Scott Adams Will Save the World
Adams has an excellent video on climate change.
He says that hockey stick graphs are “the most famous symbol of lying in the world”.
Yet, if you think the video is an attack on science you are mistaken.
The video is not really about climate change at all. It’s about persuasion and what it takes to get people to change their minds.
Both Sides Lying
Adams thinks, as do I, that both sides may be lying. Certainly, both sides overstate their case. The question is to what degree, and about what.
In the video, Adams states he genuinely is unconvinced about climate change science. So am I, even though it may not seem like like it.
What Does a Comic Writer Know?
So, what does Adams know about climate?
The same as me, perhaps a bit more or perhaps less, which is to say, not much, at least compared to climatologists. But I can smell lies. So can Adams.
Art of Persuasion
Adams knows a lot about persuasion. The Dilbert comic strip itself is about persuasion. Adams is a master of persuasion.
Adams points out that the tactics used to persuade the young and naive are not the same tactics that are needed to persuade older businessmen.
When 97% of people agree on something that is genuinely unknown or debatable, I am inclined to take the other side, as is Adams.
He gives many examples of strong agreement. Some of them are humorous.
In the economic world we see the same thing. Fed governors believe they know something for sure, but their models blow sky high all the time.
Climate Change Religion
Climate change has become a religion. That makes persuasion all the harder.
Adams asks an interesting question: What would it take to get you to change your mind?
What the Hell is NASA Hiding?
I know that I changed a few people’s minds based on emails following my post Climate Change Religion and Related Cover-Ups: What the Hell Is NASA Hiding?
Adams didn’t discuss data suppression but that is clearly another red flag.
Hockey Stick
For excellent commentary on the above comic strip, please see the Watts Up With That article ‘Mikes Nature Trick’ Revisited- @ScottAdamsSays edition.
My problem with WUWT and many other deniers is the site tends to cherry pick things out of articles, sometimes a bit out of context. But both sides do that.
Many confuse weather (what’s happening now), with climate change that happens of millions of years.
Six Red Flags
Adams mentioned three red flags on climate change. I have at least three more to add.
- Hockey Stick Graph
- Prediction Models
- 97% agreement
- Suppressing or Hiding Data
- Changing the Data or the Data Sources
- Constantly changing the model to explain what’s happening
Climate change scientists have been caught red-handed lying and manipulating data.
When data is not to their liking, the climatologists find another source, suppress the information, or change their model such that the model now predicts what just happened.
If you fail to spot these things, then you simply are not paying attention.
These things do not make the scientists wrong, but it does make them liars.
Play the Video
Please play Adam’s excellent video start to finish. It will be 18 minutes well spent no matter what your climate position happens to be.
Once again, the video is not at all about climate change, it is really about persuasion and persuasion techniques.
New Green Deal
AOC wants to spend $100 trillion or so on a “New Green Deal“
I am open to changing my mind about climate. Most aren’t.
But I have another angle that Adam’s failed to mention.
The notion that politicians will do anything sensible about the problem seems ridiculous.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
the climate discussions are marred by cultish and fanatics from both sides , dilluted by paid liars and useful idiots from both sides. Both side of the table acted like they are correct and dismiss any discussions or data that do not support them.
i find scott adam disappointing , not just in climate discussion but his world view are skewed as he become more and more acting like the people he used to mock.
he should stay in writing caricatures instead of acting like a climate cultist from the denier side..
While I appreciate the reframing of the argument I am not convinced it will lead to a solution. If you spend enough time you can find good scientific evidence to support that there is a problem, though perhaps not exactly as typically stated, and that we have only a well educated guess as to what is going to happen from here over the long term. All is not lost though as there are some fundamentals about how the system works that both sides can agree on. The natural step got scientist to gather exactly this:
http://archive.grrn.org/zerowaste/4steps.htm
While I have little hope in our current elected officials solving any of these problems, I am actually am quite excited about AOC’s GND at least in the sense that it is used to build consensus for backcasting (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeDm-HTFuiY&list=PLEXqjIYY5zi6hWCvm5idXYLH2Qtv7fT-f&index=6) to what our goals are. If government is going to even pretend to serve the people it should at least have public debates over what the next generations, up to say 7 generations in the future, goals are (even if this is initially framed in the context of climate change). The further out the more emphasis should be given to the younger generations that will be living in those times. If you want the the millennials to buy into really working towards a future it will have to be their future not one created for them by the baby boomers. Yes they are going to make mistakes, its not like we haven’t made a few, but they will also come up with solutions that are beyond our imagination because we firmly believe they are not possible.
There is a huge accountability problem when elected officials govern to people not even born but 7 generations?
I listened to a 2-hour podcast with Scott Adams and Sam Harris a couple of years ago. I’ve seen Adams present, and also know people who know him. The guy is a very insecure jerk.
The whole hypnosis angle and influence fetish is his desperate attempt to be the cleverest person in the room. Sam Harris gave him a level playing field and he couldn’t stop himself manipulating the medium – which was pointless because nobody was trying to trip him up.
I don’t recommend the podcast unless you want to see how sad this pathetic little man is inside. If I hadn’t been on a long road trip with some buddies I’d have switched it off. It was very sad.
Liars can figure, but figures don’t lie.
What would change my mind to support AGW? I would support AGW if the skeptics were given sufficient funding to try to prove their case. Maybe allocate 20% of the Global Warming research budget to skeptics and agnostics. Call them the “Red Team.” Let them go head to head with the entrenched “Blue Team.” I think there are plenty of scientists who are capable of working on this issue that would jump at the money. I don’t have any doubt that a “Red Team” group of computer modelers could demonstrate that greenhouse gases actually cause global cooling. Only after seeing both types of models can we have a real debate about which model to believe.
I would suggest that we take the same approach with the anti-vaxxers. The NIH should set aside a small pool of funds to support legitimate medical research that tries to prove that vaccines cause autism, or whatever. Give them some money and say “put up, or shut up.”
Why stop at climate science? Let’s fund an alternate Geography science to investigate if the World is flat. Let’s fund creation science to see if the World is really older than 6,000 years. Let’s fund research into germs to see if they really can’t exist because Fox News anchors can’t see them. Let’s fund research into sponges to see if Sponge Bob really has square pants.
I’ll tell you what, you put up $10,000,000 to fund anti-science projects and I’ll co-fund to the tune of $1.
Oh, you want other people’s money to be wasted on square pants research?
Noone should spend other people’s money to fund any kind of “research.” Nor to fund anything else.
No roads and bridges for you then.
Despite not being as smart as Galileo, I actually managed to grade myself a bit of a road, AND lay down some supposedly rot resistant lumber across a creek to form a bridge, a few years back. Without having to vote to shake down even one of my neighbors. Pretty amazing, eh?
I also noticed that the, no doubt democratically elected, Dear Leader of a local deer herd, must have shaken down his underlings, in order to build all manners of deer appropriate roads out in the woods behind my house….
When your kid has cancer don’t bring him to me, then.
“It won’t change the facts.”
Agreed
“Climate change is already costing the world a lot and it is only going to get worse. “
How the hell do you know?
Did you not play the video?
I’d like to see the world get a little warmer. It would lengthen the growing season in the two largest countries, Canada and Russia, which are too cold for humans to flourish in. Warmer climates tend to have more moisture.
Growing plants, including crops, consume more CO2 which would tend to mitigate the effects of ‘excessive’ CO2 (about 1/25 of 1% of the atmosphere).
Unfortunately, however, the world is not likely to get any warmer due to human activity in the near future, because human population is set to decline in Europe, North America, Japan and China and eventually everywhere.
About your comment that Canada and Russia are “…are too cold for humans to flourish in. ” I live in Canada, and would like to report that my family and I, as well as our friends and neighbors are all ‘flourishing’ up here. Too, I have friends in Russia and they’re also all ‘a-flourish.’
I understand your point regarding length of growing seasons et al, and yes – somewhat of a reduction of -40’C (equal to -40’F for all the ‘Sutherners’ reading this here reply) would be nice. Unnecessary, but nice. Take away our cold, and we can no longer do a lot of ‘flourishing’ as skiers, ice-fishers, snow-shoers, road-salters, igloo-builders and ice-road truckers – which, oddly for some, are somewhat satisfactory insofar as occupations are concerned.
As far as food production is concerned, Canada is the fifth largest exporter of agricultural and agri-food products in the world after the EU, U.S., Brazil, and China. Canada exports $56 billion a year in agriculture and agri-food products and approximately half of everything we produce is exported as either primary commodities or processed food and beverage products.
So, in short – cold weather be damned, we’re ‘flourishing’ just fine up here.
Move along, nothing else to see…
Glad you are flourishing wherever in Canada you are living which, I suspect, is closer to the US border than the Arctic Ocean. Sorry I suggested otherwise. I guess it mystified me that Canada’s population is so small compared with ours.
Thank you for pointing out Canada”s large agricultural output. I’d like to see it increase via a little warming. But, then you might have to move further north to continue to flourish.
You have to wonder if when Mish needs to amp up his comment numbers with “The Maven” he throws a little denier drivel out there (carefully wrapped in “I’m no scientist, but I can divine the truth with my intestinal superpowers”).
The dirty little secret is that Mish knows nothing about “climate science.” Nor does Dilbert. Nor does anyone else.
The whole “argument,” is no different from claiming John knows more about traveling faster than light by using “wormholes” than Steve, because John works in a physics lab an watches Star Trek, while Steve is just a stoner who likes to trip out on weird stuff.
Do you still go to doctors to get bled with leeches?
No.
But neither am I in favor of banning anyone from experimenting with leeches, for example novel ones genetically modified for therapeutic effect, just because.
That’s how science works, BTW. Just saying…. You don’t “disprove” the possibility of some form of bleeding by leeches ever working, simply by claiming “the scientists” (and the priests) say that “leeches are unscientific.”
So, you would send your sick kids to a leech wrangler, because, you know, they aren’t “disproven”?
Mish: Global warming is a scam
Scientists of the world: Nope
Mish: Uh, this cartoonist says it is.
So here is a pretty simple way of thinking about the physics of climate change for non-physicists. Climate deniers like to say that the only reason scientists are on the climate change bandwagon is because they can make lots of money from government grants. Okay, let’s say that’s true for arguments sake.
What about the other side of that coin? Suppose you could definitively prove, through physics and math, that AGW was false? Would there be any money in that? If you could prove that, could you sell that knowledge for a few cool billions to say ExxonMobil or the Saudi’s? I know if I ran a big oil company I’d pay anything for that proof.
And yet there hasn’t been a single scientist able to pull that off. In the entire world. Not one. Why not?
Could my mind be changed? Absolutely.
Just show that specific bands of infrared radiation don’t cause molecular dipoles in greenhouse gases.
If that doesn’t work, just show that there isn’t any real growth in greenhouse gases.
If that doesn’t work, just show that human burning of fossil fuels hasn’t created enough new greenhouse gases to cause that growth.
Just show that any one of those is true, and you’re rich beyond your wildest dreams. Unless, of course, there is some liberal, socialist conspiracy to withhold that information from our dear friends in the oil and coal businesses.
But most people ground their truth in their ideology, not, um, truth.
Where’s the money is proving you’re not ‘green’ at this moment? Does any company make a buck by showing how they are not ‘green’, or do they get to charge a little more by proving their ‘green’ credentials?
I mean, decades ago I had a decent car that would get me 25 mpg at 80 mph. It wasn’t the most fuel efficient of its day by a long shot. Now if your car gets 25 mpg suddenly it is something to be praised?
How about going to Costco and seeing how some plastic water bottles claim that they are ‘green’, like, really?!
Or even the ‘clean’ natural gas. Natural gas is 80% methane, a fossil fuel that is an awesome greenhouse gas.
No single scientist has pulled anything off. At least not for eons. Academia works by consensus. And is, virtually everywhere, heavily intertwined with the ruling government. Has been that way since at least the advent of Prussian universal public indoctrination.
And no single maverick can ever “prove” anything, in areas that have nothing to do with science whatsoever: “Science” isn’t science at all, when its claimed practitioners start babbling about things that aren’t open to experimental falsification in a straight forward and uncontroversial manner.
The fact that you cannot run parallel experimental worlds complex enough to have climates similar to ours, as an experiment in not just a, but any, lab; doesn’t excuse “climate science” from that very basic requirement for what it takes to be a science. It just means “climate science” is something other than a science. Or at least most of it is: Certain simple and fundamental findings, like how CO2 does contribute to a greenhouse effect, can be tested experimentally. Hence be validated. The rest is largely speculation. Hence why its arguments never extend beyond trite “the experts and scientists say……” displays of reference to supposed “authority.” No wonder progressives can’t help falling all over themselves in starry eyed wonderment….
Just like economics. No amount of curve fitting and make believe pretend-to-stand-in for repeatable-by-anyone experiments, makes up for the inability to do proper experiments. Repeatedly, and by anyone. Hence economics will never be a science. Never has been, neither. Only charlatans, and the easy to dupe, try to claim it ever were, is, or ever will be.
It’s impossible to prove or disprove global warming. There will never be a law of global warming. it will always be a theory.
While I think Scott Adams is an intelligent and sincere man, I would not put all of my eggs in one basket. While Tony Heller may be a prominent critic of global whatever, I would not be totally persuaded by any such debate.
In regards to Generation 4 nuclear power, it is still pretty much experimental and at least a decade for real world implementation. That all depends on whether it pans out as feasible. That’s a big ‘IF’ at this point.
I would direct anyone to a very quantitative piece written in 2011 by Lisa Zyga on Phys.org. It is titled “Why nuclear power will never supply the world’s energy needs”
Sadly, it is very persuasive with numbers. Pesky numbers.
If you follow scott adam’s posts before , you will notice the slow slide from borderline rational thinking into a mess that he is in now.. He become worse when trump was elected , it is like some switch turned on in him when trump got in whitehouse.. or more likely he drop the mask of neutrality he seem to strive and now just acting like what he truly is..
he become the caricature he use to mock in his cartoons.l
How can anyone lose with ‘climate change’?
If it gets hotter, we told you so.
If it gets colder, we told you so.
If nothing happens, it is because of the changes we made.
As for climate is what happens over millions of years? That’s wrong. Written history recounts numerous occasions were climate changed over the period of mere centuries, witness the Vikings in Greenland.
It’s also happened over a period of under a year. The winter of 1812 is an example. On a side note, if not for that winter, the world would be completely different. France would have dominated for the next 100 years instead of England.
I have a question for climate change deniers: Where did all that carbon that got buried in the ground in the form of oil come from during the Jurassic Period?
I am not aware there are any climate change deniers here. I think we are all aware of the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warming periods, which were followed by cooler periods of climate, the last of which was called the Little Ice Age.
There was an interesting article I read the other day that the little ice age was primarily a result of the re-forestation of the Americas after the die-off of the native American population. There was enough new plant growth to make a significant dent in the CO2 in the atmosphere.
…and Mish’s back yard had a mile-thick glacier covering it less than 12,000 years ago, which is about five minutes ago in geologic time. It’s warmed up considerably since then. Must have been all those caveman campfires roasting woolly mammoths, pumping out the CO2, and melting all the glaciers?
Oil is formed from decomposing organic matter. I don’t get your point.
According to Modern Petroleum Theory, oil is formed by algae in shallow seas, which died and fell to the bottom and due to plate tectonics or subduction became buried in the earth. Algae lives by CO-two and sunlight. So, the atmosphere during the Jurassic period must have been loaded with CO-two. Was the atmosphere hot then?Hot enough to have algae blooms in Alaska.
The politics are the government needs another stream of income and now they have this thought that they can tax to help with climate change or appropriate dollars where they will be used so beneficially for us all. This is just like the the war on terrorism. This war will never be over there will always be terrorists so they will always need money and the right to look at everything so as to protect us against this terrible threat. It’s the never ending war to distract us from their inability to get the “job done” in so many other areas. The day we eliminate terrorism will be the day it begins there have always been terrorists and they will always be. The prefect war! Climate change is the perfect cause never ending!
As per Mencken, in what remains the single most insightful quote about all (absolutely all) of politics ever written:
“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.”
Yes, Climate Change, along with the War on Drugs, War on Terror and War on Racism, have become the Big 4 sacred gov’t diktats. Ironically, tax dollars have been thown at all of these problems for many years, but according to the MSM, they are worse now than ever before. Are they really?
It used to be called global warming and then 1998 was really hot and was warmer than the next 18 years, so they renamed it climate change. And now, every time there’s bad weather, it’s blamed on climate change. The theory has switched to more weather extremes. Something vague that can’t be quantified. It can never be proven right or wrong. What kind of science is that?
There are a lot of places on earth, so it’s almost always guaranteed there will be bad weather somewhere. We had the mildest tornado season ever in 2018 and it’s never mentioned.
I think the earth is slowly warming and rising CO2 levels are contributing, but stating with certainty the results of it is asinine.
Also, the 97% statistic is very misleading. Google it to find out why.
The statistic is not merely “misleading” – it is propaganda BS made up out of whole cloth.