Argument from personal incredulity
It's amazing to me how often people make what the evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has referred to as "the argument from personal incredulity." Especially in public. Especially on fourth rate blogs like this one, where it sometimes takes the form "I'm still waiting for these same climate "scientists" to tell us why the ozone hole over the antarctic got BIGGER after they banned CFCs. When they figure that one out they can claim to predict the weather 100 years into the future." (The answer is here, by the way. Google is not that hard to use.) Discussing climate change is, of course, a competely distinct endeavor from "predicting the weather." But you can't really expect someone who's willing to put their ignorance on display like that to get it.
It's kind of painful and amusing to watch, in exactly the same way that Eating Raoul is.
It's kind of painful and amusing to watch, in exactly the same way that Eating Raoul is.
Labels: idiots
Since 1949, Durhamites have slept soundly, secure in the knowledge that, in our town, erection can be depended upon. Now, thanks to the power of the internets, we can spread that security all over the world.
17 Comments:
No Google is not that hard to use...
http://www.cnn.com/TECH/science/9810/06/ozone.destruction/
http://www.nasa.gov/centers/goddard/news/topstory/2003/0925ozonehole.html
http://www.spacetoday.org/SolSys/Earth/AntarcticOzoneHole.html
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Newsroom/NewImages/images.php3?img_id=17436
“From September 21 to 30, [2006], the average area of the ozone hole was the largest ever observed, at 10.6 million square miles,” said Paul Newman, atmospheric scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Newman was joined by other scientists from NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in reporting that the ozone hole over the polar region of the Southern Hemisphere broke records for both area and depth in 2006. A little over a week after the ozone hole sustained its new record high for average area, satellites and balloon-based instruments recorded the lowest concentrations of ozone ever observed over Antarctica, making the ozone hole the deepest it had ever been.
Notice all the new alternate explanations of why it hasn't disappeared yet. Notice that they're blaming it on colder than average temperatures.
Colder-than-average temperatures result in larger and deeper ozone holes, while warmer temperatures lead to smaller ones. In 2006, as the graph shows, temperatures plunged well below average, hovering near or dipping below record-lows.
But wait! What about global warming?
More like Waiting for Guffman. You know, a bunch of over-dramatic people wondering why their dreams don't come true.
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Anonymous, at 10:30 AM
p.s. You need to call your J-school and ask for a refund.
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Dictionary.com Unabridged (v 1.1) - Cite This Source - Share This
cli·mate /ˈklaɪmɪt/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[klahy-mit] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation
–noun
1. the composite or generally prevailing weather conditions of a region, as temperature, air pressure, humidity, precipitation, sunshine, cloudiness, and winds, throughout the year, averaged over a series of years.
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The American Heritage Science Dictionary - Cite This Source - Share This
weather (wě'ər) Pronunciation Key
The state of the atmosphere at a particular time and place. Weather is described in terms of variable conditions such as temperature, humidity, wind velocity, precipitation, and barometric pressure. Weather on Earth occurs primarily in the troposphere, or lower atmosphere, and is driven by energy from the Sun and the rotation of the Earth. The average weather conditions of a region over time are used to define a region's climate.
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Anonymous, at 10:49 AM
Educate yourself.
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Barry, at 11:16 AM
Yeah, Barry! Thinking is hard! And after all, there can only be ONE factor which causes changes! And if they don't happen IMMEDIATELY, it means you've got the wrong factor!
Sheesh. The next thing you'll be telling me is that the increase in terrorism acts around the world is BECAUSE we invaded Iraq! Hah!
Anon is right! You're such an idiot.
And I learned a new term yesterday! It's "Ecological Fallacy!" It's such a cool term I'm sure it has something to do with this topic....
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Unknown, at 11:17 AM
My head hurts.
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Barry, at 11:28 AM
So if I know the weather 100 years from now, I don't know the climate. Got it. The fact that you chose to argue semantics means you ain't got a leg to stand on.
The ozone hole is bigger than ever. Now they're blaming it on the cold and anything else they can think of including that grand generic catchall "climate change". Could it be that the CFCs that they absolutely 100% assured us were solely responsible for causing the ozone hole are, in fact, only slightly responsible or maybe not responsible at all? 'Cause 25 years ago they assured us they had the solution, it was "settled science", and that it would be all better by now. They PROMISED! But their theory and models have failed to properly predict the outcome.
There is no historical record of the ozone layer nor of stratospheric chlorine. They only first measured the "ozone hole" in 1979. For all they know both had been there all along but that didn't stop them from finding a man made culprit and demanding instant action.
They need to prove their last "cure" for an atmospheric "problem" has actually worked. We're still waiting.
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Anonymous, at 11:59 AM
"So if I know the weather 100 years from now, I don't know the climate. Got it."
Is there any point in carrying on a discussion with someone who thinks this is a valid statement?
No, you can't know the weather 100 years from now. But you can make reasonable predictions about the direction that the climate is changing over the course of time. Predictions which can be checked by observations. And modified.
Your inability to distinguish between the simple concepts of weather and climate is not merely semantics. It calls into question your ability to comprehend the various data which you think seems to support the conclusion that nobody knows what the fuck is going on.
What's your explanation for the data you cite?
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Barry, at 12:13 PM
Yow. We've really got a dense one on our hands here.
17 years ago, when the Montreal Protocols were ratified, it was widely understood that it would be 2030-2050 before the ozone hole permanently returned to its normal state. Why? CFCs are remarkably stable compounds. When they were first formally presented to the American Chemical Society, the presenter (forgot the name) took a flask of CFC, inhaled the gas, then blew out a match with it, rapidly demonstrating how sure he was that it was both non-toxic and non-combustible. The problem comes when small amounts of them (and it only takes a very small amount) reaches the upper atmosphere, and the intense radiation in the ozone layer causes the halides to split off from the alkanes momentarily, at which point they become a ferocious catalyst for ozone decay. If you're lucky, the halide then manages to react with something other than the alkane, and becomes something even more stable, thus permanently removing the CFC from the atmosphere, but often it just reforms the CFC, and the cycle repeats. This is how so little CFC can eat through ozone like butter. But again, CFCs are so stable, conditions have to be just right for this to happen, which is one reason it only happens over the poles.
So while we slammed on the breaks of CFC production, the damned things are so stable, there's still tons of them floating around in the atmosphere. You're breathing them right now, and they're continuing to destroy ozone when the conditions are right. They decay so slowly, there's going to be measurable CFCs in the atmosphere centuries from now. The only thing we can reasonably do is wait for them to deplete.
Of course, you could have found all this out by reading Barry's links, but apparently that was too much to ask.
So if I know the weather 100 years from now, I don't know the climate. Got it. The fact that you chose to argue semantics means you ain't got a leg to stand on.
Lord, give me patience.
Today, the high is close to 80 degrees in Durham. By your logic, I can infer from this that it will not be cold this winter. This logic, of course, ignores the fact that we had a high of 43 just last week.
But you could have figured this out by reading my link. Apparently, again, too much to ask.
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Unknown, at 12:17 PM
Was that logic? i didn't recognize it.
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Barry, at 12:23 PM
You can continue your Clintonesque quibble about the difference between weather and climate all you like. The dictionaries I cited don't recognize enough of a distinction for most people to care. Unless we're going to turn control of our language to NASA. But if you want to get so hot and bothered over one word in a long post go right ahead. Whatever turns you on.
I would like to ask how big was the ozone hole over the Antarctic before people started making CFCs? That's right, we don't know. In fact what we have is a hypothesis and we're running an experiment. Will the elimination of CFCs return the ozone layer to the unknown state it was in before CFCs were first made? Whatever state that is. Y'all keep waiting and believing if you like. All I see is a bunch of hand waving about why their prediction hasn't yet been confirmed. All I ask is for them to get it right. No go so far.
(I love the argument that CFCs are so stable that they hang around for years but they're so reactive that they chew up the ozone layer.)
I've been listening to the sky is falling Chicken Littles for too many years to take seriously a "scientist" whose job security depends on a prediction of doom that can't be proven in his lifetime. But in the meantime he needs more money to study the problem. Great job security that. If you don't think most government agencies, including NASA, spend almost all of their time thinking about how to keep their funding in the next fiscal year then you don't know much about how government works. "Climate change" is a boon for these guys. It used to be "global warming" but oops, some places are getting colder.
I was thinking this today on my drive home burning the gas we're supposed to have run out of ten years ago while eating some food that was supposed to be in short supply by now. Maybe someday one of these dire predictions will be proven right but so far they're batting 0.00000.
To turn to the original point, maybe the newspapers in question are finally wising up.
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Anonymous, at 7:44 PM
Here, have a clue: http://www.atm.ch.cam.ac.uk/tour/part3.html
It's probably over Mr. Anon's head, but there's not much I can do about that...
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Anonymous, at 10:11 PM
Why do i waste my fucking time?
You can't even get the most basic facts right to support your claim. Why should anyone take seriously anything you have to say?
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Barry, at 10:13 PM
Here's some more science for you, not that you've shown any indication that you're capable of understanding it.
And yeah, i think Eating Raoul is exactly the analogy i was looking for.
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Barry, at 10:25 PM
I know we shouldn't keep this up, but, well, our dear Anon here is like a Weebl. Punching him over and over is kind of pointless, and it's not much of a challenge, but there's a sort of mind-numbing satisfaction to it.
How do we know the ozone layer wasn't there before? Various isotopes which change state in the presence of UV radiation in antarctic ice cores. Or was that too many big scary words?
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Unknown, at 10:33 AM
Have y'all ever hear the term Troll?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)
Troll's love anonymity, but they hate to be ignored...
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Anonymous, at 4:17 PM
Here's Al Gore's better half..
http://www.thejakartapost.com/yesterdaydetail.asp?fileid=20071205.!15
Dishonest political tampering with the science on global warming
- December 05, 2007
Christopher Monckton, Denpasar, Bali
As a contributor to the IPCC's 2007 report, I share the Nobel Peace Prize with Al Gore. Yet I and many of my peers in the British House of Lords - through our hereditary element the most independent-minded of lawmakers - profoundly disagree on fundamental scientific grounds with both the IPCC and my co-laureate's alarmist movie An Inconvenient Truth, which won this year's Oscar for Best Sci-Fi Comedy Horror.
Two detailed investigations by Committees of the House confirm that the IPCC has deliberately, persistently and prodigiously exaggerated not only the effect of greenhouse gases on temperature but also the environmental consequences of warmer weather.
[snip]
The shore-dwellers of Bali need not fear for their homes. The IPCC now says the combined contribution of the two great ice-sheets to sea-level rise will be less than seven centimeters after 100 years, not seven meters imminently, and that the Greenland ice sheet (which thickened by 50 cm between 1995 and 2005) might only melt after several millennia, probably by natural causes, just as it last did 850,000 years ago. Gore, mendaciously assisted by the IPCC bureaucracy, had exaggerated a hundredfold.
[snip]
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Anonymous, at 7:44 AM
Toby
You certainly have a point about trolls, but the "ozone hole myth" attack is actually fresh and novel (and deranged) enough, it almost merits attention. The normal greenhouse denying that our precious anon has turned to in its latest missive is boilerplate stuff that's completely ignorable, but people going all the way back to re-challenging ozone isn't debate. It's target practice. The science on ozone is so utterly air tight (no pun intended) in all but the tinfoil hat realm that it's truly laughable. I'm generally opposed to outright mocking in political discourse, as making enemies is generally a bad move, but when someone comes begging for it, it's hard to resist obliging them.
Hey, shooting fish in a barrel is fun sometimes.
By
Unknown, at 9:46 PM
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