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GLOBAL WARMING - A Case Study in Groupthink - Christopher Booker

Threegoofs said:
Not my point.

I’m suggesting AGW is real because there is a vast preponderance of evidence for it, and this is reflected in the views of the scientists who study climate, and biology, and oceanography and many other sciences.
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"If they were right, one would be enough." --Albert Einstein
 
Threegoofs said:
Not my point.

I’m suggesting AGW is real because there is a vast preponderance of evidence for it, and this is reflected in the views of the scientists who study climate, and biology, and oceanography and many other sciences.
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Thank you for confirming the OP's point about the need for consensus. You could have just stopped at "vast preponderance of evidence". But you didn't.

Personally I find the "vast preponderance" of evidence somewhat lacking and the evidence we do have is sometimes contradictory. The climate does seem to be getting warmer. Anthropogenic carbon seems like a very plausible explanation, though by no means the only one. Nor does there have to be only one. The problem is, while warming is easy enough to prove, finding the root cause (or causes) is much more difficult. Going back to plate tectonics mentioned earlier, it's pretty clear the continents move. We can measure it over time with satellites. Why they move is still debated. No one is insisting that is "settled".
 
eman623 said:
Thank you for confirming the OP's point about the need for consensus. You could have just stopped at "vast preponderance of evidence". But you didn't.

Personally I find the "vast preponderance" of evidence somewhat lacking and the evidence we do have is sometimes contradictory. The climate does seem to be getting warmer. Anthropogenic carbon seems like a very plausible explanation, though by no means the only one. Nor does there have to be only one. The problem is, while warming is easy enough to prove, finding the root cause (or causes) is much more difficult. Going back to plate tectonics mentioned earlier, it's pretty clear the continents move. We can measure it over time with satellites. Why they move is still debated. No one is insisting that is "settled".
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You seem to misunderstand.

The consensus of scientists isn’t the proof.

The consensus reflects the strength of the evidence.
 
Threegoofs said:
You seem to misunderstand.

The consensus of scientists isn’t the proof.

The consensus reflects the strength of the evidence.
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Or it's groupthink. You don't seem to want to accept that's even a remote possibility.

We''re going in circles here.
 
Take the quick Eman "is consensus the same as evidence" quiz:

1. Does the fact that 97% of climatologists think AGW is real indicate it is in fact more likely to be real?
2. Does the fact that at least 99% of Catholic priests think the Catholic God is real indicate He is in fact more likely to exist?
3. If you answered yes to either question, then you may be indulging in groupthink.
 
Threegoofs said:
You seem to misunderstand.

The consensus of scientists isn’t the proof.

The consensus reflects the strength of the evidence.
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What a pathetic claim since there have been consensus failures that have hurt science research.
 
Jack Hays said:
"If they were right, one would be enough." --Albert Einstein
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One refutation was enough to invalidate the AGW conjecture, which happened in several ways, known years ago.

Yet kept alive anyway since it is now a religion to follow on.
 
eman623 said:
Very interesting article. Random thoughts about the three rules of groupthink.

1. A group of people come to share a belief that is not rooted in reality.: I'm not sure what to do with that. No one has an absolute lock on reality, least of all me. I'm often wrong. I can be wrong sometimes six times before breakfast. Either the climate is warming and we are responsible or we are not (actually we may be partially responsible, but then it just becomes a "how much?" question.) No one knows the answer so all we have is opinion. Rule one is useless for determining groupthink in climate change.

2. Since the shared view cannot be proven, consensus is required: On this, I think the AGW proponents are clearly the ones more likely to be at fault here. They live and die based on the 97% or 98% consensus. The skeptics are clearly in a minority here.

3. Anyone not in the group must be shunned and dismissed: Well. If attacking people with an opposing viewpoint is a marker of groupthink, then I'd say about 80% of the people here (you know who you are) are groupthinkful. ;)
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You have fallen into the trap.

The question is not if humanity os responsible for any warming but if it is at all bad.

So what is bad about the world being a little warmer, a little wetter and a lot more fertile?
 
eman623 said:
Take the quick Eman "is consensus the same as evidence" quiz:

1. Does the fact that 97% of climatologists think AGW is real indicate it is in fact more likely to be real?
2. Does the fact that at least 99% of Catholic priests think the Catholic God is real indicate He is in fact more likely to exist?
3. If you answered yes to either question, then you may be indulging in groupthink.
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Right.

I’m saying that the consensus opinion of scientists has nothing to do with the fact of AGW.

It reflects that fact.

It also is a reflection that the people who understand this extremely complex scientific topic the best are in virtual unanimity on it, making those who understand it casually- 99% of us- have to respect that fact.

That’s why people attack that number in one thread, and in another thread argue that the number is ‘fake’....because either explanation fits their predetermined view.

That’s telling.
 
Surface Detail said:
Christopher Booker is a political polemicist with no scientific education whatsoever. Given that he has no real comprehension of the topic (I've read some of the utter rubbish that he has written for the Daily Telegraph), how can he possibly be any any position to distinguish between "groupthink" and actual scientific consensus? Answer: he can't. Since he has no understanding of the actual issues, he is simply resorting to name-calling. It's pathetic.
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Yeah and what did Jonathan Swift know about liturgical science before he so boldly attacked it?

A population with brains will always be a threat to "science" this is why we must never abandon education by government.

 
Part 1,

Threegoofs,

Your attempt to support a consensus paradigm is indicative that you have no idea how reproducible research really works.

It seems that warmists are in deep love of the consensus idea to the point of dogmatism, yet doesn't even understand the irrelevance of it.

From Dr. Chrichton from his Aliens causes global warming speech:

At the conference in Washington, during the question period, Ehrlich was reminded that after Hiroshima and Nagasaki, scientists were quoted as saying nothing would grow there for 75 years, but in fact melons were growing the next year. So, he was asked, how accurate were these findings now?

Ehrlich answered by saying "I think they are extremely robust. Scientists may have made statements like that, although I cannot imagine what their basis would have been, even with the state of science at that time, but scientists are always making absurd statements, individually, in various places. What we are doing here, however, is presenting a consensus of a very large group of scientists"

I want to pause here and talk about this notion of consensus, and the rise of what has been called consensus science. I regard consensus science as an extremely pernicious development that ought to be stopped cold in its tracks. Historically, the claim of consensus has been the first refuge of scoundrels; it is a way to avoid debate by claiming that the matter is already settled. Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had.

Let's be clear: the work of science has nothing whatever to do with consensus. Consensus is the business of politics. Science, on the contrary, requires only one investigator who happens to be right, which means that he or she has results that are verifiable by reference to the real world.

In science consensus is irrelevant. What is relevant is reproducible results. The greatest scientists in history are great precisely because they broke with the consensus. There is no such thing as consensus science. If it's consensus, it isn't science. If it's science, it isn't consensus. Period.


In addition, let me remind you that the track record of the consensus is nothing to be proud of. Let's review a few cases.

In past centuries, the greatest killer of women was fever following childbirth. One woman in six died of this fever.

In 1795, Alexander Gordon of Aberdeen suggested that the fevers were infectious processes, and he was able to cure them. The consensus said no.

In 1843, Oliver Wendell Holmes claimed puerperal fever was contagious, and presented compelling evidence. The consensus said no.

In 1849, Semmelweiss demonstrated that sanitary techniques virtually eliminated puerperal fever in hospitals under his management. The consensus said he was a Jew, ignored him, and dismissed him from his post. There was in fact no agreement on puerperal fever until the start of the twentieth century. Thus the consensus took one hundred and twenty five years to arrive at the right conclusion despite the efforts of the prominent "skeptics" around the world, skeptics who were demeaned and ignored. And despite the constant ongoing deaths of women.
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Part 2,

There is no shortage of other examples. In the 1920s in America, tens of thousands of people, mostly poor, were dying of a disease called pellagra. The consensus of scientists said it was infectious, and what was necessary was to find the "pellagra germ." The US government asked a brilliant young investigator, Dr. Joseph Goldberger, to find the cause. Goldberger concluded that diet was the crucial factor. The consensus remained wedded to the germ theory.

Goldberger demonstrated that he could induce the disease through diet. He demonstrated that the disease was not infectious by injecting the blood of a pellagra patient into himself, and his assistant. They and other volunteers swabbed their noses with swabs from pellagra patients, and swallowed capsules containing scabs from pellagra rashes in what were called "Goldberger's filth parties." Nobody contracted pellagra.

The consensus continued to disagree with him. There was, in addition, a social factor-southern States disliked the idea of poor diet as the cause, because it meant that social reform was required. They continued to deny it until the 1920s. Result-despite a twentieth century epidemic, the consensus took years to see the light.

Probably every schoolchild notices that South America and Africa seem to fit together rather snugly, and Alfred Wegener proposed, in 1912, that the continents had in fact drifted apart. The consensus sneered at continental drift for fifty years. The theory was most vigorously denied by the great names of geology-until 1961, when it began to seem as if the sea floors were spreading. The result: it took the consensus fifty years to acknowledge what any schoolchild sees.

And shall we go on? The examples can be multiplied endlessly. Jenner and smallpox, Pasteur and germ theory. Saccharine, margarine, repressed memory, fiber and colon cancer, hormone replacement therapy. The list of consensus errors goes on and on.
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LINK
 
Sunsettommy said:
Part 1,

Threegoofs,

Your attempt to support a consensus paradigm is indicative that you have no idea how reproducible research really works.

:
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Considering my job depends upon the knowledge of how scientific research works, your post is both hilarious and pathetic at the same time.
 
Threegoofs said:
Considering my job depends upon the knowledge of how scientific research works, your post is both hilarious and pathetic at the same time.
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:lamo

But you manage to ignore a TWO SCIENCE PHD degree holding speaker about Consensus failures and that despite your awesome job claims, can't whip up an actual counterpoint to what I wrote.

What is holding you back?
 
Threegoofs said:
Considering my job depends upon the knowledge of how scientific research works, your post is both hilarious and pathetic at the same time.
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You have made clear that you do not understand how such things works by saying that scientific papers do not show how they get their results.
 
Tim the plumber said:
You have made clear that you do not understand how such things works by saying that scientific papers do not show how they get their results.
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You must not read many papers.

Generally, the methods section is where you’ll find this.
 
Threegoofs said:
You must not read many papers.

Generally, the methods section is where you’ll find this.
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You once posted;

Originally Posted by Threegoofs View Post
Wait. What?

Where are those ‘mountains of data’ she collected?

Or do you mean she used other people’s data...which generally means she didn’t have access to all the data, or even understand the methods of collection.
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Bloding mine.

This post shows absolutely that you had no understanding of how scientific papers have to detail their mathods of data collection.

That shows that you are not, and have never been, involved in producing a scientific paper of any sort.

That you have never done a degree in any science subject.

That you have never hung around and chatted to undergraduates doing scince at university for long social periods that would have happened if you had done a degree and socialised with anybody whop was doing a sceince degree.

https://www.debatepolitics.com/envi.../309050-snowfalls-now-just-thing-past-27.html

Post 263.
 
Threegoofs said:
You must not read many papers.

Generally, the methods section is where you’ll find this.
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You certainly lack the skill to articulate in what you claim to read about.

Where is your reply to Dr. Crichton's speech, where he knocks down consensus convincingly?

Waiting... waiting.....

:2wave:
 
Threegoofs said:
Right.

I’m saying that the consensus opinion of scientists has nothing to do with the fact of AGW.

It reflects that fact.

It also is a reflection that the people who understand this extremely complex scientific topic the best are in virtual unanimity on it, making those who understand it casually- 99% of us- have to respect that fact.

That’s why people attack that number in one thread, and in another thread argue that the number is ‘fake’....because either explanation fits their predetermined view.

That’s telling.
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You keep going back to the consensus which contradicts any commitment to the supremacy of the evidence. Do the 99% of us who are not Catholic priests have to respect the fact that Catholic priests are virtually unanimous in the belief in the Catholic God?
 
Tim the plumber said:
You have fallen into the trap.

The question is not if humanity os responsible for any warming but if it is at all bad.

So what is bad about the world being a little warmer, a little wetter and a lot more fertile?
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I think climate change will produce winners and losers. Whether it will produce more winners than losers is impossible to predict. It could be a push, globally speaking. Although that will not be much solice to the people living in paces that become sh*th*les because of it.
 
eman623 said:
I think climate change will produce winners and losers. Whether it will produce more winners than losers is impossible to predict. It could be a push, globally speaking. Although that will not be much solice to the people living in paces that become sh*th*les because of it.
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I would gladly agree with you if you could find anybody who will lose if it gets a little warmer.

Care to take the challenge? Nobody else has produced anybody who is likely to lose out.
 
Tim the plumber said:
Your first time debating with 3goofs then.
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True, but this is not my first AGW debate. 3g actually seems much more polite and reasonable than most, even if he - as in typical of yeasayers - is utterly incapable of accepting even the slightest possibility of being wrong or that the other side might even be a little bit right.
 
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