If skeptics can't get basic facts right, how can they understand more complicated science?

That's really the fundamental issue behind the denial movement - people who don't understand the basic facts, but are convinced they know it all.

Many deniers don't understand the greenhouse effect and thus think the '800 year lag' argument is valid. Clearly CO2 can't cause warming!

They don't understand basic statistics and thus think 'no warming since 1998' is valid. Susan's rant perfectly exemplifies this complete lack of understanding and yet certainty of her knowledge.

They don't understand the difference between signal and noise and thus think one cold month disproves global warming.

They don't understand peer-review or how the scientific community works in general and thus think the whole issue is a massive hoax.

They don't understand the planet's cycles and thus think the recent warming could be "natural".

I could go on, but you get the point. The global warming denial movement is based on people who don't understand the science and yet are convinced that they do. They hear some amateurish and wrong argument, think it "makes sense", want to believe it ("feel good" arguments, as you put it), and thus they believe. After reading most 'skeptic' questions my first reaction is to ask "do you really think climate scientists haven't considered that?".

As I discussed in a previous question, "common sense" based on ignorance will lead you to the wrong conclusion every time.

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=ApSPZ...

I should preface my comments by saying that it is politically incorrect to beat down the cognitively challenged, but I can be an arrogant politically incorrect SOB at times. If the PC police come, I am prepared to go down in a hail of bullets.

Getting basic facts right and understanding more complicated science are different issues. A grade 4 student has sufficient cognitive development to retain an amazing number of facts. Applying multiple concepts to solve a problem is an ability that many people never acquire. One of the problems that I pose to my new students (I take gifted high school students into my lab during summer holidays to encourage careers in science) is:

d/dx is drives x km and notices n mosquitoes on the windshield of area A inclined at an angle alpha. He gets out of the car. How many mosquito bites does he get? How many Purple Martins does he see? A few figure it out in an hour, many take a day, a few keep trying for a week, and some never get it.

Skeptics don't exhibit the ability to solve problems that require a synthesis of different scientific concepts in the answers provided so far in YA. Consequently, the inevitable conclusion is that skeptics are also incapable of recognizing inconsistencies in 'facts' that they receive from dubious sources. Rather than analyzing information and drawing correct conclusions about the veracity of their sources, skeptics merely recite by rote incorrect information with the same fidelity as their grade 4 counterparts. If Joseph Goebbels were alive today, his heart would be warmed to see the mass media principles he pioneered put to effective use in the energy lobby's disinformation campaign.

Off on another tangent, did I miss something about Chinese in Greenland in my history classes? Did the Chinese irrigate their rice patties with water from melting glaciers in subtropical Greenland during the MWP? Can a skeptic give me a reference besides C.S. Lewis' The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe?

Mark Anthony - Earning a PhD doesn't require gum chewing or walking (Stephen Hawking would probably fail your "test"), but it does require a significant amount of hard work and intelligence in the specific field of study which awarded the degree. I may not give a lot of heed to the advice of PhD physicists I've worked with in the area of parenting, sports, or brain surgery, but it would be dumb of me to not pay attention to what they say about electromagnetic hexadecapole moments. And if a whole slew of PhD physicists were telling me the same basic things, it would be ludicrous for me (without any PhD in the field, no matter how much googling I did on the subject) to assert that they were all wrong or corrupt.

As for the question, yes basic facts are important. And there are quite a few doubters that repeatedly post links to things that don't support what they are asserting. If they can't read their own links all the way through (and understand them), how can they expect to have any credibility?

Along with the Dunning-Kruger effect, one of my favorite quotes is by Bertrand Russell:

“The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt”

I would say on the average, that skeptics are probably more informed than alarmists. Some alarmists such as you and Dana, for example, know your stuff. That doesn't mean you are right. Generally, the nonsensical claims from alarmists, far exceed those on the skeptical side, in my opinion. The pope knows a great deal more about his religion than I do but that doesn't mean he has a better understanding of the truth. Sometimes it is difficult for some to see the forest through the trees. They can't recognize their own biases and how those biases influence their view of the world and science.

p.s. The 800 year lag doesn't prove that CO2 can't drive temperature but it certainly indicates that it wasn't the driver over the last few glacial cycles. Perhaps it was on very rare occassions as theorized recently. Perhaps other factors were the cause. In fact, we don't know for sure.

AGW believers prefer science fiction to fact. The IPCC reports and sites like realclimate are full of extraordinary assertions that are not supported by any published papers.

So because ONE skeptic made a small clerical error, we're ALL wrong and stupid, right?

Gimme a break!

Here's a basic fact: Archaeologists have found Viking settlements in Newfoundland. The ONLY way they could have gotten there was by using the 'Northwest Passage'. You know, the one that's only now opening up for the 'first time'? Even though europeans were convinced that it existed, even though they couldn't find it??? GW is CYCLICAL. AGW is bullsh*t. How many SUV's do you think were running around 1000 years ago???

Understanding etymology is not necessary to understand concepts that do not rely upon an understanding of etymology. It is that simple. You don't have to understand plumbing to be able to understand baseball.

I love this " you have to stop making glaringly factual errors like Vikings having to go through the NW passage to reach Newfoundland" Did it not occur to you they may have made a pit stop in the Philippines? Don't forget the part about "they didn't walk across". Indeed, they did not!

How about this one "How CO2 even remotely contributes to global warming besides some spectrum light crap". Yes lets not involve the spectrum or the periodic table when we discuss heat, light and chemistry. LOL

No Jello, it was the view of Copernicus, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Aristarchus, Galileo, and Kepler, Pythagoras and the other scientists back at least to 300 BC in the Western World. In the East it was written about by Shatapatha Brahmana in 900 BC. Just like the fact that the earth is round, scientists acknowledged the truth in their writing long before the general audience.

They can't. For example.

"no warming since 1998 IS valid"

No, it's not, and provably so. Forget judgments about "signal" and noise". The VALUES for the five year average temperature have increased.

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2007/

1998 was simply an outlier, an unusually warm year. More basic science, understanding "outliers".

And this statement also shows a certain lack of knowledge about science.

"How do we know that scientist can get facts straight, I have dealt with some that couldn't walk and chew gum at the same time."

Maybe so. But that argument on no way applies to the National Academy of Sciences, 1800 of the nations best scientists, selected by their peers. Few get any funding for global warming, either. This is perhaps THE best summary of present global warming science.

http://dels.nas.edu/basc/climate-change

Large groups of scientists always diminish the importance of the mediocre ones. Which is why the IPCC is vastly more credible than a few skeptics, most with theories that actually conflict with each other.

This one's pretty good, too.

"The 800 year lag doesn't prove that CO2 can't drive temperature but it certainly indicates that it wasn't the driver over the last few glacial cycles."

Exactly, and scientists agree. But the lack of ANY lag certainly shows it's a major driver THIS TIME.

Let's never forget that it was a skeptics view that the Sun, not Earth was at the center of the solar system. The consensus at that time from Plato and his student Aristotle and the work of Ptolemy until the time of Copernicus some 2,000 years later all agreed that the Earth was the center of the universe.

This belief predates the church by 600 years.

There were even models that showed how the geocentric universe worked, and they were accurate.

Imagine the first skeptic who challenged 2,000 years of knowledge by proclaiming that the Sun, not Earth was the center of the solar system. I'm glad they had the courage to stand up when they had the math on their side, rather than models.

Aren't you?

If you consider that I use more or less the same sites the extremist use. I shouldn't dispute what your saying. Yep... you've had some pretty lame ones yourself. What's the point of arguing over nomenclature, anatomy, cars, and litigation? Anyone that likes to fish can't be all bad. So I humbly apologize, and didn't mean to hurt your feelings.