Alberta Politics Thread

[Coach]

Originally Posted by peter12

Give me a break, dude. You have turned this into an ideological, dogma-filled, invective-filled sermon. You have also made sure to use all of scientism's buzz-words currently in vogue.

Yes, climate change is a thing. Obviously. It is also clear that no one knows exactly what is going to do, and it is obviously more political than rationally objective to term every change in weather patterns or every emerging natural phenomenon as due to climate change.

Why is this even an argument?

Problem is, there are a lot of people who disagree with the bolded.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by peter12

It instantly becomes controversial when climate science is used to make policy recommendations.

Is medical science controversial when it is used to make policy recommendations?

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by peter12

It instantly becomes controversial when climate science is used to make policy recommendations.

Obviously, but it's still preferable to policy recommendations based around "gut-feelings" and "tradition" and "family values" or whatever other non fact-based system government entities use to build their procedures around.

[AltaGuy]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

Also, link?

http://www.cbc.ca/news/thenational/f...?autoplay=true

At 2:40

[peter12]

Originally Posted by Flash Walken

Is medical science controversial when it is used to make policy recommendations?

Of course, but it's pretty obvious why climate change policy is a whole different kettle of fish.

[Flash Walken]

Originally Posted by peter12

Of course, but it's pretty obvious why climate change policy is a whole different kettle of fish.

It's not obvious to me, please explain.

[Slava]

Originally Posted by MattyC

Problem is, there are a lot of people who disagree with the bolded.

I don't think that is the case actually. I think that the disagreement comes when the causes and effects are thrown into the mix. I think that most people accept that the climate is changing though.

[ernie]

Originally Posted by peter12

So "a bunch of PhD's" is a valid group of very, very good scientists and experts?

Those who work in the area extensively and collect the data, analyze the data, make the models etc etc etc yes are experts. Myself, a Ph.D., no because it's not my area of expertise.

[CliffFletcher]

Climate change is one of those issues where scepticism or dissent of any kind is presumed to be in bad faith. Dogma tells us climate change is happening, because of A, B, and C, and we need to address it by doing X, Y, and Z. If anyone agrees that climate change is happening, but disputes B and questions the value of Y and Z, then they're discounted as someone who doesn't believe climate change is happening. The ideologues' need to maintain their belief in X, Y, and Z is so strong they deny even the possibility that people of good faith and can disagree about them.

You get this kind of thing anywhere dogma has become entrenched.

[ernie]

Originally Posted by troutman

http://www.theskepticsguide.org/reso...ical-fallacies

Argument from authority

The basic structure of such arguments is as follows: Professor X believes A, Professor X speaks from authority, therefore A is true. Often this argument is implied by emphasizing the many years of experience, or the formal degrees held by the individual making a specific claim. The converse of this argument is sometimes used, that someone does not possess authority, and therefore their claims must be false. (This may also be considered an ad-hominen logical fallacy – see above.)

In practice this can be a complex logical fallacy to deal with. It is legitimate to consider the training and experience of an individual when examining their assessment of a particular claim. Also, a consensus of scientific opinion does carry some legitimate authority. But it is still possible for highly educated individuals, and a broad consensus to be wrong – speaking from authority does not make a claim true.

Yes it is possible for scientists to be wrong and broad consensus is wrong (scientific broad consensus is an even higher standard) but you have to provide actual reason and data to suspect that the consensus is wrong to throw up the appeal to authority defense in an argument. One does not get to say "appeal to authority" and be done with it. Why? because that pretty much means you get to discount almost all information being brought forth and that is not how it works.

[CorsiHockeyLeague]

You can just say "appeal to authority" and be done with it if you like, but given the complexities inherent in this subject area (and many others) and the shortcomings of the human brain, we're just going to have to live with fallacy on this one. I'll listen to the experts. But it would be nice if there weren't some small contingent of them whose agenda-driven approach didn't undercut the credibility of the consensus.

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

Climate change is one of those issues where scepticism or dissent of any kind is presumed to be in bad faith. Dogma tells us climate change is happening, because of A, B, and C, and we need to address it by doing X, Y, and Z. If anyone agrees that climate change is happening, but disputes B and questions the value of Y and Z, then they're discounted as someone who doesn't believe climate change is happening. The ideologues' need to maintain their belief in X, Y, and Z is so strong they deny even the possibility that people of good faith and can disagree about them.

You get this kind of thing anywhere dogma has become entrenched.

Exactly... I think climate change is an existential threat to the species, personally, but I've been called a climate change denier simply for wondering if some event (like this one) may not have an actual connection to climate change. The extent to which it's become acceptable to link just about anything to climate change fully jumped the shark months ago when Bill Nye went on TV and blamed it for the Syrian refugee crisis.

"Climate change is bad and will have damaging effects, so we can say any nonsense we want if it's in furtherance of the narrative that climate change is bad and will have damaging effects" seems to be the thought process here.

[Resolute 14]

As a logical argument, this is a non sequitur. Reasonable people would agree that climate change generally helps create conditions more favourable to more forest fires. However, the existence of a forest fire does not automatically mean it was caused by climate change.

In order to discuss this fire (or any other for that matter) as being caused specifically by climate change, one would have to be prepared to demonstrate evidence of such. That's an impossible task. Which is why only alarmists and zealots make such a claim in the first place.

[jammies]

People are terrible with understanding probabilities. They want a cause for every effect, which is assigning 100% to one factor when it's always far more complicated than that. Debates over climate change "causing" specific events will be with us for the foreseeable future, and will almost always be dominated by the jabbering nonsense of the proudly misinformed.

[rubecube]

Originally Posted by CorsiHockeyLeague

Exactly... I think climate change is an existential threat to the species, personally, but I've been called a climate change denier simply for wondering if some event (like this one) may not have an actual connection to climate change. The extent to which it's become acceptable to link just about anything to climate change fully jumped the shark months ago when Bill Nye went on TV and blamed it for the Syrian refugee crisis.

Blaming the Syrian refugee crisis on climate change is pretty ridiculous but there's a tonne of literature out there on the impact climate change has or could have on migration and, if you want the social sciences take on it, how that fuels the clash of civilizations.

[AltaGuy]

Looking at the Syrian crisis through the climate change "lens" is far from ridiculous. But again, just one possible factor in a very complicated situation.

[zamler]

Even if climate change was 100% responsible for every forest fire heaping scorn on Fort Mac residents and calling it karma is about as moronic and selfish as it gets. Just about every single person in the western world would be responsible we all use energy and resources in every aspect of our lives. We are all to blame if one wants to assign such blame.

[PsYcNeT]

Originally Posted by zamler

Even if climate change was 100% responsible for every forest fire heaping scorn on Fort Mac residents and calling it karma is about as moronic and selfish as it gets. Just about every single person in the western world would be responsible we all use energy and resources in every aspect of our lives. We are all to blame if one wants to assign such blame.

Yes but who outside of a couple of idiots on Twitter did? This discussion is centered around a piece written by a UofA researcher.

[Frequitude]

I'd like to take back my comments on Notley's handling of the fires. I think she's done a commendable job.

[GaiJin]

The truth is, the more you protect forests for longer time, the more the increased risk of huge fires. There has been dry years before and big fires, but then people will say, "well never with 9 billion dollars of damage like this one!" True, but there wasn't 9 billion worth of assets up there before either buried in the woods.
Blaming this dry spring totally on anthropogenic global warming, is like believing god kills kittens for jerking off, seeing a dead kitten, and blaming yourself for jerking off in the morning.

[GaiJin]

Originally Posted by PsYcNeT

That's the social sciences in a nutshell however.

Climate change, as socially and politically as it has been coloured, is still a hard science based around observable data and computer modelling.

And the computer modelling keeps telling us that reality is wrong.
The models have to be continually backwards tuned to match what happened, considering that, the projections of the models so far is nothing more than a guess with little proven accuracy.