You're Not Galileo! Response to Climate Deniers

In this Climate Chat episode, we discuss the comments on our recent videos from climate change deniers or others who believe they understand climate science better than climate scientists do. While traditional climate denial is waning because the impacts of climate change are becoming easy to notice, there is still resistance to believing that climate change is caused by humans, is dangerous, and/or we should take action to fight it. Looking at denier arguments and discussing why they are false is a useful way to learn more about climate science.

Website that lists almost all climate myths and provides scientific references to counter them (highly recommended!):

The Skeptic article: "You’re probably not Galileo: scientific advance rarely comes from lone, contrarian outsiders"

The New Atlantis article (book review): "You Are Not Galileo":

This is a Climate Chat open discussion. To join the discussion, join our Clubhouse room for access to the Zoom link or leave comments in the YouTube Live comments.

or view our past live streams at:

[bangelos]

The Debunking Handbook from Sceptical Science recommends the following structure for debunking:
FACT: State the truth first
MYTH: Point to misinformation
FALLACY: Explain why misinformation is wrong
FACT: State the truth again
It's really worth reading the handbook.

Deniers tend not to address arguments, but to respond with more false claims.
You can't address them. You have to insist on sticking to the point.

[richgoo]

I thought Stacey made a very important point towards the end, regarding the underlying motives of deniers, which was largely overlooked/misunderstood.

[bangelos]

The main point about dinosaurs is that not all regions were habitable for dinosaurs.
The size of the habitable regions depended on climate fluctuations even then.
According to today's understanding, dinosaurs developed in the south of Pangaea and were unable to spread northwards.
They were only able to do this during a cooler period until it got too warm again and the overly hot central Pangaea separated the northern and southern populations again.
It is the same today. Not the entire earth will become uninhabitable for humans, but large parts of it will.
They probably couldn't cope with significantly higher temperatures than we can.
The cooling limit temperature also applies to dinosaurs. Protein denatures in the same way, regardless of whether it is in the body of a dinosaur or a human.
The YouTube channel SciShow "How Climate Change helped Dinosaurs Take over"
and the references in it explain this quite well.

[voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang]

McPherson says he hopes he's wrong. McPherson was the first to emphasize that the aerosol masking effect is twice as bad as previously thought - as Daniel Rosenfeld first exposed. It has been very bad if you live in Tigray region of Ethiopia. You say it hasn't been that bad - but who are you speaking for? Exponential growth means the petri dish is half empty or half full - the day before it's all over - hence you want to debate it. hahaha. The exponential growth is the RATE of growth - exponentiating means the rate of change is accelerating.

[voidisyinyangvoidisyinyang]

Can you list who you are talking to in your video description? thanks

[arkytitan]

Oxygen and nitrogen are not entirely irrelevant, they are not active in the IR radiation range, so they indeed don't intercept outgoing long wave radiation (OLR). However, it's actually due to them vibrational/rotational excitations acquired by a GHG molecule relax not by re-irradiation of the IR photon, but by collision with surrounding molecules. So basically O2 and N2 are the ones that are responsible for "collisional relaxation" not allowing the the CO2 (or another greenhouse gas molecule) to re-emit the photon, but instead it assimilates the radiation energy as kinetic energy of the molecules in the air (in essence increasing its temperature). Excitations of greenhouse gases molecules due to IR photon absorption exist for up to 0.1 s, and in dense air on the sea level, within this period of time, a molecule will experience perhaps a billion collisions with other molecules (obviously mostly with nitrogen, making up the bulk of the atmosphere). So it's very wrong to state that oxygen and nitrogen are irrelevant, they just don't interact directly with OLR, but they still play a crucial role in the planetary greenhouse effect - density of the atmosphere (and frequency of collisions between molecules) does matter.

[joeldodd]

It is a very rare climate denier that sticks to just one position and doesn't contradict themselves. Usually the typical climate denier will say there is no warming, it isn't CO2, and then say more CO2 and warming is good! Even with the rare few that stick to ONLY the CO2 is good or warming is good, not catastrophic, message, I have never once seen them correct one of their fellow climate deniers that are still questioning anthropogenic GHG forced warming.

[andywilliams]

Carbon carbon carbon. Comfort comfort comfort.
The elephant in the room is that humans have culture AND instinct.. our cultural software makes us the most adaptive species on the planet. Our speciality is adapting...and here we all are...either afraid to adapt or denying that there is a problem. The permaculture guys and gals seem to be the only ones doing anything interesting.

[cdineaglecollapsecenter]

Were the dinosaurs cold-blooded? Certainly not all of them. Birds are warm-blooded, and as we all know they are dinosaurs.

[TrivettTurner]

Co2 is not responsible for starting or stopping ice ages.

[davidwilkie]

I like the approach to reasoning behind what people say rather than what they would mean, if they knew what anyone was talking about.
In the old world before Galilean Sciencing, ideas were more qualitative and relative dimensions used in construction were made with simple instruments that were granted magical power to transfer intended actions from one thing to another, the sky above is always shifting weather and season against the backdrop of Cosmos. It's self-defining time-timing sync-duration recirculation identification of the Calendar.

So Einstein said that he was no Einstein by the value system of public media, and that applies to Sciencing in general post Galileo's timing modulation reciprocation-recirculation recognition of QM-TIME sync-duration superposition Singularity-point positioning Conception.

If you think about Astrology and Numerology in these terms, before the next iteration of understanding logarithmic condensation wave-packaging Quantum-fields Mechanism, in plain sense-in-common comprehension, everyone is wrong if no one is precisely right. Accuracy of knowledge is skilled learning by doing Intuition and adaptation to each other in mutual respect.

More qualitative discussion of Gold-Silver Rule morality.., can't hurt.

[ShaneNull]

what is with the unnecessary divisive chatter, ad hominem, dualism and fixing labels to people?👎

[dirtfirstracing]

So what did the exact reason you won’t have Guy McPherson on the show?

[Sjb-onxt]

Birds today are descendants of dinosaurs and they are warm blooded.