Neil DeGrasse Tyson: This is the difference between weather and climate change

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Jewels, what evidence would you have to see to accept that human-caused climate change is in fact happening on a global scale?

“If we’ve learned any lessons during the past few decades, perhaps the most important is that preservation of our environment is not a partisan challenge; it’s common sense. Our physical health, our social happiness, and our economic well-being will be sustained only by all of us working in partnership as thoughtful, effective stewards of our natural resources.”
Ronald Reagan on signing annual report of Council on Environmental Quality, July 11, 1984

Not known for his Hippy nor his Dippy.

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That said, ‘A is X, but B is Y’ is a great way to compare apples to oranges, both of which are real fruit.

I’m sure the commonly reported allergy to ‘oranges’ is purely psychosomatic. Evidence: the primary symptom involves turning blue from holding ones breath.

Not true! Here is a list: http://www.nobeliefs.com/fallacies.htm

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If there is evidence available then it doesn’t matter if anybody accepts it or not. Everybody is disputing on the basis of authority, not evidence.

I might believe you if the GOP wasn’t so vehemently opposed to the idea. That lends it a lot of credence in my book.

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Is there any chance that you’re experiencing confirmation bias? Because what you have said there runs very contrary to my personal experience, of many people have presenting much evidence, none of whom had any authority in my life.

That people occasionally get excluded from science for their methods and interpretations does not make science a circle-jerk. Science just has standards. You can still be friends.

Since I was not unwilling to see the evidence, I could take in the totality of it, the limits of it, and the undisputable FACT of it. When I was unsure of something, I ASKED and then accepted multiple interpretations gratefully.

I didn’t make some intellectually empty contrary conjecture or blow hot bile at well intentioned people who were ahead of me on this knowledge curve.

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“Confirmation bias” is when you believe what you choose to believe. Everybody does it. As the saying goes, “When you hear hoof beats, you think horses, not zebras.”

Science is not self supporting. It is simple good sense that a student avoids discovering things that embarrass the sponsor. The result is that the sponsor is the authority who commands what to believe, evidence or no evidence. There are any number of people who will do or say anything, absolutely anything, to get that authority for themselves. And we call that “mainstream science”, also known as “consensus”.

But the big moneyed interests right now still have vested interests in fossil fuels. If science supports the people paying the bills, why are all the environmental scientists in agreement that we need to cut carbon emissions instead of toeing the line from Big Oil and the automotive industry?

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I tried to give on my previous post a description of the quite simple physical laws that drive climate change. To understand the phenomenon you should forget for an instant the real story of the earth climate…which depend mostly on astronomical peculiarities and irregularities of the earth orbit. You should then construct a simple situation in which the dominant drivers is the composition of the atmosphere. The result computed since the 19th century by Arrenhius. Von Neuman is absolutely non ambiguous and conform to a universal physical law. The denialist never accept to listen such a simple demonstration of the consequences of injection of billions tons of carbon gathered under our feet in form of a gas in the atmosphere… If they accepted to think that way they would be confronted to their foolishness. The denialist want to speak politics…not science!

“Confirmation bias” is something that is designed to be excluded from well-designed studies and surveys. Peer-reviewed studies are checked for (among other errors) possible confirmation bias. If it’s noted, the studies won’t be accepted because information won’t be reliable.

If you want to know where the broadly thrown about numbers come from:

A survey of paper abstracts from climate scientists worldwide was published in the May 15, 2013 journal Environmental Research Letters. That survey looked at about 12,000 studies published between 1991–2011. The survey did find “consensus” which ACTUALLY means “agreement of independent research”. Typically people shorthand the survey results giving only one number (97%), and maybe they shouldn’t. Here are the actual numbers (AGW =anthropogenic 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.” (Note: “expressed no position” doesn’t mean that the “scientist has no position” it means the paper itself was not in any way related to climate change due to AGW - other things do affect our climate. They were looking for the largest possible group of papers that might deal with the subject.)

The 97% is what is most often quoted, but reflects a part of the whole, with 31.7% of scientists in Part One of the survey responding positively with an endorsement for AGW. 66.4% were neutral, with no claim. It’s only 0.7% who rejected and 0.3% who were uncertain. The 97% is actually “% among abstracts with AGW position” (Table 3 Results Part One).

So they did find a 97% consensus among scientists willing to make a claim. When they gave the scientists who had fallen into the neutral or uncertain category a chance to review their own papers, only a portion of them (under a third) did. That’s partially because not all the papers had anything to do with the subject. Even so, the consensus grew to 98.4% (Part Two).

The study was fully honest about their findings, and about what information they were referencing. “Among abstracts that expressed a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the scientific consensus. Among scientists who expressed a position on AGW in their abstract, 98.4% endorsed the consensus.” Popular media has shorthanded it thus changing the meaning of the results.

http://iopscience.iop.org/1748-9326/8/2/024024/article

So, you’re blaming science for finding good information, and trying to report it accurately to a population that enjoys being spoon fed single bits of “easily understood” data. The survey report is published, available online, and anyone can can go read it - it doesn’t even require a subscription, and it’s really short. So for people to have bad information about this really is their own fault. If you bother to visit the link I recommend you view video abstract, because it fully explains in common language just what the study showed.

97% of climate scientists expressing a position, endorse an existing scientific consensus for AGW.

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They did not discuss their reasons with me.

So how does this fit in with the “let’s doubt global warming because scientists just deliver whatever findings make their sponsors happy” theory?

http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2012/07/28/602151/bombshell-koch-funded-study-finds-global-warming-is-real-on-the-high-end-and-essentially-all-due-to-carbon-pollution/

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I’d be glad to. Environmental Scientist here. AMA.

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Is it the Doctor’s house?

Originally it would have been shown before a movie in a theatre. The silhouette is supposed to be of someone in the audience. :smile:

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