"Educated" opinions on climate change - Part 3 42

[jmw]

At 273 posts I guess the time has come to request the old thread archived and continue in a new thread and it is in this thread that I think the latest news has its proper place.

The world has never seen such freezing heat

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml=/opinion/2008/11/16/do1610.xml

Oh dear,
just what do you have to do to lose the last shreds of credibility?

Tell me honestly folks, how many engineers would still have a job with a track record like Hansen?
Actually, perhaps we'd better not answer that because I suspect the answer is that in any profession there are complete f***-ups who will never be brought to book simply because the credibility of the people who have believed them for so long is also at risk and once one goes then the domino effect comes into being.

I guess that it is only when NASA closes that we will see and end to the career of this fine purveyor of temperature data but we can be sure he will turn up in some other role on the IPCC or as an acolyte of Nobel Laureate, Al Gore.

Success, it seems, depends not on getting it right but on notoriety and why else would so many deadly politicians earn so much on the speaking circuit once they have finally left office and while their dark deeds are still fresh in everyone's mind?


You know I can't help wondering, if it weren't for those "Chads" I wonder what sort of a condition the world would be in now? And, if we are in dire financial straits now, what kind of position would we otherwise be in?



JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

B2theory,
In your first post in the thread, forum and website you open by saying:

I am always rather shocked when I find Engineers on the this side of the argument. It seems clear to me that you all should have received the type of education required to do a high level analysis of the topic or at least trust the peer review process to ultimately give you an increasingly accurate picture of what's going on.

One supposes that your primary interest is in climate rather than engineering per see but one does presume that you will have read the original and the two extensions of this thread as well as the other threads on climate on this site.

I suspect you should be shocked by any consensus view whether in the engineering or scientific communities where that consensus relates to the whole concept. Consensus would indicate a closed mind set of the community or group associated with that concept which is the end of any further development of ideas or concepts. Very few concepts are ever realised fully formed and most usually start with one precept and thereafter successive debate and evaluation refines and expands well founded initial precepts and rejects ill-founded concepts.

There is no way that the climate science or any science can ever hope to be so complete that there is not room for improved understanding.

Ergo, if no one questions the concept either in its entirety or in its detail then there can be no advance in understanding and there is nothing where there is not at least some scope for dissent.

What should surprise would be that there is no dissent about AGW and especially so where there are "trained minds" or at the very least, suspicious minds.

It would have been satisfactory for you to adopt one or other position in the argument and to bring new ideas or research into the discussion without your opening statement appearing to have been designed to challenge this community with the idea that as engineers, tere is no room for dissent.

Presumptive and patronising and assumes a position of superior intellect that you are right and those who disagree are wrong. This may well be true but it is not proved by defining engineers as those who agree with you and the IPCC and thus those that do not agree as not being good engineers.

I guess that others have made allowances for your newness to the forum but your opening has rankled some what and I finally had to comment.

However, that aside and excused, I look forward to new arguments, a new perspective and new data being brought to the discussion.

I would like to suggest that what should also be surprising is the extent to which politicians have accepted and adopted the AGW concept without requiring an independent study group, a control if you will, to try and recreate the original work (difficult as the Wegeman report, indicated by LCruiser, says where the data has been manipulated in an unsatisfactory and not fully open manner, and where the computer model used has not been openly available for evaluation.

Furthermore, I should expect that a fully independent study group should also be asked to formulate its own approach to climate change for comparative purposes.

The test of any theory should be that it is fully open and susceptible to independent duplication of the results much as cold fusion has been subjected to such testing and found wanting in that the original research results could not be duplicated meaning either that it was unsound or not properly understood.

I see no evidence of any such independent duplication.

What, we then ask, is it that we expect of the peer review process?
Peer review, especially such as is adopted for publication of articles, cannot necessarily endorse the science but simply assure that it is honestly done and honestly presented by competent and suitably qualified reviewers. The science itself may ake much longer to evaluate.
By the same token consensus is no measure of the truth or otherwise of any theory; the truth, such as can be found, will be dependent on that theory being rigorously tested and adapted as new data and insights become available and, most importantly, on the predictions made from the theory being testable and provable.

I may be wrong but it seems to me we still have an unfounded theory and one for which even the most basic predictions have failed to produce any satisfactory ratification.

Well, short of any new ideas, data or science, I guess we will be doomed to repeat ourselves, but each time shouting louder and louder at each other.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

It begins to look as if argument is now academic since Obama has appointed Prof John Holdern to the post of scientific advisor...
Here is a sample of his thinking:

http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/uploads/2007_11-6_Forum_(NXPowerLite).pdf

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[LCruiser]

Wow - the guy drank the koolaid for sure.

Page 5 - he uses Hansen's temperature, by far the most alarmist of all "measurements", and his "error bar" doesn't even include the possibility the satellites are right.

Page 6 - He doesn't even understand the role of the sun in modulating galactic cosmic particles. He talks about solar "input" - and the use of the term input vs. output (of the sun) shows an imbalance in his frame of raference.

55 more pages of the same stuff. Sickening.

 

[b2theory]

jmw (Industrial),

I took a day off to think about your comments. I don't think that you are being entirely unreasonable. So I will try to explain to POV my reaction comes from.

I am a full time working EE that is also a PhD student. I am not part of any active climate research. My background is applied optics, mechatronics, and analog hardware design.

I would see my world view as a through back to the days of the enlightenment. I am a slave to science. Data and method are unmerciful and unforgiving companions in life. [I know how pompous this sounds. Feel free to laugh at me because I am right now.]

I see the modern world as one of dimming intellect and exploding egos. As the internet has gone to the populace over the past twenty years, it appears to be weakening the scientific footing which led to its own development. Instead of becoming a tool of knowledge and enlightenment, it has become a tool of confusion and means to buttress failed ideas. The ease with which charlatans and hacks can develop channels for mass broadcast is breath taking. In the short-term this appears to have muddied the waters of nearly every single societal question of any significance. Everything needs to be organic for no reason at all. There are poisons and "toxins" in everything. A President, that is regarded for his ineptitude, is widely believed to be at the center of a false flag operation that took down the WTC. Idiots are emboldened not to vaccinate their kids because they can google "vaccnine" and "autism" and find sites warn against the "scientifically" prove causal link between the two.

If this were only the minority and the crazies participating in this carnival of ignorance who would really care? At some level I could even see it as good fun. However, these internet driven notions are exploding into real life and there are consequences.

There is another insidious trend that is contributing to this firewall of ignorance. A very coherent, and twisted, notion of "debate" has crystallized in our country. There is a notion that you must provide equal weight for the opposition position of every topic. In peoples minds and in the media, this allows pseudoscience to be elevated in merit to the level of disciplined and controlled science in the name of being "fair and balanced".

If CNN is doing a story on the Autism Scare they will have a medical doctor with a background in infectious disease on to debate with Jenny McCarthy. If you criticize the outlandishness of the situation you will be accused of squelching debate. The puppets of pseudoscience will claim that they only want a debate on their topic. This appears to be their tactic when confronted with repeatable scientific experiments that invalidate their closest world view. They mask their social/political/religious agenda as a scientific one.

People need to remember that society is quite capable of coming to conclusions on things. We no longer debate whether the Earth is flat. "Debate" has been transformed into a means to indefinitely clutch to our beliefs when they are proven to not conform to reality. Debate is dead because people forgot or refuse to admit that they can actually be lost.

Now onto a more personal and self critical thought..... I used to be just like my opposition. I denied the existence climate change and attacked the perceived political cabal that was pushing it. I used nearly every single argument that LCruiser uses.

Then I got my BSEE. I immersed myself in physics and applied science. Being a history geek, I became very interested in how we know what we know. I learned that maybe the best part of the story is not what we have learned over the past two centuries but how we learned it. I saw stories of scientists who were far more interesting because their intellectual courage than their scientific prowess. You have people who come to experimental conclusions that upset their own closely held views on life, religion, and the very nature of the universe. When confronted they transformed their world views. It is far harder to challenge your own views than those of anyone else.

So how do you do this? How can you trust your conclusions? The enlightenment gave us patterns of critical thought such as the scientific method. Over the past two centuries this has been the cornerstone of the scientific publication and review process. The decades of scientific journal publications are the lab book of our entire civilization. If you discover something new, you publish your hypothesis, methodology, observation and conclusion. If you have done this accurately and faithfully, then others will be able to replicate it. In this public forum, people have the ability to critique your methodology and conclusions in a reasoned manner. If your work is flawed it can be amended or thrown out entirely.

Being curious and willing to trash my notions of reality I started reading the literature around climate change. I feel I have a decent grasp of both the state of the science and how it arrived where it is. As a result I came to the conclusion that the consensus view of warming during the past 150 years is accurate and there could be consequences down the road.

I will yield that there is indeed actual debate as to what that means when the rubber hits the road. What happens to hurricanes when there is more thermal energy in the atmosphere? There are predictions that go lots of ways. What will happen to the climates of various regions and how will it affect agriculture? Again, there are some good indications that we might be much worse off, particularly in Americas western cattle country. Yet, there don't appear to be any hard and fast predictions.

If you were to ask me to make a reasoned policy decision I would base it on the fact that much of our civilization is built around coastal regions. The potential destabilizing affects of serious damage to these regions seems very compelling to me. That is neither here nor there.

Now to the heart of it... Much of the so called descent or denial of anthropomorphic climate change is rooted in pseudoscience. Like it or not, that is reality. I will not convince LCruiser or you that M&M are hacks or that you should be extremely suspicious of the Wegemen report. This is a conclusion that you have to come to for yourself.

What is extremely irritating to me is that engineers have a fairly sound scientific background. We all sat in physics and laughed as the med school students struggled. I also know that engineers tend, for some reason, to be a very conservative bunch. While I don't mean to universalize my own experiences, I am surrounded by people that are clearly putting their politics ahead of science.

What do you actually know of Dr. Hansen's work? Have you read his papers? Have you read the follow up done on his work? Do you realize that there are hundreds of other scientists involved in this research. Did you go to any of the most reputable scientific journals and start pulling articles? Or, do you Google search your topic and scour websites until you find one that meshes with your understanding.

For example you state...
I would like to suggest that what should also be surprising is the extent to which politicians have accepted and adopted the AGW concept without requiring an independent study group, a control if you will, to try and recreate the original work (difficult as the Wegeman report, indicated by LCruiser, says where the data has been manipulated in an unsatisfactory and not fully open manner, and where the computer model used has not been openly available for evaluation.

To me this indicates that you haven't even done the slightest actual research into this topic. If you had you would have know that there were two reports commissioned. One was deliverd by Wegemen's group and the other was delivered by the National Academy of Sciences. If you did some more reading you would discover that they affirmed Mann's "Hockey Stick" graph. [

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v441/n7097/full/4411032a.html

]. If you did some more digging you would discover that the multitude of data gathered since 1998 has largely supported Mann as well as providing a more detailed an geographically diverse picture.

What do you use to draw your conclusions? I will argue for the reasons given above that peer-reviewed science is the only thing worthy of your time.

If your conclusions are based only on an intense loathing of Al Gore... well then I don't really blame you. I will admit that both sides have their trolls. Yet, take a more critical look. You will find that data available makes this a slam dunk.

One more thing... I will say one thing in defense of Hansen. The guy is human. He is also a vanguard in many ways. Thus, his work has received a disproportionate amount of scrutiny. It has just as many errors as the next guy's. Any errors in his work has been interpreted by those on the outside as a reason for the wholesale dismissal instead of the typical corrections that come with the development of any evidence based theory. Even Einstein had to make corrections to General Relativity. Cut the guy a break and realize that he may have had a much tough road than you can imagine.

I will also apologize for my abrasiveness. I was too rude.

 

[jmw]

I like your autism example.

This is exactly the problem and why we are increasingly less trustful, less blindly accepting of everything we are told.

In the UK the MMR jab scare is exactly similar but the interesting thing is these stories don't originate from some quack or from a lunatic fringe, or from some conspiracy theorist let lose on the internet, they mostly originate with some doctor or other who needs publicity, who needs grants or who needs to be published or just needs his ego stroked or who may even be well meaning but doesn't understand statistics or RR ratio significance levels.

While there is much to criticise I do not believe we should seek to censor the internet because I happen to think it has been instrumental in preventing an abuse of position and abuse of trust by the very fact that it has provided a medium not just for cranks but also for honest and diligent "deniers" who have been denied a direct right of appeal.

No, you may not on my behalf call for the debate to be closed or the right to debate to be denied to people who hold opposing views.

I say again that you seem to consider it alarming that so many engineers haven't accepted AGW as "fact" and I consider it healthy.

Very healthy.

I used to be just like my opposition. I denied the existence climate change and attacked the perceived political cabal that was pushing it. I used nearly every single argument that LCruiser uses.

But you didn't at that time, post here and say:

"I am always rather shocked when I find Engineers on the this side of the argument. It seems clear to me that you all should have received the type of education required to do a high level analysis of the topic and conclude, as I have, that it is nonsense."

We are no longer prepared to accept that doctor knows best but we are increasingly encouraged to question and seek to understand and make our own decisions and by extension we should be able to question anyone and everyone especially when what they claim will have a great impact on our lives.

In this case the second opinion seems to raise some serious questions about the original diagnosis and prognosis.

Engineers are more logical than most and thus you should not be surprised that many question Hansen et al. Nor should we be surprised that others accept what has been proposed.

I do not have blind faith in the IPCC as some sort of scientific elite sitting on mount Olympus.

Not all scientists are honourable, honest nor have they all the same high levels of integrity we expect and some do cheat, do falsify data, do plagiarise etc etc because, as you say, they are only human.
And that is why we do not just cut them a break and accept what they say blindly and especially not when so much is at stake. We question, we see others question and we look at the answers given.

The human response when you have floated a huge mistake is to try and prop it up. The visible effect is no different whether Hansen believes or does not believe. We just see what appears to be a single person who has made a claim which has the most far reaching import for us all and we are to simply accept? Where is the reproducibility? where are the proven predictions?

When those answers make sense, when we see the full scientific method applied then we may start to accept.

The UN is a political animal.
It is not some rarefied scientific community and as such it demands that its every utterance is scrutinised with the utmost care.

I haven't had the pain/joy to sit in on the IPCC meetings but I have sat through many days of MEPC meetings of the IMO, another UN institution dealing with the environment, and I have seen just how what seems plain and logical and sensible can be turned on its head in meetings. The very fact that I was in attendance and have had some slight impact should tell you how dangerous it would be to accept the "doctor knows best" theory because we aren't just on the internet, we are in the committee rooms as well, along with FOE and Greenpeace and other NGOs.

Scary.


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

And as for predictions:

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,24820442-25717,00.html

On the subject of Prof Holdern, he shows in his presentation, the problem of the monsoons.... in other research, the monsoon weather patterns, droughts in other parts etc have been allegedly caused by global chilling.... itsellf due to pollution more readily provable, that of particulates from fossil fuel burning and the irony is that SOX emissions, so steadily and significantly reduced in parts of the world and from shipping, are one cause. There are calls (from a Nobel prize winning scientist) for sulphur to be fired into the atmosphere using rockets and artillery (more recently the proposal is for artifical volcanoes).

Oh well.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

You know, following that last post I realised we have it all wrong.

We think that truth, fact and proved or disproved theories are what it is all about when it is far simpler,what we do will depend on what the King Maker says .... by King Maker I mean the man with the power to determine, through his vast media empire, who shall govern us and what we shall believe, or not believing, pay for anyway; Rupert Murdoch. What he says in his red tops and via his media is what the red top readers will believe.

The man is here:

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2004/07/b122948.html

Sadly, I have to tell you he has now decided he believes in Global Warming after all:

http://www.terradaily.com/reports/Rupert_Murdoch_Changes_Mind_On_Global_Warming_999.html

SO that's it guys, better start putting aside some money to pay for it all.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[jmw]

Damn, I would have liked to have seen that.... maybe I should become a Sun reader...

http://money.cnn.com/2007/08/14/news/companies/pluggedin_gunther_murdoch.fortune/index.htm

His campaign gathers pace.

JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[CajunCenturion]

Seems to be a lot of trust being placed in the peer review process which isn't justified.

Very true.

Here is some additional reading on the subject of peer-review.

[li]British scientists exclude 'maverick' colleagues, says report[/li]
[li]Peer review as scholarly conformity[/li]
[li]Challenging dominant physics paradigms[/li]
[li]Trial by peers comes up short[/li]
[li]Peer Review is Censorship and Intimidation[/li]
[li]Peer-censorship and scientific fraud[/li]

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[b2theory]

CajunCenturion (Computer)

Very true.

Here is some additional reading on the subject of peer-review.

I read your first two articles. I must say that I don't think you understand what the term "maverick" means. Try to defend science in the face of todays pseudoscience and you will very quickly see that creationists, the anti-vaccine crowd, HIV denial, climate change deniers, and other charlatans have zero interest in actual science. They are interested in the appearance of being scientific. Some groups are going so far as to create their own "scientific" publications. That way they can claim their work is peer-reviewed. I kid you not that there are peer-reviewed "publications" that claim the HIV doesn't cause Aids.

I would agree with their point that simply shouting down the cranks doesn't really change anything. In fact it plays in to their fantasies of the loan wolf against the establishment.

 

[CajunCenturion]

==> I kid you not that there are peer-reviewed "publications" that claim the HIV doesn't cause Aids.
That's nothing new, and it precisely proves the point. Putting trust and confidence in peer-reviewed publications is meaningless. Justifying your arguments because they appear in a peer-reviewed publication is no justification at all.

==> I must say that I don't think you understand what the term "maverick" means.
I think there is a lot of stuff you don't understand.


Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[CajunCenturion]

I would agree with their point that simply shouting down the cranks doesn't really change anything. In fact it plays in to their fantasies of the loan wolf against the establishment.

No, simply shouting down the cranks doesn't change anything; nor does calling them pariahs, accusing them of engaging in pseudo-science, questioning their intelligence, and then patronizing those members of the engineering profession who contribute to these discussions.

I hope you go on to read the other papers as well.

----------

Let's look carefully as what you've said.

In your post of 10 Dec 08 22:16, you said

==> First, the theoretical underpinnings of anthropomorphic climate change appears to be very robust.

I commend you for recognizing the theoretical nature of the position, and that the position is not one of fact, but one which appears to be robust. Further, you later reinforce those uncertainties abound when in your post of 10 Dec 08 23:32 you say,

==>Trying to perform numerical analysis to provide predictions of chaotic systems is difficult. Trying to do that when you are still exploring the fundamentals of the systems is damn near impossible. You only end up with trend lines. The variabilities are measured in months and years.

Sounds pretty clear that we're dealing with a chaotic system, and I think everyone is well aware of that. Further, that we're still exploring the fundamentals of the system, that providing predictions is damn near impossible, and so far, all we have are trend lines with measurable variability. Yet, it appears robust, and you proceed to berate scientists and engineers who don't blindly fall in line and accept it at face value.

In your post of 18 Dec 08 13:06, you state that,

==> The climate change consensus has peer reviewed science on its side.

It's obvious that you hold the peer-review process in high esteem, but in your post of 10 Dec 08 23:32, you state that

==> I kid you not that there are peer-reviewed "publications" that claim the HIV doesn't cause Aids.

So should we trust peer-reviewed publications or not?

In your post of 10 Dec 08 22:16, you said,

==> There has been zero research that has withstood the rigor of peer review that challenges its fundamental premise. What does this mean....? It means that the same process that yielded the solid state physics of the transistor, the nuclear physics of modern thermonuclear weapons, and the double helix of DNA says that the surface level atmospheric temperature will rise.

First of all, you don't know there has been zero research. Nevertheless, the answer you offer to the rhetorical question is essentially saying that the veracity of your theory rests in lack of published evidence to the contrary. And since there is no evidence to the contrary, then this theory ranks right up with those you enumerate. I can only speak for myself, but I don't accept this claim on those merits, nor any claim which depends on the lack of evidence to the contrary.

Like you said, it's theoretical, it appears robust, it's a chaotic system, we're still exploring the fundamentals, and providing predictions is damn near impossible. On those points, I think, at least I hope, we all agree.

My final comment will be to reiterate the closing paragraph in my post of 19 Dec 08 10:03.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[b2theory]

CajunCenturion (Computer)

I think you may have misunderstood my comments. I mentioned the HIV denial example to illustrate the attempt to appear scientific when clearly you have a political agenda. Those articles can be found in "Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons". Sounds official, right? Thats the point. I would not extend that criticism to any of the top science journals. Science, Nature, AIP...etc.

Because you obviously don't understand what my stance is I will spell it out explicitly. I am not aligning myself with the militant climate change crowd(You might actually be surprised as to what my course of action would be.). I am simply defending the science.

The science says that increasing CO2 in the atmosphere will increase the mean temperature in the atmosphere. The evidence says that the industrialization of the global civilization has increased the total CO2 concentration by over 100ppm. There has been an anomalous increase in the global temperature over the past 150 years that corresponds with the predicted link between CO2 and global climate. It is almost certainly warmer now than at any point in the past 500 years. With a lower degree of confidence, the data indicates that we are warmer than any period during which we have reliable proxies, this includes the medieval warm period.

The proceeding statements are the result of peer-reviewed, reproducible experiments that has been subject to some of the highest scrutiny that has ever been applied to any area of research. If you want to argue that you throw that out on some perceived grounds of widespread academic fraud perpetrated by a cabal of socialist scientists, I don't know what to say to you. I want to call you an idiot. However, this will not cause you to challenge your beliefs. I will say that your line of reasoning deviates significantly from anything that would allow for objective criticism and honest discussion. I will also say, as I have tried to say before, that you aren't acting in a manner consistent with someone who has spent a tremendous amount of time in Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry...etc.


I make no claims as to the implications or future trends. That is what I meant by inferring the system is chaotic. It is obvious that it will be very difficult, though not impossible, to make high confidence predictions as to the implications of any future warming. However, I believe it is impossible for you to engage in useful discussion without recognizing what we do know with a high degree of certainty.

I also recognize that there is a tremendous amount of pseudoscientific garbage floating around masquerading as science fact. For example, do you have any idea how many times I have heard that volcanoes produce more CO2 annually than humans. How many times have you said this with out doing some fact checking? In reality humans emit 130 times the amount of CO2 generated by volcanoes.

 

[rb1957]

i think the key difference of opinion (belief?) is how significant is the impact of AGHG on global climate compared to, say, the sun.

some say that AGHG is dominated by non-AGHG change agents, so measures directed towards changing AGHG won't have a significant effect on climate.

others obviously think otherwise ! some think it is the dominate change agent; some think that mitigating even the small contribution of AGHG is worth "any" cost.

i think it is a different discussion to consider that climate change is acoming, and we as engineers should be looking to ways to help sustain our existence (maybe even prosper) in the face of these changes. the most efficient means for generating energy, the most efficient means for using energy.

it is also an entirely different discussion as to whether we should consume fossil fuels on a more efficient ("eco-friendly") manner. i guess that though the "greens" have been politically active for decades and have accomplished some degree of change but not enough ? that is untill Al Gore took up the gauntlet ??

 

[cranky108]

So if global warming is a problem, why are the most intrusive proposels to solve it being offered first?
Why not propose the least costly, and least intrusive solutions first? The answer is simple, there is a politicle agenda. And thats the main reason the science is being questioned so hard.

After all the greenies have questioned each and every clean coal proposel so far, and none of them seem good enough. If this wasen't political, then why isen't even a 10% reduction good enough as a start? Or why isen't there a big demand for nucular energy?

 

[jmw]

I mentioned the HIV denial example to illustrate the attempt to appear scientific when clearly you have a political agenda. Those articles can be found in "Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons". Sounds official, right? Thats the point. I would not extend that criticism to any of the top science journals. Science, Nature, AIP...etc.{/quote]
Fine, but my point was that the "learned" genuine journals are not to be trusted either, nor reports from ostensibly qualified and authoritarian sources.

In other words you can't expect us to simply roll over and accept every utterance of a scientist without question. Those days are long gone, if they ever really existed.

Now that goes ditto for "peer reviewed".

I am not being political.
I am simply somewhat surprised by the attitude with which you have approached this topic on this site and with these engineers.

You may not have intended to be patronising but that is how it seemed. You have gone on to say:

....climate change deniers, and other charlatans....

I presume that if we choose to disagree with you that that is us, charlatans.

B2theory, welcome to the site, welcome to the debate and especially welcome if you come with the idea of a discussion among your peers, not your inferiors.






JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[b2theory]

jmw (Industrial)

Fine, but my point was that the "learned" genuine journals are not to be trusted either, nor reports from ostensibly qualified and authoritarian sources.

In other words you can't expect us to simply roll over and accept every utterance of a scientist without question. Those days are long gone, if they ever really existed.

Now that goes ditto for "peer reviewed".


I am reading what you are saying and the only way I can interpret it is to mean: "We can know nothing." Do you mean to say that a reproducible experiment has no more merit than a cranks ramblings?

What is your criteria to believe an concept to be true?


I am simply somewhat surprised by the attitude with which you have approached this topic on this site and with these engineers.

You may not have intended to be patronising but that is how it seemed. You have gone on to say:

I wouldn't classify the typical lay person as a climate change denier, even if they fail to see the forest for the trees. I leave that for the jerks who are profiting from the muddying of the waters. It is my belief that if you spread disinformation as an authority on a subject that can result in potentially negative consequences for people you are a charlatan. You might not agree with my applying this label to climate change deniers, but I imagine you would agree to the word "charlatan" for other less controversial people who exhibit this behavior.


B2theory, welcome to the site, welcome to the debate and especially welcome if you come with the idea of a discussion among your peers, not your inferiors.

Take a step back. Look at some of your own words. In fact look at the initial post in the thread....

Oh dear,
just what do you have to do to lose the last shreds of credibility?

Tell me honestly folks, how many engineers would still have a job with a track record like Hansen?

As someone who has taken the time to educate them self on the topic, I am offended by your tone. Who the heck are you to slander Dr. Hansen? Who has told you that his credibility is anything other than flawless? My first impression, is that you haven't read a shred of the research on the topic. At this point you haven't done anything to change my mind. In fact, if I am understanding your previous statements, you don't care what any research of any kind says.

So what is the point of this debate? I certainly do not consider you inferior. However, I don't just think you to be wrong about climate change, I consider your views about science to be deeply flawed. I also fully expect you to believe me to be some poor mindless drone who has "drank the kool-aid".

To that end I feel that it is a requirement to not only defend the fundamental premise of climate change but modern science as an institution.

 

[jmw]

We remain mutually offended.

You have quite evidently joined eng-tips not as an engineer (this is the only forum you subscribe to and the only thread) but as a convert to AGW and thus we have no true appreciation of your credentials as anything other than an AGW supporter, one who claims to have "seen the light" and cannot undsrtand why educated engineers should not all also have seen the light.

You do not say how you would have entered this discussion in your days before your epiphany but if you are saying you would have been equally robust then fair enough, we would have enjoyed your eating humble pie.

None of us here claims to be expert on climate change, self taught or not, but we do try and learn from each other and from such science as is evident in the world but we recognise that we do not have the answers here, we simply want a better understanding. There are proponents of both sides here but I don't recall a similar approach to this topic at any time previously.

If you want to drop the superior "I have seen the light and don't understand you guys who have not" attitude and offer something new then please do so and we will get along a lot better.

If you are going to present yourself as an authority, autodidactic or otherwise, you'd better bring credentials. No one else here has has that presumption. You have not established any credentials in any other field for us to otherwise judge you and you do not appear to have brought anything new to the debate (or did I miss something?).

You claim the link between CO2 and AGW but do not explain why CO2 lags Temperature and you do not come and explain to us how "greenhouse gas effects" can continue above a certain saturation level to continue to increment the temperature, nor why with corrections to the temperature data more significant the the change predicted we should place such trust in the disputed temperature data.

Most of the people here post in numerous threads and have been judged by their peers in their own fields which lends them some credibility as engineers. In this forum we none of claim to be expert and it is where we can bring differences of opinion (not assumed status) to the discussion.

But who are you to point the finger at my comments on Hansen when your own comments on M & M are before us.

Please, take another look at what you have said and approach this community with some better understanding of what and who it is.

You may, from your comments have quite a strong opinion of who I am and thus we are mutually ill informed since we have only this thread and these last posts to inform us.

However, had you been an engineer who had taken the trouble to visit this site in your engineering capacity and contribute as others have done you might find yourself better acquainted with the other members to whom you apparently feel so superior.

You seem to feel that the IPCC is untainted with human fallibilities. If you have sat through any IPCC meetings then please enlighten us. I have not. The nearest I have come is spending more days than I'd like in MEPC meetings (the MEPC is a committe of the IMO, another UN organisation) which were enough for me to realise that politics and science do not happily co-exist. By the way, you will be encouraged to know that I have had my own small impact on environmental issues which ought to worry you and ought to make you wonder if similar morons have been at play in the IPCC....

Otherwise feel free to bang on as much as you like since it may appear I am the only one offended here and now is when I will shut up.


JMW

http://www.ViscoAnalyser.com

 

[GregLocock]

Well, jmw may be the only one offended, but I am certainly amused.

My whole professional life has been concerned with taking and analysing dodgy and misleading data, and then building dodgy and misleading models, and trying to use those models to predict what changes I should make to unrepresentative prototypes in order to improve the final product.

On average, I have succeeded.

One thing I have learnt to be very wary of is the dangers of extrapolation, and the dangers of using models that are not based in physics. Specifically, with climate change, they are using models that must, by necessity, work by extrapolation, from a noisy data set, in a chaotic system, as opposed to a car which is, by and large, deterministic.

Worse than that, the models are not physics based. That is, they predict that warming of the atmosphere at a certain altitude is the most important criterion, so the model, and the data, should agree on that. They don't.

SO, they've got noisy data, and a model that doesn't agree with its driving parameter. And they are going to use this to predict the future 50 years out, and ask for gross changes in the expected standard of living of 3rd world countries, and some annoyance in first world countries, as a result.

Forgive me if I use an Anglo Saxon expression, but, you've got to be bleep kidding me.

Cheers

Greg Locock

SIGlease see FAQ731-376 for tips on how to make the best use of Eng-Tips.

 

[b2theory]

jmw (Industrial)

Fair enough. I have been lurking on this site for awhile. There is a tremendous amount of insightful information from nearly everyone who posts. You are right that I should be contributing in other threads.

I guess I wasn't overly compelled as I was primarily trying to read from the beginning many of the threads in certain areas of interest.

As I gave you my credentials before. The only thing I can add is that I am moving into a more pure research role. This is forcing me to rely more and more on published work, particularly in the areas of optical phonons and plasmons.

I will state explicitly that I am by no means a climate expert. The more I learn on the subject the more I realize I know nothing. My previous comments should indicate that I am dedicated skeptic. We live in a world of almost continuous disinformation. To ignore it is to invite disaster(in my mind).

I came across this thread and saw it for what it was... a conservative climate change "pile on". I also know from past experience with people holding such positions that you are convinced beyond convincing. I have close friends, that I don't look down on, that hold that position. I have learned that you will very quickly end up a lonely man if you call everyone and hold their feet to the scientific fire.

Like I said initially, this thread struck a cord because it wasn't the typical losers at Fark or Digg spouting off. It was my peers. Try to look at it from my perspective. My background is in Physics in addition to Electrical Engineering. I have profound respect for all of you based on an understanding of how difficult it is to find success at what we do. Thus, when (in my eyes) I see such obvious errors in critical thinking I am really blown away. When I say this I am not trying to call you stupid or make you feel inferior. I am trying to tell you that you are thinking about this problem all wrong.

Now, I am trying to make this topic as much as possible about the grounds upon which you sort through conflicting messages. This is not tangential to the topic. This is at the heart of it. There is obviously enough conflicting information to cause extreme dissonance. At which point people seem to make up their minds based on idealogical affiliation.

Keep in mind that, while my current criticism is directed towards a traditionally conservative stance, I see the same level of uneducated crap from my liberal friends. This often results in them vastly overstating the problem and its potential consequences(See the Day After Tomorrow).

So I have tried to ask you: How do we know what we know? How do we free ourselves from analysis paralysis. Is there so much uncertainty that real knowledge is impossible.

I apologize if I have offended you with respect to my comments on M&M and ClimateAudit. I may have brought a lot of baggage to this discussion regarding them. I should have provided a much more detailed explanation as to why they are considered pariahs everywhere except for conservative talk radio.

I hope this post will help to frame my position and motivation. I will try to post detailed and sourced arguments regarding the individual nuances of this intellectual conflict. Maybe I will change your mind.

As an aside, I went to sleep last night wondering why no one has ever put together a diagram of how we know what we know. I had the same though while watching Weaponology on the Military Channel. I think the lineage of knowledge is fascinating. It would be very cool to see a diagram of ideas, experiments, and seminal papers as they have progressed through time. Ideas build on each other as successful experiments provide us with an even more detailed understanding of nature.

I most likely won't post until after the holidays. Until then, merry Christmas and have a safe happy holiday with your family and friends.