Educated Opinions on Climate change - a denouement or a hoax? Part 2.0 29

[GregLocock]

An invasion by billions of giant man-eating martians would also be catastrophic. That is a pretty poor press release, they have conflated some facts and some wild ass guess.

Begging the question is the technical term.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[beej67]

Again, it's your burden to research and support *your* hypothesis.

Nope. My position is it could be stuff other than carbon. If your position is that we are sure it's primarily carbon, then it's your job to rule out everything else other than carbon.



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[dawei87]

Nope. My position is it could be stuff other than carbon. If your position is that we are sure it's primarily carbon, then it's your job to rule out everything else other than carbon.

And it *COULD* be fairy dust from Europa or the reflection from a thousand orbiting teapots. To demand that every creative idea be ruled out before an already strongly supported hypothesis be accepted is a fantastically convenient way to delay action until never, because the wonder of human creativity means that there are precisely infinity "alternative" explanations that might be dreamed up. There will NEVER be a time when SOMEONE won't be able to think of a different answer, and that is the case for every single scientific theory out there. Same tactic the creationists do when offering their little prizes for someone to "prove" evolution: they never pay up because they can always just flip to the next page of their notepad and say "well what about THIS explanation?"

If you make a legitimate and strong case for your hypothesis then it should be my burden to address that hypothesis if it is contradictory to the one that I support. But you haven't; so far your case has amounted to little more than speculation and "maybes" with a bit of conspiracy theory. There are thousands of flavors of that floating around and I'm not really interested in indulging it further. I think I have already spent more time entertaining it than most others would. If you take the time to develop a strong scientific argument then I'll be very interested to read it, because at the very least your idea *is* original, and I respect that. But I'm not going to continue doing your homework for you.

 

[jmw]

This is science. I always thought that if you present a hypothesis then it is up to you to support the hypothesis.
Under the scientific method it is every scientist's task to try and disprove the original hypothesis.
But I forget, the scientific method has been suspended for the duration.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[GregLocock]

Yes,Feynman had some strong opinions on that

http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm

Sorry it is a badly formatted long quote, but it raises so many things that are missing from the AGW debate, and the general style of papers seen when they involve computer models and their calibration. Remember, in Feynman's opinion if you don't do this stuff you aren't doing real science.


"But there is one feature I notice that is generally missing in cargo cult science.
That is the idea that we all hope you have learned in studying
science in school--we never explicitly say what this is, but just
hope that you catch on by all the examples of scientific
investigation. It is interesting, therefore, to bring it out now
and speak of it explicitly. It's a kind of scientific integrity,
a principle of scientific thought that corresponds to a kind of
utter honesty--a kind of leaning over backwards. For example, if
you're doing an experiment, you should report everything that you
think might make it invalid--not only what you think is right about it: other causes that could possibly explain your results; and
things you thought of that you've eliminated by some other
experiment, and how they worked--to make sure the other fellow can
tell they have been eliminated.

Details that could throw doubt on your interpretation must be
given, if you know them. You must do the best you can--if you know
anything at all wrong, or possibly wrong--to explain it. If you
make a theory, for example, and advertise it, or put it out, then
you must also put down all the facts that disagree with it, as well
as those that agree with it. There is also a more subtle problem.
When you have put a lot of ideas together to make an elaborate
theory, you want to make sure, when explaining what it fits, that
those things it fits are not just the things that gave you the idea
for the theory; but that the finished theory makes something else
come out right, in addition."

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[jmw]

Another part of the essay:

The first principle is that you must not fool yourself--and you are the easiest person to fool. So you have to be very careful about that.
After you've not fooled yourself, it's easy not to fool other scientists. You just have to be honest in a conventional way after
that.

I would like to add something that's not essential to the science,
but something I kind of believe, which is that you should not fool
the layman when you're talking as a scientist.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[moltenmetal]

David, I'm just calling a spade a spade. There is clear bias in the way you present this information. You say that CO2 concentrations at Mauna Loa were "stable near 290 ppm in the 1960s", whereas in fact the annual mean CO2 concentration rose continuously through the 1960s and has risen ever since. You claim that it has risen "to 330 ppm since", which is also a gross distortion: global CO2 concentration has grown well above 380 ppm.

The data from Mauna Loa correlate well with data from many, many other weather stations, and with the ice core data.

No credible scientist disputes the rise in atmospheric CO2.

While you are correct that correlation, even strong correlation, does not prove causation, it is possible to check the validity of the correlation of CO2 with fossil carbon combustion by many secondary means. This has been done, repeatedly.

Again, you can dispute the importance of atmospheric CO2 forcing on overall global temperature and I'll have some respect for that position, although I don't share it. But to dispute the atmopheric CO2 concentration rise itself is pretty clear evidence of bias in your analysis.

 

[zdas04]

It was flat, not it is increasing. If I got the magnitude wrong, it was a failure in my memory of a number that I don't much care about, not an intentional misrepresentation, I said I thought the data was very good. what the hell do you want? The data I was looking at was at NOAA.

Checking the correlation between "temperature" and CO2 is done using methods that are typically +/-100 years for the recent data and +/-1000 for the older correlations. The granularity of this data simply does not support a determination of whether CO2 is a leading, lagging, or non indicator of climate change.

David

 

[josephv]

"Real-world visual evidence has a unique ability to convey the reality and immediacy of global warming to a worldwide audience. The Extreme Ice Survey provides scientists with basic and vitally important information on the mechanics of glacial melting and educates the public with firsthand evidence of how rapidly the Earth's climate is changing."

Here is some interesting time-lapse photography:

http://www.extremeicesurvey.org/index.php

 

[jmw]

Interesting in more ways than one as this comment over at Watts Up With That shows.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

PS the message here is that you can tell as many lies with images as with statistics.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[ewh]

...Florida's coastline would recede to Orlando.

Wouldn't that pretty much put the entire peninsula under water?

"Good to know you got shoes to wear when you find the floor." - [small]Robert Hunter[/small]

 

[beej67]

To pull the most relevant image out of the link above...

Pay close attention to the red lines.

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[jmw]

And not just the red lines but what they mean:

Note that the majority of the glacier retreat occurred well before CO2 was said to be a problem, when CO2 was at the “safe” level below 350 parts per million as espoused by weepy Bill McKibben and Dr. James Hansen of NASA GISS.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[GregLocock]

I'd have expected glaciers to retreat as we leave an Ice Age. Perhaps I have misunderstood the concept.

Cheers

Greg Locock


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[josephv]

From the National Snow & Ice Data Center

"... Since the early twentieth century, with few exceptions, glaciers around the world have been retreating at unprecedented rates. Some scientists attribute this massive glacial retreat to the Industrial Revolution, which began around 1760. In fact, some ice caps, glaciers and even an ice shelf have disappeared altogether in this century. Many more are retreating so rapidly that they may vanish within a matter of decades..."

http://nsidc.org/cryosphere/glaciers/questions/climate.html

 

[jmw]

See above.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[beej67]

Carbon was pretty close to flat from 1750 to 1860, when the majority of the bay melted.

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[zdas04]

Everybody accuses members of the "Denier" religion of cherry picking data and using bombastic rhetoric. Pretty good example from the other side

"... Since the early twentieth century, with few exceptions, glaciers around the world have been retreating at unprecedented rates. Some scientists attribute this massive glacial retreat to the Industrial Revolution, which began around 1760. In fact, some ice caps, glaciers and even an ice shelf have disappeared altogether in this century. Many more are retreating so rapidly that they may vanish within a matter of decades..."

Not exactly what I was brought up to think of as "calm scientific discourse". More like what you'd expect from the tabloids.

David

 

[jmw]

12% or 1.3%?
wind t€urbines seem to be spinning less than spinned about as in this article which looks at a recent self-serving declaration by Renewables UK.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com