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The funny thing is that we were all so willing to buy into the possible consequences of a "nuclear winter" but we easily ignore climate change.

Not that funny. It became clear that nuclear winter was oversold. We're seeing the same thing with climate change right now.

Public hysteria cannot be maintained indefinitely.

Or maybe the fossil fuel industry is employing the same fear, uncertainty and doubt that the cigarette industry used.

Well, it's not an exact comparison. You see, for us to say climate change is being oversold like nuclear winter, we would have to use the analogy that every year nuclear powers were setting off X number of nuclear weapons and slowly bringing about nuclear winter.

Because that is what we are doing with climate change; we are slowly actually bringing it about, where nuclear winter never happened because we never launched nukes.

It became obvious that the calculations supporting the idea of nuclear winter were fudged. Same with climate change -- I'm not saying that it does not exist, just that there is a strong and pervasive incentive to maximize hysteria without regard to science or facts, which leads, eventually, to climate fatigue.

Climate change will be remembered as one of the more striking popular delusions or madnesses of crowds.

I think it's important to note that, just because one scientific idea was oversold, it doesn't automatically mean that they all are oversold. It's even more dangerous to dismiss it than to oversell it.

You're an idiot.

I agree it's fair to argue there is an incentive in science, fudge statistical methods so your findings are more significant and warrant publishing in a scientific journal. But this is an incentive across science, and it hasn't stopped scientific progress as by nature, the process is self correcting when contradictory studies come out especially in a busy area such as climate science. The cost of falsifying studies or having your study contradicted is also significant however.

If you want to talk incentives though, consider the benefits to spreading doubt about climate change by the fossil fuel industry. 7 out of 10 of the largest revenue generating companies in the world are in oil. The industry stands to lose some $30 trillion from climate change in the next 25 years. Paying a PR firm to promote an agenda, paying researchers to dummy up research with a pre-determined anti-climate change conclusion is chump change to them. The cost to them are negligible if they disguise the source of funding sufficiently (e.g. funnel it through a business lobby).

Meanwhile any impropriety on the part of some climate scientists has not shaken the 97% consensus on climate change.

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/

If you're serious about the evil fossil fuel industry, boycott fossil fuels. Go ahead, show us how it's done.

Are you boycotting anything that uses the scientific method because it's subject to incentives to publish significant results?

Pretty weak straw man argument.

I'm boycotting climate hysteria, because it is one of the greatest threats to science in the modern era.

Well, you should be boycotting all of science by that logic, not just climate science, because it's all built on the same scientific method. Fallible, but self correcting.

What exactly do you mean when you say "...it is one of the greatest threats to science in the modern era"?

Also, what are the other great threats to science and how does one boycott climate hysteria? I'm curious about your resolve and the lengths you have gone or plan to go in your boycott.

I'm boycotting professional windsurfing because it's the greatest threat to Rihanna's album sales in the modern age.

Climate science has devolved to scientism. Like a cargo cult it uses methods that share an appearance with it's model, but loses the essence. Science is all about proposing falsifiable tests of a theory, and putting them to the test. As far as I can see climate science has not done this at all, nor does it seem likely to in the near future. None of the current climate models are remotely capable of predicting the decadal scale oscillations that are seen in the Earth's real climate. If they are actually capable of predicting extremely long term trends then we'll have to wait an awfully long time to test that.

I agree that it will be self-correcting, but the process will sow seeds of doubt in all of science. That's ok, doubt is good.

There are many biasing factors that current scientists must deal with. Consider the sad state of such "sciences" as criminal bite analysis, or shoeprint analysis, or even fingerprinting. Poor results come from huge external pressures to come to the "right" conclusions, regardless of the truth.

One boycotts hysteria by refusing to become hysterical, and refusing to parrot hysterical claims, even if it seems socially or professionally advantageous.

What is the worst case scenario if climate change isn't real?

I can't really think of anything significant.

Your arguments are the same kind used by black lung / coal miner or cancer / smoking skeptics. Sure, it seems like when we control for every other factor in longitudinal studies that these factors are strong predictors. But you can't guarantee that all coal miner will get black lung or a smoker will get cancer. So it must be some other lifestyle factor.

Same with climate change. Your right wing blogs / websites argue that just because you can't create a model with perfect certainty, the inexorable trend isn't obvious. No thanks, I'd rather go with a 97% scientific consensus that has convinced most scientific organisations, large multinational companies (without a countervailing interest) and national governments from America to China.

If you're so certain that the science is wrong, why not publish a countervailing journal article? Oh wait, no, you almost certainly don't have training in the field or actual understanding of the science, and are just copy pasting fancy phrases like "decadal scale oscillations" because it makes you sound more credible.

Fingerprinting is a nice analogy, Buttle. How can we be sure that all that pollution, CO2 levels, nitric oxide levels and cow farts are A) our fault, and B) actually causing changes in climate?

We cant be sure unless we predict, and then wait a few decades and keep measuring, can we? So we have to say, along with the man falling from the skyscraper, everything OK so far!

So the hysteria about nuclear weapons was a bit silly, beacause we would not all die in an all-out nuclear war. Because people high on hillsides on the far side of New Zealand with food and water and seeds and medical supplies for a couple of years would make it fine. They would not freeze, it now turns out.

Then maybe climate change will be OK too.

Prove to me that smoking causes cancer.

Also yes, if only the leaders at the time knew that isolated populations would survive thermonuclear war instead of ending humanity with certainty, they would have immediately
abandoned their foolhardy and wasteful attempts at non proliferation and denuclearization!

Exactly, Redsky, my thought exactly. We should all boycott those pesky cancer awareness groups because some people dont ever get cancer and some people live fairly long in spite of getting it. Should I be using that sarcasm button or what?

None of these criminal analysis fields are 'science', they are all 'arts'. The results are not quantifiable, they are all opinion, which is why they can't develop an automatic system to preform these arts by computer. You should never hear an expert in these fields call it 'science' in court anymore, because it's well known that they are not science and any defense attorney would roast them alive on the stand.

Most of the population of the world is still impoverished by a lack of access to electric power, motor transport, manufactured goods, chemical fertilizers ... Stuff you undoubtedly take for granted. Climate change is a gigantic distraction and a power grab, and focusing on it will result in many poor people remaining poor.

There are real problems to deal with, for one, fossil fuels really are present only in limited supply, and we'll have to somehow stop using them eventually. Climate hysteria does not help.

You are the beneficiary of countless scientific advances that use statistical analysis techniques that don't rely on an obvious, guaranteed cause & effect. It is sad to me that you are not aware of your hypocrisy.

No I am not. Science totally relies on cause & effect.

Science has methods to distinguish correlation from causality. Causality means repeatable results, possibility of practical use and my hypocritical benefit. Correlation means randomness and no reason to invest.

Im not against the notion of global warming or nuclear winter.

As far as nuclear winter is concerned I dont think there is much difference between a frozen planet and one that is merely a "few" degrees colder than normal for a couple of years. In either case humans are done for. So while the hype was overdone, reality is just as frightening.

Global warming is a projection into the future, and the future is one of the hardest things to predict. I am happy to agree that we are f*cking up our planet and need to stop ASAP. There are measurable indicators that are clearly out of bounds, conclusively because of human activity.

The political hype (of climate change) is a big risk - if the climate straightens out because of external factors humans might be tempted to not stop f*cking up their environment.

Lets stick to facts and not overemphasize various projections.

Yusss! I win nuclear winter!

In your face, rest of humanity!

Correlation and causation is distinguished by controlling for variables directly where the list of possible covariates or confounders is known & limited, or when it is not, using say machine learning techniques to infer a model from the data and repeatedly cross validating it with different test and training samples to ensure that it is rigorous. Read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Correlation_does_not_imply_causation

There is nothing about repeatability.

Also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross-validation_(statistics)

Repeatability has nothing to do with testing for correlation / causation. Okay, you repeat an experiment. It looks like X causes Y, like in the first test. But it turns out that Z (that you didn't consider or can't measure) is acting on X & Y at the same time, creating the appearance of a relationship between X & Y where none exists. Read:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confounding

If anything the political hype is underblown. Politics deals with the immediate, tangible and the "what directly helps me now." With the financial crisis, politics in the US has decreed that any action on climate change that might marginally impact wages or living standards is out of bounds.

If we assume the risks are real - polluting has specific benefits (cost reduction to polluters) and incredibly dispersed costs which are almost imperceptible for decades while the damage is being done. It requires global coordination for a cost on carbon to be politically feasible. And the effects are seen at least 40 years into the future:

http://www.skepticalscience.com/Climate-Change-The-40-Year-Delay-Between-Cause-and-Effect.html

That's the problem, by the time the effects are obvious, it will be too late to react. In the meantime, you have massive amounts of money, interest groups, politics and delayed effect all acting against any action being taken.

The list of possible covariates or confounders is unknown and practically infinite for climate. Weather - anything beyond three days is guesswork, climate - more complicated.

Science is about repeatability (and disprovability), and it is true, correlation can provide false repeatability. You sure win that one. Correlation can be a good lead sometimes to find real relationships, but you cant base science solely on correlation.

"If we assume the risks are real" - (sigh) just dont assume. Also I would not speculate about future risks, the current situation is already bad enough to warrant action. The conflation of climate science and economic science worries me deeply, having a degree in the latter. Pollution is not an economic benefit/cost, it is a side-effect, it becomes a cost only if it is artificially designated as one ("taxed") and is better dealt with not by incentives, but by strict "safety" regulations of technology. Economic subjects can deal with pollution taxes with economic tools, rather than change of technology.

Like the ozone hole, the hype alone, or economic measures, would not have stopped people from using sprays. "Safety" legislation and the induced introduction of an alternative technology did.

Hype will generate irrational responses.

Given how politics works goverments go after soft targets only, unless pressured. What should be hyped are not dire predictions of the future but A) polluters and what can be done about them and B) implementation of new technologies that replace polluting ones (thats where tax breaks can help).