Global warming - true or false?

[Jon]

Many people would agree with you. Others might say social proof is what is leading to this conclusion. The power of the crowd shapes how we think.

None of us here are climate scientists, and no one is 100% rational and objective. Furthermore, no one has all the data and causal relationships are hypothesised rather than confirmed.

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Not as a statement of arrogance or an attempt at argumentum ad authoritatem, but I'm probably the closest thing this particular forum has to a scientist, though I had to change career direction 30 years ago due to family issues.

My field isn't climate science but the math I had to study included a heavy dose of statistical methods. I do have the skills to evaluate poorly done research and math, and I see red flags in a lot of things that have been published. Jon, you should be aware that on the Access forum, there is a thread where personalities get involved in this subject because of the depth of emotion on both sides of the issue. I will not say more than that.

 

[Jon]

For me, I like to think of being a scientist as a mindset: evidence based thinking. However, I understand where you are coming from. Without the requisite tools that scientists use, it is hard to know if your interpretations of the data are on point. This is where the huge value of understanding statistics comes into play. People say you can mislead with statistics. I disagree. My view is that people misinterpret statistics, not noticing when someone is trying to present data in a way that tricks the uninformed. Those two are different.

I remember reading in a national newspaper something like this: "48% of people think the government's policy is wrong on welfare." Then they go on to argue how badly they are doing on their welfare policy. The first thing I think of when I read that is: "A minority of people think the government's policy on welfare is wrong." This is a bit of a simplification, because in essence it depends on a) if the survey question had only two choices, and b) I tend to think that the country is approximately divided 50:50.

So, I believe the scientists mindset is about evidence based thinking + tools. (And practice in using them!)

Doc, I haven't seen that thread. Sometimes I don't even want to look at what arguments are going on there!

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Jon, I wouldn't go there without first taking an antacid or a mild analgesic. And at the moment, the thread has diverted itself.

I would interpret that newspaper article as INSTANTLY being wrong, biased, or poorly constructed. I would say (at least in the USA) that 100% of the people think the government's policy on welfare is wrong. I could not, of course, tell you how many want stricter rules and how many want looser rules - but nearly EVERYONE wants a change. The "48%" number is close enough to 50:50 that I would ask to see the sample size and also see if they took demographic information on the respondents. First, a small enough sample on a question like that would lead to a "sampling error" that could be as high as 2 or 3 percent, which would make 48% be consistent with a 50:50 split. Second, depending on who and where you ask your survey questions, a given neighborhood might be either predominantly unemployed or predominantly employed, thus including bias to the answers. I cannot tell you HOW many ways that could go wrong, but those are the kind of questions I would ask.

The American philosopher and humorist Mark Twain was once quoted as saying, "There are lies, damned lies, and statistics."

 

[Jon]

Let me add one more thing, the wording of the question. It can be done in such a way to shift the emphasis so you bias the sampling.

The results seems to differ quite a bit based on if CNN or Fox News is doing the survey! Their chosen demographic is, ahem, probably carefully selected.