Last month I explained to you how having faith in the condition of our changing climate requires some degree of ignorance.
I told you that only the intellectually dishonest among us would ignore the overwhelming evidence that proves the reality of climate change…and to ignore the truth is morally wrong.
I gave you four indisputable facts for you to remember:
- 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit - the mean global temperature increase over the past 100 years.
- 97% - the majority ratio of climatologists who agree that global warming is real and caused by human activity.
- The 2000 year old Hockey Stick - as a model of the Earths average mean temperature, showing how the advent of the industrial revolution marks the 1.4 degree anthropogenic increase.
- and the 6.7 inch increase in sea level over the past 100 years as a result of the melting ice caps.
Given that overwhelming evidence, there is no longer any question that global climate change is real. None. If someone tries to tell you otherwise, the burden of proof is with them, because they are making an extraordinary claim…and you know what Carl Sagan had to say about extraordinary claims…they require extraordinary evidence.
Today’s episode of Phedippidations is the second part of a three part series about global warming. What I’d like to discuss today is something that’s probably very obvious to most of you: the difference between weather and climate.
Now, I shouldn’t have to bring this up…but many of the “discussions” I’ve had over the years with climate change deniers include a number of really annoying logical fallacies.
Someone will say: “Global climate change can’t be caused by the human burning of fossil fuels because if it were, switching to non-polluting energy sources would bankrupt our country.”
That’s a clear case of an “outcome bias” or “Argument from Consequences”, and quite frankly it’s incredibly dumb.
Someone will say “You know, climatologists have minor disagreements about the specifics of global warming, therefore there’s a lack of consensus with climate experts on climate change”.
It’s true, that when you break down the details, not all climate scientists agree on the rate of global warming and the specific average amount of CO2 that’s in our atmosphere.
If you were in a room with ten firefighters, and the room was engulfed inflames, and 9 of the firefighters ensured you that the room was on fire and you should leave the room immediately...what do you think? Is the minor disagreement with the 10th firefighter worth considering? Since not all of the firefighters agree, should you ignore the warning and have a seat in the comfortably ever warming room?
here's what the overwhelming majority of climatologists and every major scientific institution dealing with climate, ocean and/or the atmosphere agree on: That the climate is warming rapidly and the primary cause is human C02 emissions.
And then there’s the denier favorite “It was colder here today than it normally is, which proves that there is no global warming”.
The fact that I have to explain that weather is not the same as climate is sad and embarrassing for our
species.
Weather is chaotic, and the weather characteristics of a single day, in a single place has nothing to do with the overall state of the climate. No conclusion on climate change can ever be drawn from a single data point…and that includes a 30 year long set of data points: yeah, I’m looking at you Little Ice Age.
I’ve been following this Climate Change stuff since I was a full fledge climate change denier back in the late 1980’s. It took the constant presentation of facts from my friend, Dick Leone…a card carrying member of the Sierra Club, to turn me around.
From personal experience and from much of the information I’ve consumed over the years, I can tell you without a doubt that almost all of the arguments against the reality of climate change is based on the fallacy of incomplete evidence…also known as cherry picking.
Named after the perceived process of harvesting fruit, where the picker would be expected to select only the ripest and healthiest of cherries, leading an observer to conclude that most or all of the fruit is in amazing condition….cherry picking is actually the suppression of evidence. It’s the act of pointing to individual cases or data that seem to confirm a particular position, and it’s used by the majority of climate change deniers every day.
Now see, this is a perfect example of intellectual dishonesty and the "fallacy of incomplete evidence". Look everybody, look at me! I have a snowball and it's snowing outside right now, today, in the winter…behold my single example of something I am offering as proof that climate change is a hoax, so therefore Global Warming isn't real!
Intellectually dishonest? How about mind numbingly ignorant. And he's not alone, there are way too many 'Merican's in my country who think that a snowy day is proof against the reality of climate change.
But what these deniers do not understand, and really should is the simple difference between "weather" and “climate".
I live near, and grew up in the suburbs of Boston Massachusetts, and as Mark Twain once famously wrote "“If you don't like the weather in New England now, just wait a few minutes.”
When we Bostonians do wait a few minutes, the rain stops...or the snow falls, or the wind stops howling, or hail starts to fall. It's common for the weather to change hour to hour as any Red Sox fan understands too well: sitting out in the bleacher seats.
CLIMATE change is not measured day to day...although the frequency of EXTREME weather events
is predicted due to an increase in the global temperature of the planet.
Here in New England, we joke about our wishes for global warming when it's dark at 3 PM and the outside temperature is below 20 degrees Farenhight...but those of us who can read and understand simple science know that a cold day in Boston is not an indicator of anything.
Proving that Global Warming is real, and understanding climate change are impressively easy tasks. It’s not hard, you just have to remember that it’s the deniers who have the burden of proof…and when you consider that their method of arguing against the truth is to employ cherry picking: well, you’ve pretty much already won the argument before you even started.
I’ll say something else that might surprise you, but it shouldn’t: I have never lost an argument with a climate change denier…I’ve pissed them off, I’ve seen them cower beneath the shelter of ad-hominem attacks from time to time, but most of the time I win because they refuse to counter their arguments with evidence…and they know they’ve lost.
That’s really why I don’t want to argue about climate change anymore…so don’t ask me to. I always win. I always win, because it’s easy to win. That’s not me being snarky or feeling intellectually superior: remember, I’m a dummy: and if a dummy like me can always win in an argument against a climate change denier, then what’s the point?
That is intellectual dishonesty in it’s extreme.
Cherry picking is the selection of data or data sets so that an argument, study or survey will give desired, predictable results which may be misleading or even completely contrary to reality.
Let’s look at some classic examples:
False claim number 1: The Antarctic sea ice is growing.
Anthropogenic global warming models do NOT predict uniform warming throughout the globe.
That's why the 1.4 degree Fahrenheit measurement is a global mean average...meaning everywhere on the planet, not just in Washington DC or Antarctica!
To be intellectually honest you have to consider the balance of evidence...not the meaningless cherries that climate change deniers who use this argument pick.
The growth in the East Antarctic ice sheet indicated by some evidence is so small, that it's within the margin of error. That means, the ice sheet could actually be shrinking...but that's okay, lets say it IS growing...except of course for the most recent results from NASA's GRACE experiment.
Oh, I'm sorry climate change denier, you're unfamiliar with the GRACE experiment? Why thats the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment...haven't heard of it? Oh...how sad, because it blows your stupid shrinking sea ice cherry into tiny chunk sized pieces.
Also, and for the record, and I can't believe that I have to explain this to you climate change deniers...but ice-sheet thickening is consistent with global warming....think it through…the warmer the climate gets, the more precipitation there is. Note that Antarctica is the planets most extreme desert, I know that climate change deniers think that deserts are defined only by sand and heat, but I’ve already established their idiocy…so let the adults drive here, thank you:
Let’s say that the Antarctic warms up by 20 degrees Fahrenheit , from…oh, I don’t know, it’s usual minus 50 degrees Fahrenheit.
Actually: I looked it up, and at the Amundsen-Scot South Pole Station today it was minus 87 degrees Fahrenheit…so, let’s say that the temperature rose by 20 degrees….and, precipitation began to fall…what would that form of precipitation be?
If you answered a warm, soothing bathwater rain…you’d be very very silly. If it snows, the ice volume increases, not it’s mass…the Antarctic fills up with a white fluffy snow.
Oh, and let us not forget about our friends in Greenland…where ice happens to be growing in the center of that not so green land….this by the way is another favorite location for climate change deniers who cherry pick the interior of that fine island nation.
The problem is, they don’t like to notice the coastal areas of Greenland where they’re losing 124 cubic miles per year…which is double, that is TWO TIMES the rate of just ten years ago.
So, if you’re a climate change denier and you EVER dare to bring up the increase in snow in Antarctica, you’d better friggin mention the melting ice on the exterior of Greenland or our conversation is over.
Hey, do I sound angry? Yeah? Good...I am, because this is easy to understand and climate change deniers who cherry pick their simple examples piss me off with their ignorance. I refuse to argue with them any more.
This issue is, as I will clearly explain in the next episode “the single most important issue of our time”, yes Donny Drumpf…about a trillion times more important that terrorism. I’d love to explain THAT logic to you, but we’ve got some more cherries to pick before I go.
False claim number 2: The satellites show cooling.
Now some quasi-savvy climate change deniers will latch on to some satellite analysis that once showed that the troposphere wasn’t warming as quickly as models predicted it would if global warming was occurring.
Think about that for a minute: these same cherry pickers who point to the ground based temperature measurements represented in the hockey stick graph as being a myth are happy to embrace the data coming from a satellite circling the planet which measures the microwaves emitted by atmospheric oxygen to estimate temperature.
Enter the most recent data collected from a series of satellites known as AMSU - the Advanced Microwave Sounding Unit, in operation since 1998. Can you guess what they have found? Yup: the warming they’ve measured is well in line with the model expectations.
See, with the earlier MSU units, in operation from 1978 through the early 2000’s, orbit decay, splicing data together from different instruments and excessive data processing lead to some inaccurate readings….that’s why they created the ADVANCED MSU, to fix all that.
So, yes…the early Microwave Sounding Unit’s in orbit around the planet provided useful data that showed “some” warming, but that data was not as accurate as the more recent data…but let’s not let the facts ruin a good story. Cherry pickers ignore newer overwhelming evidence in favor for the juicer bits that support their ignorance.
False claim number 3: Global Warming stopped in 1998
I assume many of you have heard of El Nino
Well, one of the favorite ploys of a cherry picker with regards to global warming events is to select a specific year where a trend begins. 1998 was a record high year for temperatures, in fact it was 32 degrees Farenheight higher than the previous highest record year, which happened to be 1997, the year before.
1998 was the strongest El Nino of the century. If you pick that “exception to the rule chaotic “ year as your starting point; of course the following years will have a reduced mean average reading.
Listen to me carefully climate change deniers: you cannot extract meaningful information about trends in noisy data from single year end points.
There are plenty of other silly examples of cherry picking that climate change deniers like to present as counter evidence to reality. Examples of climate sensitivity observations that claim the models are wrong, the fact that Newfoundland was so warm in the medieval warm period that the Vikings brought boatloads of grapes back to Europe, satellite measurements that show that the arctic sea levels are falling, and the fact that some ground measurement stations in the United States show cooling trends…these are all badly formed fallacies of anecdotal evidence.
Climate is not the same as weather, although an increase in frequency of extreme weather events: hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, flooding…are all examples of extreme weather conditions that are predicted by the climate change models.
Heavier than normal snow levels in Washington DC is one such example…so when an elected
politician who believes that climate change is a myth, walks into the senate floor with a snowball to try to prove his point…you are witnessing intellectual dishonesty and a impressive demonstration of stupidity and ignorance.
Science doesn’t give a shit. The evidence is overwhelming that climate change is real, and that the planets mean average temperature is continuing to increase. That’s the truth, we have extensive data to prove it…and yes, there are some dark red, sweet, juicy examples that seem to be contrary to the overwhelming evidence: you can pick those if you want to, but the burden of proof is with you…and if you’re a climate change denier: you’re going to lose the argument: everytime.
In part one of this series I proved to you that global climate change is real, and explained to you how easy it is to understand.
In this episode I’ve described to you the difference between weather and climate and given common examples of bad arguments, in the form of “cherry picking” that is often used by climate change deniers.
Next week, to conclude this topic: I’m going to explain to you why global climate change is the single most important topic of our time….more dangerous than terrorism, drug abuse, cancer, political corruption, bio-warfare, economic collapse and credit card fraud.
We have a moral obligation to make the world a better place, and we just don’t have time to argue about this anymore.
One more thing:
Early on the morning of Sunday June 12th, a 29 year old hate filled, loser opened fire at a nightclub in Orlando Florida killing 49 innocent people.
Now, alot has been said about this crime and the reasons behind it; so there’s unlikely to be anything new that I’ll have to add to the conversation; but here I go anyway…stating the obvious.
Love is the only rational act. Which means that what this psychopath did was not only hate inspired, but it was irrational; and anyone who applauds this act has climbed aboard the irrational bandwagon, be it some failed wanna be self proclaimed jihadist militant group, the Turkish newspaper Yeni Akit Pastor Roger Jimenez of Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento, or Pastor Donnie Romero of Stedfast Baptist Church in Fort Worth Texas…all four hate filled exceptions of humanity.
And then there’s the Donald Drumpf…his real last name by the way, go ahead look it up if you think I’m kidding.
As the reports came in about the shooting, The Drumpf waggled his tiny little baby hands and bragged that he had predicted that just this kind of thing would happen…justifying his call for a ban on all Muslims entering the U.S.
Yes, you heard me right: THE Donald was almost literally peeing his undersized Depends disposable underwear in glee that OH MY GIANT FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER, I WAS RIGHT!!
And then, he gave a speech where he called for suspending immigration QUOTE “from areas of the world where there is a proven history of terrorism against the United States, Europe or allies.”
And like the incredibly stupid wack-job that he is, The Drumpf went on to claim that the shooter was born in Afghanistan…because Drumpf cannot or will not read or listen, he gets all his news on the friggin’ inte-webs. But here’s the thing Don-Don, the loser who killed all those people was born in New York, not to far away from you, you orange headed unevolved primate.
So, how was that helpful Donny? How did your scary-scenario rant help a grieving nation? What good did you provide the world with your ridiculous mindless hatered? Eff-you Donnie Drumpf, you impotent angry squirrel handed tiny dick little ass.
The good news for the world is that he’ll never be elected. I promise you, he hasn’t got a chance.
Even if you don’t vote for Hillary, it’s over…she’s going to be our next President…not something I personally was hoping for, I love Bernie…but this is where we’re at: I’m confident of this…but what Drumpfs ignorance reveals is the stupidity and hatred of so many of my fellow Americans.
Yes, I’m angry, yes I shouldn’t be…yes, you’re right, I’m as bad as these ass-tards are, I know this…I’m embarrassed about it, I’ve stoopt to their level, I’m just as bad as Drumpf is for saying this…I too have made the world a worse place for speaking out…and I shouldn’t have…but damn…I mean what the hell man?
So, what are we do to as rational humans (that is, when I am rational) in response to all the hate from the Drumpf Drones who think we’re actually going build a wall?? (laugh) Yeah, build a wall…have you ever heard of anything so incredibly stupid? I’ll answer that for you: no, you haven’t…Drumpfy as set a new standard for stupidity in ‘Merica.
So, let’s not hate, love one another…even the ass-chumps like Dunna Drumpy and his drooling drones, because they are not intelligent…they lack four or five key chromosomes or something like that, it’s clear and obvious…let’s not even hate them (make fun of them, sure…why not, they have it coming) but hate? Nahh…that’s their game.
Love is the only rational act. Be rational.
I’m Steve Runner, reminding you to Run long and taper.