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IMPORTANT // Please look after your loved ones, yourself and be kind to others. If you are feeling that the world is too hard to handle there is always help - I implore you not to hesitate in contacting one of these wonderful organisations Lifeline and Beyond Blue ... and I'm sure reaching out to our PRE community we will find a way to help. T.
Global Warming
- Thread starter Disco08
- Start date
KnightersRevenge said:
Un-de-funding?
The federal government could do with some undie-funding.
Coburgtiger said:
Budgie smuggler red herring generators for everyone! Pretty sure Brandis got his express post.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2014/12/16/climate_change_deniers_are_not_skeptics.html
If You Don’t Accept That Climate Change Is Real, You’re Not a Skeptic. You’re a Denier.
By Lawrence Krauss
A few months ago, I appeared on a Q&A, a popular Australian television news program with a prominent Australian politician and a well-known Australian journalist. Both flatly denied that climate change was human-induced. Both referred to themselves as skeptics.
This label successfully undermines the heart of what skepticism is all about, however, and it is unfortunate that journalists often don’t get the subtle bait-and-switch that is being performed here. For example, to take a U.S. example, in a Nov. 10, 2014, New York Times article “Republicans Vow to Fight EPA and Approve Keystone Pipeline” Sen. James Inhofe was referred as “a prominent skeptic of climate change.” Two days later Scott Horsley of NPR’s Morning Edition called him “one of the leading climate change deniers in Congress.” These are not equivalent statements.
Skepticism is all about critical examination, evidence-based scientific inquiry, and the use of reason in examining controversial claims. Those who flatly deny the results of climate science do not partake in any of the above. They base their conclusions on a priori convictions. Theirs is an ideological conviction—the opposite of skepticism.
This confusion is at the heart of political efforts to undermine climate science. It’s sufficiently disturbing that a group of fellows of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry—including well-known scholars and public figures like Dan Dennett, Bill Nye, Sir Harold Kroto, Kenneth Miller, and me—have drafted an open letter to the media urging them to consider carefully the language they use when discussing climate change issues.
Our letter was precipitated by the New York Times description of Inhofe. This confusion of terms is not new, and various individuals (for instance, Slate’s Phil Plait) have made the point before that “denier” is the better label in these circumstances. But we felt that when someone like Inhofe, who has so clearly denied or ignored the major scientific analyses of human induced climate change and its consequences, was so inappropriately described by a publication like the New York Times, it was necessary for a broad-based group in the scientific community to speak up. The effort to stop effective action to curb climate change has been successful in part because it has focused on public relations rather than content. By confusing skepticism with ideological intransigence, journalists play into the hands of those who plan and implement these large-scale disinformation campaigns.
In the meantime, journalists and others can use a test I turned to on the television program in Australia. After hearing that the individuals in question did not accept the conclusions of climate change modelers at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other academic bodies, I asked them the simple question: “OK, what do your models predict?”
As you might expect, the response was silence.
If those who decry the claims of climate scientists cannot provide some sound empirical basis for their critiques of these claims and the data and models they are based on, then their denialism should be treated on the same footing as those who deny the results of evolutionary biology simply because they do not want to accept evolution.
To put climate deniers on the same footing as scientists, for whom skepticism is a central facet of their life work, is to do a great disservice to science, knowledge, and progress.
Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University.
Lawrence M. Krauss is Foundation Professor and Director of the Arizona State University Origins Project. His most recent book is A Universe from Nothing.
If You Don’t Accept That Climate Change Is Real, You’re Not a Skeptic. You’re a Denier.
By Lawrence Krauss
A few months ago, I appeared on a Q&A, a popular Australian television news program with a prominent Australian politician and a well-known Australian journalist. Both flatly denied that climate change was human-induced. Both referred to themselves as skeptics.
This label successfully undermines the heart of what skepticism is all about, however, and it is unfortunate that journalists often don’t get the subtle bait-and-switch that is being performed here. For example, to take a U.S. example, in a Nov. 10, 2014, New York Times article “Republicans Vow to Fight EPA and Approve Keystone Pipeline” Sen. James Inhofe was referred as “a prominent skeptic of climate change.” Two days later Scott Horsley of NPR’s Morning Edition called him “one of the leading climate change deniers in Congress.” These are not equivalent statements.
Skepticism is all about critical examination, evidence-based scientific inquiry, and the use of reason in examining controversial claims. Those who flatly deny the results of climate science do not partake in any of the above. They base their conclusions on a priori convictions. Theirs is an ideological conviction—the opposite of skepticism.
This confusion is at the heart of political efforts to undermine climate science. It’s sufficiently disturbing that a group of fellows of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry—including well-known scholars and public figures like Dan Dennett, Bill Nye, Sir Harold Kroto, Kenneth Miller, and me—have drafted an open letter to the media urging them to consider carefully the language they use when discussing climate change issues.
Our letter was precipitated by the New York Times description of Inhofe. This confusion of terms is not new, and various individuals (for instance, Slate’s Phil Plait) have made the point before that “denier” is the better label in these circumstances. But we felt that when someone like Inhofe, who has so clearly denied or ignored the major scientific analyses of human induced climate change and its consequences, was so inappropriately described by a publication like the New York Times, it was necessary for a broad-based group in the scientific community to speak up. The effort to stop effective action to curb climate change has been successful in part because it has focused on public relations rather than content. By confusing skepticism with ideological intransigence, journalists play into the hands of those who plan and implement these large-scale disinformation campaigns.
In the meantime, journalists and others can use a test I turned to on the television program in Australia. After hearing that the individuals in question did not accept the conclusions of climate change modelers at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and other academic bodies, I asked them the simple question: “OK, what do your models predict?”
As you might expect, the response was silence.
If those who decry the claims of climate scientists cannot provide some sound empirical basis for their critiques of these claims and the data and models they are based on, then their denialism should be treated on the same footing as those who deny the results of evolutionary biology simply because they do not want to accept evolution.
To put climate deniers on the same footing as scientists, for whom skepticism is a central facet of their life work, is to do a great disservice to science, knowledge, and progress.
Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University.
Lawrence M. Krauss is Foundation Professor and Director of the Arizona State University Origins Project. His most recent book is A Universe from Nothing.
Here is a great idea that if properly managed should really sort the wheat from the chaff. I wonder if they've had a go at some of The Aus's "science" journalism?
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2015/aug/14/scientists-get-tool-to-mark-online-climate-science-media-coverage-and-its-not-a-rusty-teaspoon?CMP=soc_567
http://climatefeedback.org/
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/planet-oz/2015/aug/14/scientists-get-tool-to-mark-online-climate-science-media-coverage-and-its-not-a-rusty-teaspoon?CMP=soc_567
http://climatefeedback.org/
KnightersRevenge said:
Labels are all-important to leftists.
After shivering through the coldest July in 20 years, still waiting for any of the warmist predictive models to prove they're worth a damn.
rosy23 said:
Is there a mood or a "vibe of the thing" atmosphere that suggests Mirabella could eat into Cathy's vote Rosy?
LeeToRainesToRoach said:
Oh I see the problem. You think it's a left vs right issue - actually it's a science vs politics issue.
Once you understand where you've gone wrong, we can get on with actually changing the way humans bugger up the atmosphere.
LeeToRainesToRoach said:
Nah I'm more this guy:
[youtube=560,315]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ln2Xq8fCNI8[/youtube]
KnightersRevenge said:
Not sure Knighters. I've never heard a person say a word against Cathy. She's like a breath of fresh air. She fights hard for the electorate and she keeps us informed in regards to what's going on and her reasoning behind her decisions. Having said that this is traditionally a strong Lib electorate and they are also running a National candidate to support Sophie. Really hard to know which way people will vote this time.
LeeToRainesToRoach said:
stats show you are right. south east australia is having a colder than average winter.
the world though is on track for the hottest year on record, beating last year which is currently the hottest year on record.
http://www.watoday.com.au/environment/climate-change/heating-up-july-added-to-string-of-record-hot-months-globally-20150814-giznco.html
LeeToRainesToRoach said:
But what would we do without labels? Communications would get tricky and tedious. 'Yeah I'm having a lot of trouble getting one of those people who joins pipes together so water can come in and out of my house'.
a couple of cold days so the worlds scientists don't know anything. The battery died in my car the other day, gunna sell the heap of crap.
I just opened my freezer and it was 4 degrees in there! When the hell is this global warming thing gonna kick in?
I mean when I put my hand in the back of it, it was red hot, but if every single surface in the whole entire world isn't hot, then it can't possibly be getting warmer on average right?
I mean when I put my hand in the back of it, it was red hot, but if every single surface in the whole entire world isn't hot, then it can't possibly be getting warmer on average right?
Hey, average temperatures and extreme weather events are increasing every year - but "climate change" is just a leftie label. "Absolute crap" as our fearless national captain put it a few years ago - but this wasn't a label, this was a considered scientific opinion.
