The Amazing Randi's amazing global warming denial

[salvorhardin]

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) -- a group of thousands of scientists in 194 countries around the world, and recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize -- has issued several comprehensive reports in which they indicate that they have become convinced that "global warming" is and will be seriously destructive to life as we know it, and that Man is the chief cause of it. They say that there is a consensus of scientists who believe we are headed for disaster if we do not stop burning fossil fuels, but a growing number of prominent scientists disagree. Meanwhile, some 32,000 scientists, 9,000 of them PhDs, have signed The Petition Project statement proclaiming that Man is not necessarily the chief cause of warming, that the phenomenon may not exist at all, and that, in any case, warming would not be disastrous.

Happily, science does not depend on consensus. Conclusions are either reached or not, but only after an analysis of evidence as found in nature. It's often been said that once a conclusion is reached, proper scientists set about trying to prove themselves wrong. Failing in that, they arrive at a statement that appears -- based on all available data -- to describe a limited aspect about how the world appears to work. And not all scientists are willing to follow this path. My most excellent friend Martin Gardner once asked a parapsychologist just what sort of evidence would convince him he had erred in coming to a certain conclusion. The parascientist replied that he could not imagine any such situation, thus -- in my opinion -- removing him from the ranks of the scientific discipline rather decidedly.

History supplies us with many examples where scientists were just plain wrong about certain matters, but ultimately discovered the truth through continued research. Science recovers from such situations quite well, though sometimes with minor wounds.

I strongly suspect that The Petition Project may be valid. I base this on my admittedly rudimentary knowledge of the facts about planet Earth. This ball of hot rock and salt water spins on its axis and rotates about the Sun with the expected regularity, though we're aware that lunar tides, solar wind, galactic space dust and geomagnetic storms have cooled the planet by about one centigrade degree in the past 150 years. The myriad of influences that act upon Earth are so many and so variable -- though not capricious -- that I believe we simply cannot formulate an equation into which we enter variables and come up with an answer. A living planet will continually belch, vibrate, fracture, and crumble a bit, and thus defeat an accurate equation. Please note that this my amateur opinion, based on probably insufficient data.

The whole sorry thing: http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/805-agw-revisited.html

This is sad. Do click through to read the whole sorry thing. Randi's statement at the very end caught my attention though where he says:

In my amateur opinion, more attention to disease control, better hygienic conditions for food production and clean water supplies, as well as controlling the filth that we breathe from fossil fuel use, are problems that should distract us from fretting about baking in Global Warming.

Well, that's the trick isn't it? If you concentrate on solving precisely those problems Randi lists, then you're almost assured of reducing human-related CO2 output and thus ameliorating AGW. And in a way, I think Randi is right about that anyway. Too much emphasis is put on the end result of AGW, and not the immediate problems that are leading to AGW. Solving those problems are worthwhile things on their own and much more understandable to the average person than the vague and undefined effects of AGW fifty or a hundred years down the line, even though the effects of unchecked AGW will be much more disastrous on a wide scale than the problems Randi lists which happen on local scales.

[trotsky]

1. Well at least he acknowledges the science and principles behind it.

And he does state his case reasonably well, which is basically that global climate is something affected by far too many variables (and which has fluctuated far more in the pre-human past) for us to be absolutely sure.

However the first comment to the article illustrates his problem: the people who know the most about climate are in near-complete agreement. Woos often make the mistake of poo-pooing authority because they think they know more than the experts. It pains me to see such a great skeptic do it too.

But you are right, focusing on the topics Randi mentions would help, so it's not a complete loss.

[salvorhardin]

2. The most galling thing was his assigning credibility to the Petition Project

5 minutes of googling would have shown that to be as bogus as the Discovery Institute's list.

This was all just puzzling considering that a year or so ago he wrote favorably of An Inconvenient Truth and believed AGW was a serious problem.

Phil Plait said he sent Randi some things to read, that Randi didn't mean to take an outright denialist position and Randi would clarify himself yesterday evening. Nothing has appeared on the JREF site yet, so I guess we'll just have to wait to see what he has to say.

[TZ]

3. Whats sad is

I'm finding that these intelligent "skeptics" seem to be only focusing on data thats not particularly strong. THere is just tons and tons of data (a lot of it biological/ecological) that does support climate change and its sad to see people so focused in on a few particular data sets, they seem to lose sight of the larger overall scientific supports. For instance. One can look at epidemiological studies of diseases like Malaria and Dengue Fever and see how they are becoming known and almost endemic in places that 50 years ago they were not. (Like the Southern US). You can see it in the expanding populations northward of warm weather birds in the same amount of time. And yet, in the arguments, I almost never hear this kind of data cited....

[Odin2005]

14. Just because you are intelligent doesn't mean you can see the big picture.

[WhollyHeretic]

4. That is some amazingly flawed logic

The Petition Project? Really? FFS. Out of the 31,000 "scientists" who have signed this petition they have 39 people with some sort of degree in climatology. The only scientific discipline on the list with less people is hydrology with 22. They do have 10,000 engineers!!! 2,600 mechanical engineers!! Over 3,000 in medical fields!!!

This is pretty disappointing.

[trotsky]

6. Side question: why are engineers so near-universally conservative?

Is it because they usually approach a problem thinking that there's just one tiny component at fault? Because they think political problems are the exact same thing as technical problems, and have a simple black-white answer? I have worked in I.T. for two different software companies and this even extends to software engineering: those guys are 99.9% Republican, lapping up the simplistic blame-somebody politics of today's GOP.

[salvorhardin]

7. You might also ask why climate change denial is so rampant in organized skepticism

I think it's classic Dunning-Krueger. Engineers (and skeptics) understand some very complex things. Therefore they thing they're equally capable of understanding everything, or that logic and rationality alone are enough to make an informed decision on any given topic (even if it requires advance study). I actually saw someone make this exact claim in a response to Phil Plait's take on this situation on his Facebook wall.

I'm afraid I'm one of the vitriolic ones in this whole thing. Randi's non-apology doesn't really take back anything he said, other than he should have looked at The Petition Project more closely. Otherwise it's just "Hey, I was just asking questions and being provocative." Bullshit. That's what Fox News says. It's not what the most prominent leader of movement skepticism should say. Hell, Penn Jillette's apology on his AGW denialist positions was more satisfying. At least he said, "You shouldn't be listening to me."

On topics that require advanced education to reasonably understand, skeptics, unless they have that education, should not be making claims in those fields. Skeptics can pick apart logical fallacies and point out common errors in reasoning but that's the extent of their ability to dissent from scientific consensus. In other words, skeptics should take the scientific consensus as the default position, requiring dissenters to provide the extraordinary evidence that majority of mainstream scientists in any given field are wrong.

And I'm sorry if I sound vitriolic, but Randi should know better. He blew it big time here.

[Orrex]

8. Regarding the engineers and skeptics

I've previously mentioned a friend who's doing doctoral work in soil ecology and microbiology, and he told me flat-out last year that humans have nothing to do with global warming. He justifies this claim by asserting that he's had lots of practie assessing data, and he's looked at the figures.

Well, I don't have the background to challenge him directly, so I usually nod and make noncommittal comments and then change the subject. Nothing I can possibly say will change his thinking, because he's already decided what the answer is.

I know a few engineers who are fiercely intelligent yet almost comically right-wing in their politics. It's truly baffling.

[onager]

9. I wonder that too, seen it my whole career.

I've spent my whole career around aerospace/electrical engineers. A depressing number are creationists who believe that since they have to design electrical circuits, SOMEBODY had to design the Universe.

From WH's post, this is a giant red flag: They do have 10,000 engineers!!! 2,600 mechanical engineers!!

IOW, engineers trying to apply scientific principles totally outside their fields of competence. I think that is the #1 mistake engineers make, when they go wandering off into the fields of biology, climatology, etc.

And the #2 reason, which you hit on with: "Because they think political problems are the exact same thing as technical problems, and have a simple black-white answer?"

IMO, sort of. Many engineers seem to believe in a near-woo-wooish idea of Universal Engineering Principles, which operate even in non-engineering disciplines like...uh...evolutionary biology.

(Though that notion certainly doesn't operate in their own field, since we don't see civil engineers designing airplanes or electrical engineers designing bridges. Fortunately...)

Just the other day on these very internets, I read a long dissertation by a mechanical engineer on the human skeletal structure. He said that he could never design anything so complex, therefore the human skeleton was a bio-mechanical miracle, hence it had to be designed by...Guess Who.

:banghead:

[Silent3]

10. That's not my experience

I'm a software engineer myself. While there are certainly a few conservatives around here where I work, liberals aren't hard to find either. Many of those you might call conservative are more libertarian than Republican, at least in how they talk (how they vote I usually don't know and don't ask).

The area where I work in southern NH likely plays a part in the political leaning of the people I work with.

Then again, I don't get an overwhelmingly conservative impression reading forums like slashdot either.

[Odin2005]

13. Most engineers are by temperment "inside the box" thinkers.

That doesn't mean there are not creative engineers, of course, but they are not the rule. That same lack of creativity also makes them very "compartmentalized" thinkers, they have difficulty in extending ideas into areas outside the original field and when they do they tend to do it in a way that doesn't make any sense, like expecting climate models to be as precise as formulas used in engineering.

[Lionel Mandrake]

15. Good question.

The typical career of an engineer is to work for a large corporation, follow orders, and seldom argue with the boss. Conservatives tend to gravitate toward such careers. Liberals are less likely to accept the corporate culture and tend to look for other kinds of jobs.

[salvorhardin]

5. Randi's "clarification" - "I Am Not 'Denying' Anything"

Again, the importance and the impact of this phenomenon is well beyond my grasp. I merely expressed my thoughts about the controversy, and I received a storm (no pun intended) of comments, many of which showed a lack of careful reading that led to unfair presumptions and interpretations. Will I do it again with other subjects? Without fail, I promise you. This is what human interaction is all about, what makes it important. I've shown that I can make observations on subjects barely within my understanding, while admitting my shortcomings, and provoke reactions that are interesting, constructive, and sometimes furious. That's okay. Language is a means of expressing one's thoughts and opinions without resorting to fisticuffs or worse. This encounter was bloodless, gentlemanly, and civilized.
http://www.randi.org/site/index.php/swift-blog/806-i-am-not-qdenyingq-anything.html

[realisticphish]

11. bs

just basic damage control.

I like James Randi, but this is a big one

[Deep13]

12. "Please note that this my amateur opinion, based on probably insufficient data."

Well, I agree with him there.

I don't understand the motivation deny that humans are responsible for GW. If that were true, we are screwed and there's nothing we can do about it. If GW is man-made, at least we might be able to mitigate it by changing our behaviour.

I really don't like to resort to the "Well you're not a climate scientist argument" because it comes close to the fallacy of appeal to authority. Nevertheless, the simple fact is that much information in the world is simply beyond the reach of nonprofessionals. At some point we have to defer to actual experts and decide who is giving an honest opinon based on the evidence and who is not. Seeing who writes the expert's paycheck is a good place to start when evaluating bias and even honesty. If I had never heard of Al Gore, I would still be convinced that GW is real and that CO2 and other artificially released chemicals have greatly accelerated it. That is unless someone can come up with another explanation for the loss of 1/3 of the north polar ice cap in a few decades. I was aware of GW in the 1980s.