Debate:Yet another global warming debate

This is a Debate page. Feel free to add your own spin on the story. Please keep it civil! This debate was created by Fox.

So as I was perusing through the CP Recent changes, I encountered this fine example of User #188. It is a stub (obviously) and all it contains is an quote on global warming mined from a statement by an obscure British global-warming skeptic. Yes Ed, your antics are beginning to scare me. The Emperor_{Kneel before Zod!} 18:36, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

Everybody on conservapedia is a global warming denialist. It's expected. ENorman 19:40, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

are you kidding, "scare" as ed wrote it, is an apt description of the way Andy et al live their entire lives. at least their entire online lives.--En attendant Godot_{"«Her intense and pure religiousness took the form of her having equal faith in the existence of another world and in the impossibility of comprehending it in terms of earthly life. V.Nabokov»} 20:42, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

That's a bit rich. There is no concensus about climate change within the scientific community, and there is no evidence that man made emissions are causing global warming. If you believe otherwise, without any evidence, then that is pretty scary, too. Fox 20:56, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

There's a majority scientific agreement that the climate is warming, Does it matter how it was started, if measures can be taken to slow it down, shouldn't they be? _and marmite 21:02, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

There is always the possibility that a measure we take could make the problem worse. I realize that an issue like climate change is almost impossible to understand completely, but taking action on an issue without a good enough understanding could just make the fire bigger. --Stilldeciding (talk) 02:21, 11 April 2010 (UTC)

Satellites circling the planet twice a day show that the world has not warmed since 2001. But let's assume that there is a warming - if we don't know what causes it, how can we take measures to slow it? If the theory of how it is caused is false, how do we know that it can be slowed at all? Fox 21:05, 24 March 2009 (EDT)

So is that theory in the same way your former comrades referred to the theory of evolution? --Kels 00:22, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

A belief is not scientific if there is no evidence, and no situation where it could be proven false. Theories must be falsifiable. Anything else is faith-based... You cannot have it cut both ways, I'm afraid, Kels. Just like the skeptics of "religious woo", skeptics of Anthropogenic Global Warming demand evidence too. Fox 03:17, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

Fox: What makes you disregard the IPCC as "concensus" [sic]? Coarb 00:02, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

Firstly, I figure that was written by me about 2 or 3am. Emphasising a spelling error is just the kind of shitty argumentum ad hominem response Aschlafly makes. And then gets pulled up for here on WIGO. As for the IPCC, what makes you believe that what is effectively an interest group established to promote a theory is proof of consensus? Isn't it the case that over 30,000 scientists, significantly more than sit on the IPCC, have signed The Petition Project? The IPCC is an international committee, it's not evidence, nor evidence of consensus. Argumentum ad verecundiam is not proof of anything except that a committee paid to find a particular result can produce a long document. Two logical fallacies in a ten word sentence? Nicely done. Fox 03:17, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

I wasn't trying to emphasize the spelling error. I felt I had to put "consensus" in quotation marks, given the structure of the sentence, no matter how it was spelled above. I apologize if it came off an unfunny and rude.

The rest of your response is sort of rhetorical. I learned from The Fog of War to answer the question you wish was asked, instead of the actual one asked. I will look into what you said, but I'm going to restate them in a form that does not assume I already know some things that you appear to know.

"Did you know that IPCC was established and recruited for the purpose of promoting the anthropogenic/greenhouse gas global warming theory, rather than finding consensus on it?"

"Are you dissuaded by The Petition Project?"

"Did you know that the member of this committee were paid on the condition of finding this result?"

Finally: "Nicely done"? Don't be rude. A grown-up way to respond to an innocent logical error is to correct it, not to go straight to asshole mode. An appropriate response to a query such as mine would have been: "Here are the reasons it's not a consensus . . .".

As far as appeal to authority goes, bringing up a group of climatologists when asking about climate is not an logical fallacy. I assume you accept as evidence the opinions of relevant experts in their fields. I am happy to have a discussion about whether or not IPCC counts as "relevant", "experts", or a "consensus", and I look forward to investigating your claims, but the idea that one must justify every scientific belief based on only a direct appeal to the raw data would leave us disbelieving in nearly all science, simply based on the amount of time we have to investigate. I don't want to spend every day debating Duesberg, so I just trust the experts and wear a condom. Coarb 03:46, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

As you already knew all of the above, and your query was merely a veiled dig suggesting that the IPCC trumped my claim that there was no consensus, stop acting the martyr/shocked maid. "Asshole mode"? Yup, that's exactly how it looks when people find it necessary to draw attention to typos. As for a "direct appeal to data" to "justify... scientific belief" - without the data, it is merely that: belief. Dogma belongs in religion, not science. And no, I don't accept as evidence the opinions of experts: a theory stands or falls on its evidence, not on opinion. Fox 04:32, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

This is truly strange. I did not know "all of the above". I was summarizing from your questions. I have yet to investigate these things.

I do not know how you have inferred that I knew about the things you said. There was no veiling. I was really, truly asking. Really. I promise.

Your belief that I was playing does explain your anger. I don't know where you get the idea that I knew already your criticism of IPCC. Where did you get that idea?

If you really do not accept the consensus of any group of qualified experts, then you may end up spending your life writing a new skeptic's dictionary or working for James Randi. I wish you all the best in that endeavor. I will enjoy reading your work.

On the other hand, you will never really catch up with modern science. I will simply strongly "believe" in the truth of the Poincaré conjecture and Fermat's last theorem as long as the community of qualified experts does, "religious" though that may make me. I think it's statistically justified; usually, the consensus of science professors is right. I wouldn't say the same thing about the Catholic Church, for instance. If they produced vaccines and rocketships, I would change my mind.

I apologized above if my "[sic]" was rude. I do not know how else to calm you.

You seem very, very angry, and very, very suspicious of me. Coarb 05:16, 25 March 2009 (EDT)

All scientists are not the same. The very first image on the Petition Project site is a picture of a physicist's signature. A physicist is not a climatologist.

Secondly, the IPCC has effectively become an advocacy group for their own work because they've had to be. They released their conclusions and many vested interests have attacked them ceaselessly. In the process of defending their work, of course they're going to appear to be partisan. But they have been around for a long time now and are staffed with numerous highly respected individuals. Furthermore, virtually every scientific organization with a pony in this race (i.e. not including the American Petrochemists Association) has issued statements strongly agreeing with the IPCC conclusions.--^talk 02:31, 11 April 2010 (UTC)