Gleick on Cherrypicked Climate Trends
Not to beat a dead horse, but here’s a nice piece from Peter Gleick in Forbes about how deniers cherrypick data in their effort to show that the climate isn’t warming: “Global Warming Has Stopped”? How to Fool People Using “Cherry-Picked” Climate Data.
The current favorite argument of those who argue that climate changes isn’t happening, or a problem, or worth dealing with, is that global warming has stopped. Therefore (they conclude) scientists must be wrong when they say that climate change is caused by humans, worsening, and ultimately a serious environmental problem that must be addressed by policy makers.
The problem with this argument is that it is false: global warming has not stopped and those who repeat this claim over and over are either lying, ignorant, or exhibiting a blatant disregard for the truth.
So, deniers, which is it: Are you lying, ignorant, or exhibiting a blatant disregard for the truth? There really aren’t any other options.
February 9th, 2012 at 5:51 am
Imagine if you will , ole shcb in his pj’s early in the morning petting his ole cat Clyde, doing the following in his best Julia Child voice
Yes, let’s get started, shall we? First break off the corners of what your opponent is saying and drop them in a bowl, just a few now, enough to give credibility but not so much to overpower your own point. Now we add a generous helping of what we wish they would have said, ideally this should be something that helps make our point, but in a pinch it can be done for self gratification with satisfactory results. Nest we mix vigorously, we need to pulverize all those lumps of what the opponent actually said and blend them smooth in our sauce of what we wish they had said. Carefully pour this in a lightly greased 9 x9 pan, into the oven at 350 degrees for 45 minutes. As you can see from this pan we just removed from the oven, we now have a delicious plate that will allow us to win any argument as long as the target audience is generally in agreement with us to begin with.
Remember, “if you’re afraid of butter, use cream”
February 9th, 2012 at 9:51 am
First, take a bit of dried out industry money, apply liberally (such a dirty word!) to the wallet and sprinkle over wwnj ‘think’ tanks. Marinate fresh bullshit in a sauce of old prejudices, newly enraged sociamalism, with a pinch of homey anecdotes and poor vocabulary. Allow this to stew in its own juices until the frothy santorum reaches a fetid odor of failure. If desired use junk science and partisan cranks to bolster untenable positions, complain of reverse prejudice or any other blather than comes to mind if called out. When challenged by reality, retreat into an ever shifting playing field of nonsense and numbskullery. Ingest hate-filled right wing diatribes until properly outraged. Blend with fresh stupidity and racism until you can barely pound out the letters on your keyboard. grrrrrr! When anyone laughs in your face due to overweening stupidity and ignorance, imagine murderous schemes to assuage your tumescent ego. Fold in fauxnewts lies and misinformation, call anyone who disagrees a commie socialist and bake for several decades.
viola! soufflé of wwnj bullshit
Forbes article has some interesting comments. One guy gives a link to *prove* dum libs is teh stoopid. http://tinyurl.com/5t3u7ke now try entering 1900 in the left hand data field and re-plot that graph. What direction is the overall trend? You can do it wwnj! Reality beckons. Actually, it sure looks like reality is giving you the finger, but there you are.
Funny how the wwnj experts aren’t winning over the climate science experts. Perhaps Mr Grey can simply shout socialism! a few more times to convince everyone the science is all wrong.
February 9th, 2012 at 10:11 am
For what its worth, a significant German warmist-turned-skeptic appears to be causing debate with his new book http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=d38_1328721437 regarding prior AGW analysis and conclusions. Will his book be discredited or be given credence? I don’t know.
It does look at CO2 in the light of affecting warming, but within a more robust climate model as opposed to a more delicate one. And a climate in which the sun may play a significant role.
February 9th, 2012 at 11:30 am
Oh look, someone wrote a book with a contrarian view and is selling it to make money: in poker, that would be a hand with Ace high. Compare that to the straight flush of IPCC etc.
Yawn.
February 9th, 2012 at 11:31 am
Dr Roy Spence is working in that direction too, the satellite data seems to show the models are using assumptions of a sensitive climate when the data shows an insensitive system.
February 9th, 2012 at 12:17 pm
You know Knarly, that reminds me of a story I read, I think it may have even been Spencer that said it, doesn’t matter, it was one of the scientists that are skeptical of AGW. He asked one of his colleagues why he thought man was the cause of global warming, the other scientist said “what else would cause it?” to this the skeptical scientist said “how would you know if you don’t look?”
February 9th, 2012 at 1:43 pm
shcb still spewing nonsense.
I looked at the Craig’s link, what I could read looked like sensationalist BS and the rest was written in German. Doesn’t seem to compare at all with research published in established scientific journals.
February 9th, 2012 at 1:49 pm
I assume you’re talking about Roy Spencer rather than Roy Spence. And here again, you’re guilty of cherrypicking. It’s not that Spencer doesn’t have credentials; he does. It’s that he’s an anomaly. He’s an outlier. You’ve got a tiny number of people with actual credentials who are actually studying this stuff saying one thing. And then you’ve got a much larger number of people with credentials who are studying this stuff saying something completely different. And you’re choosing to point to this guy, this guy in the 2-3% of climate scientists with contrarian views, and saying, “see? Expert opinion agrees with me!”, all the while failing to address in any adequate way the problem for your position represented by the overwhelming majority of climate scientists who disagree with you.
Guess what? Spencer also advocates teaching Intelligent Design, as opposed to mainstream science’s embracing of “evolutionism.” Are you with him on that, too?
There will always be outliers. There will always be people who, for whatever random reason, whatever experiences that made them who they are, see things differently than everybody else. And that’s fine. That’s actually a good thing, since it’s an important part of how new ideas can rise up and win out and replace outmoded but popular ideas.
But just because there are a small number of people out there who believe in wildly unlikely conspiracy theories and who happen to actually be right, that does not mean that any given wildly unlikely conspiracy theory is likely to be right. Most of them aren’t. That’s what makes them wildly unlikely.
Your views on climate change are wildly unlikely to be right. That’s easily demonstrated just by looking at the official statements of national academies of science, which summarize the current consensus view, and which contradict most of the things you say. Your evidence in support of your position is to reference a few cherrypicked outliers, and make vague assertions of having been scientific in your own researches. Repeatedly, when pressed to justify your views, you come back to the same, rock-bottom justification: It’s what you believe, based on your own (unspecified) expertise and investigation. And that should be good enough for the rest of us. It’s true because you say it is. Your authority should be good enough to gainsay the world’s climate scientists.
It’s not.
February 9th, 2012 at 3:04 pm
I’ve been right when all around me have been wrong, and wrong when all others have been right, the former more times than the later, I can live with that.
But it is nice to see that no one Craig or I put out there is going to be good enough, not based on their work but based on who they are and what they believe (in this case in an area other than the subject matter), I seem to have been right about that a couple weeks ago.
February 9th, 2012 at 4:23 pm
Again, you’re evading my point, and taking refuge in the aforementioned appeal to your own authority.
Really? You’ve kept some kind of actual count of the times you’ve been right in the face of majority disagreement, versus times that you’ve been wrong? How did you identify which cases were which?
Let’s talk about the more numerous case (per your accounting): You were right, despite everyone around you telling you that you were wrong. How did you figure that out? Did you have access to some sort of independent authority that you were willing to trust on the question? By definition, everyone around you was telling you that you were wrong. Yet you figured out, somehow, that you were actually right to believe what you did. How? Can you describe a specific case in which this happened? How did you know?
Or you could give an example that went the other way, in which everyone around you disagreed with you, and you turned out to have been wrong. How did you figure that out in those cases? What was it, aside from everyone telling you that you were wrong, that finally convinced you? What was it that actually led you to change your mind?
The fallacy is obvious. Again, you’re making an appeal to your own authority. You’re willing to view yourself as the ultimate authority on whatever question you’re giving an opinion on. In cases where an overwhelming majority with demonstrably greater expertise disagrees with you, there’s an easy answer (at least for you): they’re wrong and you’re right. Once in a great while you’ve been confronted by evidence so overwhelming that even you were forced to admit having been wrong. But those cases have been rare.
There’s another way to explain the phenomenon you’ve noticed. I’ll accept that the examples in which you were correct in the face of overwhelming disagreement outnumber the others, at least in your own mind. But that’s not necessarily evidence that you are possessed of an uncanny ability to identify the truth even when experts say otherwise. It’s just evidence that you’re especially prone to confirmation bias. You want to be correct, so you cherry-pick data and employ fallacious reasoning in order to “prove” (at least to yourself) that you’re right.
That you have an uncanny ability to be correct in your opinions more often than not even when the experts believe otherwise would be really remarkable if it were true. But if that were truly the case, I’d be surprised that you had to work for so many years. Why didn’t you just apply your uncanny ability to the stock market, or to the Vegas betting line? If you actually had the ability you’ve described, it should have been trivial for you to parlay it into a vast fortune. The betting line in Vegas is set by expert opinion. Just go look at the games scheduled for the weekend and figure out, using your innate ability to be correct when experts are wrong, which teams are likely to beat the point spread, and bet heavily on them. You should totally go do that. Let us know how it turns out.
So, to sum up, I can see two ways of explaining the set of facts you’ve described:
1) You are possessed of near-clairvoyant knowledge that you obtain from some source other than expert opinion, and which is correct more often than not in cases when experts disagree with you. But for some reason you have chosen not to profit from that ability, even though it should be trivially easy for you to do so.
Or:
2) You are opinionated and crankish, and willing to employ crappy epistemology and fallacious reasoning in order to “prove” (at least to yourself) that you are correct even when the weight of expert opinion is against you.
I know which of those two explanations seems more likely to me.
February 9th, 2012 at 4:41 pm
Here is the english translation of the interview with the person I mentioned above. http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,813814,00.html
In the intro, a warmist representative who has seen an advance copy of the book, says a “number” of the issues brought up have been “refuted”. The exact number is not specified. The interview itself is pretty good. The Spiegel interviewer doesn’t throw softball questions at him and actually challenges him on some points.
Apparently, there are going to be additional parts to this whole story published shortly, so it will be interesting to see what else comes of it. Its an intriging idea to consider the effect of other natural elements more seriously than they may have been, up to this point.
February 9th, 2012 at 5:51 pm
So I’ll put you down for a “3″ right Craig?
Please correct me if I’m wrong on my assessment of your level
http://www.lies.com/wp/2011/12/07/moran-on-the-stages-of-climate-change-denialism/
So what is driving the temps up? I find it fascinating that Fire Fritz (his nickname in Germany for supporting the construction of a controversial incinerator iirc?) became famous/elected for exposing chemical pollution and fighting against it. But now he and his geologist co-author have decided ACC is a hoax (etc). Perhaps we should let the climate experts debate the merits of his book. And the papers he has authored to refute ACC (etc). Convincing wwnj is a done deal: anything that agrees with his wwnj bias has, by definition, got to be true. It’s right wing, it says right right on the label! sheesh!
Again I’ll ask: so what is driving temps up? What are the expected impacts of this warming? What can we do about it? Should we do anything? If it is volcanos as knarly suggests (citation pls? links?) well what is to be done? Is mankind doing anything to change the environment? Or is it just business as usual? Are we reaching some sort of carrying capacity limit for technic civs based on fossil fuels? I am asking you to tell us what you think is driving temps up. Sunspots? Volcanos? Cycles?
Let us say, just for the purposes of discussion, that we are at level 4: climate change is happening, humans are part of it, but it’s just too darned expensive to do anteing about it. Done. Well there are a great many experts who say we are the primary drivers of climate change and CO2 is a part of it. How do you (and expert ACC deniers/skeptics) present your case? So far it is nibbling about the edges: you guys didn’t do this or that right or are deliberately misinterpreting the data for the filthy lucre (etc, ignoring the even stronger possibility that the obverse is true: deniers are often in the pocket of ‘the industry’)
I disagree (mildly) with jbc: there are steps we can take *now* that will have a big impact down the road. I’ll have to look it up, but there was a discussion on another site about ‘what to do now’ and the suggestions were pretty tame: drain rice patties more often, cook stoves, simple stuff. Not gene-engineering plants w a lower albedo. Not using nukes to blow up volcanos to spew more particulate to block the sun’s energies. No gene-engineering miracles or marvels. No imposed limits to growth. Just using plain old human ingenuity and drive to fix the problems bequeathed upon us by the last set of technologies. Start now. It’s cheaper. Much cheaper. Just like the SO2 exchange.
February 9th, 2012 at 11:49 pm
Good post jbc, but rather than vegas the wwnj should go to http://www.intrade.com if he thinks he’s right most of the time. He could even share his buy/sell predictions with us , but I bet he doesn’t have the courage.
Enk, iirc my theory was the release of heat from the earth’s core is primarily through undersea vents, not volcanoes, and this might be a significant factor in rising global temperatures. For context, see: http://www.lies.com/wp/2011/05/17/usa-today-editorial-board-vs-james-inhofe-on-climate-change/#comment-223030
It was made in a mockery of some wwnj personal theory. Then afterwards, strangely, I saw an old article stating that the vents were vastly more prolific than first thought and it had similar speculation.
The pure speculation on my part was based simply on geometry. Our thin layer of atmosphere & hydrosphere where we measure temperatures is insignificant compared to the mass of the sphere that the atmosphere & hydrosphere encircles. The earth contains over a million times more mass than the atmosphere and most of the earth’s mass is hotter than a blast furnace just a mile below the surface. Rate of leakage would matter if it varies…
Total mass of atmosphere: 5.1 x 10^18 kg
Total mass of hydrosphere: 1.4 x 10^21 kg
Mass of Earth: 5.9736 x 10^24 kg
For scientific basis, see: http://www.mpg.de/617026/pressRelease201010071
Then, again conceptually, we have the El Nino / La Nina phenomena. We have a decent handle on their effects on our weather, but I have yet to hear a plausible explanation for what causes this heating and cooling / oscillation. However unlikely it may be that giant, intermittent ocean vents exist, it’s an intuitively better explanation for El Nino / La Nina than anything I’ve found yet.
Burning fossil fuels creates (and traps) heat too. :-)
February 10th, 2012 at 5:28 am
JBC
You asked how I knew when I was right and when I knew when I was wrong. Because it was proven one way or another. I’ll give you a couple big, and related examples. When I owned my machine shop my largest customer was Samsonite, some years they were 75% of my business, at some point I realized they were going to shut down operation in Denver, these around me thought I was crazy, Samsonite had been a staple in the Denver area for generations, they had survived through bad management before, they would again, but there were other factors that made me sure this time they wouldn’t make it. Now I was so sure of that I sold my company for a modest profit, but I certainly didn’t get rich. Pretty bold statement to sell your livelihood over a hunch. Well, the assembly plant that covered 10 acres under one roof is now a hole in the ground.
The company I sold mine to bought it primarily because they were certain I was wrong and they would get a huge built in customer out of the deal, they were wrong. After 911 the automation business just stopped, no one knew what was going to happen and new products are a luxury so everything was put on hold. Those around me said we were going to go under, I said there was no way, we were one of the best automation houses in the country, this was just a little blip, after drawing unemployment for over a year I realized I was wrong about that.
Now in neither of those cases was I the only one that saw it coming, I had to choose sides, sometimes I was in the minority, others in the majority. But the majority of the time I have been right. I know what you are saying, it 9 of your 10 friends say don’t marry that woman, she’s a bitch and the marriage will never last, they are probably right.
Since you seem to be enamored with the numbers of experts on this subject let me deposit this. I made a decision of which side was right and which was wrong based on whatever I based it on several years ago, let’s say 5 since Hayhoe used 5 years. Now in that time I haven’t seen any new evidence, nothing earth shattering anyway, the argument has sort of stagnated, Hayhoe didn’t elaborate on the new findings she was talking about and you haven’t offered any either, you just keep repeating the head count. In that time more and more climate scientists have jumped ship mostly based on the reasons I used to make my original decision. The public has also changed its opinion in my direction. Now you still hold the majority numbers in both cases, but I’m gaining ground, why would I change course now?
Enky,
I agree
February 10th, 2012 at 5:34 am
Here’s one we could do, take all the catalytic converters off cars, they take carbon monoxide which is just poisonous and convert it to carbon dioxide which is killing the planet. When did they start using catalytic converters? Wasn’t it about the time co2 started climbing? Just a thought.
February 10th, 2012 at 9:20 am
I remember when catalytic converters were first used, I was studying to become an auto mechanic at the time so it was a big topic of discussion. The converters had exotic metals, were they going to kill us (the mechanics) if we were exposed to them over long periods? The lead in gas coated those exotic metals so they didn’t work anymore, taking the lead out of the gas cause the exhaust valves to burn up so stellite seats had to be used, the converters had to be very hot to operate properly so there was fear the carpet in the cars might catch fire, and on and on. One of the concerns was what is going to be the effect of the CO2 being pumped into the air, we were told don’t worry, CO2 is a harmless gas, vital to the existence of life on the planet, more will just mean plants will grow better, and since we all should be vegetarian, more plants are better (they didn’t say the vegetarian part I just made it up for comic relief). And water vapor, we need water vapor. Well, fast forward a few decades and here we are with too many greenhouse gasses, and they are… CO2 and water vapor.
My point is whatever we decide to do to fix this problem we will probably create another, and socialism will somehow be the cure to that problem too.
February 10th, 2012 at 10:03 am
JBC – I seem to have a post stuck in the moderators queue.
shcb, I see your point but don’t have the means at present to assess. Can say it sounds fishy to me intuitively and ever-the-more-so considering the source (you.) Also, CO2 is lesser of two evils as high concentrations of CO etc. in urban areas would kill so many brain cells that the average IQ’s might drop to that of red state residents.
1. the noun “gas” when made plural is “gases”; the verb “to gas” when
plural is “gasses” – you’re excused in this case as I expect “gasses” is the form you normally see, as in: “I wonder what he’ll say when shcb gasses him with wwnj nonsense?”
2. Greenhouse gases are many, CO2 is often used as a proxy (as in “CO2 equivalent”) when discussing the entire mix of greenhouse gases. Yes, CO2 is not harmful in low concentrations, but higher concentrations will asphyxiate. Other greenhouse gases are not so harmless. Also, expect big positive feedback to global warming as vast quantities of methane are released into the atmosphere as the permafrost around the globe thaws.
February 10th, 2012 at 10:13 am
I’m just causing trouble, I don’t want to go back to the pre 70′s smog. My point is whatever we do may have other impacts that need to be considered, economics for instance. Adding a half degree here or there may be the lesser of two weevils (loved that scene in Master and Commander)
With all my typos you pick that one? :) Actually that wasn’t a typo, you taught me something, whew, it’s good to get my one annual mistake out of the way so early in the year.
February 10th, 2012 at 10:26 am
So you are a #4 now wwnj? Or as Smith said, you will be whatever # helps your argument at the moment.
Perhaps you could devise a catalytic converter that actually captures that carbon? Might be a bit of money in that! Oh wait, I’m a lib so somehow this is all about ‘socialism’? Laughable. Talk about orthogonal to reality. I’m already starting a new company this year, so I’m tied up with that, but I am sure the market (with smart nudges from gov) will find a way.
So basically wwnj opinion is whatever we do will further screw things up, so do nothing and just continue on the path we’re on? Sounds like it is straight out of the oil/coal lobbyist playbook.
As knarly pointed out, it isn’t just CO2. We have to stop powering our civilization by burning dirt. Plain and simple (or if we need to burn dirt, clean it up and include the cost of that clean up (past, present and future) on the books.
wwnjs said the SO2 exchange was going to be the collapse of civilization! Profits would tumble! End of life as we know it! So… how’d that all work out?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v896_ZvM97Y
February 10th, 2012 at 12:37 pm
Here is how the game is played:
“So basically wwnj opinion is whatever we do will further screw things up”
is what Enky heard and will repeat forever
“So basically wwnj opinion is whatever we do might further screw things up” is a more realistic restating of what I actually said, but Enky will never say.
February 10th, 2012 at 1:24 pm
Enk, FYI http://www.lies.com/wp/2012/02/08/gleick-on-cherrypicked-climate-trends/#comment-289149
shcb, re: JBC’s line of reasoning, “That you have an uncanny ability to be correct in your opinions more often than not even when the experts believe otherwise would be really remarkable if it were true. But if that were truly the case, I’d be surprised that you had to work for so many years.” It is apparent you’ve just cherry picked another example to confirm your confirmation bias. He asks rhetorically, “Why didn’t you just apply your uncanny ability to the stock market…” but seriously, I’d like to see you pick any ten contracts at http://www.intrade.com, usign play money or real, and see how you’ve done by the end of the year. Actually, that’d be a good challenge for all of us.
February 10th, 2012 at 2:43 pm
Sounds fun, but see, I’m not that smart, it’s not that my opinion is right more times than the experts, it is just that I pick different experts.
I will pick ten contracts and let you know how I’m doing in a couple months, if I do well, I might even plunk down some of my real money.
Have a good weekend
February 10th, 2012 at 4:21 pm
knarly, you have referred to this as volcanic activity, volcanoes etc before, but if you want to limit it to just undersea vents, you’re welcome to show us the studies indicating increased thermal outputs. Or maybe it is the GHG gases are increasing or some mix of factors? I haven’t heard of any climate science that says undersea vents are the prime drivers of the observed climate change (nor am I qualified to assess if the sources and information would sway the climate experts, other than maybe a basic sniff test: is it posted on Prison Planet or Fox? Well then it is probably bullshit).
wwnj I suppose I could have used another modifier like might rather than will, but to my mind starting it all off with “basically’ already puts it in the realm of the thumbnail. Will or might doesn’t really change the idea much. ymmv I’m sure you’ll run with this as yet another great victory over them stupid libs! theys always so durn wrong! chuckle! (pats cindy loo on the head)
February 10th, 2012 at 4:33 pm
will or might changes the entire meaning! But thanks for clearing up my misconception, I thought there might be more than one factor for any kind of climate change, guess I was wrong.
February 10th, 2012 at 9:51 pm
Enk,
If I were a troll it might be fun to go on about thermal vents undersea but I’m not. So let me try again to be clear. There is virtually no science on this as far as I can tell. I don’t know exactly why that is. It could be because the math on the heat output required to heat the pacific ocean makes the whole concept crumble into ridiculousness. Or maybe because the venting was dismissed by mistake early on (not likely) and never re-examined. It might be that people thought they knew the extent of thermal vents with enough accuracy to rule them out but recently have discovered there’s lots more (possible given the Max Planck ocean sciences link I’d provided.)
Whatever the reason, the message I was presenting is that there are always more theories coming along to challenge the status quo consensus opinion, but until a contrarian theory is assessed properly the new theory is more often than not just idle speculation or nonsense. You know, like the stuff shcb says.
shcb, yes please go ahead and report back in a few months about the predictions you selected and how great you did. Sure we’ll believe you. (Sarcasm.) It doesn’t work that way. You’ll need to declare at the time you take a position in the market and the same thing when you close your position in a market or it settles. And yes, it is fun but prepare to be humbled by intrade.com , I’d be game to try it again. Better yet, here is an intrade “challenge” site so that if anyone else wants to join in the contest they can do so. First prize: bragging rights.
http://liesintrade.wordpress.com/
February 11th, 2012 at 7:16 am
I had never heard of that site, it looks like it is mostly gambling so I doubt I will mess with it. You were wondering why there is no research being done in thermal vents as it applies to global warming, well the answer is obvious, there is no need to do research, we already know the cause of global warming, man. This goes back to the comment Spencer made above. There is an old joke in the scientific community, if you want to get grant money to study some critter, good luck, if you want to study the effects of global warming, manmade global warming, there is all kinds of money available. Unless you are trying to disprove manmade global warming, then the till dries up real fast. And it’s not just Democrats, a bill to eliminate Colorado’s carbon tax was killed in committee this week, a Republican dominated committee.
February 11th, 2012 at 7:18 am
Ha, Ha, you went to a lot of work for that, I’m famous!
February 11th, 2012 at 11:20 am
So when push comes to shove, shcb backs off and basically admits he is not correct enough to make predictions, using the semantic dance that these predictions are gambling.
Therein lies the problem, shcb thinks predicting global warming is like gambling. He is willing to stake his opinions on that but clearly does not really comprehend how knowledge and science changes the odds. How else can one explain his position against the consensus scientific AGW conclusions except that he is a very, very bad gambler. His position on AGW is effectively a bet with both a good chance of some short term moderate economic rewards and a near certainty, based on our knowledge and science, of increasing and permanent catastrophic outcomes in the medium to long term.
Come to think of it, that is characteristic of wwnj thinking on most issues: a likely short term gain for a few people with a high probability of extraordinarily bad outcomes for most people as time goes on.
February 11th, 2012 at 1:56 pm
No, you don’t understand the difference between critical thinking and gambling, we can pay your game if you wish but it won’t prove any point because intrade is simply gambling, it is learning to play the game and learning to play the odds. To some extent that seems to be a little of what JBC is wanting me to do with AGW, pay the odds, but that isn’t critical thinking. I understand gambling, I’m not much of a gambler myself but my family is, my sister’s family has always made their living off the horses, starting into the fourth generation now. My cousin has been making a 6 figure income doing nothing but gambling for almost a decade now.
To win in this type of gambling there are basically two strategies (in simplest terms of course) volume or obscurity. Volume is the way my cousin wins. He only plays computer poker, he knows the odds for the game or type of machine and only plays the games that have a positive payback. Now you have to play nearly perfect to maximize that payback because it is only few percentage points, then it is just a matter of volume, he runs 8 to 12 million dollars through the machines a year, the rest is just math. The other is obscurity, this is where a lot of people make money on the horses, they bet on the underdog, usually not straight up, but bracketed some way.
The way this is going to work is if you take an issue, say Obama being reelected, take the unconventional thinking now while it is a ways out, whether you believe he is going to be reelected or not, then hedge that bet later taking the conventional thinking, again no matter what you actually believe. Couple that with some side bets on who will be the primaries using the same bracketing, in the end you may lose the straight up bets but you will make it up with a few trifectas.
Then you pick a few subjects you know more about than the people betting and cherry pick an obscure something you can make a killing on to offset the basic 50-50 shot of Obama. It’s all in the game.
February 12th, 2012 at 1:09 pm
So you’re sure you’ve got the strategy that’ll win. Typical. Seems JBC already covered that mentality, no need for me to repeat that here. But I’m sure if you tried your hedging & side betting strategy you would be humbled by intrade soon.
Also that strategy does not serve the purpose of determining whether you know what’s going to happen more than anyone else,based on yoursupposed critical thinking. So stake out some intrade positions and hold them.
February 12th, 2012 at 1:49 pm
That is correct, it is a pointless exercise for this discussion. JBC and you have asked why I don’t use my super powers to make a killing in the stock market or Vegas, it is because I understand the gambling aspect of both enough to not get involved in either too deeply. That is critical thinking.
Most situations in life aren’t black and white, true and false, that is what your game is, by definition, now you guys tend to try and point me into giving a black and white answer, and seem to see things in that regard, but that isn’t critical thinking.
February 14th, 2012 at 10:22 am
You do not have a choice whether or not to gamble on climate change. Your position on that demonstrates a recklessness and failure to apply critical thinking. Your excuses and semantic gymnastics don’t seem to have fooled anyone on this site except yourself.