U.S. Politics Thread (2017 going forward)

[Akito Kinomoto]

Guys I think you're being too hard on man-made climate change deniers. We're just not getting the message across well enough, so here

[Jaden]

When it comes to climate change, I don't think a Stein presidency would make much of a difference over Trump. I believe that Trump's policy to do nothing about it may actually be in the nation's best interest.

I agree with the consensus view that includes:

1) The earth is warming overall
2) Fossil fuels are the main contributor to recent trends

Where it gets uncertain is the next parts:

3) How bad is it going to be for humanity?

Last time I checked IPCC, the fork of predictions was very wide, some suggesting 4x the amount of warming others do. The effects of CO2 in a greenhouse are well understood, but all the positive (and some negative) feedbacks on earth quickly become impossible to understand in a quantitative fashion, at least for the layman. As such, I have very little faith in predictions. Even if an accurate prediction could be made, who knows how well civilization and life in general will be able to adapt, and whether we could even reap benefits from climate change.

4) What should be done about it?

Well, this has been debated endlessly for as long as I've been alive. Not a lot of action has been taken. It's clear from how costly green energy still is that the free market isn't going to solve the problem in a timely fashion. A solution would have to be something pushed by the government and would be rather costly. No country wants to be the first to saddle those debts, and it's unlikely the rest of the world would follow suit.

I sometimes get lumped in with climate change deniers just for offering my views on parts 3 and 4, but I'm really more a defeatist. I used to be a climate change activist after Gore's campaign when that movement was really picking up steam, but the lack of results has been disillusioning. I don't see any way to globally cut emissions, so I'm now placing my hopes on our ability to adapt to the changing conditions.

The lazy way out, a shitty attitude, hypocrisy coming from someone who claims to care about the environment...maybe. I'll bite those bullets. Those are my views on it anyway, and I think they may echo many others in my age group who don't really care about Trump's climate change denial.

[GDB]

Originally Posted by Key Board

House GOP guts ethics panel

http://www.cnn.com/2017/01/02/politi...tee-amendment/


what the fuck. This is cartoon villainy tier. No, This is what fascism looks like.

I feel like this important fact is getting buried under this nonsense global warming argument.

[mangamuscle]

Originally Posted by GDB

I feel like this important fact is getting buried under this nonsense global warming argument.

The fall of the USA has started. What made said country great in the first place was the strength of its institutions, you will see the rule of law crumble as the year advances. Trump has announced he is against this move, but that is because he wants direct control, if someone wants something done in washington trump wants a piece of the cake., Whether the USA becomes a plutocracy or an oligarchy does not change the fact that the average joe will be adversely affected.

[Key Board]

He's not against it.
He's against the timing of it.

edit: crisis averted for now. GOP seems to have dropped its plans.

[Akito Kinomoto]

Originally Posted by Jaden

When it comes to climate change, I don't think a Stein presidency would make much of a difference over Trump. I believe that Trump's policy to do nothing about it may actually be in the nation's best interest.

The issue isn't Trump doing nothing on climate change so much as he's picking people for his administration that would deregulate agencies like the EPA to the point of not existing. The irony is Obama's climate plan is cap and trade, the conservative response for environmental protection, and the upcoming administration wants to operate in a way which effectively nulls even that ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Draco Spirit]

Originally Posted by Jaden

When it comes to climate change, I don't think a Stein presidency would make much of a difference over Trump. I believe that Trump's policy to do nothing about it may actually be in the nation's best interest.

I agree with the consensus view that includes:

1) The earth is warming overall
2) Fossil fuels are the main contributor to recent trends

Where it gets uncertain is the next parts:

3) How bad is it going to be for humanity?

Last time I checked IPCC, the fork of predictions was very wide, some suggesting 4x the amount of warming others do. The effects of CO2 in a greenhouse are well understood, but all the positive (and some negative) feedbacks on earth quickly become impossible to understand in a quantitative fashion, at least for the layman. As such, I have very little faith in predictions. Even if an accurate prediction could be made, who knows how well civilization and life in general will be able to adapt, and whether we could even reap benefits from climate change.

4) What should be done about it?

Well, this has been debated endlessly for as long as I've been alive. Not a lot of action has been taken. It's clear from how costly green energy still is that the free market isn't going to solve the problem in a timely fashion. A solution would have to be something pushed by the government and would be rather costly. No country wants to be the first to saddle those debts, and it's unlikely the rest of the world would follow suit.

I sometimes get lumped in with climate change deniers just for offering my views on parts 3 and 4, but I'm really more a defeatist. I used to be a climate change activist after Gore's campaign when that movement was really picking up steam, but the lack of results has been disillusioning. I don't see any way to globally cut emissions, so I'm now placing my hopes on our ability to adapt to the changing conditions.

The lazy way out, a shitty attitude, hypocrisy coming from someone who claims to care about the environment...maybe. I'll bite those bullets. Those are my views on it anyway, and I think they may echo many others in my age group who don't really care about Trump's climate change denial.

Funny enough the main creditable alternative to fossil fuel is nuclear energy... but very few greens would push towards using it to reduce the carbon footprint. Even through solar and wind are too immature to use primary energy sources. Course geothermal trumps the lot, but you to to fluke out on geography to rely on it as it stands.

[MCAL]

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/03/trump...re-repeal.html

Presumably with magic...


EDIT: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/...52807024840704

Trump making excuses again. What a surprise...

[mangamuscle]

Originally Posted by MCAL

http://www.cnbc.com/2017/01/03/trump...re-repeal.html

Presumably with magic...

aka smoke and mirrors, if you can convince millions of people that climate change is a hoax using the opinion of scientists that do not study climate change (nor have a theory or hypothesis that probes otherwise). Then you can convince them that most people/somebody else/the guy next door did not lost his coverage after the ACA repeal. Same way they will convince them than manufacturing jobs are returning by the millions (only to omit that said work is being made by robots). It is only about making it "the truth as told by the GOP" and bingo, profits!

[OH&S]

For the sake of this scientifc debate (thats ultimately going nowhere) I'll keep my reply in tldr tags as I still feel this is off topic.

TL;DR…

frivolity

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I leave this last quote out because I feel it is the most relevant to this thread:

Originally Posted by frivolity

As if the multi-billion dollar green energy industry doesn't fund its own scientists, and in fact does it through direct full-time employment instead of an ad-hoc basis.

TL;DR…

last word

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I'll leave you with one last article written by Cook. Its not a scientific paper but just some interesting obervations about climate change denial. No need to comment on it either.

@Jaden

TL;DR…

final comment

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[Akito Kinomoto]

Trump's treasury secretary illegally kicked people out of their homes

In other news, the sky is blue

[frivolity]

Originally Posted by OH&S

For the sake of this scientifc debate (thats ultimately going nowhere) I'll keep my reply in tldr tags as I still feel this is off topic.

TL;DR…

frivolity

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I leave this last quote out because I feel it is the most relevant to this thread:

TL;DR…

last word

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I'll leave you with one last article written by Cook. Its not a scientific paper but just some interesting obervations about climate change denial. No need to comment on it either.

@Jaden

TL;DR…

final comment

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Thank you for the reply. Unfortunately, my home internet has been down for the last two days (blame TPG for that!). I already have a reply in mind, but I'm not about to spend my entire lunch hour writing up a post from my work computer. I'll post the full response when I get my home connection fixed.

[MCAL]

http://edition.cnn.com/2017/01/05/po...are/index.html

I see Trump and the GOP are really showing their love for woman.

[Key Board]

hey GOP

if you want less abortions don't try to suppress birth control

[Galaxian]

And we're only on the start of the first week!

[mangamuscle]

It seems weird to me that no one has mentioned the clear and present danger of the repubs changing medicare and medicaid from mandatory to discretionary spending (heck, I am no affected by those changes at all, so people that do should be already up in arms imo).

http://www.forbes.com/sites/charlest...-and-medicaid/

http://www.democraticunderground.com/10028428673

[frivolity]

Internet's FINALLY back

@OH&S: If you don't mind, I've taken the liberty to move some segments of your post around for the sake of brevity, since you and Haak covered some overlapping issues. I've also removed all the tl;dr tags since I for one don't consider this discussion to be irrelevant given that this very issue is directly affected by Trump's proposed policies.

Originally Posted by Haak

OH&S said the abstract were useless in determining whether the study is right or wrong. Cook's study uses abstracts to determine consensus.

Originally Posted by OH&S

I don't think I need to explain how broken your logic here is. I actually do think you're smart enough that you could just be playing with me here.

With that said, Haak has already hit the nail on the head; an abstract is ultimately just a short summary of the paper and its conclusion. For the purposes of what I wanted to do (read and critique the paper) the actual details of the paper are more important. For the purposes of Cook's study, the abstract should be all he needs because he's only looking at the position the paper takes (not critiquing the paper). Of course, further reading of the paper should be required if the abstract isn't explicit; which after reading Cook's methodology was actually done.

I actually thought that you were making reference to the paper that showed that a very high proportion of abstracts don't actually contain stuff that's in the paper. I remember this being covered during the orientation at the beginning of my Honours year, and the lesson to us was not to rely on abstracts for research. I don't have the exact article since it was 5 years ago, but a quick search turned out this paper that shows 23% of clinical chemistry papers contain data that is not in the article itself.

In any case, if your position is that the abstract is sufficient for Cook's study, then I disagree with it.

Originally Posted by Haak

Take a look at the other authors.

David Legates - Koch, connections to Exxonmobile and Chevron
Willie Soon - Koch Foundation
Christopher Mockton - Hahahahahaha

John Cook - ????????

John Cook - a climate change activist who isn't a climate change expert but who somehow has the authority to routinely publish about supposed climate change denial.

Originally Posted by Haak

Why would that not be my preference? I'm already having so much fun

Excellent We can keep going then.

Originally Posted by OH&S

For the sake of this scientifc debate (thats ultimately going nowhere) I'll keep my reply in tldr tags as I still feel this is off topic.

I'll cop that one on my chin. It is quite easy to find (if only because every climate skeptic and his dog has got a copy of it).

But I won't critque it as Cook already did in a follow up paper. And I think we should move on to Cook's 2016 paper instead (more relevant).

Also I have zero confidence in the author due to aforementioned reasons.

If we're referring to the same paper, then Cook (2016) primarily addresses the criticisms from Tol (2015) instead of the Legates paper. Nevertheless, if you're not confident with Legates' credentials then I'm fine with leaving it here.

Originally Posted by OH&S

You're half right. If Cook was out there producing his own climate papers, one would have to read his papers very carefully. But he isn't, so he doesn't need to be. But 1st-class Honours in Physics and currently completing a PhD in Psychology? Still pretty hardcore in his own right.

But if that alone is enough to give you doubts (which is fine btw) take a good look at the people that you're quoting.

Sure, Cook's academic credentials are pretty hardcore compared to most of us, but that's exactly the point I was making when I cited the survey of the American Meteorological Society. Not all of them may have published climate papers, but I would argue that their scientific knowledge would put them in good position to formulate an sufficiently educated opinion on the topic, which can include the view that we simply don't know enough yet.

Originally Posted by OH&S

YES Reasons explained above. But effort WAS made to contact the authors.

Now this is a much more interesting conversation. There is definitely some truth to what you're saying regarding the bias. But IMO, that bias is implicit and natural. If you put work into producing a scientific paper and your peers double check the methodolgy and accept it, you would have more confidence in the the type of analysis that you would do. That's entirely due to the peer review system and the scientific model. This is true for all fields of science.

But its the bold statement that kinda ticks me off. If there is any truth to that statement, its only because their work is probably flawed to begin with. Now, do I think that if we compare a scenario where an AGW proponent tries to get his work accepted through dodgy means with an AGW denier doing the same thing, there would be a more negative bias towards the denier? Absolutely. We are human after all. But I also have faith in the peer review system and the scientific model to weed out the junk science (not 100% faith mind you, there are definitely pitfalls and weaknesses).

On a smaller note, I find the comparison to economics weak as economics isn't a hard science.

In regards to the last part about your comments about Cook's methodology, I do find your reasoning sound. The methodology is not necessarily perfect. However, that's far from being completely useless and I don't think the bias would be strong enough to affect the results by more than 50% of the final value (that's just too farfetched).

The thing about Cook's 2016 paper that makes it stronger and more robust than his previous ones is the whole consensus of consensus idea. Its not just his methodology now; its a multitude of different ones by different authors closing in on agreement regarding the bounds of the true number. Its the kind of methodology that would make the inner statistician in me cry tears of joy; a very effective strategy.

Notwithstanding what I said above about the danger of only looking at abstracts, Cook's methodology is also worth investigating.

I took a closer look at Cook's (2013) paper and the supplementary data that he provided (simply copy and paste data into Excel and split into columns).

Cook defined the level of endorsement ordinally as follows:
1 Explicitly endorses and quantifies AGW as 50+%
2 Explicitly endorses but does not quantify or minimise
3 Implicitly endorses AGW without minimising it
4 No Position
5 Implicitly minimizes/rejects AGW
6 Explicitly minimizes/rejects AGW but does not quantify
7 Explicitly minimizes/rejects AGW as less than 50%

The percentage for each level of endorsement is actually (ascending): 0.5%; 7.7%; 24.4%; 66.7%; 0.5%; 0.1%; 0.1%.

The percentage over time for each level is shown in the following 2 charts (second one is only shown for visual purposes):


What we can see is that majority of the papers take no position, and this percentage has been slowly rising over the years. At the same time, the papers that implicitly endorse AGW has been declining, and the two bumps at 1992 and 2006 suggest that these two series are inversely related. Crucially, only 0.5% of the papers explicitly quantify AGW as having a higher than 50% impact, and this number has fluctuated over time but appears to be somewhat stable in mean.

What Cook (2013) did, however, was to first lump levels (1), (2), and (3) into one category, then present the 32.6% figure without presenting the breakdown. Second, Cook completely ignored the 66.7% of papers with no position and then compared the 32.6% versus the 0.7% of papers in categories (5) to (7).

Such an approach is bad practice because of non-response bias, as I pointed out earlier. It could simply be the case that scientists who reject AGW are not wont to state that their views in abstracts. It is also somewhat likely that scientists who don't know for sure where AGW stands would not write such a thing in their abstracts (I certainly didn't when I published my thesis in a journal, since methodology and results are the primary focus of publications). It could also be that such scientists do more work on regional climate instead of "global climate change", which is the search term that Cook used. All of this could be substantial. You could be right of course that the bias won't affect more than half of the final value, but we won't know for sure. In any case, even a slight bias would be sufficient for the so-called consensus to be uncertain.

Also consider that Cook (2016) cited Powell (2015) with approval:

Powell (2015) shows that applying Tol's method to the established paradigm of plate tectonics would lead Tol to reject the scientific consensus in that field because nearly all current papers would be classified as taking 'no position'.

As it turns out, Powell (2015) actually disagreed with Cook's (2013) methodology:

The sine qua non of the Cook et al. method is the assumption that publishing scientists who accept a theory will say so—they will “endorse” it in the title or abstract. To count an article as part of the consensus, Cook et al. required that it “address or mention the cause of global warming.” Of the 11,944 articles that came up in their search, 7,970—two thirds—did not. Cook et al. classified those articles as taking no position and thus ruled them out of the consensus.

Do we need to know any more to realize that there is something wrong with the Cook et al. method? The consensus is what the majority accept; you cannot rule out a two-thirds majority and still derive the consensus.

Note that Powell (2015) claims without proof that the actual consensus is closer to 99.9%, so he is on the side of the AGW scientists, but even he rejected Cook's (2013) methodology. While Cook (2016) is right to say that Powell's (2015) criticism invalidates Tol's (2015) estimate, it is clear that the exact same criticism applies to Cook's (2013) methodology as well.

On the issue of soft science vs hard science, the reason why I brought up economics is because that's my area of expertise. Nevertheless, I consider the example to be apt because I don't view climatology as a hard science either. Hard and soft sciences fall on a spectrum, and I consider climatology to be in between - a science in transition. It's getting there, but it's not at the stage of say, chemistry, which has long transitioned into a hard science since its origins in alchemy.

There are also issues with the other papers, such as non-response bias once again, though I'm not going to review them all. Cook's methodology is the kind that makes my inner econometrician shake his head, while making the professional economist in me want to go over and give him a pat on the back for being able to present his results in such a misleading way and yet get so many citations. As an aside, if you ever see a submission to an ACCC anti-competitive matter that uses a similar approach some time in the near future, there's probably a good chance that I will be one of the authors .

Originally Posted by OH&S

No such system will ever exist. I find the current peer-review system the best we can go. Stop talking about narratives when there is international agreement on this. Let the data speak for itself and let the peer-review system weed out the bad science.

Tor? As in... Richard Tol? He's about as trustworthy Monckton. I'll be fine thanks. But I guess its thanks to people like Tol being stubborn mules that studies like this will lead to more robust confidence regarding the 97% consensus among climate scientists.

One of the things I'm watching for is whether the peer review system turns out to be robust to the Trump administration, given Trump's position that global warming is a hoax. If an even greater percentage of scientists endorse AGW in spite of the political pressure, then I would definitely be a lot more convinced.

As for Tol, I'm happy to wait and see his response, though I can understand your view.

Originally Posted by OH&S

I leave this last quote out because I feel it is the most relevant to this thread:

Ultimately it comes down to this. Which scenario is more believable?

That climate scientists produce dodgy papers in order to get more money to produce dodgy papers and that the green energy industry which has the most to gain out of this is paying off scientists to do this all part of some international conspiracy involving every climate research center and educational instituation in the world spanning over 40 years?

Or,

That the fossil fuel industry that currently does have the money and power and stands to lose the most out of the acceptance of AGW is paying off and funding scientists to produce dodgy papers that go against scientific consensus in order to stifle public opinion as long as possible over that 40 year period (which we have proof for btw)? (EDIT: Don't forget the politicians that we know for a fact have been bought. I completely forgot out that aspect; in a US politics thread to boot!)

History tells me that it is the ones who have the most to lose out of this situation that are the least trustworthy. The automobile industry; the tobacco industry; the pharmaceutical industry; the telecommunications industry; the taxi industry; the firearms industry; etc, etc, etc. I've seen enough of this happen that I know which scenario is more likely. That colours me in terms of which sources I'm willing to trust over others and why climate change caused by AGW is easily believable to me. If you believe that the other scenario is more likely, then your current position and sources that you are willing to trust above others makes more sense. And regardless of what evidence I give, you'll never believe it. There'll be allegations of bad science, data manipulation, bought scientists, etc.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

The point about my quote is that the green energy industry already has just as much to lose over this issue as the fossil fuel industry does. Green energy is already a multi-billion dollar industry, with the Obama administration having spent over $100 billion on green energy subsidies, coupled with billions worth of tax benefits. So you can add the green energy industry to the ones on your list of industries with a lot to lose.

One thing I've noticed as well is that the scientists supporting AGW have become a lot more alarmist in recent times (though it may be just me), to the point that I'm starting to feel that they're as much activist as the scientists on the other side. This is why my position, as I've repeatedly stated in this thread, is:

My own view is that climate change is: real; may or may not have been materially exacerbated by human actions; may or may not be catastrophic in the long run; very unlikely to be reversible using current green technology; may or may not be reversible with future green technology; and very likely to be prohibitively costly for developing countries to take any steps to address.

Both sides have just as much to lose on this issue, so my answer is simply that I don't know and I'll wait until we have more accurate technology and methods to carry out extrapolations three hundred years ahead.

Originally Posted by OH&S

I'll leave you with one last article written by Cook. Its not a scientific paper but just some interesting obervations about climate change denial. No need to comment on it either.

I'll comment anyway.

I was a lot more receptive to the idea of AGW before billions started getting poured into the industry and those in support of policies to ameliorate AGW started becoming more alarmist about it. I still don't consider climate change to be a hoax, but I do consider that the ground has muddied to the point that neither side holds sufficient credibility with their rhetoric.

Originally Posted by Akuma Kousaka

Guys I think you're being too hard on man-made climate change deniers. We're just not getting the message across well enough, so here

I'll leave it to OH&S and Haak to comment on your source.

[OH&S]

^
I'll briefly respond to the easy things because I'm short on time.

Firstly, could I kindly ask you to put all of that in tldr tags as we are now talking about the science rather than the politics?

TL;DR…

frivolity

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[Akito Kinomoto]

So if explaining it like someone would to a 12 year old doesn't work, how about this

[Haak]

Originally Posted by frivolity

I actually thought that you were making reference to the paper that showed that a very high proportion of abstracts don't actually contain stuff that's in the paper. I remember this being covered during the orientation at the beginning of my Honours year, and the lesson to us was not to rely on abstracts for research. I don't have the exact article since it was 5 years ago, but a quick search turned out this paper that shows 23% of clinical chemistry papers contain data that is not in the article itself.

In any case, if your position is that the abstract is sufficient for Cook's study, then I disagree with it.

Not that there's really any point to this particular argument anymore (since it's already been established that Cook's 2016 paper relies on more than just the abstracts), but your paper about chemistry papers is super weaksauce. Data and conclusions are different things. It's easy to imagine data being inconsistent between abstracts and the full papers. It's much harder to imagine conclusions/opinions being inconsistent. In any case, even the study you linked to acknowledged that "The majority of data inconsistencies were minor".

If your lesson was not to rely on abstracts in research then that would make sense if it was about proving hypotheses and not relying on abstracts from other papers because the underlying methodology could be bad. But that has little relevance when talking in terms of consensus.

John Cook - a climate change activist who isn't a climate change expert but who somehow has the authority to routinely publish about supposed climate change denial.

Listen, this kind of evasiveness is really tiresome. If you can't link John Cook to any Green Energy Industry money (like I did with your sources and petro dollars) then either say that or nothing at all. Don't try and change the subject.

In any case, I'll same thing I said last time: Take a look at the other authors. John Cook is completing a PhD is Cognitive Psychology and perceptions on climate change fall well within that realm. If any part of his research requires more expert opinion on climate science then he has plenty of it at his disposal.