Who do global warming skeptics go to when they're sick?

Question

Witch doctors? Faith healers? People with magic pills that cure every disease? Former auto mechanics who've decided that, if they can fix cars, they can fix people?

Or do they go to regular MDs, who have been educated (brainwashed?) in "consensus" medical practice. And licensed by the "liberal" government bureaucrats.

When they have a problem with their heart, do they prefer to go to someone who is trained and "board certified" as a cardiologist? Who prescribes treatments that are the "consensus", backed by the peer reviewed literature?

Why then do they believe the unqualified or the oddballs on global warming?

Mrr Jello. As I've told you several times. I fearlessly predict that in five years the five year average temperature will be warmer. Here's the data that allows me to do that:

http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Climate_Change_Attribution.png
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/wiki/Image:Carbon_History_and_Flux_Rev_png

I won't predict any one year. That's just weather, not climate.

And you won't find a "skeptical" scientist who will take 10:1 odds on his side to bet against this.

I wouldn't call Gray unqualified, although he's a meteorologist, not a climatologist, and has published very little in climatology.

I will (once again, fearlessly) call him an oddball as far as global warming is concerned. Details here:

http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/04/gray-on-agw/

The bottom line:

"The problem is not Gray's age — we all revered Henry Stommel who did some of his finest work in his seventies. The problem is Gray's failure to adapt to a modern era of meteorology, which demands hypotheses soundly grounded in quantitative and consistent physical formulations, not seat-of-the-pants flying."

Vladoviking. Please feel free to only consider climatologists with only relevant undergraduate degrees. The consensus will be much, much stronger in that group.

I have moved Trevor to sarcasm. In a perverse way, I'm proud.

mt-zion-crusader - One of your better arguments. My reply would be that this is not a close call, and that climate science, even in its' present state, can easily make it.

Answer 1

Bob,

You're intelligent, you must know that sickness doesn't exist. I can prove it to you 15 times over...

Less people are dying of Sickness now than in 1934 therefore Sickness is over.

Viscount Blenchley, who doesn't believe in global warming, doesn't beleive in AIDS. If he says it doesn't exist then it doesn't exist.

Professor Seitz, who also doesn't believe in global warming, will tell you that smoking is harmless and we don't need to wory about cancer. Ignoring his interests in tobacco and big oil, he's a professor so he must be right and therefore Sickness doesn't exist.

There is no Sickness on Mars therefore it doesn't exist.

I looked in the mirror this morning and I couldn't see any Sickness. There's no sign of Sickness here so it doesn't exist.

Sickness was invented by politicians so they can tax us and use the money for pseudo-hospitals.

It's all about the money, the Doctors just need to mention that they're researching Sickness and they get grant money, it's the Doctors that are making it up.

Some blog written by someone I've never heard of and who has no credentials says it's a myth so it must be.

It's a natural cycle, during the Medieval Warm Period there was Black Death and then during the Little Ice Age there was Plague. These things have always happened and there's it's entirely natural, we're nothing to do with it.

Doctors can't even predict the next flu outbreak.

There was a programme on TV called The Great Sickness Swindle, it was made by a convicted fraudster with no medical background at all and he said that Sickness is a myth so it must be.

30 years ago the same Doctors were predicting an outbreak of healthiness and saying that we would live forever.

Doctors have signed a petition against Sickness.

Germs and bacteria are too small and insignificant to affect us.

John Doleman is a vet who started the Animal Channel and he says Sickness is a myth so it must be.

Answer 2

There is indeed a consensus regarding medical science.

My wife is a perfect example - she's got a medical problem which has been rather difficult to diagnose, because she doesn't fit into any "textbook" case of symptoms. After literally years of seeing various doctors and specialists, we finally think we've got a good idea about the problem - except the cardiologist basically thinks it's all in her head because she doesn't fit the textbook case. In fact several different doctors have basically told her it's probably all in her head because most cases her age with her symptoms are just due to stress.

Doctors are trained to the medical science consensus - 'a person with these symptoms who fits in this category usually has this problem'. They often have a hard time dealing with cases which don't fit into this established medical science knowledge base.

There are thousands of other examples of everyone trusting the scientific consensus on a daily basis. We trust airplanes not to fall out of the sky, our computers to turn on and connect to the internet, the food we eat not to kill us, etc. etc. These are all based on a scientific knowledge base which scientists are in consensus about.

Now there's a scientific consensus that people don't want to hear - that humans are the primary cause of the current warming - and all of the sudden they say 'oh the scientific consensus has been wrong before' or 'consensus is not science'. It's amazing the lengths people will go to in order to believe what they want to believe.

Answer 3

Consensus should not be sought in the case of global warming because it breeds bias. In medicine there is usually years of research that tests the theory before it is then published in a journal. After it is tested on a portion of the population to check its credibility it is rolled out.

In other fields of scientific research, the initial stage is the same, theory to hypothesis to research to publication although in many cases tests cannot be conducted to definitively prove the hypothesis. Generally it is accepted or rejected based on criteria which are assessed during the peer review system (so as to determine the validity of the research and test criteria). It just seems that as soon as this research is politicized its corrupted by opinion. Opinion is not used in science. Science is based on what has come before and here inlay the problem. With stuff like climate science it takes thousands of papers to build a basis on which more robust theories can be developed. This is because unless a few other researchers have come to the same conclusion or there data is consistent with yours questions will be raised. Of course on a topic as large and diverse as anthropogenic climate change their will be inconstancies. Just remember that when it comes to things that we don’t think about or that are not politicized generally we trust science. ie chemistry, microbiology, biology, ecology. Science is used to predict quota in fishing and in land management practices.

Science is complicated, based on theory, past research and contemporary views of the world and should be left to scientists not politicians or the public. You don’t see scientists fighting fires or politicians training football players so why do you expect pollies to know what they are talking about when it comes to science. Its only their opinion. This is where the public comes into it and it stinks. Trust science and leave politics and opinion.

Its a load of rubbish that if you challenge the consensus you get squashed. If someone came along and said my theory was flawed and showed me how i would shake his hand and improve. Its actually the other way around in the case of AGW. Governments and oil companies are pressuring scientists to take out key words such as anthropogenic, man driven ect from reports and are threatening them if they don’t. Were is the evidence that its the scientific community threatening challenges to consensus.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Climate_change_programs_in_the_United_States
Rick Piltz, the former Senior Associate with the U.S. Climate Change Science Program Office, "a government scientist for 14 years", resigned March 2, 2005, "over concerns that scientific documents were being amended for political reasons. Evidence released by Piltz was reported in the NY Times on June 8. Philip Cooney, the White House official accused of editing the reports, resigned June 10."

Answer 4

Medical practice is a consensus? My God man! Where do you go to school? Imagine a person carried into an emergency room. Test are run on him/her to determine what is wrong. There is not a group of doctors debating and voting on what they believe is the problem!

Consensus in medicine? Have a bad back. Go see 10 surgeons. Chances are that the surgeons will tell you that you need surgery. Go see 10 internal specialist. Chances they will tell you that medicine and therpy will cure your problems. See 10 chiropractors. Chances are that the consensus will recomend a spinal adjustment.

Which is correct? It depends on who you want to believe.

Just like "global warming" 10 climatologist will no doubt blame man. 10 liberals will blame man, 10 objective scientist will state man is not the problem.

How do you know for sure?

You believe who you want to believe because that is your bias. You cannot determine what the climate will be like in the future. You can only guess, and guesses are not science.

Unquallified? Sorry, Dr. Bill Gray is not unqualified. You have to tear down good mens reputations only because you can't argue facts toe-to-toe with men like him. You must use 'swift boat' tatics and slander one man to make yourself look better.

I hope you could prove me wrong, but you can't. You cannot tell if 5 years from now if it will be warmer or cooler and show your work to how you came to this conclusion. You can only guess, like guessing the number of hurricanes each year.

Added Note: Good try Bob - Just cut and paste others work and declare that as proof. "Predict"? That's just another word for guessing. Thanks for proving me right.

Answer 5

That's a fair and unbiased question. It shows you have an open mind and are willing to hear from all sides of the issue. You should run for political office. You have the air of a statesman about you.

Answer 6

You want us to buy into the notion that we should gobble up every thing said by a climatologist. When in fact they are the specialists themselves in many areas of climatology, computer make believe, ice core collectors, ocean samplers so no I wouldn't go to a E.N.T. to hear about my Erectile dysfunction. I especially wouldn't go to a plastic surgeon who didn't go to basic medical school either, as many purported climatologists do in regards to their field. Getting a BS degree in fields totally unrelated in Atmospheric science and then going for a PhD in climatology.

And Knowledge is not limited to people with a raggedy piece of paper perched up behind your desk on the wall.
Nor is common sense and ethics other wise I wouldn't be able to find a list of professors as long my arm up on charges of sexual deviance or child porn.

Oh PS I go to a doctor from India somewheres.I don't understand any thing he says except "quit smoking" ,I' pretty sure he doesn't understand any thing I say either so we get along fine.

Answer 7

They are treated by Dr.Al Bedo and Dr. Aero, Sol, of course.

They are usually told...

"Take two ERUs and call me in the morning"

and cautioned to....

"Cut out all GHGs from your diet."

Answer 8

Nice try but medicine is not science. Scientific principles are learned and used by doctors but they make wrong diagnoses all the time. Consensus is not science and there is no consensus on the cause of any global warming. Global warming has to be defined under a time period, whether it be a year, decade, century, millennium, or longer. If you select a time period that suits your agenda, that isn't science either.

Answer 9

This is probably the best question I've seen on these ridiculous boards.

And Trevor - where have you been all my life? What a post!

Answer 10

It's called the "ART" of medicine for a reason.

As for your "predictions," the IPCC specifically disavows the word "prediction" because they can't make them. They take linear models of a basically chaotic system who's starting points are all just "estimates" and run them far longer than they were ever intended to run, getting meaningless results.

Mean Surface Temperatures are not "rising" anymore. There is no "trend" in the data and there hasn't been for 10 years.

Sea Levels are not rising any faster now than they have for the last 100 years - if anything, they've slowed their level of increase.

Pesky thing DATA.

If I go to the Doctor for a pain in my foot after I stumble while running, and he insists on looking in my ear for the source of the pain, I go to a different doctor.

If a Climatologist projects increasing temperatures with increased CO2, and the temperatures don't increase as CO2 does, I go to a different Climatologist.