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Re: [Phys-l] Mike Mann _The hockey stick and the climate wars_



Everyone should read the article in the latest Physics Today on this
subject. It is written by a climatologist. His account is chilling.
Apparently there are many people who just are so opposed to the idea of
anthropogenic climate change that they are literally trying to shoot the
messenger. Anyone who write positively about anthropogenic climate change
gets death threats and various organizations go to court to obtain their
E-mails and raw data. This is not how science should be conducted. The
scientific process works over time to sort out the various theories and
hypotheses. Sure, there are mistakes made, but over time they are sorted
out. Incidentally evolution supporters get similar threats, and I know of
teachers who have been reluctant to discuss evolution in class because of
the social pressure. And let us not forget that people have linked
relativity theory with moral relativity and as a result the theory has been
denied.

It is true that there are a few climatologists and atmospheric scientists
who deny anthropogenic climate warming. On prominent one has 2 web sites.
One is scientific, and the other is religious with no links from the
scientific one to the religious one. The religious one claims that God
would not allow anthropogenic climate change. He is considered to be
creditable scientist, but would you think that after reading his religious
claims?

There is another recent article on Fox News by a denier who claims that the
climate warming debate is mere hysteria on the part of the climate warming
claimants. The person who wrote this has NO credibility as a climatologist,
and cited no data for his claims. In other words he is using a social
argument against science. From what I can see most of the deniers are not
scientists, and the hysteria is due to the deniers. And there are plenty of
websites where climate change denial is dismissed in the same breath with
dismissal of evolution. There is even a Conservapedia which claims to be a
guide to conservatism, which denies both evolution and climate change.
There is plenty of evidence that the deniers are ill informed and usually
guided by motives which have nothing to do with the evidence. Unfortunately
the climatologists who are convinced that global warming is not
anthropogenic do not speak out and condemn the hysterical actions of others.

I doubt that the deniers get death threats, or that their E-mails are ever
demanded. The organizations which are doing the demanding do not have to
reveal the source of their funding unlike the government funded
climatologists. Then of course there was the VA state attorney who tried to
obtain all of the data from a VA professor. He has no expertise in the
field, and is just wasting public money on a fruitless pursuit.

The problem here is the classic paradigm change difficulty. People who are
against the established climate science are using gut reactions. They can
not change their minds no matter how powerful the evidence. About the only
thing that might make them change would be a 10ft dramatic rise in sea level
over 10 years, but that is unlikely to happen. They cite cherry picked
evidence without looking at the science behind it. So when they cite the
increase in Antarctic sea ice they ignore the evidence that the overall mass
of ice has decreased in the S polar region. The winter sea ice is a
relatively thin layer and is only a seasonal phenomenon. They never bother
to look up the articles which state this. We have to be careful to test our
gut reactions against the actual evidence. Psychologists know full well
that when you bring logical arguments against gut reactions, the individual
makes up arguments and keeps on putting more and more conditions on their
internal model. It takes special techniques to make them change. PER has
lots of these such as anchor and bridging analogies, interactive lecture
demos, McDermott tutorials... But you can't use these types of things on
the deniers. Actually this type of reasoning where only one piece of data
is used is similar to what concrete operational children do. They can't
consider multiple data which involve multiple variables. Similarly people
who have mental difficulties actively manufacture evidence to be able to
deny them. Whole societies go into denial. When this happens, it can hide
serious problems which need to be addressed.

Read the Physics Today article it is quite good.
http://www.physicstoday.org/resource/1/phtoad/v65/i2/p22_s1?bypassSSO=1
Notice how hysterical and accusatory the reactions are. How many of them
are true? How many of them actually cite evidence. Ok the high Himalayas
are not experiencing large amounts of ice loss, but all the lower altitude
glaciers, the Arctic, Greenland, and the Antarctic are losing ice. Notice
the cherry picking of one piece of evidence and ignoring the rest. Part of
this is because outlets like Fox trumpet the headline about the Himalayas so
people never read the rest of the article. In it the climatologists admit
that the original thoughts on the high glaciers came from estimates based on
the lower level glaciers. What if they had the headline "Himalayan high
glaciers not losing ice, but all other glaciers decreasing." They would
lose some of their readers.

Actually I would not describe many deniers as naïve or influenced by power
interests. The majority of the them may be fueled by gut reactions often
heavily influence by religious/social beliefs. People who are naïve can
change their minds, but those with powerful gut reactions can not unless
faced by draconian evidence. People who are high level thinkers in science
would not make threats or demand others data. They would do their own
research and publish reasoned articles.

John M. Clement
Houston, TX





The description of the book doesn't make me want to read it.
His argument is that all "deniers" are
funded by powerful interests or simply naively helping those
powerful interests. I wonder if he actually
addresses the short-comings of his methods in the book.