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Tags: groupthink | parsimony
OPINION

Is It Global Warming 'Science' or Hype?

climate or global warming debates

(Alain Lacroix/Dreamstime.com)

John Tantillo By Tuesday, 26 September 2023 11:40 AM EDT Current | Bio | Archive

Global warming "science" tops the list in the current "woke" era and whether it is science or something else?

The dirty little secret that can't be discussed for fear of being labeled a denier or something worse, being alienated from one's colleagues, is that global warming "science" is not science at all.

Instead, it's political science with a bias toward reinforcing the prevalent "groupthink" thought with no regard to skepticism to how data is analyzed, collected, and interpreted by the global climate change curia.

One cannot ignore the many studies that support that there may be a change in our climate (and allolw this writer to underscore may).

Still, a more skeptical attitude toward these findings is more consistent with the scientific method than assigning the adjective — deniers to those who don't wholly agree with global warming orthodoxy.

It's a fool's errand to deny that there is no climate change.

The issue is how profound this change is and whether there is anything we can do to effect, or somehow reverse, this phenomenon.

These two arguments are the foundations for a reasonable conversation about remedying a blatant disregard for the environment.

One doesn't have to go too far to see global change political science actively at work when discussing the cause of the Hawaiian forest fires.

These climate change alarmists attribute these fires to global climate change.

If this were truly a scientific inquiry and not a political play for points, one would immediately refer to one of the scientific method's basics — the" law of parsimony," which states: "choosing the simplest scientific explanation that fits the evidence."

Using this law, a more parsimonious explanation of the forest fires is not global warming but rather better forest land maintenance, which would clear suspectable fire-enhancing land from the combustible nature of dry forests.

Another issue that the true skeptical scientist, unlike the political scientist, is error. In Science, like in life, there are two ways this can happen — Type I or Type II errors.

A Type I error is when the examiner concludes that a phenomenon exists when it doesn't.

Said another way, the scientist makes up significance.

A time long ago, science was based on not committing Type I errors and always being skeptical of the findings or data one generates. Unfortunately, this is not today's thinking in scientific precincts.

On the other hand, Type II errors are missing significance, concluding that global climate change doesn't exist when it does.

This is undoubtedly a no-no to the political scientist but a more typical situation for the truth-seeking professional scientist who is skeptical rather than having a preconceived notion of fact.

The reasons for these two errors are many.

They include investigator bias, statistical sampling, group thinking, zeitgeist, and good old academic politics-- not being accepted by one's peers, which means failure to get published and not securing tenure.

Investigator bias, groupthink, and zeitgeist are all part of the same construct.

When conducting their research, the investigator must interpret the findings consistent with the prevailing notions of the day.

Otherwise, their research will not be accepted as accurate, and all efforts are for naught.

Statistical sampling, the "art and science" of choosing not only a random sample but a representative sample is too often overlooked by this august group of scholars. Using climate data for even 500 years isn't a representative sample, even when considering the earth's age in millions of years.

The question becomes whether we can make generalizations about climate behavior based on a relatively limited number of data points.

Yes, science is a human activity requiring reliability and validity to be accepted as credible.

That is why we should always be skeptical of our findings when using the scientific method, no matter how compelling we think they should be.

Marketing professionals should be encouraged by the zeal that global climate change scientists have utilized their discipline to create a need for the belief in their global change hypothesis.

It would be more beneficial for all if they could change the discussion from an emotional argument to a logical one where implementing practical ways of making the earth cleaner is the goal rather than only alarming a skeptical world about the carbon footprint. And when this is done, they may realize that it is always easier when one has marketing in mind.

Dr. John Tantillo is a Marketing Professor at Lander College For Men at Touro University with a doctorate in Applied Research from Hofstra University. He also teaches Branding and Social Media at the university's Graduate School of Business. He is the author of: "People Buy Brands Not Companies." You can follow him on Twitter @marketingdoctor and at Facebook.com/dr.johntantillo. Read Dr. John Tantillo's Reports — More Here.

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JohnTantillo
Yes, Science is a human activity requiring reliability and validity to be accepted as credible. That is why we should always be skeptical of our findings when using the scientific method, no matter how compelling we think they should be.
groupthink, parsimony
790
2023-40-26
Tuesday, 26 September 2023 11:40 AM
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