[enemieslist]

I'm always really curious about people who deny human causation of global warming, which is what it seems like you're doing. I mean this as a legitimate question: How do you justify this belief?

The overwhelming majority of climate scientists believe in human-caused global warming. I'm assuming that you don't have specific training in these issues, or data that no one else possesses, so under what criteria do you choose to follow your own reasoning, or gut instinct, over such a mountain of educated opinion?

A corollary, for me, could be drawn to atoms. I have never seen an atom, nor have I ever really dug deep into the data that people say proves atoms exist. I have no more first-hand knowledge of atoms than I have of God. Yet, I simply choose to believe in atoms because people who are supposed to know about these things say atoms exist, and I'm told that if I really wanted to prove it to myself, I could go back to college or to a laboratory and do so.

We have to do this for all kinds of things, every day. We're surrounded by things that operate on principles that no single person will ever have the time or energy to investigate and validate by themselves. We have to delegate authority over most technical matters to specialists, simply because we don't have any other choice.

Why draw the line at global warming? Do you believe in internal combustion? Do you believe in black holes? Do you believe in evolution?

Really, I do not mean this to sound like an attack. I want to know.

[jquery]

Being skeptical of political crusades and trendy beliefs is very different from being a "denier". We can scarcely predict the weather one day in advance. Being skeptical of global climate predictions spanning decades is hardly on the same level as denying the internal combustion engine. And even if you accept the premise of global warming, as I do, it's a big stretch to make lifestyle recommendations based on that, and an even bigger stretch to start regulating personal eating habits.

[pessimizer]

We can scarcely predict the average of three dice rolls, but over a series the average becomes trivial.

[chrisjsmith]

Unless you roll a thousand 6's.

[jessedhillon]

> We can scarcely predict the weather one day in advance. Being skeptical of global climate predictions spanning decades is hardly on the same level as denying the internal combustion engine.

Your analogy disregards the difference in degrees of wrongness involved here. We cannot predict the temperature of the air above your house at 3:28pm tomorrow. We can predict within N degrees the average temperature for the next 30 days, for some N.

We can definitely predict the average temperature for next summer -- we can't say with any certainty how hot it will be on August 8, 2012. However, this failure doesn't negate our ability to identify trends and patterns on a macro-scale.

Global warming is a macro-scale event. It's always possible that black swans will upturn our knowledge and ruin our predictions. Climate change deniers essentially appeal to this aspect of human nature -- that we cannot plan for random events with very large consequences.

But we don't plan for the black swans, we plan for our predictions and, with a healthy dose of skepticism, we remember that the map is not the territory.

And by the way, deniers bet it all that the black swan will be a leveling off or even drop in temperatures. That earthmoving event could also be that temperature increase is actually exponential, not linear as it seems now.

[jquery]

> Climate change deniers essentially appeal to this aspect of human nature -- that we cannot plan for random events with very large consequences.

It's one thing to plan for a random event. It's another thing to propose trillions of dollars in taxes (both monetary and regulatory), wealth that could be used to further the human race by pursuing causes such as education, poverty, hunger, disease, standards of living, and advancing technology.

[chrisjsmith]

Thank you for articulating my point better than me.

[randallsquared]

I think for skeptics of anthropogenic warming, the main problem is that proponents appear to be interested in politics as much as or more than in science. This just isn't the case for internal combustion, black holes, or even evolution.

Also, it's easy to fully agree that warming has been happening (over hundreds of years, at least), and still be skeptical that humans are driving the change, what with the Medieval Warm, the Little Ice Age, etc.

[jacoblyles]

How would you prove to yourself that Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming exists to the same degree of certainty that you could have that atoms exist? I'd like to know so that I can independently run the same experiment.

Also, the history of environmental scientists making false apocalyptic predictions is lamentable. It should take some extraordinary evidence for a rational person to believe a fresh one.

[chrisjsmith]

It's all down to climate science being more akin to religion that science.

Science is based on building a hypothesis, building a supporting model that produces a reliable theory, then wrinse and repeat.

Climate science is based on building a hypothesis, marketing it, claiming that a theory is going to kill us all, fucking up the numbers when asked to prove it and then sticking your fingers in your ears and ridiculing your peers when a competing hypothesis appears.

There are models for the weather systems on this planet. They simply don't work. We can't predict the weather very well and never have been able to. That is the same for just about everything that climate science has come up with. Back in the 70s and 80s we were facing an ice age. Now it's back to global warming.

We just don't understand why the planet works like it does. We like to pretend we do and make a big kerfaffle about how advanced we are as a species and how we can control our fate, yet it's a thing much larger than the lifespan of the entire human race and it has no respect for us.

I don't believe in god - why would I? It's not observable. Atoms, internal combusion engines and evolution are all observable and we have models which are recreatable.