funny to hide the decline. 1934 was the hottest year that NASA recorded when they corrected data input the real data back in the data set. So that lies debunked also.
Cite: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/earth/environment/10916086/The-scandal-of-fiddled-global-warming-data.html
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/11/25/the-end-game-in-us-data-tampering/
http://joannenova.com.au/2009/12/fraudulent-hockey-sticks-and-hidden-data/
Basically your arguments boil down to appeals to authority with articles written with forgone conclusions—its always climate change.
Laughable!
And….you’re back.
When you start your evidence list with a “scandal” that was debunked and whose principals were exonerated by three independent investigations 5 years ago, I know we are in for a bumpy ride. One of the rules of evidence is that it needs to be timely. Another is that it needs to be true.
The Wunsch paper you cite is interesting, but because it has frequently been cherry-picked and misunderstood, the authors have gone on record to clarify that the ocean, overall, is warming. See here, for instance when they respond to a Graham Lloyd editorial in the Australian:
“We never assert that global warming and warming of the oceans are not occurring – we do find an ocean warming, particularly in the upper regions.”
Read more here: http://theconversation.com/having-it-both-ways-news-corps-climate-paradox-30024
The arctic is warming: http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/
I have not read anything to suggest that there will be enough naturally occurring negative forcings to overcome any of the feedbacks I have mentioned, such as methane release, increased water vapor, or ice melt leading to albedo loss. There is some logic to the idea that increased CO2 might spur more plant growth for a time, but that growth would plateau and decline rapidly, according to everything I have read from reputable sources. Increased cloud coverage may cause cooling or may cause warming or may cause both. The fact is we are uncertain as to how much it will contribute to or detract from net warming. However, having simple faith that nature will act like a thermostat is contrary to the good advice of risk management strategy and seems like a Hail Mary.
Most of the points you have brought up throughout this correspondence have been frequently raised and re-raised by contrarians. The never-ending cycle of debunking them repeatedly has given rise to the expression “zombie arguments.” And as always you return to the idea that there is a vast conspiracy of scientists who are fudging numbers. There are multiple lines of empirical evidence pointing to the truth of the science.
Let’s get back to the basics: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/235402/global-warming
And I see you deleted my last reply. As one would do if his arguments did not come up to snuff.
As I said you did not refute the science, relied heavily on appeal to authority, and consensus. Appeals to authority and consensus by definition are NOT science. Science is hypothesis testing using real data, not faked data created by models laden with assumptions that do not fit the real world.
So tell me in terms of GDP costs and benefits your plan to fix global warming and some of its unintended consequences.
I am loading each reply that you delete to my page to show the puerile manner by which you argue.
The paper that refutes Mann’s hockey stick. Read some statisically based science, not that pop-pscyhology crap you usually do.
Click to access viewer
I deleted your last comment because it added nothing substantive to the discussion. Plugging your ears and saying, “Nuhuhn!” is not a winning argument. I have posted numerous links to scientific articles and refuted your replies with logic and references to scientists and their work. You misunderstand what appeal to authority is; you use outdated, unreliable sources; and clearly misunderstand the process of science.
1) Appeal to Authority
Definition: Using an authority as evidence in your argument when the authority is not really an authority on the facts relevant to the argument. As the audience, allowing an irrelevant authority to add credibility to the claim being made.
Example: Chris Monckton, who is a journalist and not a climate scientist, states that the earth has a built in temperature gauge, so global warming does not exist and all those other scientists are fudging the numbers.
2) None of your arguments cover any ground that has not already been thoroughly debunked by scientists working in the field. The one peer-reviewed paper that you cited from the last 5 years did not actually bolster your claims, as the authors of said paper are on record clarifying that your position is at odds with their research.
3) The science is hypothesized, tested, peer reviewed, and reported to the world in journals, and then debated in the pages of journals to ensure accuracy. That you would post a link to a paper from 2003 and suggest that it is the final word on the hockey stick graph, suggests either a fundamental incuriousness or a willingness either to deceive or be deceived. The Mcintyre and Mckittrick paper (funded by the Marshall Institute, incidentally, for those keeping track of papers produced by industry-funded think tanks) was at odds with the Mann hockey stick; however, analysis of that paper by other scientists showed that they, themselves, were flawed, and that Mann’s figures were correct. See here: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10584-006-9105-7 and here: http://www.people.fas.harvard.edu/~phuybers/Doc/hockey_grl2005.pdf
Your argument is a mishmash of things thrown against the wall in hopes that something would support your original claim, your sources (including a Forbes editorial, a Daily Mail editorial, and a Telegraph blog post) hardly rise to the level of scientific credibility (while at the same time you call Scientific American, Britannica, and the NOAA “pop psychology crap”; and you seem to be getting progressively ruder. Given these factors, I am not going to drop what I am doing and take the time to rebut you every time you google something new. If you really wanted to learn, you would take some time to investigate your sources. The internet is notorious for letting people create filter bubbles of information in which their opinions go falsely supported and unchecked by means of facebook likes, blogpost groupthink, and Google’s search algorithms. I suggest that your considerable myopia on this thread provides some useful insight into the creation, dissemination, and interpretation of information as seen through lenses of economics, politics, and culture. In short, you began this thread insisting that science is purely and completely on your side, and yet you have demonstrated nothing remotely close to that original proposition.
For those interested in ethical research practices, one method to build objectivity into your searching is to use an a priori research rubric for evaluating your sources: https://unofficialfactchecker.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/usable-source-rubric.pdf.
Another useful thing to keep in mind is the established bias of your sources. Here are some of the known biases of popular journals, magazines, and newspapers: https://unofficialfactchecker.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/consider-the-source.pdf
Studies written by think tanks are often cited in the news as objective, credible sources, but most of them have an ideological or partisan slant. Keep track of them here: http://fair.org/extra-online-articles/fair%E2%80%88study-think-tank-spectrum-2012/
Here to shares something fact checker. Telegraph UK has done a series of exposés on the fiddling of data that gone on by the climate scientist to make the data reflect global warming when there was none.
In effect the data sets have had the temperatures decreased by about 1°C before 1940 and had the temperatures increased by 1°C after 1995. No matter which way one does statistics using these polluted data it always shows global warming. Takeout “adjustments” and low and behold you have exactly what I asserted above several times– normal heating and cooling of the climate.
So it looks like right now that global warming, climate change, whatever it’s called if this moment is nothing short of a multi-billion dollar fraud.
There is more than sufficient proof to state this unequivocally. I am posting the link with part of what the article says and I bet you will pooh-pooh it as right wing propaganda.
However as our conversations have run you have yet to refute anything I say with science, statistical reasoning, or anything that fallacy.
So note as of today your dearly loved so-called theory starts dying the death it should have.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/11367272/Climategate-the-sequel-How-we-are-STILL-being-tricked-with-flawed-data-on-global-warming.html
“One of the more provocative points arising from the debate over those claims that 2014 was “the hottest year evah” came from the Canadian academic Dr Timothy Ball when, in a recent post on WUWT, he used the evidence of ice-core data to argue that the Earth’s recent temperatures rank in the lowest 3 per cent of all those recorded since the end of the last ice age, 10,000 years ago.”
Did you evaluate the source for credibility? Did you do any research to see if maybe, possibly, Steven Goddard was misrepresenting the data or drawing false conclusions about it? After all, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. It would be something if NASA, NOAA, and HadCRUT were all using falsified data. But since these issues have been raised before, I will let others explain it:
First, here is some information about GISS’s methodology http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/paper/gistemp2010_draft0803.pdf
Second, when D’Aleo and Smith first raised this concern in 2010, this was all explained http://www.yaleclimateconnections.org/2010/01/kusi-noaa-nasa/. Raising it again with no reason is disingenuous.
Third, Judith Curry and Anthony Watts have both already publicly distanced themselves from Goddard’s faulty reporting and analysis. When you are a climate change denier and not even Curry and Watts will back you up, you are, as they say, on thin ice.
Fourth, for a robust critique of Goddard that should put this to rest for you, see here: http://rankexploits.com/musings/2014/how-not-to-calculate-temperature/
Finally, satellite temperature readings are in line with weather balloons, ground stations, and ocean temp readings.
Until you google again,
UFC
Correction: Homewood wrote the article, not Goddard. Goddard wrote a similar article in 2012, and I got them mixed up. The critique is much the same.