Cohenite et al.

Please read
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2013//20130412_arcticseaice.html

David

Divergence

See how your approach is one of mere credulity?

Has it ever occurred to you that other people might be doing the same thing, including people you look up to and trust?

If it was a matter of mere opinion, it would be okay. But these are people who think it's okay to waste other people's lives and freedoms like it's going outta style.

They talk about how cost doesn't matter, money is no object. But none of the warmists offering to make so free with other people's money are offering to pay $11 million to fund a job themselves, or to fund any of their other obscene and corrupt boondoggles. They all want the comforts of western civilisation while expecting everyone else to be forced to sacrifice to pay for their own values. Their concern for others is fake. Real moral superiority is based on personal responsibility, not an abdication of your critical faculties backed up by force.

An interesting study result summarised below:

A survey of thousands of peer-reviewed papers in scientific journals has found 97.1% agreed that climate change is caused by human activity.

Authors of the survey, published on Thursday in the journal Environmental Research Letters, said the finding of near unanimity provided a powerful rebuttal to climate contrarians who insist the science of climate change remains unsettled.

The survey considered the work of some 29,000 scientists published in 11,994 academic papers. Of the 4,000-plus papers that took a position on the causes of climate change only 0.7% or 83 of those thousands of academic articles, disputed the scientific consensus that climate change is the result of human activity, with the view of the remaining 2.2% unclear.

The study described the dissent as a "vanishingly small proportion" of published research.

"Our findings prove that there is a strong scientific agreement about the cause of climate change, despite public perceptions to the contrary," said John Cook of the University of Queensland, who led the survey.

Public opinion continues to lag behind the science.

The study blamed strenuous lobbying efforts by industry to undermine the science behind climate change for the gap in perception. The resulting confusion has blocked efforts to act on climate change.

Jon Krosnick, professor in humanities and social sciences at Stanford university and an expert on public opinion on climate change, said: "I assume that sceptics would say that there is bias in the editorial process so that the papers ultimately published are not an accurate reflection of the opinions of scientists."

No army could function without a chain of command. That is why soldiers are punished for disobeying orders, even if it turns out that the soldier was right and the officer who gave the order was wrong. Similarly, no complex civilization can function without reliance on expert opinion.

I know for a fact that a great many antinuclear activists are talking nonsense on stilts, but I am not a climate scientist. The case for or against AGW relates to the scientific data, not tastes or values. Unless the climate scientists are in serious disagreement with each other (not the case, as shown by Geoff of Perth's study) or make arguments that violate basic physics, I have no reason to believe that they are wrong. So far, all such problem arguments seem to be coming from the anti-AGW side. Even some of their own scientists are concerned about it:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/02/climate_deniers_are_giving_us_skeptics_a_bad_name.html

This issue goes far beyond AGW. If people are encouraged to "think for themselves" and ignore expert opinion on AGW, why shouldn't they also ignore expert opinion on evolution, vaccination, the HIV virus, the Holocaust, the dangers of secondhand tobacco smoke, or anything else? The temptation to do this is likely to be great, especially if accepting the expert advice is going to be inconvenient, cost them money, or challenge their favourite religious, political, or economic ideology.

There is new television documentary, "Jabbed", on vaccination that is going to be screened this week. It is going to show 30 seconds of a newborn baby with whooping cough that is struggling to breathe and may die. The baby would be too young to vaccinate and could only be protected by herd immunity, which can be easily lost if its family's idiot neighbours refuse to vaccinate their children. This is the ultimate result of "thinking for oneself".

"I can't believe you believe this rot.
Posted by cohenite, Wednesday, 15 May 2013 8:52:44 PM"

I guess like theism, that's fundamentally what it comes down to. You have to believe or have faith because the evidence is against you. I will go with the climate scientists.

As to the OP, excellent article, you're not going to get far with it unfortunately. It's a pity the recent rewrite of the DSM didn't include the delusion in believing in some dude in the sky... be it santa, or god as a disorder. My main issue is these people can vote, I do think they can believe in whatever whacky thing they want but to hold political sway is repugnant because they lack the ability to apply the critical thinking necessary to make an informed decision.

Divergence, you're wrong. It's the result of completely failing to think for oneself because one lacks the tools or the innate ability to do so. As a result, anything can be taken as true, with no test other than whether it confirms underlying prejudices, or has some other emotional impact.

The reason religion has been so successful is that it says to those who are losers in life's lottery that they will be in the corporate box after it ends and of course, it has produced reams and reams of impressive-looking theology which must be right, because it's got lots of long words.

Ditto with other movements that have exploited members of underclasses everywhere. When you're poor, ill-educated, ground down by life and so are all your friends, who is going to argue with someone who isn't who shows an interest?