Thursday 4 February 2010

The cognitive dissonance of the main stream media [update 2]

“Cognitive dissonance” is defined as “a condition of conflict or anxiety resulting from simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes, beliefs, or the like.”  Cartoonist Blunt suggests the rapid demise of the IPCC’s credibility is leading to something similar.

Sylvester-McMonkey-McBean

The reason for the angst? In summary, “the utterly baseless case for ‘global warming’ is melting a lot faster than the glaciers in India’s Himalayas which, by the way, are not melting.”  And after years of carrying water for the IPCC Team, even CNN is finally reporting on the collapse of warmist make-believe—or in their own words, “how recent scientific scandals are impacting the debate on climate change.” 

    “In just a few months [says CNN] the global view of climate change has changed dramatically.” 

Very true. (Keep up with the almost hourly revelations at Climate Depot and Watts Up With That)

It’s great fun to watch the whole thing unravelling. Frankly,   The mainstream media are finally realising they’ve been treated like fools by The Team—and there’s none so furious as a journalist scorned.

UPDATE 1: The Australian visit by the ever-polite Christopher Monckton is setting a cat amongst the warmists’ pigeons, exposing many supposed idealists as “often disguised haters and totalitarians.” Here are the ABC’s Joe O’Brien and Virginia Trioli doing their best to ignore the litany of bent and exploded warmist science he cites.

Here he is on ABC Radio.

And here he is as part of a climate debate in Brisbane.

 

UPDATE 2:  Beleaguered IPCC head Rajenda Patchauri sticks two fingers up at his critics and says those who attack him “are people who say that asbestos is as good as talcum powder – and I hope they put it on their faces every day.”

So like a bureaucrat.

16 comments:

Greig McGill said...

I love "has not been disproved". You can't prove a negative, morons. The IPCC are making the assertion, let them prove it.

Arggh. I should just stop reading the Herald. Bunch of pillocks.

Sean Fitzpatrick said...

Be fair - how long did it take the catholic church to admit that the earth went around the sun?

Richard McGrath said...

That was exactly my reaction, Greig. Although, of course, the IPCC are not beneath falsifying data to try and prove their fairy tale, and are the ultimate denialists (Mann's hockey stick being the prime example of this).

Falafulu Fisi said...

Quote:
“Cognitive dissonance” is defined as “a condition of conflict or anxiety resulting from simultaneously holding contradictory or otherwise incompatible attitudes, beliefs, or the like.”

Question to objectivists.

Would it be fair to say that “Cognitive dissonance” is when knowledge integration is in disarray (ie, self-contradicting) ? In other words it is a form of Quantum Logic, ie, propositions can be true and false (or yes and no) simultaneously, an object can be at point A and point B simultaneously which are contradictive. Am I correct here or they do mean different things?

Sally said...

The paper is exactly right, AGW has not been disproved.

Until it is disproved then governments will prepare for it.

Sounds reasonable to me.

gregster said...

AGW has been disproved.

There was a much greater level of CO2 at cooler periods in the past.

CO2 lags behind warming. Warming driven by the Sun's activity. That's so obvious a child would figure it out. It is a minor greenhouse gas.

The greenhouse effect actually keeps us alive.

The computer models are used to fit the theory. 'GIGO.' That means 'Garbage In, Garbage Out,' for you warmists.

Computer models are what the politicised IPCC uses to base its fraudulent policies.

Earth's orbit and heat exchange with space isn't about to alter any time soon. Average temperatures are most influenced by the Sun, and water vapour.

If the dismantling of the industrial age - a time of unsurpassed quality of life for ever-increasing numbers of humanity - "sounds reasonable to [you]," based on a non-existent problem, then I'd categorise you along with Stalin, Chairman Mao, Hitler, Pol Pot and Mugabe. To name a few.

Whichever paper you refer to Sally is exactly wrong.

Greig McGill said...

Sally, you miss the point.

If I come up with a hypothesis (such as AGW), I have to prove it. It's not up to anyone else to disprove it. Such a thing is not possible.

Let me abstract it for you.

I hypothesize that there is a pink elephant in the room right now. My theory states that it is there, but undetectable by any current method. You can't prove that it ISN'T there, so should we just accept my theory that it is? This is what is meant by proving a negative. You can't do it. Now apply the same logic to AGW. Unless it is proven, it's just a theory.

Now on to the supposed "reasonableness" of governments preparing for it. Even if you accept that AGW could be true (which I've given up arguing against, as I see it as counter productive - I've been through my reasoning behind that in another thread), what moral right do governments have to "prepare for it"? How will they do so? By their usual methods of theft and coercion. I don't really consider that reasonable, do you?

Sally said...

Mr McGill,

No-body is asking for blind faith on AGW. Peer reviewed research supporting AGW runs into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of articles.

Governments, like people, are usually forced to make decisions about their actions with incomplete knowledge of the future. It is the nature of life.

The discussion of whether governments have the right to undertake such actions is a separate argument form whether in the current circumstances such actions would be logical or illogical. Based on the weight of research pointing to AGW and the lack of sufficient arguments against it preparing for accelerated climate change seems logical.

Anonymous said...

Mr McGill. If the case for AGW is so good why do they have to fulsify data?
I cannot think of any honest endeavour where it is appropriate to lie to make your case. The fact you have to makes it clear that you do not have a case!
Kenneth

Anonymous said...

Did anyone else see Christopher Monckton on TV1 Breakfast. It made so angry that they ran images of melting ice in the background. So journalistically unprofessional! And particularly shameful given the number of news articles they are currently running of the big freeze in the Northern Hemisphere. Why not run some of those images in the background?
I have a mind to complain to the Standards Authority.
Kenneth

Tim said...

Greig,

I'm afraid you're mistaken. It IS possible to disprove hypotheses. For instance if I hypothesize that "All swans are white" it takes only one observation of a black swan to falsify the theory. That's something that science does and ought to do.

You are lumping together falsifiable and unfalsifiable hypotheses as though there's no difference between them.

Sure, I might agree that AGW comes close to being an unfalsifiable theory. But that wasn't the point you were trying to make.

Greig McGill said...

Tim, correct. Apologies, I misspoke. You have nailed what I was actually meaning to say.

Kenneth: Sorry? You seem to have me confused with someone who thinks AGW exists? And you are accusing me of falsifying data? Have I missed something, or are you mixing me up with someone else?

My argument is not that AGW exists. I seriously doubt it does. My argument is that while it remains unproven, and in my opinion, unlikely to BE proven, we're simply not going to change people like Sally above who "want to believe". So, far better I think to argue against the "the government must act" mentality. That's the part which threatens to damn us all.

I've said it before and I'll say it again. The climate can change for a million possible reasons. Only a tiny fraction of these are human related. Should we not then do what we always do? Adapt nature to our will, overcome, and thrive? Not shackle production and chain people up with meaningless regulation designed to "maybe" prevent one possibility out of a million from occurring?

Please don't confuse me with the AGW bunch again Kenneth. It makes me feel like going to have a shower.

David S. said...

"My argument is not that AGW exists. I seriously doubt it does."

It's these sort of statements that really drives home how ridiculous the skeptic community really is.

No-one with any knowledge of the subject is saying that AGW does not exist, no-one. The argument being put forward by Lord Monckton and other more knowledgeable skeptics is that the global sensitivity to man made emissions is lower than what has been estimated by the IPCC and other scientific organisations. They say that sensitivity is more likely around half a degree Celsius rather than the 2-4 (possibly as high as 6 degrees in the future) whenever the concentration of CO2 doubles.

AGW is real, no-one is seriously saying otherwise.

Greig McGill said...

David, it's been done to death. A cursory google turns up plenty of people who seriously say AGW is bull, or at least, nowhere near established scientific fact. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the_mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming just for a start.

But again, *I DON'T CARE*. It's just such a non-issue. Did you read what I wrote above? AGW is only one possible scenario for climate change. No point giving it the massive amount of thought and concern it seems to be getting. Imagine if there was a "world government" (shudder) and they successfully shackled the crap out of humanity, and beat AGW into an impossible scenario. Then, the very next day, solar output changed by a fraction of a percent and we all died? Or a massive gamma ray burst from another star buggered our atmosphere, or any one of a thousand other possible scenarios outside our control. Then what? Capitalism will "solve" climate issues, not socialism.

Mo said...

Human ingenuity could very well solve the issue. But people are not open-minded to innovation. they are however open-minded to government coercion which doesn't solve nor prepare us for anything except more misery.

Greig McGill said...

Exactly, Mo. And that is where we should be making our stand and fighting hard against it. If we simply focus on the myth of AGW, it's very easy for these lovers of the government gun to label us "deniers" and just move on, much as David S. attempted to do above. This attack on the character instead of on the argument is much easier when you're dealing with something like AGW which "seems reasonable" to the majority. They're not scientists themselves, and don't have the ability to test what they're told, so they just accept it, and "we" sound like loonies trying to deny what "most reasonable people" think. Far better to debate the odious methods which they would impose on us to "solve" the problem. On that, our reason alone is our strongest weapon.