Browser-based climate change simulation

> Suspicion, bias, identity, and a whole schwack of other things, all fall under the domain of psychology.

For sure. I just mean the act of pivoting and re-framing. It's hard to imagine the contiguous core motive that brought you to say both that you harbor suspicion that climate scientists are cooking the books and that you wonder if psychological misunderstanding is the reason we can't move forward. It seems like you laid out one kind of bait, caught about what I'd expect, and then wished you'd caught something else.

> It's like 90% armchair psychology...

Sorry--this was probably obfuscated by moving my reply here. My interest is in where (along the scale from actual researchers down to general nonscientists communicating in public fora) people are saying things that rub you the wrong way. I certainly see issues up and down the scale, but they're different.

> ... but what I think might be somewhat of a novel/underinvestigated idea, is how these things manifest in day to day interactions, and in turn affect subsequent behavior... Has there been any academic study into this?

I have hunches, but not much hard knowledge from which to reason about how well recognized/investigated this is. It's something I have and continue to actively reflect on a lot. I'm not aware of a big body of empirical work here, but the world is vast and I am not. It seems inevitable that there's research (knowingly or not) pulling on threads of this from multiple vantage points. My gut says there are chicken/egg problems here, but I'd have to take some time out to survey a good random sample of real research to know how well-tuned that is.

> It appears on any culture war topic

I think these are pervasive hermeneutic/epistemic problems, though I suppose conflict does highlight them.

> ... perhaps our perceptions of the nature of "resistance" or "disagreement" may not be accurate, and in turn our solutions/response to that may be suboptimal.

It certainly seems this way. I don't know how to cash this realization out once people are in the trench, though.

> ... I see little evidence that others are making any effort to understand. Rather, it seems that my lack of complete agreement ... seems to invoke an authoritarian, tribal response.

>...the amazingly widespread inability and unwillingness among intelligent people to step out of this mode of thinking, or acknowledge clear signs of it.

Mostly just acknowledging these. I don't have a single clear response. I can imagine a lot of different things going on here. Maybe it helps to imagine the people who aren't responding, and reflect on how the medium, forum, topic, discussion, subthread, your own post, and the very act of clicking the "reply" button to a long post may all act as filters that skew your sample.

> Is the fact that climate change is (has become) a culture war topic interfering with people's ability to discuss or think clearly about the matter

> or does group identity trump everything (System-1 overpowers System-2, ~without exception, even among the intelligent)

> If the requirement is mass persuasion (and it very much is), and the topic is identity-related (causing the human brain to malfunction, resorting to tribal, System-1 thinking)...

> Even if we could get everyone's sentiments pointed in the right direction, there are a lot of other seemingly unrelated issues that may need to be taken into consideration, but if a higher frame of enlightenment (willingness to cooperate, MAYBE) could be established, perhaps we could fix several problems at once.

I'm not sure there's a meaningful direct way to address what skeptics think. I assume they can be clustered in at least a few ways, but I haven't looked for studies breaking it down. I imagine the broadly "conspiratorial" cluster (people who are interpreting climate in light of a conspiratorial outlook), however big it is, is largely unreachable. The strictly "identitarian" cluster (people who would have no opinion if not for some group/ideology commitment) is probably a little (but not much) more reachable in the sense that some event could shake their ideological/group commitment and leave them open to revision. There are obviously other clusters (and overlap/grey zones), but the technical nature of the topic informs how prevalent I assume they are.

I guess it's trite (and maybe useless), but I feel like pointing out how thoroughly this dance is structured by the ~invisible idea that average people should have any opinion--let alone one we insist must be founded on cold, hard, rock-solid rational logic--about a mountain of published research (itself built on many vast datasets, quite a few complex models, and projections) that collectively draws on, synthesizes, and spans many disciplines. Perhaps the first reaction is that, well, this is how democracy works. But step back, and realize that this pattern demands epistemic hubris. And I think we get it.

In that light, I think we have too many opinions (regardless of how well-founded they are). I have wondered for a while now how much room there is to cultivate epistemic humility and whether we'd be better off if most of us were able to resist dropping anchor on things we don't need to have an opinion on. Perhaps it'd just be a different hellscape.

> I feel like I have to address this "97% of scientists" point now, since this is coming up again and again.

It does come up again and again - in this conversation, but also in mainstream and social media, as a representation of the overwhelming consensus of scientific agreement, which may plausibly affect the opinions of average citizens.

Considering this, I think it's fair to questions whether the "97% of scientists" claim is actually true, or whether it may be the result of some fancy footwork.

> I did not do this so far because it's ultimately beside the point.

Beside "a" point, but beside "the" point? Depends on the topic of discussion I suppose. In this thread, we have a prior comment:

> In fact the "95% of scientists agree" is just such an example - if you look into it, the number becomes very questionable.

So no, it isn't actually "beside the point".

> Climate science studies the climate, and not climate scientists, and I don't find the exact percentage of climate scientists agreeing or disagreeing with something at all interesting or relevant.

Me neither, but I doubt the same applies to the general public, and I know it doesn't apply to large numbers of people on social media (where I see the statistic quoted as some sort of proof, regularly), and I also know it doesn't matter to actual deniers, conspiracy theorists, and right wing media talking heads (Fox news, bloggers, YouTube celebrities, T_D members, etc) who will look for any weakness in your game and exploit it to it's maximum potential. Don't underestimate this last group - meme magic is real.

> Well this is not a popularity contest

Public support of climate change initiatives is very much a popularity contest, of sorts. The public discussion certainly doesn't consist of qualified discussion of the science.

> it's a scientific issue where there is a well-known method for making progress: You present logical arguments and counter-arguments, based on facts from credible sources (or original experiments). That's the only thing I'm interested in, and the he said / she said style of arguing that may get you points on reddit and twitter is super boring to me.

Your relative interest is interesting, but beside the point. The topic of this sub-thread is very clearly about trustworthiness of claims, so please stop complaining about the topic. If you are not interested, please don't reply.

> This is just how science works. What else are you asking for?

I wouldn't mind hearing your thoughts on the perspective below, with respect to whether it is truthful or necessary to describe the actual facts below incorrectly, as: "97% of scientists agree...", especially considering scientists numbers weren't included in the initial report.

(Note that I put a few qualifying comments below the stats part, you might want to skim those before starting a reply. Also note that we're obviously talking past each other at this point to a large degree, and I fully appreciate that this criticism is ~ridiculous to some degree (I'm not a complete idiot), but as I willingly concede that, might you willingly concede that there very much is a propaganda war going on in parallel to the actual science? Whether you personally care about that is orthogonal to the fact of its existence.)

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https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/2/024...

> We analyze the evolution of the scientific consensus on anthropogenic global warming (AGW) in the peer-reviewed scientific literature, examining 11 944 climate abstracts from 1991–2011 matching the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming'. We find that 66.4% of abstracts expressed no position on AGW, 32.6% endorsed AGW, 0.7% rejected AGW and 0.3% were uncertain about the cause of global warming. Among abstracts expressing a position on AGW, 97.1% endorsed the consensus position that humans are causing global warming. In a second phase of this study, we invited authors to rate their own papers. Compared to abstract ratings, a smaller percentage of self-rated papers expressed no position on AGW (35.5%). Among self-rated papers expressing a position on AGW, 97.2% endorsed the consensus. For both abstract ratings and authors' self-ratings, the percentage of endorsements among papers expressing a position on AGW marginally increased over time. Our analysis indicates that the number of papers rejecting the consensus on AGW is a vanishingly small proportion of the published research.

Popular claim: 97% of scientists agree with the consensus on anthropogenic global warming.

Actual Facts:

Within the subset of climate change abstracts that mention the topics 'global climate change' or 'global warming':

66.4% of abstracts expressed no opinion on AGW

32.6% of abstracts endorsed AGW

0.7% of abstracts rejected AGW

0.3% of abstracts were uncertain

Within the subset of these abstracts that expressed an opinion on AGW, 97.2% endorsed AGW

Percentage of scientists who endorse AGW: NOT STATED

Percentage of scientists who have expressed an opinion on AGW, who endorse AGW: NOT STATED

--------------------

Please note, my question is not in any way about whether this anomaly should be considered a reasonable and valid debunking of AGW science itself (it isn't, of course), it is strictly about the truthfulness (or propaganda, depending on how one's boat floats) aspect of it.

Also note that I have no idea if this is article is based on the most up to data, or if a newer study is available that fixes the shortcomings below. If there is, fantastic, perhaps I'll read it. But again, this is not my complaint: my complaint is the "97% of scientists...." memes that were deployed into the public arena of perception. I do not like this approach for several reasons, one of which is it is susceptible to justified attack by deniers and conspiracy theorists.

Because absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, abstracts expressing no position can not be included in the 97% number. Finding many abstracts that fall into this category is expected and does not detract from the 97% finding, because there are so many aspects of climate science that you can study that have no direct bearing on the question of whether anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is real or not.

You phrase it as ...

> Within the subset of these abstracts that expressed an opinion on AGW, 97.2% endorsed AGW

... which is a misleading way of framing this, because opinion does not play a role in this. Expressing an opinion in a scientific abstract would be highly frowned upon. The question is whether the abstract contains information relevant to the question of whether AGW is happening or not. These are the only abstracts that you want to consider when the question is whether the science agrees or disagrees with AGW.

Your point that going from "97% of abstracts" to "97% of scientists" is not strictly correct is fine (and this is not done in the Cook et al. paper), but this simplification in the media is not worrying to me at all, since you'd expect those to be very highly correlated.

> might you willingly concede that there very much is a propaganda war going on in parallel to the actual science?

Well, based on this comments section that seems rather self-evident. The scientists, however, are not fighting a propaganda war. That's a political or media phenomenon. Everything written in this comments section so far for me has reinforced the picture that this "war" is very one sided, since the anti-science arguments either just disappear or boil down to inconsequential pedantry as soon as you shine some light on them.

(NOTE COPYPASTA: This discussion is getting a bit long in the tooth, I'm happy to argue indefinitely because this topic happens to be my hobby horse, but I'm more than happy to declare a truce of sorts so you can gracefully exit and get on with more interesting things. I very much thank you for arguing though, I've found it helpful in clarifying my thinking on some items.)

> Because I find the idea of taking human psychology into account interesting

Ok good, because this is mostly my point, so it's nice to have found one person who can see it as worthwhile to consider

> as long as it is goal-oriented. I had hoped I'd learn something from this thread and from you on how to deal with others who either think climate change isn't a thing or who think that we could improve how we deal with this. This is what you're all about, right?

Well, so far I'm primarily trying to discover if it is even possible to get people to consider whether human psychology is a relevant variable in the problem. I would say this thread was the first time I've had some success. But you're right, I haven't even attempted to shock and amaze anyone with my brilliant theoretical solutions to how to deal with the anti-AGW camp, you might be the first person who's actually expressed any interest (will have to review the discussions).

> You claimed repeatedly that people who think climate chance is a thing are too absolute, too certain and that they should listen to the sceptics, or at least try to understand the sceptics and how they work and influence this discussion. Then, you state that the very absolutes are the problem, because they are exploited through memes and whatnot.

Pretty much, but I get the sense you see this as somehow contradictory? If so, could you explain?

> This entire discussion has one problem: It's asymmetric. Like with everything where conspiracy theories come up easily. One weak study that shows different results, or results taken out of context and boom, you have the cannon fodder to attack everything around "climate science". Thing is: The counter side sometimes even uses lies as their weapons.

I agree, it is an unfortunate truth that people are not rational actors, on both sides (but mostly the anti-AGW of course).

> There is no easy solution to that. It's the problem of many complex and invididually unverifiable topics. Whether it's climate science, vaccines, homeopathy or the moon landing.

Correct. So, what shall we do about this situation? Nothing, except more of the same? Is it working, within the time constraints nature seems to be forcing upon us? My gut tells me no.

> And now you claim that the scientific community needs to be open to the arguments of the naysayers or at least take into account how the discussion can be made more productively? Please, I still challenge you: Enlighten us with a clear path on how to handle this discussion, if one side isn't willing to educate itself at least somewhat?

For fun, ask yourself this: if it is a fact (for the sake of argument) that I do not have a clear path to a solution, does it then logically follow that the problem does not exist? Sorry, couldn't resist. :)

Joking aside, you treat it like any other project: analyze the requirements, come up with plausible solutions, test and iterate. If your response is that we're already doing that, here is just a few ways in which I would disagree:

a) Not only have I seen no initiative (to understand the true anti-AGW mindset) in the public sphere, I've seen none of it even in smaller, intelligent communities like HN. Perhaps no one have thought of this before, which is fine if true, but when the notion is raised (look through the entirety of this thread and judge for yourself), the response seems to be either null, wilfully ignorant (refusal to discuss the idea via changing of the subject), or ~hostile.

b) When I encounter discussions (in the media, or online) about people in the anti-AGW camp, it is like there is some sort of mass delusion going on. The entirety of the anti-AGW camp is described as if they are mouth-breathing idiots (which shouldn't be too surprising really, at least if you've done any reading on how perceptions of reality work).

> Because you make it sound as if you've found a way to "exploit the human brain".

Well, I've managed to get at least three people on HN to engage in conversation on this topic. So yes, I believe I may actually be acquiring skills in the field, but it's too early to form any strong opinions.

I'll ask you a similar question: you make it sound like you know something about climate change. Is it true, do you actually believe that? If so, care to explain how you think you accomplished that?

>> ... which is a misleading way of framing this, because opinion does not play a role in this.

>At first glance, this seems rather surreal. I am stating it accurately

You may have slightly misunderstood what I was trying to say here, I was referring only to your use of "no opinion" versus the paper's "no position." It's not a hugely important point so I'm only going to comment on the following ...

> You can have the science and technical solutions all figured out (and it is, well enough), but if you are unable to assemble adequate public consensus & support, the entire initiative may fail, [...]

If this was all you'd been saying, we'd be in full agreement. I agree there's room for improvement in popular science reporting. I disagree that there is anything majorly wrong with it, though. [0] If you have any specific recommendations for improvements that could be interesting.

However, I feel you are holding popular science journalism to an unrealistic standard here - a standard that is applied to no other subject.

If journalists were forced to use the highly technical, precise and nuanced language of peer-reviewed scientific publications in their popular reporting, that just wouldn't work for the vast majority of their readers. It would leave the field wide open to dishonest sound-bite style reporting by people unconstrained by truth. Therefore, simplifications are to some degree necessary, as long as they don't deform the underlying science. People are still free to dig deeper into the literature if they are that interested, just as we've been doing here. I don't think that's too much to ask - or, put differently, if this is too much to ask, then the problem is a much deeper one: a lack of critical thinking, a lack of curiosity, a pathological preoccupation with just the most superficial aspects of a topic.

Or, putting this a bit more practically: I feel like I have done a fine job of showing why quoting the 97% number is not particularly misleading. What form could this argument take that would fit in less than a couple of paragraphs? Because there aren't very many places outside of HN where that would fly...

[0] I don't know if this applies to places where people people mostly argue in meme format. It may not, but that would be a general cultural problem and not one of scientists and / or science journalists.