How It All Ends (last climate change post for a while I promise...)

You may remember I posted a video called "How it all ends" as part of my "reply to Sean" post stemming from my Earth Hour post. Wonderingmind42's project is the most accessible (to laypersons like us that is), logical, and thorough study of science, the climate change "question", and everything in between that I've seen so far. Interestingly, a lot of the arguments he deals with in these videos are surprisingly transferable to a lot of other scientific (and non-scientific) debates too. You could also go to the wonderingmind42 webpage or The Manpollo Project, which are external sites that have all the videos organized and ready for watchin'.

The first video he made was entitled "The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See" which was submitted to all the hypercritical scrutiny that the interwebs could muster. There are quite a few response videos on YouTube too. I know far too many of them use swears or other such indignant fiddle faddle but a lot of them are very thoughtful and helpful attempts to provide constructive criticism. Anyway WM42 then put out a series of 3 videos called "patching holes 1", "p.h.2", and "p.h.3". These were much much less popular than the first video but they did get some video feedback too.

He then asked his subscribers for help on how to propagate the videos in the next project.

The second incarnation of the most terrifying video was called "How It All Ends", which digested all that previous stuff and reexamined the argument after the public flogging of the original video. There was even a preview for it. One critique of the video (it is actually one of many similar critiques) I found was particularly astute. Why does doing something to prevent climate change have to be an economically bad thing. Environmentally sound technology and ideas should save money and resources in the long run so why can't we have "doing something" be an economically viable option as well. Perhaps we could transfer some of the billions of dollars being thrown down war's cake hole and apply it to environmental issues.

To complete the How It All Ends video project there came a multitude of "expansion pack" videos, which strive to address every coherent critique argument or comment (and some incoherent ones) about the video, it's logic, science, and arguments. Like I say there are a bunch of them (see the video below) so I figure the best thing to do is refer you to one of the links in the first paragraph so you can check them out. I have only watched the first few so far because there is over 6 hours of video but I plan to get through them all eventually (after certain writings are out of the way). Anyway, he also made an index video which describes what is going with these, the final installments in his project.

Three months later, a series of 4 vidoes called "Operation Saturation" provided an update. Operation Saturation: On the Threshold Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Update 1: This post was stepped up a bit by the "reply to Sean" update. I decided I wanted to throw a little more info out there and then leave it be for a while. The other Sean did point out a website in his reply called climate audit which discusses the Hockey Stick controversy (the Wikipedia article is as good a place to start as any if you are interested in this). While it is sometimes touted as an important argument by climate change skeptics, it is in fact a single study done 8 years ago dealing with palaeoclimate data and the methodological discussions surrounding it are mute (although the strenuous deconstructive studies of the hockey stick graph are clear evidence of how minutely climate change studies are analyzed and critiqued for errors). It is only one of a great many studies using many different data sets which all say the same thing. The graph above is a new and improved "hockey stick" graph employing multiple studies (Gavin Schmidt, Michael Mann, and Stefan Rahmstorf from REALCLIMATE). So, I'll say it again, the fact of climate change is NOT based on any single study it is based on hundreds of studies and an overwhelming preponderance of supporting data which has been checked and rechecked by skeptics, scientists, scientific institutions, governments, and companies. All pointing to the same conclusion. Basing one's stance on climate change solely on whether one is "intelligent enough to follow and understand the math presented at climateaudit.org" (as other Sean puts it) is nonsense.

Update 2: Check out Gristmill's "How to talk to a climate skeptic", also recommended by WM42. I should point out that here is a sub-article with that series discussing the hockey stick controversy and it deals with the crux of McIntyre's (from climate audit) problems.

Update 3: In all fairness, also check out the British "documentary" The Great Global Warming Swindle (though it has been largely discredited it is the most popular skeptic movie I can find, here is the Wikipedia article). It was kind of a response movie to Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. Even better though is the "Great Global Warming Swindle Debate " an ABC program which discusses this film and some of the issues raised in it with input from both sides (Part 0, Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8).

Update 4: I forgot to give a shout out to Updog&Indy's post about crazy environmental shit going on right now.