One thing that has become obvious from the regular alarmists who comment on this blog is that they are too lazy to look at the raw data for themselves. It always comes down to a matter of faith for them.
They can’t believe that government scientists would lie, cheat or delude themselves with confirmation bias. It is easier for them to have misplaced faith, than to put out the effort to think for themselves.
I have no interest in believing bullshit, which is why I don’t take anything at face value.
It’s not laziness. It’s lack of ability or intelligence that prevents them. There is considerable difference between the scientists and engineers who are skeptical versus the eco worries who may have no formal education or at best, arts degrees.
Arts degree ? Is that a formal education ?
Our founders were smart cookies, and I live by some of their credos, like this advice given to a nephew…
“Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blind-folded fear.”
Thomas Jefferson
I watched Ben Bernanke on the news yesterday and I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. But people are generally ignorant of economics (unless they are economists or perhaps run their own businesses). Here was the translation of what he said, “The fiscal cliff is getting close and as a response I have put my foot on the accelerator towards it. However, even I with my various super powers cannot prevent going over it.”
You gotta love government experts.
This basically his acknowledgement that Fed are in a trap and dont know how to get out of it since the idea spending less money than you take in is apparently an alien concept. And this from the leader of our fiscal controls. We are so screwed.
It must be a sad existence for them. Believe the BS, close your eyes to truth.
Facts and truth are meaningless concepts to these people.
You have to be cautious about experts whether government or not. Someone I know was advised to have a number of painful procedures by her sports physician. I looked up the papers but the treatment appeared worthless to me. (About a 3% improvement over control group, but also small sample size.) I told her it was a waste of time. She underwent the procedures anyway. A year later she acknowledges they were useless…
(I do not recommend people in general do this. If you’re not familiar with how to interpret a scientific study or the findings are not clear cut one way or another, or there are confounding factors, the best sceptical approach is to seek multiple second opinions.)
I have a friend who’s a Warmist. One night at dinner, I began mentioning some of the evidence against it, and she broke in: ‘Wow, you mean you even researched it…’, with a condescending tone. I went back to eating my dinner.
When I posted a comment on the iconic IPCC statement about how most of the recent warming was attributable to human influence, David Appell was sceptical and demanded citations… Seriously, the guy blogs about climate change all the time, but he is so dog shit stupid, he hasn’t even bothered to read the executive summary for policy makers. Would only take him an hour or two…
Some stuff is banned from their bible. And most don’t even read their own bible. It’s just: ‘Warming = man. Man = warming. Let us pray.” Thinking some for yourself is hard and stuff.
It’s much like when those in the Protestant reformation encouraged people to read the bible for themselves, and the Catholic hierarchy had a fit…
I have had exactly the same experience with some of my left leaning friends. Express some evidence supporting to doubt about CAGW and they figuratively put their hands over their ears – hear no evil! They are so committed to thermageddon that the possibility that climate change is mostly natural is an anathema. And yet, if the climate is so important to the welfare of mankind, you would think that they would feel obligated to actually educate themselves about it.
Your post sums up every argument I’ve ever had. Invariably the other person’s ignorance of the subject matter is inversely proportional to their confidence they are right. This is followed by outright silence when presented with any real data.
I don’t know if its laziness, or a kind of faith or arrogance, or monomania.
When presented with any of the essential data sets, my opposition must weigh this against the constant barrage of news to the contrary. Should it come as any surprise that data is met with the sound of crickets. It simply does not compete with decades of brainwashing.
“The problem with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.”
Bertrand Russell
Early on in my days as an accountant in training, I was out on an audit and my audit supervisor summed it up perfectly: “Trust but verify”.
The facts don’t line up with the CAGW theory. In my own little world, I went on my government’s web site and copied all the temperature data for my own little city into my own little spreadsheet. I’m not a climatologist, but I can perform simple mathematical functions like calculating high’s, low’s and averages. In my little city, the warmest decade on record was the 1920’s, the warmest year tied 1918 and 1987, the warmest day July 15 1919 and July 25 1933 tied. High temperature records for a single day (366 calendar days) 32 are from this century (which started January 1, 2001), or 2.66 per year, and 44 are from the 19th century (which ended December 31, 1900). Temperature records go back into 1884, so that is 17 years or 2.58 temperature records per year. With 129 years of temperature data, expected records would be 2.84 record daily temperature high temperature records per year (366/129, slightly more with ties).
So, I concluded that it is unlikely that the climate (at least temperature) has changed much in the time period for which records exist. Full disclosure, there is some trend evidence that nights are not as cold as they were, but I attribute this to UHI which is a plausible explanation of the fact that days are not warmer but nights are less cold. I am going to find a nearby rural weather station to try to test this theory when I get a chance.
As far as the Fed goes, the United States Federal Government spends more than $5,500,000,000 more PER DAY than it receives (November 2012 deficit approximately $170,000,000,000). Until that changes, there is little (if anything) Bernanke can do. I watched one of those late night comedy shows last night where they interview people on the street. The question was “what is the fiscal cliff and is it good or bad?” The people they interviewed had no clue. Obama’s “tax the rich” policy will battle that down to, well, more than $5,500,000,000 per day. The United States has a spending problem, not a monetary policy problem.
Two logical and easy to implement solutions: Stop subsidizing businesses (all businesses, don’t just pick on the Greens) with tax dollars, government should not pick winners and losers, it should regulate to protect the public interest; and implement a Federal Value Added Sales tax (VAT) like pretty much every other industrialized nation already has. A 5% VAT at 1.7% of GDP (Canada’s VAT raises 1.7% of GDP at a 5% rate) could raise in excess of $250,000,000,000 per year. That would help.