Deltoid

Hi, I would like to ask readers whether they know of any instances in which someone who frequents and posts comments on blogs about AGW has changed their 'mind' (in quotes because it has to be something obvious in their writing and sincere rather than just a claim). I'm somewhat interested in whether or not it's possible to turn a troll (oxymoron?), but I'm more interested in what specific future findings could change the mind of someone who currently argues about whether or not AGW is real and non-negligible. I think it is, and if asked why, I would say it's because of the weight of evidence but particularly because of these three things: radiative properties of CO2; temperature increases which match old predictions; and cooling stratosphere. What would it take to change my mind? For AGW-deniers, I generally assume that they don't actually believe the stuff they write; but I'm curious if any of them will admit a possibility that they could be convinced and then identify what evidence such a change would require. Thanks.

Posted by: Steve L | May 28, 2008 11:00 AM

Steve L- that question has come up in cmobat with trolls, and indeed simple uninformed people, and I do not recall any definite answer. IN the trolls case, it is because they do not want to give on. In the case of the uninformed people, who are often knee-jerk anti-environmentalists, its simply because they do not know what it would take. They do not know enough about the topic to be able to say what would change their minds.

Posted by: guthrie | May 28, 2008 11:30 AM

Vagueofgodalming: Lott is very familiar with sock puppets. It's kind of sad.

Steve L: I know this is secondhand, but longtime poster cce discussed his own change of mind here, in his introduction (part 0). I don't have any examples from the blogosphere per se, though.

However, I do tend to point people here when I ask them similar questions. Towards the end of that (part 6), he provides criteria for AGW falsification similar enough to the one I'd accept, as an example to those who the video's trying to reach. (Be advised that this particular one is a bit of a hodgepodge if viewed on its own.)

Posted by: Brian D | May 28, 2008 12:04 PM

Women's suffrage? I thought the force responsible for big government was Al Gore, or Bill Clinton, or FDR, or whatever the bogeyman du jour happens to be.

Posted by: bi -- IJI | May 28, 2008 12:36 PM

Women's suffrage? I thought the force responsible for big government was Al Gore, or Bill Clinton, or FDR, or whatever the bogeyman du jour happens to be.

Right. I'm not sure about FDR, but Bill wouldn't have been elected without women's suffrage. From the article, all the democrats to have won the presidency in the last few decades would have lost had women not had the vote.

Posted by: ben | May 28, 2008 1:48 PM

Steve L.

Interesting question. One of the frustrations of posting on-line is that the chance of actually changing someone's mind is remote (at best). I am an AGW skeptic and I believe that I am actually capable of changing my mind. When I first became aware of the Global Warming issue, I suspected that temperatures weren't really rising at all, that it was all UHI etc. What made me change my mind? People I respect changed their minds and the data became convincing.

First, I believe that the greenhouse effect exists, that the Earth is getting warmer and that man is contributing to the greenhouse effect via CO2 emissions. I believe that man's effect is small and that catastrophic warming is highly unlikely. (It's pointless to argue about these here, if Hansen, Mann, Amman et al haven't convinced me yet, neither will you). I use the term "believe" (for which I always get grief) because it would be unsuitable for me to claim that I "know" anything when experts and people with much bigger IQs than me are still arguing with each other.

What would it take for me to believe that AGW is likely to be catastrophic? I would have to be convinced that this has been the warmest period in a millennium. I would have to be convinced that UHI and land use changes have been properly accounted for in the surface record. I would have to see models that successfully predict results for a significant amount of time (10 years?). It would also be notable if developers stopped building in Miami due to GW concerns (or that insurance companies stopped insuring such projects).

On a non-scientific basis, things that dispose me to question catastrophic GW are: Attempts to say the debate is over, Ad hominem attacks on those that disagree, Claims that everyone would agree if only it wasn't for Exxon/Mobil, refusal of AGW supporters to ever admit that they might have gotten something wrong, the fact that AGW supporters never seem to "call-out" unreasonable claims of the effects of GW, my perception that AGW supporters are largely the same group of people with which I disagree on almost every other issue as well.

One thing about your post that I find most interesting/revealing/troubling is

For AGW-deniers, I generally assume that they don't actually believe the stuff they write;

The only way that I would go to the trouble of posting things I don't believe would be if I was a PR flack in the employ of Exxon (and we can't ALL be PR flacks working for Exxon). If I believe that we're all gonna die from GW and that the only way to avoid it is via a UN led World Government, I'd be on board with that, regardless of how much I might dislike the idea.

Posted by: BillBodell | May 28, 2008 2:39 PM

Those interested in further comments on the Lancet estimates of Iraqi mortality should see this. Basic summary: Most people think that IFHS and L2 estimates of violent mortality in Iraq (151,000 versus 601,000) differ by "only" a factor of 4. This is mistaken. Using the same assumptions for L2 and IFHS (no adjustments for underreporting or for clusters that could not be visited) generates estimates that differ by more than a factor of 8: 601,000 to 72,000.

I would be interested in the opinions of the Deltoid community on this topic before I write it up more formally.

Posted by: David Kane | May 28, 2008 3:13 PM

Steve L,

Reasonable enough. Sorry if I misinterpreted your post but using insulting words like "AGW denier" doesn't intone an air of objectivity to your comments

Lance

Posted by: Lance | May 28, 2008 3:54 PM

there is not unanimity as to the long term trend

There isn't?

Posted by: Boris | May 28, 2008 4:28 PM

It's not when I changed my mind, but when I lost patience with the, uh, unbelievers was when the satellite temperature records were straightened out. Before then there was some evidence (though not much) that warming wasn't happening or at least that the record was genuinely inconclusive. Since then there hasn't been any solid evidence that AGW was not happening (a few years of stable high temperatures under a La Nina is NOT a decline in long term temperature). An unbeliever of my acquaintance simply stopped referring to the satellite record (which he had previously based his argument upon) and started dragging out all sorts of illogical thermodynamics-denying crap, rather than admit that his evidence had been undercut, after which my respect for his arguments dropped exponentially.

Posted by: James Haughton | May 28, 2008 8:39 PM

"Is there a good/desired target ppm of CO2 agreed to by the consensus to stop/reverse climate change?"

Consensus? Not really... Absolutely, by 800 ppm of CO2 I think everyone predicts global disaster for human civilization. (Everyone sane, that is) In all probability, by 550 ppm (the EU target, the most restrictive official target currently). Looking more likely all the time, 450 ppm, but I don't know if that's reached more than 50% penetrance of the AGW-believers yet. James Hansen recently is on record as saying 350. Yes, we are above that already. The What-me-AGw folks publicly deride him enormously, which of course is an acknowledgement that his predictions have been correct longer than anybody else's, for 20 years now. And he was one of the authorities behind the original 450 ppm target; his new estimates based on further observations of positive feedback and "inertia" whereby the temp will continue to rise for a while even after CO2 drops now lead him to believe that if we stay at 450 ppm for a while, the ice caps will all eventually melt, with the aforementioned global disaster coming to pass; thus the 350.

Posted by: z | May 28, 2008 10:33 PM

James,

The corrections to the satellite records played a key role in my acknowledging GW. Am I still an "Unbeliever"?

Posted by: BillBodell | May 28, 2008 11:26 PM

thus the 350

Good luck with that. At least the melted ice will only mostly take out the liberal coasts, leaving new beach-front property for us unwashed rednecks.

Posted by: ben | May 29, 2008 1:25 AM

Tim always seems to start his new Open Threads just when I am about to head away for a spot of field-work monitoring endangered beasties in the wilderness. This conveniently lets me alert those who might notice my absence that it is not because I am avoiding any challenges, and I hope that if Neil Craig responds to my last post answering him, someone might take up the baton on my behalf.

If it's worth the effort of course...

And following on from that aforementioned post, it seems that just about all of the 'Peak Oil' denialists have suddenly become very quiet, what with the recent increases in the price of oil. I am curious to know if there is still any significant group of people who disparage the foresight of M. King Hubbert, or those who followed after, such as Campbell and Heinburg.

I know that there were one or two conservatively-inclined folk here who have aspired recently to hummers or similar - how many are still all dewy-eyed about the possibility of knocking around in a guzzler? And if their complacency is still entrenched, what of next year, or the year after? I am very curious indeed.

Australians are suddenly being rudely awakened, and I have more than a few acquaintances who are regretting their bravado of even six months ago about Peak Oil being a complete myth.

The truly frustrating thing though is that those who can, aren't, and are instead fiddling whilst the smoke starts to billow over Rome.

Posted by: Bernard J. | May 29, 2008 5:51 AM

Bill Bodell posts:

If I believe that we're all gonna die from GW and that the only way to avoid it is via a UN led World Government, I'd be on board with that, regardless of how much I might dislike the idea.

Straw man argument. No one is saying the cure for AGW is "a UN led World Government." That's a right-wing paranoid fantasy.

Posted by: Barton Paul Levenson | May 29, 2008 8:01 AM

Neil Craig said in #29 above:

"Jeff's remark about the letter inviting people to sign the Oregon Petition not being "peer reviewed" shows that he has absorbed all the Luddite buzz words without understanding what peer review is."

As with several other recalcitrant trolls who pop up here, and true to the form he has established in denigrating Jody Aberdein's relevant expertise, Neil obviously has no clue who Jeff Harvey is, nor what Jeff's credentials are.

Neil, a reminder - know whom it is you are insulting before you start. Otherwise you are simply opening your mouth to change feet.

Again.

I'll say one thing for you Neil: you are nothing if not consistent (or perhaps merely persistent)...

Jeff is an internationally respected population biologist (with a long list of peer-reviewed papers linked on Deltoid, if you care to make the effort to find them), and I can say without hesitation that he has infinitely more of a clue about matters ecological than you have.

Are you deliberately trying to present yourself as an unredeemable prat?

Oh, and don't think that we haven't noticed your shuffling of the goal-posts with respect to the Erhlich/Simon wager, and the intent behind said wager. Ludd and Malthus need not be invoked either positively or negatively in this matter for the fundamental points of natural resource limitations to stand (although, interestingly, Malthus is very much misrepresented in the eco-deniers' use of his material).

You might as well let loose on me now - I won't be able to post again for over a week, so you should be able to vent quite a load of spleen in that time without my immediate replies.

I'm sure though that others here will baby-sit you for me, in the interim.

Posted by: Bernard J. | May 29, 2008 10:10 AM

BPL

Straw man argument. No one is saying the cure for AGW is "a UN led World Government." That's a right-wing paranoid fantasy.

No. It would be a straw man argument if I said that I was against acting on AGW because it would lead to a UN World Government.

I said that I would SUPPORT a UN World Government if I perceived AGW to be a significant enough threat and that was the best way to deal with it. I was trying to make the point that none of my personal political preferences are so important to me that I would let the planet fry, my great-grandchildren and hundreds of millions of humans perish.

bi,

"inactivist" is a better term. I will join you in trying to propagate it. But then, I was trying to push referring to the years 2001-2009 as "ought 1" etc. As eminently reasonable as that seemed (it worked 100 years ago), I failed.

Posted by: BillBodell | May 29, 2008 11:50 AM

#22 z

.......by 550 ppm (the EU target, the most restrictive official target currently). Looking more likely all the time, 450 ppm, but I don't know if that's reached more than 50% penetrance of the AGW-believers yet. James Hansen recently is on record as saying 350. Yes, we are above that already.......

So the EU target is an upper limit.

I was looking for a lower bound as well, say a range 230ppm to 300ppm or something like that but it seems not.

I do understand the need to reduce pollution but in this case it would, for me at least, be useful to have a measurable target to aim for rather than just have people saying use less petrol or whatever the politicians and activist decide is bad for the hoi polloi to do that week.

Posted by: Chris' Wills | May 29, 2008 1:21 PM

Actually, Bill, I was using unbeliever in a slightly ironic effort to not cause too much offence and derail the thread; I usually use delusionist (Quiggin terminology: one who either believes or spreads delusions) or Adullamite.

But in answer to your question; your position seems reasonable to me, though I think the weight of evidence is against you in saying change will be minimal. But certainly the precise level of impact is harder to predict than that there will be an impact, and forms a legitimate area of disagreement. What gets my goat is people like the Laviosier institute claiming that the law of conservation of energy doesn't apply in the stratosphere.

Whether or not change is "catastrophic" is a complicated definitional question, since whether or not something is a catastrophe includes how well humanity (and the ecosystem) responds to the problem, eg an earthquake that in Japan would be serious but managable is a catastrophe in China. It would help the discussion if you would specify what you would consider catastrophic: an increase in sea level of X metres? rise in average temperature of Y degrees? Rise in extinction rates of Z%?

Posted by: James Haughton | May 29, 2008 8:08 PM

"Ahh, the entertainment never ends."

Indeed. Were I not familiar with this blog since back when, and had I only discovered the recent influx of new posters, I would suspect The Onion were involved somehow.

Posted by: z | May 29, 2008 11:40 PM

James,

It's not that I'm afraid to get into the gory details (well, I'll force myself to if enough people question my manhood). It's just that I'm not going to convince anyone here that I'm right. Also, it's rather pretentious to assume I have something to contribute when so many people with more knowledge and a higher I.Q. than I (and probably you) have devoted a significant portion of their lives to these questions and are still arguing with each other.

What interests me (and could actually accomplish something in a place such as this) are questions like: Do people arrive at their opinion about AGW because of their political affiliation? Or does the same worldview that led them to their politics lead them to their view on AGW? Are AGW proponents truly worshipers of Science? Or is it just because science happens to be on their side at the moment? (I had an analogy about the minimum wage that nearly brought a previous open thread to a halt until Tilo showed up and reinvigorated it). I'm also interested in seeing if I can convince some individual "alarmists" that a thoughtful, caring, rational person could actually hold a different opinion than theirs.

I'm also very interested in defining the arguments better. I read all the apostates (Singer, Lindzen, Micheals, Avery, Lonborg). I follow the CA, Climate Skeptic, Lucia, Niche Modeling and Pielke Jr blogs (along with Deltoid, Open Mind and RealClimate for balance). Everyone of those skeptics accepts that the Earth has warmed over the last 100 years, that the greenhouse effect is real and that man is probably contributing to it's effect via CO2 emissions. Yet it seems that AGW proponents classify them all as "deniers". If there are blogs where idiots claim that the globe has not warmed (in the last 100 years) let me know where they are so that I can go over there and argue with them from time to time.

I'm tired of the arguments where one person says that the trend of the last 7 years has been negative and the other side says "Liar! The smoothed 15 year trends are positive". That's semantics and definition of terms and it doesn't get us anywhere. That's like me saying one baseball team has a great offense because of their high batting average and some one else says "Liar, they do not have a great offense because they don't score many runs". The proper argument is "what constitutes a great offense?", not yelling past each other by quoting different statistics as if everybody is in agreement on the basic question.

Posted by: BillBodell | May 30, 2008 12:54 AM

That's semantics and definition of terms and it doesn't get us anywhere.

The melting icecaps don't care about your "definition of terms".

I suppose your quibbling along the lines of Jennifer Marohasy shows just how "thoughtful, caring, rational" you are?

Are AGW proponents truly worshipers of Science? Or is it just because science happens to be on their side at the moment?

We've already shown to you that there's no consensus among economists on the minimum wage. But you just had to ignore the evidence.

What's up with that?

You posted a rather "innocuous" talking point. At any rate, I reserve the right to be as blogfascist as I want, after all it's my own blog.

Posted by: bi -- IJI | May 30, 2008 1:24 AM

If Jeff does have the credentials mantioned then he knows perfectly well that what I said about peer review is correct. Peer review is a proces used ofr scientific papers. There are serious problems with peer review even there & it can be a method of preventing the publication of stuff that goes against the theories of those chosen to review. - instance the fact that Stephen McIntyre's criticsm of the Hockey stick as being mathematically rubbish, which is now accepted as mathematically entirely correct, could not get published & he had to put it out on the net. Peer reviewed criticisms of Lysenkoism were never published under Stalin which is not convincing proof that the theory was sound. In any csae per reviewed petitions, public opinion polls or suchlike are at best nonsensical & at worst an atack on freedom.

If Jeff really has the standing claimed then he knows this perfectly well & was not writing ignorantly but dishonestly, which is not better.

Sod your claim to have read the things you quoted me as having said merely, like your claim that bio-fuels receive absolutely zero government subsidy, represents the pinnacle of honesty to which the eco-fascist movement aspires - that is to say thit is a complete & deliberate lies.

Your claim that last year's production of bio-fuels would not have required subsidy on today's fuel prices & the subsidy therefore doesn't count is clearly dishonestly trying to justify the subsidies you are on record as saying odn't exist. It is the nature of the universe that cause precedes effect. It is probably also untrue (you give no evidence) since a number of experts have pointed out that since bio-fuel maize, like the rest of it, is grown using fertiliser made from oil, the effect of producing such fuels is not to significantly cut oil use & may be to increase it.

Dano's response to my points is at least honest - he doesn't read facts he doesn't like & therefore is secure in his position ;-)

James since you use pejorative terms I trust I have your word that you more than equally approve the use of the term eco-Nazi. More than because it is proven that the "environmentalist" movement have inded supported killings on a scale worse than Hitler wheras your term "delusionist" presupposes that those doubting the catastrophic warming claims are the ones labouring under the delusion. Do you really claim that McIntyre's mathematical dissection of Mann's Hockey Stick was using "delusional" mathematics while Mann's was entirely correct? If not perhaps (or indeed if so) you had better find an insult that does not apply to yourself.

Posted by: neil craig | May 30, 2008 6:23 AM

Bill Bodell posts:

If there are blogs where idiots claim that the globe has not warmed (in the last 100 years) let me know where they are so that I can go over there and argue with them from time to time.

Try http://www.climatebrains.com. There are a lot of them over there.

I'm tired of the arguments where one person says that the trend of the last 7 years has been negative and the other side says "Liar! The smoothed 15 year trends are positive". That's semantics and definition of terms and it doesn't get us anywhere. That's like me saying one baseball team has a great offense because of their high batting average and some one else says "Liar, they do not have a great offense because they don't score many runs". The proper argument is "what constitutes a great offense?", not yelling past each other by quoting different statistics as if everybody is in agreement on the basic question.

It's not a semantic argument, Bill. One side is right and the other is wrong. The trend is up. If you think it's down, it's not a question of you having a different view of things. It's a question of your not being able to do math. There aren't two valid opinions on whether 2 + 2 = 7 or not. One opinion is right and the other is wrong.

Posted by: Barton Paul Levenson | May 30, 2008 8:08 AM

"And following on from that aforementioned post, it seems that just about all of the 'Peak Oil' denialists have suddenly become very quiet, what with the recent increases in the price of oil."

To a very large extent this group overlapped with the "The Iraqis will greet us as liberators" camp and the "Al gore is fat therefore global warming is a One World Government UN Socialist conspiracy" group.

It's rather touching that having been proven spectacularly wrong twice, they still remain absolutely confident in their own infallibility on the third topic.

Posted by: Ian Gould | May 30, 2008 9:30 AM

Barti it has been proven that approx 70 million people have died of malaria subsequest to the environmentalist banning of it. You are taking advantage of the fact that debate has been prevented on that on the previous thread & that some here will not know of it.

I suggest anybody doubting that you are merely displaying the standard of honesty to be expected from eco-Nazis checks out www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.html

Ian peak oil has been predicted repeatedly since the 1850s so you are probably correct that most of the earlier "denialists" have been silenced by time. However I challenge you to name any prominent current "denialist" who now is silent. The peak, as it were, of peak oil scares was about 1970 when Professor Hibbert & the Limits to Growth people were saying it had arrived 7 we would be out of oil by about 1990. Since you are clearly proud not to be a "denialist" perhaps you could amuse us by telling what happened when the oil ran out in 1990.

The fact is that eco-fascism depends on pushing scare stories & that not one of the hundreds of worldwide catastrophe stories they have ever produced have come true. Despite bluster no eco-fascist has ever been able to produce a counter example.

Ian your 2nd post asserts that we "probably" want to keep CO2 levels down because it will prevent what you define as "climate change" but was traditionally known as "waether". Perhaps you would have the courtesy to show what evidence there is that traditional weather (as opposed to the catastrophic warming claims which you implicitly distance yourself from) will cease if we get CO2 down to what may be the levels at which we always had weather.

CO2 does have the beneficial effect of improving crop growth - before demanding we stop it you should, if being honest, at the very least, have firm proof of some harm to more than match its benefit. I could also point out that if your peak oil scare were true then it would be impossible for the catastrophic warming/climate change by 2100 caused by the burning of this disappeared oil to be true. However poking holes in a string vest is non-productive & it is obvious that mere facts are irrelevant to the true believers.

Posted by: neil craig | May 30, 2008 10:42 AM

bi,

At any rate, I reserve the right to be as blogfascist as I want, after all it's my own blog.

Very true.

However, I would have thought that one of the primary purposes of blogging would be to get people to visit one's site.

Posted by: BillBodell | May 30, 2008 10:53 AM

Chris' Wills:

As so many high profile proponents of reducing CO2 fly 1st class or use private jets I doubt that they'll argue for it

Oh, so because "many high profile proponents of reducing CO2 fly 1st class or use private jets", therefore "saving petrol" is merely something that the high and mighty want you to do. Someone's been working too much on the Cathedral of Hate...

The arguement is actually about what length of time is required for a trend to contain useful data. Correct?

Yes, the kind of things that have some relation to melting icecaps, massive flooding and all that. It's not some time period which you just make up from thin air.

Posted by: bi -- IJI | May 30, 2008 11:03 AM