The 0.04%
Are you the 0.04%, i.e., would you cling to the 1 peer reviewed publication out of 2,259? This ties in nicely with my post on the dangerous trio in changing people’s minds.
https://plus.google.com/+ChadHaney/posts/WA7zHYK42Qn
h/t Rugger Ducky and Filippo Salustri et al.
#ScienceSunday #Anti_anti_intellectualism
Originally shared by Wil Wheaton
“I just want to highlight this illuminating infographic by James Powell in which, based on more than 2000 peer-reviewed publications, he counts the number of authors from November, 2012 to December, 2013 who explicitly deny global warming (that is, who propose a fundamentally different reason for temperature rise than anthropogenic CO2). The number is exactly one. In addition Powell also has helpful links to the abstracts and main text bodies of the relevant papers.
“It’s worth noting how many authors agree with the basic fact of global warming – more than nine thousand. And that’s just in a single year. Now I understand as well as anyone else that consensus does not imply truth but I find it odd how there aren’t even a handful of scientists who deny global warming presumably because the global warming mafia threatens to throttle them if they do. It’s not like we are seeing a 70-30% split, or even a 90-10% split. No, the split is more like 99.99-0.01%.” (http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/the-curious-wavefunction/2014/01/10/about-that-consensus-on-global-warming-9136-agree-one-disagrees/)
January 13, 2014
Stunning infographic. I believe this is an update on an earlier analysis of the peer reviewed literature that had similar findings. It would be great to have a similar analysis done on the vaccine controversy and GMO safety. And how could I forget evolution? 🙂
January 13, 2014
It is visually stunning. I should look for other examples as you mentioned Rajini Rao.
January 13, 2014
The comments on the OP are …interesting (putting it mildly). People are actually hailing the single dissent as the courageous equivalent of Copernicus and Darwin, while ignoring that scientific consensus after decades of research actually is overwhelmingly in support of both the heliocentric model and evolution.
January 13, 2014
I didn’t bother to look at the OP. Wil is too popular and can attract the nutters.
January 13, 2014
The parallels Rajini Rao were about evolution back in Darwin’s time, or heliocentricism at the time of Copernicus (Actually Bruno, but never mind.)
January 13, 2014
Brian Salter , my point is that climate study is not in its infancy so the field is not equivalent to a period that can be compared to the original proposal of natural selection or heliocentricism. In any case it was dissent from religious factions that stood against both those seminal theories at the time. Since then, the vast majority of research has validated them beyond any doubt, as is the case with anthropogenic climate change now.
January 13, 2014
Renaud Janson just look at the first comment. – Tell me when you want me to stop
January 13, 2014
It just means that most of them are wrong. Just because a lot of people believe something doesn’t make it true.
January 13, 2014
John Enfield, pointing out a possible fallacy doesn’t make it a fallacy either. If 9135 scientists out of 9136 scientists reviewed the data and decided it is accurate and of note (aka peer review), then they are most likely right.
January 13, 2014
I don’t quite understand your question, Garrett Wolf !
January 13, 2014
John Enfield you need to read the related link that I left. It’s not that people “believe” something. That’s faith. The evidence is overwhelming.
January 13, 2014
Renaud Janson, first comment: “Stunning infographic. I believe this is an update on an earlier analysis of the peer reviewed literature that had similar findings. It would be great to have a similar analysis done on the vaccine controversy and GMO safety. And how could I forget evolution? :)”
January 13, 2014
Rajini Rao Climate study ~is~ in it’s infancy, in a comparable way to the study of astronomy was in it’s infancy at the time of Bruno. While there had been a good deal written about astronomy in the centuries prior to the late 1500’s, most of it was pure speculation, and very little of it produced testable predictions. The same goes for the current climate models, which produce little if any useful predictions. For instance, if oxygen in the atmosphere were increased by 0.01%, how would that affect the world’s climate for the coming decade?
January 13, 2014
Brian Salter climate study is not in it’s infancy; not in the scale that Rajini Rao is comparing it to. Much of the “proof” that climate change deniers want is not possible to obtain. You simply cannot do a controlled experiment on the entire planet. There’s a reason why I left a link to my other post.
Will you change your mind?
https://plus.google.com/+ChadHaney/posts/WA7zHYK42Qn
January 13, 2014
Brian Salter , as a scientist working in the most research-intensive university in the US, I find it absurd to equate climate studies today with the study of astronomy at the time of Bruno. Sorry, that seems like willful denial to me. I wonder if Noah Diffenbaugh could stop by and comment on the “primitive” nature of his research? 🙂
January 13, 2014
Thanks Jason Mitchell. I hope you have Rajini Rao circled as her posts are even better. Maybe Jason Davison can comment on the “maturity” of climate science as well.
January 13, 2014
Chad Haney and Rajini Rao about the maturity of climate science.
Brian Salter, Climate science is extremely mature period. Some of the first useful purposes for computers were to run numerical climate and oceanographic models. Saying numerical climate modeling is in its infancy is equivalent to saying that computers are still in their infancy.
We’ve only had computers in this last century. Astronomy is really old so clearly we don’t understand computers. I’m using your logic.
As modelers, we are required to know what a 0.01% change does on every single one of our parameters. All good models go through a sensitivity analysis to determine which parameters are important and which ones aren’t. Go look at the manual of WRF (mesoscale numerical climate model), there is more information there than you’ve ever realized.
Brian Salter, we all have jobs. My job is to model and we are pretty good at it.
January 13, 2014
Jason Davison , thank you for that insight. I would be pretty miffed if my biomedical research was equated to that done in the time of Darwin. Let’s see what tools Darwin had at his disposal: no whole genome sequencing, no atomic resolution structures of proteins, no recombinant DNA technology, no laser scanning confocal fluorescence microscopy ..nope, it was just a tad different back then 😉
January 13, 2014
Chad Haney, one of things often missing in these reports are the other cause of climate change. CO2 is just one of the main cause of Climate Change. What we, as humans, have done is increased our greenhouse gases (including methane, water vapor, CO2 …), changed the land surface, modified the ocean’s and placed black carbon across the globe.
Some of the Climate Deniers, the real scientists ones, are debating about the various impacts of each one of these forcing. Some scientists believe that regional land use change has a bigger impact than global climate change. Other scientist think that our main problem is the increase in CO2.
This internal debate should not confuse the public. All atmospheric scientist agree that an increase in greenhouse gases causes an increase in global temperature. We are now debating on the degree of the impact.
As a scientist we debate everything. We love saying how someone else is wrong because they are off by 1%. What makes science so great is that disagreeing is encouraged rather than being discouraged.
January 13, 2014
Thanks Rajini Rao, I think part of the problem is that numerical modeling is so abstract until you get your hands under the hood.
Most people never get a chance to take a class on modeling. In a lot of programs students aren’t even exposed to it until the end of graduate school.
I wish we could get modeling taught in high school!
January 13, 2014
Jason Davison , to clarify, the infographic confirms the consensus on anthropogenic climate change, correct? There are those who propose that climate change is just part of natural geologic cycles and not related to human activity (therefore, we don’t need to alter our disruptive behavior).
January 13, 2014
Rajini Rao, thanks. I was confused by this line (that is, who propose a fundamentally different reason for temperature rise than anthropogenic CO2).
Yes, everyone agrees!
January 13, 2014
Thanks Jason Davison for your valuable insight. My idea of modeling is quite different. I do pharmacokinetic modeling of intravenous agents used in imaging. We don’t need supercomputers. In terms of maturity, medical imaging (especially MRI) has made huge leaps from the days of Mansfield and Lauterbur (both Nobel Prize winners for MRI). I can’t imagine not having a superconducting magnet and no parallel accelerated imaging.
January 13, 2014
Jason Mitchell, we enjoy engagement, even dissent (as long as it’s civil).
January 13, 2014
No I do not Jason Mitchell. What leads you to ask?
January 14, 2014
Chad Haney As we know, the root issue is not one of evidence, but of science education (not in terms of listed facts, but in terms of skill sets related to critical thinking, formal logic and reasoning, the concept of falsification, the scientific method, etc.) and one of trust.
If individuals are ill-equipped to understand over-arching principles down to specific details, they will naturally resort to random news media for their science reports and interpretation. Although there are plenty of decent media sources of varying caliber, the situation is a catch-22 since individuals need to have some fundamental grasp of the topic in order to discern which ones are more reliable.
Independent of evaluating the level of veracity of information itself, we can see the degree of mismatch in content and discrepancies introduced by just comparing an original study’s statements with what is in turn portrayed in some media outlets. These include wide-spread inaccuracies, whether accidental (imprecisely relaying some piece of information not quite stated by scientists themselves), incidental (errors introduced out of an attempt to simplify concepts for general public accessibility), or intentional (flat out misinformation).
Related to your other linked post, there are many similar concepts like attitude polarization, anchoring bias, fallacy of personal incredulity, the backfire effect, reactive devaluation, and on and on and on. While all of these phenomena are well described and researched, and while it makes for a fascinating analysis of human cognitive-behavioral psychology, pointing out the mistake or limitations themselves is quite ineffective for those who are not interested in or do not have the mindset for self-reflection.
For example, people will assume outright and then attribute and dismiss a viewpoint thinking it is based solely on confirmation bias without demonstrating that is in fact the case (a rather meta view on biases about confirmation biases). If they don’t know where the “center” of evidence and information is (by reading and studying climate science extensively), then they won’t know what is considered the fringe of unsupported or perhaps even fabricated info (more of that catch-22).
A while ago, The Future of Storytelling held an interesting Hangout discussing what might be a more effective approach of delivering information through storytelling because people care more about what happens to them and people they know than some impersonal fact, no matter how accurate that fact is. (I think a good recent example of this is an article in the NYT that embodies this approach well: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/14/science/earth/grappling-with-sea-level-rise-sooner-not-later.html?_r=0 )
Tomorrow there is a different Hangout that will discuss communication issues on the topic of climate change, which hopefully will prove to be productive and interesting too: https://plus.google.com/events/cq4bfp3bafhr6po8961a02bik88
January 14, 2014
Thanks for your thoughts and comments Johnathan Chung. I agree that my other post about, confirmation bias, cognitive dissonance, and motivated reasoning isn’t going to stop people, who are ill equipped to digest the evidence, from sticking to whatever soundbite the already agree with. In another post I talked about the Perry preschool project as it relates to gun violence. I wonder if preschool would help with anti-science sentiment, i.e., getting to your point about not having the skill set to understand these discussions beyond the soundbites.
January 14, 2014
Chad Haney I am not aware of that project, but I will read about it more closely later.
I think if we ask any discipline what needs to be taught more in school, they will all mostly say their subject area 🙂 There are so many things competing for time/resources that addressing processes and how to learn would presumably be more fruitful and efficient than just what to learn (teaching a person how to fish and all that :P), although a little of both are needed.
I’d assume establishing that framework sooner at a younger age would be more beneficial for those individuals and society as a whole.
January 14, 2014
Johnathan Chung the Perry preschool project is from the 60s. You can search for my post about Cabrini Green or I can link to it later.
January 24, 2014
Chad Haney It’s strange for anyone to say that our actions cannot have an impact on the planet we inhabit but we could use more clarity regarding the degree of our influence. As you mentioned climate science is not like physics, there are no laboratory experiments. Convincing people about hard sciences is not that difficult but when dealing with a phenomenon of organized complexity (like biology)the challenge is indeed high, it’s not surprising that people question GMO and evolution.
Modelling work within the boundaries of data we feed, ascertaining all the causal factors and weighing their impact within a complex phenomena which is in constant state of flux is implausible. In such scenarios whatever we measure ends up being considered as important rather than measuring what actually matters. Inducting laws within an uncontrolled environment is questionable, even then modelling can predict patterns and correlations but they are far from concrete equations. To say that if we cut emissions by a factor of Z today we can reduce “human impact” on climate by a degree of Y tomorrow is preposterous.
Earth’s climate has never been stagnant, accepting that our actions influence its cycle is a tad different from claiming we are the cause of climate change.
January 24, 2014
Mahesh Sreekandath the post is more about the people who cling to that one article out of 2259 to say that climate change doesn’t exist. The degree to which we influence it is a reasonable debate (it’s not my area of expertise, maybe that part isn’t even debatable). The debate about its existence is worthy of the label “denier”. The other issue that bothers me is, if the climate change people are wrong does it hurt to reduce emissions, pollution, etc? Does seeking “green” energy hurt? On the other hand, if we listen to the deniers and do nothing or worse, increase emission of greenhouse gases and the deniers are wrong, that’s something not worth risking.
January 24, 2014
Chad Haney My point is relevant because climate science by its very nature is different, say from physics or chemistry, also unlike biology we unable to adapt the scientific process to overcome these difficulties. Once we accept our inability for induction/deduction we are on one slippery slope.
It is always useful to utilize energy in a conservative manner but taking a fundamentalist position on climate change and enforcing top down policy decisions is unwise, since there are no concrete equations and only vague suppositions those policies inevitably become discretionary.
It’s always good to exhibit some diffidence when dealing with systems exhibiting organised complexity, macroeconomics and biology comes to mind.
Why Walking to Work Can be More Polluting Than Driving to Work? http://www.econlib.org/library/Columns/y2013/McKenziewalking.html
“A hypothesis must always be followed by experiments or trials that will objectively show whether or not the hypothesis holds true under the scrutiny of the science.” – See more at: http://www.smart-heart-living.com/lipid-hypothesis.html#sthash.e5xq1Doc.dpuf
January 24, 2014
Mahesh Sreekandath I think Jason Davison would be offended at your view of the research he does. By your logic, we should not regulate carcinogens because we don’t have a mathematical equation to predict exactly what gene will mutate and when.
I suggest you see the link above about the dangerous trio in changing people’s minds.
https://plus.google.com/+ChadHaney/posts/WA7zHYK42Qn
You are not going to change my mind and are likely to offend me by telling me how science works. I’m not going to change your mind either. I think we should stick to discussing Jeeps and heavy metal bands.
January 24, 2014
Mahesh Sreekandath, we have great mathematical PDEs that govern climate models. We use thermodynamics, Navier-Stokes and simple energy/mass conservation laws.
Stating that we don’t understand and know the governing equations is silly. Pick up a copy of Mesoscale Meterology by Pielke. Then read it.
Please stop making up this nonsense that we don’t understand the general governing equations.
January 24, 2014
“when dealing with a phenomenon of organized complexity (like biology)the challenge is indeed high, it’s not surprising that people question GMO and evolution”. This statement implies that there are no laboratory experiments that test the effects of GMO or principles of evolution. That’s emphatically incorrect. There is a huge body of experimental, published, peer-reviewed data on both these topics. There is overwhelming scientific consensus in both these fields and it is simply uninformed and misleading for anyone to suggest otherwise.
I wish I could simply point to a single study or journal article, but from experience in such online forums I have realized that is not likely to convince the skeptic whose opinions are already made up, who has no expertise in the subject under discussion but will challenge the expert never the less.
Once again, I find myself quoting from the article on “The Death of Expertise” when arguing against the lay person in the subject area of my expertise. “But if you have neither education nor experience, you might want to consider exactly what it is you’re bringing to the argument.”
http://thefederalist.com/2014/01/17/the-death-of-expertise/#disqus_thread
January 24, 2014
Jason Mitchell , I share your hopes too! Science should inform our social policy and politics, but these days it is often the other way around. Politics shapes the way people view science, thanks to strident TV “political news” shows and opinion blogs.
January 24, 2014
Why don’t we just google “114 out of 117 climate models failed to predict”
Rajini Rao My point was that the nature of biology makes it difficult to convince everyone, seems like you reinforced it.
January 24, 2014
Chad Haney It is cognitively taxing to hear contrary opinions but I have not read anyone explain a convincing scientific process for climate science, analogy to carcinogens is wrong for multiple reasons. yes we can always discuss Jeeps and metal!
January 24, 2014
Ah, google university to the rescue, of course. As I said, Mahesh, your views on science are likely informed by politics, not expertise. That’s your choice, but that does not make it accurate.
January 24, 2014
Rajini Rao I see you that even you are making strange analogies there.
Jason Mitchell Feel free not to google 🙂
January 24, 2014
Sorry that you did not see the numerous questions i raised here but decided to question Google!
January 24, 2014
Isn’t it ironic that you said condescending?
January 24, 2014
I can see Confirmation Bias, Cognitive Dissonance, and Motivated Reasoning are playing a role here. It’s unlikely anyone is going to yield. I suggest agreeing to disagree and leave it at that.
January 24, 2014
This also might be relevant here > https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8078969
January 24, 2014
Mental contamination is probably best left for Zuleyka Zevallos to comment on rather than engineers.
January 24, 2014
Amused at your belief of accepting propositions based only on its source, which runs contrary to reason. Instead of responding upfront regarding adaptability of scientific process you guys prefer to allude to my hobbies, political views and academic background skewing my rationality? LOL Are we engaging in a celebration of irony here?
Hope this paper should help us in reasoning along different lines, especially since it’s from an authority?
http://highmesa.us/Hayek/Theory%20of%20Complex%20Phemomena.pdf
January 24, 2014
The irony is that I’m an engineer and was including myself in that comment. It also ironic that you want to comment on whether or not to believe something based on the source, because this post is about people clinging to one peer-reviewed article out of 2259 that support anthropogenic climate change. The reasoning for that is climate change denial.
January 24, 2014
LOL Chad, haters hate, deniers deny, my motivation was only to reflect on certain largely ignored aspects, climate science should not be considered as this holy grail where reasoning goes to die.