It amuses me how triggered people are by Greta...
I don't see relevance of the Motte and Bailey fallacy here.
Climate science is pretty mature now - the experts having been saying the same thing for well over 30 years, and it's playing out just as predicted. People can nitpick about exactly how long it will take Florida to go under, and a whole bunch of other things, but I think it's mostly their sad reluctance to admit they were wrong coming through. It's only becoming more certain that we are experiencing anthropogenic global heating. Many people foolishly swore that wasn't happening, and now they'll be trying to weasel their way around that till they die - such is human nature.
It amuses me how triggered people are by Greta...
It's just irrelevant and embarrassing and furthermore obvious astroturfing. I want people to elevate dialogue, and the climate change camp using these kind of theatrics denigrates science and undermines their credibility. If you're trying to have a conversation about a serious issue, don't bring out an autistic kid to make emotional appeals as your spokesman. That's not how somebody trying to present facts and evidence would prove a case. It's how somebody trying to swindle and manipulate would. Like a pastor at a megachurch or something. Is the goal here to get action and results or "trigger the deniers"? You should be calling it out too and saying this isn't how the dialogue should be happening, otherwise don't be surprised and complain when it happens in reverse and nobody takes your complaints about their dirty tactics seriously.
the experts having been saying the same thing for well over 30 years, and it's playing out just as predicted
Not much has changed in the last 30 years really, so there wasn't much to predict. We could each point to some examples (e.g. receding glaciers vs prediction at Glacier National Park that they'd be entirely gone by 2020) but that misses the point. FWIW, I suspect receding glaciers have very little to do with CO2 -> increasing temperatures -> declining glaciers, but I don't know enough on the subject to say much confidently. I do know that they've been receding for 100+ years which doesn't really match the CO2 story since human cumulative emissions back then were absolutely tiny compared to now. I suspect particulate pollution increasing solar absorption plays a big role, but I also imagine glaciologists have taken that into account. Precipitation, cloud cover, and solar radiation are other obvious candidates that could have a much larger impact than the mediocre warming over the last 100 years.
But climate scientists aren't the problem here for the most part and not the main parties in this drama that I disagree with. It's the shitty translation of the work that happens in the media to pump up fear and attention, not focusing on most likely outcomes and other obvious threats. And once again, this undermines credibility and science. Florida will not be under water, for example. That's the kind of nonsense that gets repeated by doomers and the media all the time but no climate scientists take seriously. Sea level rising a couple inches in the next hundred years just doesn't do it. That prediction is meaningfully wrong in obvious ways. The world warming 1.4C vs 1.8C or whatever in some model looks trivial in comparison. I know why they do this to get attention for a cause that they believe is important and would be ignored otherwise, but it's a Faustian bargain. You can't complain about inaction, confusion, and distrust if you're injecting disinformation and fear into a discussion. Climate scientists need to call out this dumb shit instead of tolerating them as politically expedient bedfellows.
IMO far bigger threats are habitat destruction and overexploitation (e.g. WalMart parking lots going up everywhere, jungle being destroyed for palm oil monocrops, collapse of fish stocks, collapse of biodiversity and the biome). Those will make the world a far different place in 2100 compared to a counterfactual world where CO2 increased, the world warmed 2 C, but human civilization disappeared tomorrow.
The doomers are just as wrong as the deniers IMO. It's just different kinds of wrong. And by focusing energy at fanciful and counterproductive narratives, it undermines political capital to address real environmental damage. I suspect that is intentional--the narrative that we'll all just keep our extravagant lifestyle but switch to Teslas to save the planet is very attractive to industry and an infinite growth model. Solving CO2 emissions is trivial compared to actual issues of overconsumption. Almost nobody is focused on that--certainly no politician that wants reelection.
Many people foolishly swore that wasn't happening, and now they'll be trying to weasel their way around that till they die - such is human nature.
Some are. In my experience, most still just deny it's happening at all because it's just a question that isn't important to them in relation to the "solutions" being proposed. In my experience, most of those don't really have much of an opinion or interest of the science but don't want government interference and increased state control. They're not wrong on that IMO, it's just a question of values and viewing it from a scientific angle simply isn't important to them in the same way as somebody telling you "but the sandwich you're eating isn't halal" isn't important to you. Maybe that perspective doesn't make sense to others, but it's as close of a read of their psychology that I've got, and it seems far better than most of the other junk, fearmongering, and villainization that happens in the media lamenting the deniers. And if you hope to win people over, the first step is understanding things from their perspective, not a caricature, how you think about it, or how you wish they thought about it. But like all things when you ask a group of millions of people their opinion on things, you'll gets lots of different answers.
If you're trying to have a conversation about a serious issue, don't bring out an autistic kid to make emotional appeals as your spokesman.
We are dooming our children to live on a ruined planet - the least we can do is let them complain about it occasionally. It's perfectly relevant. Again, I think it just triggers people because they can't handle the truth about how our actions blatantly shit on children.
It's the shitty translation of the work that happens in the media to pump up fear and attention, not focusing on most likely outcomes and other obvious threats.
I don't this is true overall for climate science. Basically I think the opposite is happening. Sure, the Guardian is doing their best to raise the alarm, and you can call that fearmongering if you like, but I disagree. Like everything else climate science is corrupted by money, and with climate science the vast majority of the money is pushing propaganda that tries to understate and ignore the issue. The IPCC reports are notoriously censored and understated, to try and make the problem seem as harmless as possible.
Habitat destruction and overexploitation is also a big shorter term problem, but if we don't destroy those species now, we'll likely do it later via global heating anyway.
Solving CO2 emissions is trivial compared to actual issues of overconsumption.
I agree that the CO2 problem can't be solved via Teslas and replacing light globes. To solve global heating you also need to solve overconsumption, and basically re-design the way modern society works. That's why it's not happening - that's why most the money is pushing to ignore the problem, not overstate it.
It's fine if people don't give at shit about ruining the planet for future generations, and would prefer to maximise their own freedom before they die. I do wish they'd be honest about it though.
It's not surprising that there is big money and vested interests supporting the minority. Of course industry is going to look out for itself, and in the same way research grants will go to ideologically agreeable scientists on the "pro global warming" side too. Not saying that those are equal, but it's not some huge scandal in and of itself.
Starting an article like this is honestly cringe.
The old "97% of scientists agree" really does get abused quite frequently in discussion as a motte-and-bailey fallacy.
Motte: 97% of climate scientists responded that the Earth is warming and that humans contribute to a majority of that warming.
Bailey: Scientists are in agreement that global warming is an existential threat, human civilization will be wiped out in 50 years, Florida will be underwater in 10 years, we must take action at any cost to lower CO2, etc.
I'm sure there is far less consensus about how much warming will occur, which other non-human factors contribute and how much, how much of a net positive/negative it will be on humanity, the environment, and various ecosystems, what actions of remediation should be taken, etc.
Science isn't done by popularity anyway, so while it can be very informative to understand the prevailing views, ultimately the truth cannot be determined by vote--it must be by evidence and data. Unfortunately given that climate change is a political issue with various ideologically driven sources of funding and political agendas, this creates even larger uncertainty around results since there is pressure exerted by both sides to produce favorable results.
For the "anti" side, that means research downplaying the warming, showing non-human causes, etc. For the "pro" side, this can also appear even if everybody is legitimately trying to be fair, e.g. "hmm, this model shows very little warming or even cooling, but that can't be right since all the other papers are showing warming. I must have messed something up. Let me go back and try changing that parameter before I publish. As it stands now, this paper would probably get rejected anyway, and I might get labeled a loony and jeopordize future research grants since my peers won't take me seriously", etc
All this is to say, the numbers are what they are, the survey is probably roughly correct about the general views among scientists in the field, but the interpretation always needs caution and context and don't actually prove the implied, broader claim that gets repeated over and over again about a climate emergency--not necessarily by the scientists but in the broader culture.