One engineers perspective on global warming 33

In forum1554 MVP members of eng-tips.com develop articles for publication on the Internet. This informal peer-review process has resulted in several articles being published thus far. Early indications make this seem to be an effective way to make information available to the engineering profession.

One of the articles was on my perspective on global warming. It was published today.

I would be very interested to participate in a discussion here about the article or the subject in general. There were several conversations that were started and then cut short in the Engineering Writers Guild because that group is intended to promote publication, not debate points of view. If anyone want to take up those conversations, this is the place to do it (although it is too late to correct formatting, grammar, or punctuation errors).

The article is available at: One engineer's perspective on global warming

Thank you to all of those who worked hard on this article to keep me more or less honest. I had a lot of help, but at the end of the day any errors and/or omissions are mine. I'll share the credit for the good stuff, but I own the mistakes.

David Simpson, PE
MuleShoe Engineering

Law is the common force organized to act as an obstacle of injustice Frédéric Bastiat

 

[btrueblood]

"" We knew that Newtonian Physics was wrong well before a Swiss Patent Clerk showed why ""

"Will you enlighten me about this. I always thought that the Swiss Patent Clerk invented the theory to deal with a paradox he
needed to work out and only then was it tested. "

Read chapter 2 of

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_special_relativity

...specifically, the Michaelson-Morely experiments of 1887, Voigt's transformation (which was "largeley ignored" by the mainstream scientists until it was brought up again by that whacko Swiss patent clerk), and the work of Poincare and Lorentz in the years leading up to Einstein's first paper in 1905.

That problems with Newton's equations were known to exist, see

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tests_of_general_relativity#Perihelion_precession_of_Mercury

especially: "This anomalous rate of precession of the perihelion of Mercury's orbit was first recognized in 1859 as a problem in celestial mechanics, by Urbain Le Verrier."

also, further down:

"Deflection of light by the Sun[edit]
Henry Cavendish in 1784 (in an unpublished manuscript) and Johann Georg von Soldner in 1801 (published in 1804) had pointed out that Newtonian gravity predicts that starlight will bend around a massive object.[10] The same value as Soldner's was calculated by Einstein in 1911 based on the equivalence principle alone. However, Einstein noted in 1915 in the process of completing general relativity, that his (and thus Soldner's) 1911-result is only half of the correct value. Einstein became the first to calculate the correct value for light bending.[11]

Regarding scientists misrepresenting the accuracy/validity of their results, see

http://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/200608/history.cfm

It is interesting to plot the "accepted value" of the charge-to-mass ratio over time, as subsequent experimenters kept reading closer to the real value, but were fain to go against the value published by the vaunted physician JJ Thompson. The result is a slow convergence over time to the current value, and papers such as the one above being published long after the passing of the "culprit".

 

[GTTofAK]

btrueblood,

The sad thing is that on an engineering forum people who demand evidence that there were known flaws on classical mechanics and that Einstein proved how and why.

I'm quite convinced by this discussion that many here are lying about their education, and qualifications. I find it impossible that engineers would not now such simple facts.

 

[GTTofAK]

The issue of convergence to the real value over time is also something that I find very puzzling with climate science. Generally speaking as time goes on and more research is done we converge close and closer to the real value. In the case of "climate science" the proposed range for the forcing of CO2 has not changed significantly in over 30 years. One would think that if "climate scientists" were on the right track after 3 decades and billions of dollars the range should shrink closer and closer to the true value. Instead the range is still is still pretty much as large as it was in the 80s.

In other less politicized fields of science this lack of convergence would be seen as prima fascia evidence that the field is on the wrong track.

 

[rconnor]

Beej67, I’ll try to be as calm, clear and to the point as I can be.

The Clean Power Plan was never designed to single handedly prevent global warming.

The Clean Power Plan was designed to be an important first step towards reducing emissions.

The Clean Power Plan will provide benefits to Americans through reducing health issues associated with pollution and damages from climate change. If you don’t believe the latter is real, then ok, your issue should be with the science the policy is predicated on, not with the policy itself. However, even if you feel the latter isn’t real, then even ignoring it, there is still a large net benefit to Americans.

The CATO analysis of of X tons of CO2 saved = Y deg C lower temperature = $Z saved in climate change related costs is not how it climate change works as the relationship between tons of CO2 saved, temperature changed and climate costs are not perfectly linear. Climate cannot be parsed so easily. Climate change mitigation must be looked at as a cumulative goal towards a specific ppm target. Many studies have done this properly and you’re welcome to research them. The CATO analysis is fundamentally misleading (which, I’d argue, is their intent). So this isn’t dismissing the CATO analysis because it comes from CATO. It’s dismissing a fundamentally flawed analysis because it’s fundamentally flawed.

 

[2dye4]

bt

Thanks for the informative links. Had no idea that early measurements were sensitive enough to find Relativity effects.

Regarding Millikan I could imagine that many of his drop experiments had something wrong with them. He likely recorded
the data, puzzled over the inconsistencies and possibly found the causes.
When the data became more consistent he used that for his result.

I would not fault him for casting out known bad data from known causes.

If I understand correctly he reported an number that was much closer to the true accepted value than any other at the time.

Is this right ??

How could he have misrepresented his data if he got the answer right ?

GTTofAK
I don't know the science of atmospheric physics so I can't comment. But I just might conclude that being careless with the facts in one sphere
makes it likely that others from the same individual are also in error.

 

[IRstuff]

"In other less politicized fields of science this lack of convergence would be seen as prima fascia evidence that the field is on the wrong track."

Or, just that the state of the art is the state of the art. It is extremely difficult to determine open-loop gains in a closed-loop system.

Newtonian mechanics are not "wrong" in general, they are "wrong" for particular problems; special and general relativity ONLY cover a small portion of the entire field of physics. You do not need to use relativity in the equations of motion for your car running down the street.

TTFN
faq731-376

Need help writing a question or understanding a reply? forum1529

Of course I can. I can do anything. I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert!

 

[GTTofAK]

2dye4,

"GTTofAK
I don't know the science of atmospheric physics so I can't comment. But I just might conclude that being careless with the facts in one sphere
makes it likely that others from the same individual are also in error."

With the one piece of supporting evidence that rconnor has posted to support his assertion that AGW causes stratospheric cooling I dont think that Dr. Santer was careless at all. The parsing of his words was careful, deliberate, and well thought out. Once cannot accidentally or carelessly make such a statement as Dr. Santer made. Dr. Santer parsed his words so as to make no lie of commission, a patently false statement, and instead used lies of omission, lies of context, and lies of misleading and dissembling to make sure that the reader was given a totally wrong impression . This isn't carelessness. This is intentional deceit. So yes I am very suspect of any field where such statements make it into the literature and are apparently left unchallenged as well.

 

[rconnor]

2dye4,

Yes, he sure has made “a lot of unproven assertions”. Has he ever provided supporting evidence outside false analogies? He did refer to “the 2007 paper” (which I had to guess which one it was) but even then I can’t find any line in it that defended his position (quite the opposite actually, it talks about negative brightness along CO2 bands). Using an analogy that established science has changed in the past can be used to attack ANY established theory and defend ANY crazy counter-theory. Anti-vaxxers and Young Earthers say the same thing. So, the logical might and debating prowess of GTTofAK is only equaled by Jenny McCarthy and Ken Hamm. Just because established science has changed in the past, it does not follow that the climate science consensus will change. It might but there appears to be little credible evidence to suggest that at this time (and with this he has offered nothing).

I also applaud your ability to show composure after he said that you weren’t an engineer. I wouldn’t have been able to show as much restraint. Where I practice, to accuse a fellow engineer of not being an actual engineer is a serious accusation and, if done flippantly, this could be considered a violation of the Code of Ethics for engineers. We have to deal with some pretty bizarre arguments but I think he’s a special class. In a 24 hour period, he’s:
- Implicitly questioned the greenhouse theory (and I’m not talking about ACC but the bare bones greenhouse gas theory) and offered no supporting evidence
- Said that OLR has increased along bands associated with CO2 and offered no supporting evidence
- Used (and improperly referenced) regional data of the US southern great plains as evidence against global increases in downward radiation (despite the author of the paper he (improperly) referenced explicitly stating in the abstract that this shouldn’t be done)
- Categorically rejected all temperature data over 30 years old and offered no supporting evidence
- Supported, or at least the defended, the conspiracy that skeptical research is being suppressed within academia and offered no supporting evidence (besides some anecdote about Salby being left at an airport…)
- Grossly misinterpreted (and I would add purposefully so) ever single argument presented to him (ironically most of that was when he was accusing me of using straw man arguments)
- Confused OLR and TOA (hint: clear sky condition is how you study OLR, TOA takes into account the larger picture. They aren’t the same thing.)
- Said that the rise of atmospheric CO2 is natural and not anthropogenic
- Mentioned (not even referenced) Salby’s widely discredited research as his sole example to support this
- Claimed that the reason Salby’s research wasn’t accepted was because of a conspiracy within academia
- Called Santer a liar about 6 times and claimed that the only reason it was published was due to “pal review” (despite actually agreeing with his paper that the ACC theory correctly predicted stratospheric cooling and stratospheric cooling would not have occurred at this time had it not been for anthropogenic CO2 emissions)
- Referred to Logical Fallacies around 127 times (and many/all of those were done so inappropriately)
- Referred to his superior debating skills

 

[GTTofAK]

"- Implicitly questioned the greenhouse theory (and I’m not talking about ACC but the bare bones greenhouse gas theory) and offered no supporting evidence"

Nope CO2s direct forcing is 1C I expect that the climate sensitivity is somewhere between 0.5 and 0.9, i.e. negative feedback. If I was denying greenhouse gas theory all together I wouldn't be talking about feedbacks because no feedbacks would exist. More and more you are proving that you are not an engineer.

"- Said that OLR has increased along bands associated with CO2 and offered no supporting evidence"

You correctly identified the paper. Its my fault you wont read the data. It clearly shows brightening in the 700 band. Its not my fault the authors don't want to talk about it. Its clearly there in the data. Since you are looking for a quote and not the data you are again proving that you are not an engineer.

"- Used (and improperly referenced) regional data of the US southern great plains as evidence against global increases in downward radiation (despite the author of the paper he (improperly) referenced explicitly stating in the abstract that this shouldn’t be done)"

Some of the links you gave were regional as well such as Evens 2006, which is data form Ontario. Given the physics regional or global should not matter CO2 is well mixed and should be observable anywhere given a long enough time frame. Hence even many of your links were regional or poorly distributed. One used 20 something stations in the US and only 1 in Europe. Calling that a global sample is a joke.

"- Categorically rejected all temperature data over 30 years old and offered no supporting evidence"
I rejected its accuracy within a tenth of a degree. Do I need to prove to you why so many weather stations are at airports. You demand proof for very very simple concepts or simple facts proving once again that you are no engineer.

"- Confused OLR and TOA (hint: clear sky condition is how you study OLR, TOA takes into account the larger picture. They aren’t the same thing.)

"Said that the rise of atmospheric CO2 is natural and not anthropogenic"
Said you cannot tell based on light and heavy carbon ratios, as the IPCC claims so the issue is arguable. IMHO its probably not a an all or nothing but hte IPCC is clearly wrong in its assertion based on carbon ratios.

"Confused OLR and TOA (hint: clear sky condition is how you study OLR, TOA takes into account the larger picture. They aren’t the same thing.)"
Nope
The OLR is estimated directly from several ABI infrared radiances for each ABI pixel, regardless of sky condition.

http://www.goes-r.gov/products/opt2-upward-longwave-toa.html

I really don't know where you are getting this crap. You kind of missed the point. You cant cherry pick data points in a real world test. You cant look at only clear days to see how the system is behaving. Real world tests are all or nothing. If you cant or wont look at all the data you dont do the real world test at all. Once again you are proving to me that you really aren't an engineer.

- Supported, or at least the defended, the conspiracy that skeptical research is being suppressed within academia and offered no supporting evidence (besides some anecdote about Salby being left at an airport…)
Lots of people get fired for rocking the boat. It takes no massive conspiracy.

"- Mentioned (not even referenced) Salby’s widely discredited research as his sole example to support this"
How is it discredited. His research was rejected because a reviewer, brought in late, said it wasn't innovative enough not that it was wrong. We are seeing this excuse being used to round file a lot of skeptical papers recently.

"- Claimed that the reason Salby’s research wasn’t accepted was because of a conspiracy within academia"
Never claimed such a thing. Just group think, same thing happens in the real world of business no conspiracy needed. Go along to get along.

"Called Santer a liar about 6 times and claimed that the only reason it was published was due to “pal review” (despite actually agreeing with his paper that the ACC theory correctly predicted stratospheric cooling and stratospheric cooling would not have occurred at this time had it not been for anthropogenic CO2 emissions) "

Called him a liar and proved it no less. As for pal review probably true. And ACC theory predicting stratospheric cooling no, you still don't get why the stratosphere cools proving yet again that you are not an engineer because its not a hard concept. Stratospheric cooling and AGW share teh same cause CO2, however they are not physically related. That is like saying that pissing and drowning are physically related.

"- Referred to Logical Fallacies around 127 times (and many/all of those were done so inappropriately)"
Oversimplification and exaggeration fallacy. I'm able to list so many fallacies because you keep making them.

"- Referred to his superior debating skills"
When you are good at something you are good at something. Have faith in your abilities not yourself. That is confidence. You seem to lack it.

 

[GTTofAK]

BTW rconnor

"- Called Santer a liar about 6 times and claimed that the only reason it was published was due to “pal review” (despite actually agreeing with his paper that the ACC theory correctly predicted stratospheric cooling and stratospheric cooling would not have occurred at this time had it not been for anthropogenic CO2 emissions) "

Don't think I didn't notice that you are trying to morph your position on stratospheric cooling here. By now you have had enough time have researched the issue and know that I'm right about stratospheric cooling and you are attempting to change your position without admitting that you were wrong.

 

[HenryOhm]

GTTofAK,

"The OLR is estimated directly from several ABI infrared radiances for each ABI pixel, regardless of sky condition."

I'm quoting you but your link included that very same sentence. But, the link is for the GOES-R satellite. At the top of your linked page it's entitled "Future Capability Product Description." The satellite's main page (

http://www.goes-r.gov/)

says, "The first satellite in the GOES-R series is scheduled for launch in early 2016." Why are you including and quoting verbatim a link to a site that is about a future satellite and its future capabilites?

 

[mendinho]

@beej67 @GTTofAK I do not know why you seem angry. I apologise if I said something inconvenient or wrong. It is simply my humble opinion that skeptics provide fears and doubts just to keep the climate debate going but cannot provide a solid theoretical alternative to the official Anthropogenic Global Warming theory.

Have you ever read the Structure of scientific revolutions by Thomas Kuhn? Well, according to Kuhn, the concept of falsifiability is unhelpful for understanding why and how modern science has developed as it has. In the practice of contemporary science, scientists will consider the possibility that a theory has been falsified if an alternative theory is available and they judge it credible. Such is life.

If >90% of climate scientists are wrong (vid.

http://climate.nasa.gov/scientific-consensus/)

please, given your fantastic skills, knowledge and intelligence, persuade them asap. I do not have much time to write posts but I will keep reading the thread from time to time. Regards,

http://notonlybridges.blogspot.com

 

[2dye4]

Re GTTofAK

I don't mind his pithy insult of not being an engineer. It is a device he is deploying to avoid providing details. Nice move.

I could say that any engineer who doesn't understand that everything ultimately has a statistical nature to it and casts scorn on
"statistical exercises" is also not an engineer.

Have you noticed the particular writing style of skeptics, Zdas being the exception ( his paper was well written ), they tend to
write with sentences that don't flow together as well as paragraphs. It is a shotgun scattering of factoids meant to tweak emotions
not make coherent points. This seems to extend up into real professional papers ( to the extent they exist ).

GTTofAK has pre deployed a mechanism to avoid having to deliver specifics. However we aren't fooled by that are we.

He is harmless. Beej , GregLocock, and Zdas carry the skeptic argument much more skillfully.

 

[beej67]

The Clean Power Plan was never designed to single handedly prevent global warming.

It doesn't impact global warming at all, according to the EPA's models, yet the EPA claims it will avert 30 billion dollars worth of climate related damages.

Explain that.

I have an explanation, that goes like this: "The EPA cooked the books."

What is your explanation?

The Clean Power Plan was designed to be an important first step towards reducing emissions.

It's a great first step towards reducing emissions, because it reduces emissions. But there's a complete disconnect between reducing emissions and global warming, as evidenced by the EPA's own models. And that first step cost us the same amount of money as preserving an amount of rain forests equal to the entire country of Honduras.

The Clean Power Plan will provide benefits to Americans through reducing health issues associated with pollution

Freeze right there. Ok, great. But you don't save any money from that, because people still die and dying still costs money.

and damages from climate change.

What damages? The damages from going up 0.02 extra degrees centigrade over the next century? What damages are those?

If you don’t believe the latter is real, then ok, your issue should be with the science the policy is predicated on, not with the policy itself.

I'm presuming the EPA's science is absolutely real, and that they're not lying to us with the MAGICC model, and based on that presumed real science, the policy does not produce anything like what the EPA and Obama claim the policy produces. My issue is absolutely with the policy, and with the organizations proffering that policy lying to everyone about the effectiveness of that policy. I may have issues with the science, but I can set those issues aside, presume that the science is 100% correct, and the policy is still dumb, as verified by the science.

However, even if you feel the latter isn’t real, then even ignoring it, there is still a large net benefit to Americans.

What benefit? Are you moving the goal posts a third time?

There is no climate benefit of any kind from a 0.02 degree difference over 100 years, so we can throw that dollar figure in the EPA's fact sheet out the window.

There is no financial benefit from the health benefits gained by reducing pollution, when you take into account the fact that everyone dies eventually, and no matter what they die from we don't save money, unless they're dying from car crashes or falling off cliffs.

There is a lifespan benefit from reducing pollution. I will not deny that. But the EPA fact sheet said nothing about that benefit. If the EPA would like to reissue their fact sheet saying that the 8 billion dollars on reduction of carbon emissions is going to increase life expectancy, amortized across the entire american population, by four months, I might buy that. If they did that, we could compare other ways to spend 8 billion dollars to expand life expectancy, to have an honest policy comparison. We could also throw different ways to eliminate the harmful pollutants from CO2 emitting power sources into the discussion, to see which is the best way to spend our money.

But nobody's saying that, now, are they? Here's what Obama's saying:

The Clean Power Plan has public health and climate benefits worth an estimated $55 billion to $93 billion per year in 2030, far outweighing the costs of $7.3 billion to $8.8 billion.

The whole thing is cooked books. No honest scientist would stand by this. Go back and read the two links you quoted to me earlier. Read them in detail. They're cooked. And your camp keeps dodging this question, so I'll keep posting it until you guys quit dodging it:

Someone gives you 8 billion dollars to spend on protecting the environment. Pick which will have the most impact:

A) Preserving 75,000 square miles of rain forest, or
B) Curbing 0.02 degrees of warming in the 21st century.

Pick.

In particular, lets be very clear that (A) isn't fanciful, it's an actual number that could be actually realized without leaning on science some people find questionable, and (B) outright presumes that the EPA and AGW camps are correct in their modeling.

The truth is this: You carbon people are destroying the future credibility of the entire environmentalist movement with your attitude of spending infinite amounts of money on tiny climate returns, while the whole world goes extinct from stuff that has nothing to do with the tiny changes in climate you might be able to achieve. The world is going extinct because of toxic pollution (not CO2), increased disease/invasive species vectors, and loss of habitat. And you are fiddling with models while the world burns.

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[beej67]

Breaking this out separately:

The CATO analysis of of X tons of CO2 saved = Y deg C lower temperature = $Z saved in climate change related costs is not how it climate change works as the relationship between tons of CO2 saved, temperature changed and climate costs are not perfectly linear. Climate cannot be parsed so easily. Climate change mitigation must be looked at as a cumulative goal towards a specific ppm target. Many studies have done this properly and you’re welcome to research them. The CATO analysis is fundamentally misleading (which, I’d argue, is their intent). So this isn’t dismissing the CATO analysis because it comes from CATO. It’s dismissing a fundamentally flawed analysis because it’s fundamentally flawed.

CATO did not claim the relationship was perfectly linear. CATO used a very nonlinear EPA model to determine what the savings were. CATO even ran three different IPCC scenarios, to make sure they had all their bases covered.

If those 8 billion dollars spent were the "first tiny step" towards your cumulative goal, and the money spent on that "first tiny step" could also just as easily permanently preserve 75,000 square miles of rain forest, (math above) then I contend that we could probably save the entire South American rain forest, every single acre of it, for the cost of about ten of those first tiny steps.

So which is better for the environment? Preserving all of South America's wilderness and biodiversity for future generations, as well as its very real effect on global climate, or making ten tiny steps towards CO2 reduction which might amount to a whopping 0.2 degrees difference a century from now?



Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[beej67]

mendinho,

Yes I've read Kuhn. It's quite good. I have my qualms with the state of the science, and I've expressed those in another thread, but the larger issues to me is that even if the science was right, there's a complete disconnect between the science and the policy. And the scientists conveniently clam up on making any kind of assertion about the effectiveness of any policy proposal, other than "well we have to do something."

Hydrology, Drainage Analysis, Flood Studies, and Complex Stormwater Litigation for Atlanta and the South East -

http://www.campbellcivil.com

 

[GTTofAK]

"I'm quoting you but your link included that very same sentence. But, the link is for the GOES-R satellite. At the top of your linked page it's entitled "Future Capability Product Description." The satellite's main page (

http://www.goes-r.gov/)

says, "The first satellite in the GOES-R series is scheduled for launch in early 2016." Why are you including and quoting verbatim a link to a site that is about a future satellite and its future capabilites?"

The website is an informative website on the new satalite. The page gives definitions of OLR and TOA radiation. The fact that the satellite is new has nothing at all to do with the definitions of OLR and TOA. You will find nothing to support rconnor assertion that I was confusing OLR and TOA or his definitions of them such as OLR, from scientific pages all the way to the wiki page, being only clear sky conditions. There is OLRc which is clear-sky outgoing long wave radiation. In short he made it up and hoped that he was right.

"I could say that any engineer who doesn't understand that everything ultimately has a statistical nature to it and casts scorn on
"statistical exercises" is also not an engineer."

I didn't say just a "statistical exercises" "purely statistical exercise" meaning that there is no underlying science. Mann's reconstructions are what are known as statistical reconstructions. The man doesn't even collect his own data. He takes what may be proxies throws them into a statistical meat grinder and sees if they somehow correlate to temperature somewhere. This is a purely statistical exercise, correlation = causation, Mann does not purport to show how these proxies correlate to temperature only that they do for his calibration period and therefor are temperature proxies for their entire record. Contrast this with the aforementioned ice cores which are scientific proxies. They have a solid established and verified scientific relationship to temperature in their oxygen isotope ratios. While some statistics may be involved ice core analysis is not a purely statistical exercise as is the case with Dr. Mann's reconstructions.

mendinho,
"Have you ever read the Structure of scientific revolutions by Thomas Kuhn?"

Yes I have and Kuhn does not mean that in a positive sense. Kuhn argue that scientists tend to stick to the current paradigm and that science advances on funeral at a time. People on both sides of the issue try and claim Kuhn as you are doing here. Personally the people who try and argue as you did are wrong. As Einstein showed falsification precedes paradigm shift. Science had already moved on. There were plenty of young minds like Einstein trying to figure out what was wrong with classical mechanics. It was the scientists that were stuck in the paradigm. My statement was the science advances through falsification and paradigm shifts. I'm right you are wrong. You need to learn to read more critically.

 

[GTTofAK]

"GTTofAK has pre deployed a mechanism to avoid having to deliver specifics. However we aren't fooled by that are we."

If you stop making logical fallacies I wont stop pointing them out. There is no need to go wrestling with pigs in mud. I'm not going to dirty my hands arguing against what is an obvious logical fallacy.

 

[2dye4]

GTTofAK

If MBH98 data sources were not good proxies the statistics would not work. The sources of data in the study are quite varied with
solid established and verified scientific relationship to temperature including your acknowledged ice core data.

""
The network includes (Fig. 1a) the collection of annual-resolution dendroclimatic, ice core, ice melt, and long historical records used by Bradley and Jones 6 combined with other coral, ice core, dendroclimatic, and long instrumental records.
""

Combining many disparate sources of data that share a common factor in their evolution is a well know and accepted statistical technique see for example
sensor data fusion.

If you wish to dismiss these techniques as "purely statistical exercises" then have at it but science uses the methods to draw very reasonable conclusions
nearly daily.

BTW point out an example of a result where "correlation is causation" is not the sole deciding factor in human decision making.

How do you know that if you drop a rock it will fall to the ground. If you are honest all you can say is that is what most people think will happen and that is
what I have always observed to happen. No matter how well a phenomena is understood and considered solid science or is one of "law" or "accepted" and "established" it always comes down the the degree of correlation that has been observed.

I missed another of your fine techniques. Beside claiming your arguments rest on common knowledge to avoid filling in pesky details you also deploy the
" logical fallacy " discussion excuse without backing it up so as to avoid the holes in your ideas.

Tell me again how asking a person in a debate to support their assertions is a logical fallacy.

BTW i think your quote is a direct logical fallacy or a Freudian slip.

""If you stop making logical fallacies I wont stop pointing them out""

In other words you are going to point out logical fallacies that have not actually materialized. Yup I say it was a Freudian slip.

 

[rb1957]

"If MBH98 data sources were not good proxies the statistics would not work." ... NO, the math will work on whatever data it's given. as shown, Mann's statistical model gives the same hockey stick with a noise input.

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati