Gambling addiction was mentioned earlier, and I think it’s interesting to ponder. I’m sure some people have been paid off to spread doubt about climate change and are just doing it for the money, but it seems clear that others aren’t. I don’t understand them, like I don’t understand casinos. Why would someone engage in a series of gambling transactions in full knowledge that the odds are stacked against them? I’ve been to many meetings in Reno (cheap hotel rooms) and it’s always strange and interesting to walk through the casinos on the way to my room. What are these folks smoking (besides, of course, tobacco)?

Work that out and then find the orange line that includes the aerosols on this graph:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/sciam/assets/Image/articles/earth-will-cross-the-climate-danger-threshold-by-2036_large.jpg

That is the optimistic outcome for that probability. A bit complex to think about. But I think if you work out the likely probability of LTES at 3.5 or above, it might be a bit shocking. I’m not sure what it is right now (haven’t looked lately) but it is not a few percent. It is in the two digits range. Way more than you would accept for any loss of life or limb level risk in day to day life (like the change of crossing a particular street with your eyes covered with a blind fold at night in the fog)

Why not mention that the 80s were warmer than the 70s, that the 90s were warmer than the 80s, that the 00s were warmer than the 90s, that the four warmest years on record have been 2014, 2010, 2005, and 1998, and that 14 of the 15 warmest years have occurred since 2000.

That warming has not occurred as expected is not supported by the data, or rather it’s only supported by the data if you’re loony enough to believe that the data have been fudged in the interest of a worldwide conspiracy.

And then there are so many other inconvenient facts:

“It has — quite rightly — been pointed out that surface air temperature (SAT) isn’t all there is to global climate or global warming. Since 1998 we’ve witness[ed] sizeable warming of the oceans, including the deep ocean. We’ve seen a staggering decline of Arctic sea ice and the continued dwindling of most of the world’s glaciers. Sea level has continued to rise at a rate much faster than the 20th-century average (which itself was much higher than the average over the last several thousand years). It has been emphasized that a lack of “statistically significant” warming is not the same as a lack of warming. It has also been pointed out that the “pause” in SAT is not inconsistent with climate model simulations, that in fact climate models show episodes like we’ve observed “since 1998?? even in a still-warming world. And it has been shown (as climate scientists knew all along) that greenhouse gases aren’t the only factor influencing temperature, that “since 1998?? we’ve seen the most prominent known non-greenhouse factors (el Nino southern oscillation, volcanic aerosols, and solar variations) conspire to lower global temperature. It’s obvious to those whose eyes are open that without continued greenhouse-gas warming to offset these natural factors, we would have seen a notable decline in global temperature “since 1998.”
But, let’s put all those perfectly valid considerations aside…

Let’s use temperature data starting in 1979 (so we can include satellite data for the lower troposphere) and ending with 1997 to predict what we would have expected over the next 16 years, then compare that to what happened.”

The conclusion:

“Given how fast global temperature was rising prior to 1998, the real surprise which followed is not that temperatures slowed or stopped their increase … the real surprise is that temperatures rose so far so fast and were so damn hot. Even allowing for the existing trend.”

My own conclusion is that you’re a typical parroter of septic talking points, not very knowledgeable about climate science, reality, and recent research, and not very interested either.

You & your gambler friend are in a small aircraft at 8000 ft. The door is open. Neither of you have a parachute. You comment, “I’ll bet if you jumped out of this plane now, you probably wouldn’t live…”.

It’s not at all certain that your friend would die; there are documented cases of skydivers surviving such events.

Your friend is, as you describe, a “risk taker”. He could jump and gamble that he’ll survive the consequences.

Should your friend jump, and prove your point that he’s simply “not risk averse”? What’s in it for him to “take the risk”?

there’s nothing in it for them to win

I was talking about risk, not certainty.

thinking such as “This box canyon won’t flood during this heavy rain and become a torrent!”

It has been shown that many humans are risk-takers, i.e. they are not risk averse, they are simply loss averse. You can think about the success of businesses that offer gambling.

So that fact that many people take the risk of ignoring global warming is no great surprise.

This is an interesting mental disorder that surely warrants its own field of study… Greg, have you assembled a post of two on this topic before? Which structure(s) in the brain breaks down & misfires in these cases? Is it caused by neuronal death? Chemical exposure? Neurotransmitter malfunction? Structures failing to mature? Interconnections that mis-wire?

One would think that evolution would select against this and it would be bred out of humanity by now. After all, thinking such as “This box canyon won’t flood during this heavy rain and become a torrent!” and “That auroch bearing down on me isn’t real, so I’m in no danger of being stabbed to death!” would not be conducive to being passed on to future generations…

So why does this type of thinking persist past the age of 4 or 5 in some people? Serious question…