Which alternative science group is the most harmful?

[politicus]

I would say climate change deniers. Holocaust denial is more morally reprehensible, but has less RL negative impact.

[Old Man Svensson]

Climate change deniers. Holocaust deniers are perhaps more worthy of having their entire mouthful of teeth knocked out, but people actually believe climate change deniers.

[Lambsbread]

Climate change deniers are bad, but literally denying the slaughter of millions of people is straight up ridiculous. Denying climate change is bad, but the holocaust is a much more emotional issue.

[Donerail]

Climate change deniers are bad, but literally denying the slaughter of millions of people is straight up ridiculous. Denying climate change is bad, but the holocaust is a much more emotional issue.

But how many Holocaust deniers have any kind of power? The climate change deniers have an entire major political party behind them (I guess the creationists do too, though they don't wield quite the same influence).

[Lambsbread]

Climate change deniers are bad, but literally denying the slaughter of millions of people is straight up ridiculous. Denying climate change is bad, but the holocaust is a much more emotional issue.

But how many Holocaust deniers have any kind of power? The climate change deniers have an entire major political party behind them (I guess the creationists do too, though they don't wield quite the same influence).

True, but I guess it's the sentiment more than the politics.

[RI]

None are particularly harmful. Holocaust denying is somewhat idiotic, but by itself nothing more. Regarding creationists, you should define your terms but I'll assume you mean YECs, they are also rather demonstrably wrong but not really harmful; 95% of people are not impacted by this at all in their day-to-day lives.

Climate change denying, well, I'm not yet convinced they're entirely wrong, and even if they are, climate change is easily the least founded of the three.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Holocaust deniers are the most despicable, but they are such a fringe that they're not really dangerous. Climate change deniers are the most dangerous because they are established enough to influence a whole course of policies in the wrong direction, with potentially tragic consequences.

[Ban my account ffs!]

When you can definitively prove that doubling CO2 from 280ppm to 560ppm in our atmosphere actually has detrimental effects, I'll listen.

It floors me that you people say this stuff when the planet hasn't warmed for 15 years!  At the very least, the climate modelers will have to admit they missed out on a natural factor they assumed was much smaller before (like the massive change in the state of the sun in the past 10 years from incredibly active to below average... likely headed towards a grand minimum).

If they contend they have the natural factors taken into account, then they will have to admit the amount of warming from the CO2 we're adding is smaller than previously thought since even as CO2 emissions have skyrocketed since 2000, temperatures have been flat.

This is what the IPCC says:

"It is very likely that the majority of global warming since the mid-20th century has been driven by human greenhouse emissions"

Half the warming we've seen since pre-industrial times took place before the mid-20th century.. which all but the worst alarmists admit was caused by natural factors.

Our CO2 emissions were only strong enough after WWII to have an appreciable impact, even if you assume climate sensitivity that the IPCC does.

But here are some facts:

As Arctic sea ice reaches new lows, like it did in September 2012, Antarctic sea ice grows, and is setting record highs.

As air temperatures over the Arctic basin have been warmer than normal (mostly during autumn and winter), the bulk of Antarctica is cooling.

The small bits of evidence of Arctic weather prior to the satellite era that we have show that the Arctic hasn't gone through some incredible, unprecedented change.  Areas that were perpetually ice clogged for most of the 20th century until recent years were open enough to allow non-ice breaker ships up there for an expedition in the summer of 1881.  The winter of 1880/81 was particularly brutal across the central U.S... like this year, with the storm track focused on the region like a laser.  But sea ice near Greenland and NE Canada was low... indicating a blocking pattern like we've had recently.. which warms the sea between Labrador and Greenland and delivers cold to the mainland USA.

There is evidence that the Arctic has been warmer since we emerged from the last ice age.. namely around the time of the Holocene Optimum, when solar insolation was stronger at high latitudes during summer than it is today.

In fact, early satellite data from the Arctic from the mid 1960s show that ice extent was actually below the 1979-2008 summer average while Antarctic ice was similar in extent to today's record highs... indicating that a similar pattern of warm Arctic/cold Antarctic was affecting sea ice back in the '60s.

But again.. the biggest news is that the planet, by any temperature record, hasn't warmed for 15 years... whether that's Muller's Best data (the name people like to throw around as the big gotcha), the UAH satellite data or NASA's GISS interpretation of the data.

The "climate change deniers" want to know why this is... because us "deniers" were assured that the science was settled and that the warming would continue unabated at an increased pace as time went on.  Of course you'd expect a cooling trend now and then to last a few years.. but 15?

The truth of the matter is:  The period of warming where CO2 emissions were significant was from 1976-1998... 22 years.  And as emissions ballooned with China's development in the 2000s, the global temperature has stagnated.

No.. at the end of the day, it will have been the alarmists that should be locked up for stifling the development of the economy for a billion impoverished souls on our planet when clean drinking water and electricity by cheap, widely available sources of electricity would have greatly improved their quality of life.

Instead, they can occasionally run a lamp (but not the fridge at the same time!) off of solar panels.

People have turned this into a religion, and the "science" is nothing but dogmatic bullsh**t that actually takes away from science and scientific endeavor and exploration.

But whatever.. you threw down your holy bible and picked up a green bible.  And now you call people who deny your green dogma bullsh**t as "worse than holocaust deniers"

Seriously people... wake the f**k up.

[MyRescueKittehRocks]

Evolution is the alternative science not Creation science.

[Starbucks Union Thug HokeyPuck]

Evolution is the alternative science not Creation science.

face meet palm. 

Creationists, of course.  It's the most pervasive.  Humanity will achieve so much more when we stop believing we are special. 

[Ban my account ffs!]

Evolution is the alternative science not Creation science.

face meet palm. 

Creationists, of course.  It's the most pervasive.  Humanity will achieve so much more when we stop believing we are special. 

Best post in the thread so far.

Humanity will achieve so much more when we stop believing we are special. (I apologize for dragging you into it.. but the statement applies in different ways to creationism and climate change denial)

[Oswald Acted Alone, You Kook]

Climate Change Deniers, for they have the most valid points amd are the most powerful. Holocaust Deniers aren't very powerful outside of the Middle East and Creationists are even less powerfull and both are heavily despised (depending on which form of Creationism; most Creationists on the Atlas are Theistic Evolutionists, which aren't very despised except by Young Earth Creationists) compared to Climate Change denial.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Wouldn't Holocaust deniers be more of an alternative history group?

Anyway, probably climate change deniers.

[DC Al Fine]

How is holocaust denial "alternative science"?

[TNF]

Other: people who don't believe in vaccination.

they kill people. That's pretty damn harmful if you ask me.

[Lambsbread]

Evolution is the alternative science not Creation science.

Come on dude...

[courts]

Other: people who don't believe in vaccination.

they kill people. That's pretty damn harmful if you ask me.

[🐒Gods of Prosperity🔱🐲💸]

I've never heard Holocaust denial referred to as a science, but it's more harmful on balance than the other two.  It's useful to anti-Semitic middle eastern demagogues in their efforts to try to shift attention away from their own failure and say things that end up causing instability in the region.   

The only ones worth calling "climate change deniers" are the one's who claim that climate change doesn't happen at all, and don't want people to study it or plan for the possibility.  How much it's happening now in what directions, and why, is an open question. I suspect there's something to anthropogenic climate change and we should be concerned about it, but I think those who doubt it have helped keep some harmful and largely ineffective policies to try to stop it from being implemented. 

[Donerail]

Evolution is the alternative science not Creation science.

FTFY?

[Ban my account ffs!]

Other: people who don't believe in vaccination.

they kill people. That's pretty damn harmful if you ask me.

Indeed.

You know what else kills people?  Cold.  For all the hemming and hawing that still shows up from time to time about the 2003 summer heatwave in Europe... the real enemy is cold.

And even if you accept that the planet will start warming with a vengeance any day now... you have to accept that it will still get cold enough to kill people who are ill prepared for it.

The number that die due to cold in England each winter is a tragedy.  Yet such deaths are almost unheard of here.  And if you listen to scientists, you'd be stupid to prepare for cold.

Crop yields hit records last year in Minnesota... 2012.. the warmest year on record for much of the state dating back to 1895 (1877/78 was warmer.. but only a few stations were operating here at that time).. record crop yields.. and the best year for farmers in 40 years.

2013?  The latest spring on record.. a coincidence after last year's earliest spring on record?  Nope.  Less corn is in the ground so far this year than in any year since 1995 (as far as the record I saw goes).  Cold will kill yields this year... so hopefully those farmers set aside some money.

The extremes we've been seeing with weather is more an indication of the lack of warming and the weaker solar activity than greenhouse forced warming.  A weaker sun weakens the polar jet streams and allows a more north-south flow than the standard west-east zonal flow.  This is why it can be 50*F in Nuuk, Greenland and 25*F in Kansas City in May.

Most scientific literature predicts fewer hurricanes for example.  This is because the major function of tropical systems is to disperse tropical heat poleward, as is most of our weather....  But when the earth warms, the polar regions tend to warm more than the tropics.. so the difference in temperature from equator to pole lessens... so there's less of a need to redistribute that heat poleward.. resulting in fewer storms.

There is some evidence that even with fewer storms, the chances they develop into strong storms is higher due to increased atmospheric water vapor.. but that would be situational at best and doesn't reflect the overall drop in atmospheric water vapor in the past 15 years (which coincides perfectly with the stagnation of global temperatures).  This drop goes contrary to every global climate model and flies int he face of the foundations of modern climate change theory.

For example, severe weather is worst in the U.S. during La Niña springs.. and La Niña tends to cool the planet.  But wait?  A cooler planet means more severe weather?  In North America, the impact of La Niña tends to strengthen the subtropical warmth that dominates the southern 1/3 to 1/2 of the U.S. while also strengthening the polar cold that reaches the northern 1/3 of the U.S.

This means there's more energy and moisture than normal available in the already warmer/wetter parts of the country while the colder areas are even colder.  This is perfect for severe weather formation.

During El Niño on the other hand, while precipitation across the U.S. tends to increase overall, severe weather does not.. because El Niño cools the southern U.S. while the northern U.S. remains mild.

I've said this multiple times before:

La Niña year:
15F in Minneapolis
50F in St. Louis
80F in Memphis
90F in New Orleans

El Niño year:

45F in Minneapolis
50F in St. Louis
55F in Memphis
70F in New Orleans

Another example:  The historic lack of tornadoes in 2012 and 2013 in the U.S. have been caused by two opposite factors that result in the same thing:   no tornadoes.

Spring 2012 was simply too warm, especially areas in the central and northern U.S.  Spring 2013 has just been too damned cold...

So instead of the clash where you might see tornadoes ahead of the cold front with snow showers behind.... you have these systems that bring blizzards with unprecedented cold on their back sides with nothing but boring, but very heavy rain ahead of them (again, moisture is available but rains out of the systems in the cool air in a steady, drenching rain rather than in a supercell thunderstorm)

whereas last year the cold couldn't come down to challenge the heat and pop up storms... this year the heat just isn't coming in, which causes even fewer tornadoes...

But all this stuff simply explains the weather we've had the past several years.  Even so, we are finding the mechanisms that cause these extreme events... and the underlying causes simply do not have the fingerprint of warming caused by a gradual buildup of carbon dioxide in our atmosphere.  It has the fingerprint of a sudden change in solar activity.

Seriously... it's the sun, stupid.

[Donerail]

Snowguy, you've presented a lot of scientific evidence, but have you presented any to suggest why a vast community of scientists from across the world (including all major national science academies and around 90% of scientists in the field) are collaborating to fabricate a massive amount of evidence and research and are deceiving the entire world? In short: what evidence do you have to back up your allegations of a global conspiracy of scientists?

[DC Al Fine]

Snowguy, you've presented a lot of scientific evidence, but have you presented any to suggest why a vast community of scientists from across the world (including all major national science academies and around 90% of scientists in the field) are collaborating to fabricate a massive amount of evidence and research and are deceiving the entire world? In short: what evidence do you have to back up your allegations of a global conspiracy of scientists?

Has Snowguy been talking about global conspiracies?

It's not like all the AGW proponents discovered the truth years ago and are trying to cover it up (although the odd one has). It's mostly the emotional issue of having one's life invested in a theory/trying to get grants from sympathetic groups that makes one inclined to believe . Nothing so outlandish as a conspiracy.

[Ban my account ffs!]

Snowguy, you've presented a lot of scientific evidence, but have you presented any to suggest why a vast community of scientists from across the world (including all major national science academies and around 90% of scientists in the field) are collaborating to fabricate a massive amount of evidence and research and are deceiving the entire world? In short: what evidence do you have to back up your allegations of a global conspiracy of scientists?

Why would I argue that there was a conspiracy when there is none?

There are, however, more than a few instances of cherry picking and fudged data in order to make your hypothesis appear correct when an objective look at the data collected might show no such evidence to back up the AGW hypothesis, or at best, a less extreme version of that presented by the original scientists.

This happened with the hockey stick graph produced by Michael Mann.  His proxy data did, in fact, show a hockey stick.  No conspiracy there.

But he made a big mistake:  He grafted together proxy data with instrumental observations of global temperature.

He first argued this wasn't a problem because the instrumental data and his proxies (which went to year 1980) showed a good correlation during the time period they were both shown on the graph (1880-1980)... but it is misleading at least because it might make the average viewer of the graph assume if there were proxy data after 1980, that it too would show the huge jump in global temps in the instrument record after 1980.

But it turns out Michael Mann used a "trick" to make the two datasets correlate.  This became known in "climategate" as "Mike's Nature Trick".

The proxy data showed a sudden, large rise in global temperatures from 1910-1940 or so.. just like the thermometer records.  But then showed a large drop in temperatures after 1940 to the levels seen in 1910 by the endpoint in 1980... so global temperatures spiked upwards for 30 years, then back down to their starting point in the 30 years after the peak.

But the thermometers showed no such fall.. instead showing temperatures falling only slightly from 1940-1980 before rising rapidly again from 1980-2000.

So, Mike deleted the proxy data from 1960-1980 and instead used the figures recorded by thermometers in place of the proxy records in order to erase the big decline in temperatures after 1940 in the proxy data.  By using thermometer data, the big rise in temps from 1910-1940 still shows up in the proxy data.. but the dip afterwards is much smaller.. appearing to correlate well with the thermometer data (because it USES the thermometer data!)... thus... hiding the decline.

Michael Mann tried to pass off his "hiding the decline" comment in one of his e-mails by saying what he meant by "decline" was the alleged, but unsubstantiated claim that proxy data "declines" in accuracy for some unexplained and apparently unknown reason after 1960.... because almost all proxy data that shows data up to present shows a bigger decline in temperatures from 1940-1980 than is recorded by our thermometers, and generally shows only a slight warming after 1980.. but not to the levels seen in 1940.

Until the 1990s, the global instrumental record actually showed this.  It showed a rapid warming from 1910-1940 and then a cooling from 1940-1975 nearly as big as the warming from 1910-1940.  This graph was employed by media outlets in the 70s as proof that cooling was here to stay and that an ice age was potentially imminent.  But numerous adjustments to the records over the years have slowly erased this cooling after 1940... mostly by adjusting temperatures around 1940 downwards while adjusting temperatures after 1970 upwards.. so the warming trend appears larger.

Scientists claim these adjustments are merely to remove outliers by averaging any one station with anomalies of nearby stations.. up to 1200km away.  But if it's merely to remove outliers, why do 4 out of every 5 adjustments increase the warming trend?  Wouldn't you expect it to be half and half?

In combination with poorly sited weather stations and the lack of accounting for the urban heat island effect on the increasingly relied on urban stations to compile the global temperature... there's actually a chance that a not tiny portion of the warming since 1950 hasn't actually even occurred.  The proxy data and the satellites corroborate this.  The satellites measure the temperature of the entire atmospheric column.. but we only have data back to 1979.

Alarmists like to dismiss satellite data as somehow inferior.. or claim they have a "cool bias"... which was true.. orbital decay introduced a known cooling trend into the data.. but has since been corrected.


Back to tree rings as proxy records for temperature.  "Denialists" like me think there is a combination of reasons quality goes down after 1960.. one is.. tree rings are simply not good proxies of temperature.  They are, however, good proxies of growing season precipitation.... and also of CO2 levels.  This is especially true of the tree species employed in the hockey stick graph which grow at very high elevations and are specifically evolved to grow very slowly regardless of temperature.  But when exposed to higher CO2 concentrations, grow much faster simply due to the "fertilizing" effect of more available CO2.  So in this case, his tree rings were a better proxy of CO2 concentration than anything else.

The reason they have to use the argument that the quality or accuracy declines for some reason is that the proxies don't show the recorded warming by our thermometers in the late 20th century.  And if they can't catch this warming period, then they probably missed other ones in the past.. and the usefullness of proxies to determine past temperature gets called into question.

But that's just one particular issue.  Michael Mann is now a well known public figure and does have an outsized influence on climate science.. as was seen in his e-mails.  There were conspiracies by him and a few other high profile climate scientists not only to discredit any scientist that brought forth evidence against established climate science theory... but to blacklist journals and editors that would publish their work.  The method?  Sully their reputations by claiming they're just agents for "fossil fuel companies".

Of course it wasn't a global conspiracy.  But there was definitely a "damage control" element to climate science... where contrary evidence was lambasted or not allowed.  Which is why I think it has become more of a dogmatic, nearly religious issue than a scientific one. 

If the theory of anthropogenic global warming is so solid and sound... why can't they explain the lack of warming in the past 15 years?  Why, even when the planet was warming... wasn't it warming the way the models said it should have.. warming most where CO2 concentrations were increasing most?  (the mid-troposphere)  Why has water vapor dropped if one of the basic elements of greenhouse theory is that water vapor increases with co2?

There are prominent scientists with the IPCC that admitted there were a few model simulations that took natural factors into account that said the planet could "stagnate" for another 5 years.. and that that worried him.  That if the planet were to stagnate even for 5 more years, it would be a game changer in the climate science community.. and they'd have serious questions about the models and the very basis of their greenhouse theory.

But for a denialist like me who believes the changes in solar activity are the main driver.. I believe the planet will stagnate, and even cool substantially for at least another 15-20 years.

Obviously if that happens... it's all she wrote for the greenhouse super sensitive earth theory.

But either way, we're gonna find out. 

[SUSAN CRUSHBONE]

The correct answer is Kalwejt, Franzl, me, and Lief.

[Sbane]

Since it is somehow fair game to compare holocaust deniers to climate change skeptics.....then it must be said that climate change proponents are only pushing their beliefs to kill poor people in poor countries!