An interesting question. With out thinking too terribly hard I'm not sure what the answer is.

Your short-cuts, for example, might be plenty good enough for most folks and wouldn't require that they have a great deal of training in thinking. They can be followed more-or-less by rote.

I think I've mentioned that several folks are studying the effectiveness of heuristics in decision making. What they are finding is that for a host of problems deemed "ecologically valid" heuristics are very nearly as accurate as statistical models.

Poorly defined: Ecologically valid problems are decision problems that represent the types of decisions that people will routinely encounter in normal life.

Before I start wandering again: it seems to me that good heuristics on source discrimination could provide a great deal of improvement in much of the population--or at least that fraction of the population not already set in their ways.

On the other hand, teaching source discrimination heuristics may not work unless people have been taught some critical thinking skills first.

I must think about this further.

If memory serves many of the subjects in those experiments come to believe that they are wrong. But I am working from some old memories so don't quote me on that.



And I certainly hope I haven't given the impression that I was claiming a one-and-only cause. This represents a single possibility that seems likely to be an important contributor to the problem that I am claiming (failure of evolved thinking skills in a modern society).

I would be stunned if there were not other contributing factors.



Not having read the complete study I will have to guess.

I do have some notion of how the study should have been conducted (with strangers to the child) and the study was published in a good journal (Psychological Science, Volume 20(2), 231-237 if you have the inclination to read the study before I do.) so I am prone to conclude that the other people were initially unknown to the child.



Right now I am searching for the answer to this question. Ken's post (2 back as of my starting this reply) has several heuristics that can be used and I think will point you in the right direction more often than not.

I've seen various lists in various places, most of which overlap with what ken posted earlier. If I can get my grading done I'll see what I can find.



I'll take suggestions on who is responsible because it certainly isn't clear.

If you do not have the training, or the time, to evaluate the full scientific evidence you'll have to trust someone else. My claim in recent posts has been that we need to help folks without time/training to discriminate who is trustworthy and who isn't.

Having advocates try to persuade you bothers me because advocacy, at least in the U.S., isn't necessarily tied to arriving at the truth. Advocacy is about persuading people that some position is correct, whether it is or not.

The lawyer who advocates for the criminal is required to try and create doubt of his client's guilt even if he knows full well that the client is guilty.

When it comes to complex scientific issues I don't want people trying to create doubt where little/none exists. I want people who are trying to find, and report, the best knowledge of the day. I want advocates for truth regardless of what the truth may be.


Unfortunately I don't know how to break away from the climate of advocacy that has grown up around a couple of scientific issues. Like the lawyer defending the criminal we have a lot of folks protecting some interest or other with no regard for anything other than the interest being protected.

A very small number of folks have legitimate questions about the science of climate change. But a fairly large number are sowing doubt and confusion for the protection of any number of special interests--and they masquerade this advocacy as scientific concern in order to hide their true interests--in some cases they are even hiding their true interests from themselves.

I think the damage to U.S. car manufacturers are largely self-inflicted from decades of poor business practices. But it is much more expedient for them to blame the environmentalists' "unsupported" climate claims and onerous legislation in response to those claims. Especially now that we have an economic "crisis" and we need to save all those jobs in Detroit.

Now we have a lot of regular folks who believe the false message that "unsupported" climate concerns are the cause of their current economic problems. Having chosen a side in the "debate" they are unwilling and unlikely to change no matter what evidence becomes available.

I agree that Gore is a poor choice of spokesperson for the issue of climate change. (Search this thread and you'll find that I've objected to Gore quite strongly in the past, and I've found no reason to improve my opinion of him since.)

Really? I hadn't heard this one yet. What legislation in specific? I was under the impression that there hadn't been any legislation thanks to antiscience special interest groups...and in fact, the Bush administration even nixed California's attempt to get manufacturers to produce more fuel-efficient vehicles (albeit there may have been valid reasons...e.g. if each state went ahead with its own requirements you have a patchwork of legislation that would bog down the industry. You need a coordinated plan and the Bush admin didn't have a plan out yet).

If the car manufacturers were under onerous legislation it was from the Clean Air initiatives, a desire for reduced dependence on foreign oil, and better fuel efficiency (save money at the pump). Some of that legislation was from the 70s and 80s.

Just looked up GM profits and found this article on GM spending/benefits. It lists a few reasons why GM was failing the big one being out of pocket health care costs. According to this article GM legacy costs (pensions, health care) averaged 7 billion/yr between 93 and 2007, and probably more than 10 billion/yr now.

Found some legislation too....the 2004 Tier 2 Vehicle and Gas Sulfur Program which was to reduce emissions where sulfur (a contaminant) was being removed from the fuel in the newer refineries. It'll reduce pollution, acid rain, particulate matter, and estimated to prevent about 4200 deaths/yr. Nothing there about GHG, mainly acid rain.

I certainly understand how confusing science sites are for non-science people, as I have no idea if what I'm reading is from a good versus bad sites. Maybe I need to go back for an MBA now?

Tuned in to Neil Boortz yesterday afternoon, while driving. He was saying something that I just caught the tail end of, about some scientist (didn't catch his full name, but I think it was Something Taylor), who he claimed was an expert in his field, but was denied entry to a scientific conference for the reason that he didn't share the common wisdom about global warming.

I've been trying to track down the full details. While I've been quite clear about admitting that I have little or no scientific training with which to evaluate the findings of global warming researchers one way or the other, I think I have at least a little abililty to evaluate their methodology. Consequently, any hints or suggestions that they might get the answers they get because they were determined to see nothing else makes me a little antsy.

Anyway, I haven't yet been able to get the full details on whatever I heard yesterday, but I did find an interesting page about Neil Boortz Global Warming Factoids, which I've presented along with my own commentary on each one. I found some more powerful than others, and tried to call it down the line here. If I make everyone mad, then we'll know I succeeded.



I don't know if it can be denied or not, but if true, it certainly sounds like it might be a plausible alternative explanation for warming. But how much hotter are we talking?



If true (I hadn't heard it before), it seems like a continuation of the previous point. See previous comment.



I've heard that too. In fact, a few years ago, somebody sent me some incredibly cool (no pun intended) pics of water in Antarctica that seemed to have frozen in mid splash. I don't know what the explanation for thicker Antarctican ice is, especially if the sun is getting hotter.



Is this a rhetorical question? We got the idea from the existence of certain emissions that we believe trap heat inside the earth's atmosphere. The idea wasn't made up out of thin air (again, no pun intended), if that's what he's suggesting.



Yeah, this is a concern of mine too. Science isn't as pure as it was in the days when Lavoisier was researching chemistry in his spare time. Funded science does have a certain tendency to find what the people writing the cheques wants it to find.



Doesn't sound like much, granted, but that's an average, isn't it? We've already conceded above that the ice caps do seem to be melting. So, if that's caused by preventable human action, then yeah, 1 degree is a lot. Taken by itself, that factoid isn't reason to hit the Panic Button, but nobody who's hitting it is doing so for that reason only.



As with Point #5, this is something of a concern (although, to be fair that "Many of the people" bit seems a bit glib; he doesn't actually name any).

When I was a kid in the 70's, the line I'd hear over and over was some angry bit about "Americans have [such and such] a percent of the world's population, but use [such and such] a percentage of the world's energy." (I heard this, in almost the same words so many times that, thinking back on it, it must have come from somebody's handbook). They made it sound like we were out siphoning gas out of Ethiopian's cars. Even then, I knew that the reason we used so much more was that so few Ethiopians had cars, rather than that we were hogging their share and forcing them to do without.

So, if then, a few years later, they come out and say "Oh, by the way, there's a scientific reason why you should be doing... what we wanted you to do anyway, even before there was a scientific reason", it is one of those things that makes you go hmmmm.

But that's assuming he's right that "the same people" are responsible for both. No doubt people who wanted to roll back the American lifestyle would be very kindly inclined towards global warming claims, and maybe pre-disposed to accept them even before the evidence was in, but that doesn't mean that the scientists are "the same people".



Well, the real question here is why did no Democrats vote for Kyoto? The most obvious answers are that either a) they believed it would have no effect on climate change, or b) that they believed it would, but would also cost jobs, for which they would be blamed. Or c) they thought it would be good for the environment, but bad for jobs.

Of course, it must be pointed out that this is a question about what politicians believe about climate change, not about what scientists believe.



I don't know there, but it seems that this is a completely separate question. We could agree that Kyoto was an awful treaty, while still believing in man-made global warming.



Again, about 30 years. When I was in elementary school, before anyone was talking about global warming, I remember hearing that we were about 10,000 years overdue for the next Ice Age. (I suspected then that they might be guessing, and still do.) Of course Boortz Factoid #2 claims that the Antarctic ice is getting thicker now, so where does that leave us?

I just scanned some of those points, Petrosianic, and they're the standard denier nonsense that have been debunked many times. The ones I saw are based on complete nonsense and made-up information.

1. Sun is hotter. Yes, it is. In fact, it is getting hotter....over a period of something like 50 million years. There are several satellites carefully measuring the sun's output and there is no evidence it has increased within the time-frame needed. Quoting Climatologist Michael Mann (realclimate.org) in a interview for LiveScience Here's a quick 5-minute video that debunks this idea solar schmolar

2. Martian icecaps are melting. This is classic cherry-picking. Pick the facts that fit your theory and ignore all the others. There are over a 100 bodies in the solar system (planets, moons, asteroids). Some will be warming, some will be cooling. The planets have their own seasons. And Pluto is warming too...but if you figure out the energy needed to be heating up Pluto, it turns out the earth would be crisped (Shrink the sun down to the size of a baseball....Pluto would still be 4.5 miles away...the earth something like 3 feet (I forget the exact measurements but you can calculate them out yourself). Anyway, this is easy enough to debunk from science sources, but here is another nice video from Sinclair called Mars Attacks.

3. Ice pack Antarctica getting thicker. So what? Antarctica is a huge continent (size of Canada about). What icepack? The western one, the central one, the eastern one, the oceanic ones? There is nothing in the warming model that says all the ice packs are melting. Warmer air holds more moisture resulting in more snowfall than melting. Melting may increase greatly but if snowfall exceeds melting then ice pack will increase. You can check out the details of what is happening at the cryosphere.

4. Because we have good ideas of what caused those past climate fluctuations, and this time none of those causes explain this increase. The only thing that explains it is CO2. Want another fun video on climate cyles? Here's that 1500 year thing.

5. THis one is just a conspiracy theory dressed up and taken out. Over 97% of climatologists find anthropogenic warming. You can have biases, as mentioned, but not such a consistent global bias. You cannot hide the facts that are available to everyone.

Besides, what does the government have to do with this anyway? World governments have a secret agenda to pretend warming is occurring? The deniers need to get their stories straight. It is the scientists who are misleading the government (almost all of them around the world), now it is the government paying grants to scientists to mislead the people.

6. One degree: That's an average (0.7 C actually). At 2 degrees we're looking at some bad changes (check realclimate.org as they have a recent article on the 2 degree thing). Last time the earth was 6 degrees warmer on average, ice caps did not exist and we had a tropical planet. Six degrees cooler and the earth was locked in an ice age. Northern regions have warmed 4 to 6 degrees by the way.

7. Many of the people involved in the global warming are also capitalists. Big deal. Cherry picking with conspiracy agendas. And where does he get his figures from anyway?? He has a list of global-warming proponents and their background somewhere? This one is just silly.

8. So now senators are scientists, are they? They're politicians.

9. Over-simplified politics, and of course we have the insinuations from the McCarthy Committee looking at the Anti-American activities of those commie global warming proponents. Over at Only in it for the Money (google it...am rushed now), there is a lot of talk about the overstatements of the crippling of the economy. Anyone making any comment on how this will cripple the american economy needs to read through the material and links there which will take them to numerous economic sites and thoughts along these lines.

10. The old scientists talking about global cooling thing and ice ages meme again. Differentiate between popular media and what is in the scientific journals. Someone has already done a search in journals and found the majority weren't saying an ice age was coming. A quick introduction to the subject, another video is That 70s Thing.

The best evidence for global warming comes from deniers who repeat the same long-disproved half-truths and twisted facts. If they actually had any real evidence they'd use them. The fact that this is the best they can come up with and then keep repeating it over and over again speaks volumes as to what they actually have...and that is, nothing.

Anyway, am late for the gym now. If you want sources from science sites, let me know and i'll find them and link them later. For now, check out realclimate.org and their wiki site (there is a Start Here button for people wanting the background).

It's newer to me than to you just because I haven't followed this much. I remember a friend of mine in college always took the attitude about global warming that maybe it's happening, maybe it's not, but either way, the reality is that we're going to use up all the petroleum, and all these arguments boil down to whether we're going to do it in a hundred years or in 150.

That's really my main interest in the issue. I don't want to challenge the notion of whether there's man-made global warming so much as the idea of whether or not we can really do anything to reverse the effects. We've seen the ridiculous games politicians play. Like having kids have a bake sale at the school to raise money to reduce the deficit, having them earn maybe $400, send it to Washington, and tell the poor kids that they're doing some good, when really they're having no effect at all. That's the kind of thing I'm most wary of. A bunch of restrictions on behavior that politicians will pass, and tell us that we're doing something meaningful to fight global warming, when in fact, it's just a feel-good thing and we're not doing anything helpful at all.

That's the real question for me. Not "Is there man-made global warming?", but "are there any reasonable measures we could enact to reverse it?" I'd be willing to cut my driving down if I thought it would help, but I'm afraid it wouldn't. I'm not really willing to go live in a teepee though, even if it would help (and I'm not sure it would).

There are at least 3 good reasons to cut down on use of oil

1) We are going to run out of oil in about 40 years (more or less)
2) Security reasons, the oil mostly comes from countries that is not democratic and if war breaks out or some terrorist take power we might end up with no access to their oil, so for security reason it is a good idea to be independent of oil from these countries
3) Global warming

So even if you don’t believe in 3) it still makes sense to replace oil with green energy.

Rimfaxe makes very good points. It occurred to me yesterday, while reading up on the Russian economy and the money coming from oil, that finding alternatives to oil might be one way in which some countries could destabilize the growing Russian power. Not that I advocate one way or the other as I don't know much about this, but it did make me wonder how power structures would change if oil became less important.

Petro: yeah, I agree with you on the politician stuff. We know in the past they've enacted various legislation or restrictions, some of which are harmful as they're acting before all the information is available. They want to appear to be doing something and sitting around doing nothing for 2 years while waiting for more information is seen by the public as waffling on important issues rather than waiting to make a more informed decision. (a great generalization, I know).

Another interesting issue regarding global warming is that the last few years the sun-spot activity on the sun is the lowest observed for decades. This makes scientist speculate whether we are entering a new period of miminum activity on the sun. We had such mimimum activity periods in 1650-1700 and 1800-1840 where we had "small iceages". If the sun is entering such a minimum period now indeed the climate may be cooling the next few decades.

This does however not solve the CO2 issue because in 40 years when the sun returns to normal activity the temperature will increase very rapidly because of the CO2 and we get the global warming anyway.

There are many different cosmic events (like low sun spot activity) as well as geological events (vulcan eruptions) that effects the climate on earth more significant that CO2, but these events are usually short term, where the CO2 is a long term effect. That is the reason I think we should do something serious to reduce the CO2.

Very wonderfully said. Even if the heat from sun has gone down in the recent years, the problem faced by mankind due to unprecedented CO2 levels has to be addressed. Ever-decreasing forest areas, ever-increasing urbanization, more and more industries emitting smoke, amount of vehicles on the roads burning petroleum/gasoline etc. etc. lead to so much of C02 on earth's atmosphere. This doesn't help in the long term at all. We should focus on what we should, that is, cut-down emissions of C02 from man-made things. If the sun gets hotter in the next 100 years, we cannot do much about it, but atleast we can keep the earth cleaner of C02 and prevent any warming, that would be a good step forward.