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The point is we need a statistical test developed for this sort of stuff regardless of the whole evolution debate, and when we have one developed, we could apply it to the DNA record for the past and see what it turns up.

As I said, if we had a Jurassic park time machine to collect DNA samples from the past, that might be feasible. But without a time machine, DNA simply doesn't last long enough for any sort of rigorous analysis. Even using a time machine to collect DNA samples, it's not clear that it would be possible to distinguish a rapid change in natural selection pressures from the work of a supernatural designer.

I doubt it would support ID, but it does make ID falsifiable.

I've previously listed a few experiments that already could have falsified evolution. Your fantasy doesn't count because it's too vague and requires technology that doesn't exist and may very well be impossible. That's why you wouldn't be able to publish it in a reputable evolutionary biology journal, but if this bill goes through maybe your chances will improve.

Here's a good analogy. When I was debating Brett, I proposed a "crazy hypothesis of a non-biologist" to falsify abiogenesis. I think your argument is similar to mine (albeit more vague- I didn't see you describe the exact steps necessary to identify a statistically abnormal mutation).

But I was describing abiogenesis, which scientists consider more tentative and mysterious than evolution (a separate topic.) And I later became more skeptical of my own proposed falsification, calling it an example of my "ignorance of exobiology". These sorts of musings shouldn't be conflated with the actual falsifications that have been repeatedly applied to evolution.

But all this is beside the point anyway, because Beelzebud was right to point out that "intelligent design" argues that "irreducably complex" structures like flagella can't possibly have evolved naturally. The list of these "irreducably complex" grows without bound, because it's a scientifically useless concept that embodies the "argument from incredulity".

Occasionally I think climatologists’ arguments are wrong (like RC.org and your stance towards Watts) ... [ShakaUVM]

... the temperature station project was worthwhile, and various (real) papers have credited Watts for his work. [ShakaUVM]

... both Watts and the Mc's have occasionally made actual contributions and been cited in the literature. [ShakaUVM]

I could copy and paste links from thread after thread where you had to be dragged kicking and screaming to make even the smallest admission that Watts' empirical station survey had any work. I could post all of those links, and make you look stupid. Or I could just say it outright. Which I just did. [ShakaUVM]

Due to cognitive dissonance, most IDers would rather have their fingernails pulled out than talk about all the cases where they think the theory of evolution works just fine (similar to how Khayman had to be dragged kicking and screaming to finally admit that *maybe* there was some *small* benefit to AGW-denier Watts' station survey work) ... [ShakaUVM]

Again, my stance towards Watts is that he's convinced an army of crackpots that Real Climate is bullshitting about the temperature record despite the fact that he hasn't performed any original research to back up these libelous conspiracy

Occasionally I think climatologists’ arguments are wrong (like RC.org and your stance towards Watts) ... [ShakaUVM]

... the temperature station project was worthwhile, and various (real) papers have credited Watts for his work. [ShakaUVM]

... both Watts and the Mc's have occasionally made actual contributions and been cited in the literature. [ShakaUVM]

I could copy and paste links from thread after thread where you had to be dragged kicking and screaming to make even the smallest admission that Watts' empirical station survey had any work. I could post all of those links, and make you look stupid. Or I could just say it outright. Which I just did. [ShakaUVM]

Due to cognitive dissonance, most IDers would rather have their fingernails pulled out than talk about all the cases where they think the theory of evolution works just fine (similar to how Khayman had to be dragged kicking and screaming to finally admit that *maybe* there was some *small* benefit to AGW-denier Watts' station survey work) ... [ShakaUVM]

Again, my stance towards Watts is that he's convinced an army of crackpots that Real Climate is bullshitting about the temperature record despite the fact that he hasn't performed any original research to back up these libelous conspiracy

Well, I'm neither an AGW-denier nor a creationist, but at least Mr. Fuckwit would have some basis for calling me an AGW denier, even though my criticisms are valid; the CRU was behaving in an anti-scientific sort of way, and the investigation rightly called them out for it. Calling me a creationist, though, is as stupid a criticism as calling me short. [ShakaUVM]

FWIW, I believe in AGW, and think it’s a serious problem. Does that sound like a crackpot creationist to you? No? Oh, I guess you don’t fucking know what you’re talking about, do you? [ShakaUVM]

... referencing the Salem Hypothesis (a reference to Creationism) *was* insulting. [ShakaUVM]

Thanks for making the record. You sounded just like the Creationists that get really evasive when pressed to explain some of their answers. In fact, saying that they don’t have time to educate people is one of their favorite lines. [ShakaUVM]

Years ago, I wrote an article defining science using falsifiability, and explained why ID/creationism doesn't qualify. In it, I pointed out that "Intelligent Design" advocates are humorously evasive about the identity of the Designer, but "wossname" has to be the funniest example I've ever heard. Anyway, a computer scientist replied to my article, saying "I'm a creationist" then claimed that a prominent atheist scientist's belief in panspermia amounted to secular belief in ID/creationism. He argued that "evolution is almost infinitely adaptable like this, and is thus unfalsifiable" which can be rephrased as "you can prove nearly anything using evolution" or "you can sort of argue anything using evolution" or "... With the same rationale, evolution is impossible to falsify as well...". Like most creationists, he used the term evolutionist liberally but at least he didn't babble about ID excluding creationism. He also didn't pull a Ben Stein by trying to link Darwin to Nazis. Brett's real classy like that.

Later, Marble joined Andy Schlafly and other "skeptics" in

Well, I'm neither an AGW-denier nor a creationist, but at least Mr. Fuckwit would have some basis for calling me an AGW denier, even though my criticisms are valid; the CRU was behaving in an anti-scientific sort of way, and the investigation rightly called them out for it. Calling me a creationist, though, is as stupid a criticism as calling me short. [ShakaUVM]

FWIW, I believe in AGW, and think it’s a serious problem. Does that sound like a crackpot creationist to you? No? Oh, I guess you don’t fucking know what you’re talking about, do you? [ShakaUVM]

... referencing the Salem Hypothesis (a reference to Creationism) *was* insulting. [ShakaUVM]

Thanks for making the record. You sounded just like the Creationists that get really evasive when pressed to explain some of their answers. In fact, saying that they don’t have time to educate people is one of their favorite lines. [ShakaUVM]

Years ago, I wrote an article defining science using falsifiability, and explained why ID/creationism doesn't qualify. In it, I pointed out that "Intelligent Design" advocates are humorously evasive about the identity of the Designer, but "wossname" has to be the funniest example I've ever heard. Anyway, a computer scientist replied to my article, saying "I'm a creationist" then claimed that a prominent atheist scientist's belief in panspermia amounted to secular belief in ID/creationism. He argued that "evolution is almost infinitely adaptable like this, and is thus unfalsifiable" which can be rephrased as "you can prove nearly anything using evolution" or "you can sort of argue anything using evolution" or "... With the same rationale, evolution is impossible to falsify as well...". Like most creationists, he used the term evolutionist liberally but at least he didn't babble about ID excluding creationism. He also didn't pull a Ben Stein by trying to link Darwin to Nazis. Brett's real classy like that.

Later, Marble joined Andy Schlafly and other "skeptics" in

Well, I'm neither an AGW-denier nor a creationist, but at least Mr. Fuckwit would have some basis for calling me an AGW denier, even though my criticisms are valid; the CRU was behaving in an anti-scientific sort of way, and the investigation rightly called them out for it. Calling me a creationist, though, is as stupid a criticism as calling me short. [ShakaUVM]

FWIW, I believe in AGW, and think it’s a serious problem. Does that sound like a crackpot creationist to you? No? Oh, I guess you don’t fucking know what you’re talking about, do you? [ShakaUVM]

... referencing the Salem Hypothesis (a reference to Creationism) *was* insulting. [ShakaUVM]

Thanks for making the record. You sounded just like the Creationists that get really evasive when pressed to explain some of their answers. In fact, saying that they don’t have time to educate people is one of their favorite lines. [ShakaUVM]

Years ago, I wrote an article defining science using falsifiability, and explained why ID/creationism doesn't qualify. In it, I pointed out that "Intelligent Design" advocates are humorously evasive about the identity of the Designer, but "wossname" has to be the funniest example I've ever heard. Anyway, a computer scientist replied to my article, saying "I'm a creationist" then claimed that a prominent atheist scientist's belief in panspermia amounted to secular belief in ID/creationism. He argued that "evolution is almost infinitely adaptable like this, and is thus unfalsifiable" which can be rephrased as "you can prove nearly anything using evolution" or "you can sort of argue anything using evolution" or "... With the same rationale, evolution is impossible to falsify as well...". Like most creationists, he used the term evolutionist liberally but at least he didn't babble about ID excluding creationism. He also didn't pull a Ben Stein by trying to link Darwin to Nazis. Brett's real classy like that.

Later, Marble joined Andy Schlafly and other "skeptics" in

Well, I'm neither an AGW-denier nor a creationist, but at least Mr. Fuckwit would have some basis for calling me an AGW denier, even though my criticisms are valid; the CRU was behaving in an anti-scientific sort of way, and the investigation rightly called them out for it. Calling me a creationist, though, is as stupid a criticism as calling me short. [ShakaUVM]

FWIW, I believe in AGW, and think it’s a serious problem. Does that sound like a crackpot creationist to you? No? Oh, I guess you don’t fucking know what you’re talking about, do you? [ShakaUVM]

... referencing the Salem Hypothesis (a reference to Creationism) *was* insulting. [ShakaUVM]

Thanks for making the record. You sounded just like the Creationists that get really evasive when pressed to explain some of their answers. In fact, saying that they don’t have time to educate people is one of their favorite lines. [ShakaUVM]

Years ago, I wrote an article defining science using falsifiability, and explained why ID/creationism doesn't qualify. In it, I pointed out that "Intelligent Design" advocates are humorously evasive about the identity of the Designer, but "wossname" has to be the funniest example I've ever heard. Anyway, a computer scientist replied to my article, saying "I'm a creationist" then claimed that a prominent atheist scientist's belief in panspermia amounted to secular belief in ID/creationism. He argued that "evolution is almost infinitely adaptable like this, and is thus unfalsifiable" which can be rephrased as "you can prove nearly anything using evolution" or "you can sort of argue anything using evolution" or "... With the same rationale, evolution is impossible to falsify as well...". Like most creationists, he used the term evolutionist liberally but at least he didn't babble about ID excluding creationism. He also didn't pull a Ben Stein by trying to link Darwin to Nazis. Brett's real classy like that.

Later, Marble joined Andy Schlafly and other "skeptics" in

Well, I'm neither an AGW-denier nor a creationist, but at least Mr. Fuckwit would have some basis for calling me an AGW denier, even though my criticisms are valid; the CRU was behaving in an anti-scientific sort of way, and the investigation rightly called them out for it. Calling me a creationist, though, is as stupid a criticism as calling me short. [ShakaUVM]

FWIW, I believe in AGW, and think it’s a serious problem. Does that sound like a crackpot creationist to you? No? Oh, I guess you don’t fucking know what you’re talking about, do you? [ShakaUVM]

... referencing the Salem Hypothesis (a reference to Creationism) *was* insulting. [ShakaUVM]

Thanks for making the record. You sounded just like the Creationists that get really evasive when pressed to explain some of their answers. In fact, saying that they don’t have time to educate people is one of their favorite lines. [ShakaUVM]

Years ago, I wrote an article defining science using falsifiability, and explained why ID/creationism doesn't qualify. In it, I pointed out that "Intelligent Design" advocates are humorously evasive about the identity of the Designer, but "wossname" has to be the funniest example I've ever heard. Anyway, a computer scientist replied to my article, saying "I'm a creationist" then claimed that a prominent atheist scientist's belief in panspermia amounted to secular belief in ID/creationism. He argued that "evolution is almost infinitely adaptable like this, and is thus unfalsifiable" which can be rephrased as "you can prove nearly anything using evolution" or "you can sort of argue anything using evolution" or "... With the same rationale, evolution is impossible to falsify as well...". Like most creationists, he used the term evolutionist liberally but at least he didn't babble about ID excluding creationism. He also didn't pull a Ben Stein by trying to link Darwin to Nazis. Brett's real classy like that.

Later, Marble joined Andy Schlafly and other "skeptics" in

Finally got this comment through the filter after removing MANY of the links.

In a field where all you really have are climate data and computer models, refusing to share them with the world is akin to a physicist claiming that he’s invented Cold Fusion, but refusing to show exactly how (except perhaps to a couple of his friends). Gavin of course defended him saying that while maybe THEIR data wasn’t available, HIS data was available, and so that made it all better. (Which it didn’t – it rather just highlighted their shady behavior). ... [ShakaUVM]

Gavin wasn't just saying that other data was available, he was saying that CRU doesn't do any primary data collection:

... Claims that data has been destroyed or lost are untrue. Claims that there is no access to the raw temperature data are untrue. There is nothing in any of the CRU archives that is particularly special or noteworthy and that isn't mostly available to anyone already via NOAA. ... [Gavin Schmidt]

... If you want the very original hand-written records from individual stations, ask the National Met. Service in the relevant country, not the people who collate the homogenised records for use in tracking climate change. [Gavin Schmidt]

The raw data is in the custody of the met services who originated it. CRU is just a collation, not a temperature measuring organisation. [Gavin Schmidt]

No data has been destroyed, the original files and numbers are with the national weather services that provided them. Removing a copy of a original file because it is not useful for my purposes is not 'deleting data' [Gavin Schmidt]

The raw data is the GHCN data (v2.mean.Z) (publicly available, as has been the case for decades). [Gavin Schmidt]

Unsurprisingly, that's also what the reviews said:

The Unit does virtually no primary data acquisition but has used data from published archives and has collaborated with people who have collected data. ... [Oxburgh panel, p2]

The CRU dataset, which forms the land surface component of the HadCRUT global temperature record, was compiled with the aim of comprehensiveness. The majority of the data in it are derived from the same freely-available raw data sets used by NOAA and NASA. ... [UK House of Commons Inquiry, p13]

Any independent researcher may freely obtain the primary station data. It is impossible for a third party to withhold access to the data. ... Regarding data availability, there is no basis for the allegations that CRU prevented access to raw data. It was impossible for them to have done so. [Muir Russell Review, p48,53]

Somehow, you managed to twist the fact that it was impossible for CRU to prevent access to the raw data into a

Couldn't get Climategate through the filter.

Do you have any reputable citations showing professional climatologists engaging in groupthink or responding badly to reasoned criticism? I ask because, once again, your description of the climatology community sounds like a description of a cult... [Dumb Scientist]

You mean like how they circled the wagons around Phil Jones, even when actual bad behavior on his part was discovered? For example: [ShakaUVM]

“This has some similarity to the CRU email theft, where precious little was discovered from among thousands of emails, but a few sentences were plucked out of context, deliberately misinterpreted (like “hide the decline”) and then hyped into “Climategate”.” [RealClimate]

Presumably you meant to say that scientists in general are circling wagons and responding badly to reasoned criticism.

Or you can just read the editor’s comments left in the response sections of RC.org. Just skimming through that above article, here’s an interplay between Pielke and Stefan. [ShakaUVM]

Coincidentally, Pielke Jr. had similar things to say about that interplay. That's the interplay where he asked a bunch of 'questions' like "Was it appropriate for the IPCC to make stuff up about my views?". Then Stefan replied:

Clearly there are different views on this, which is why we called this graph "debatable". But let's keep things in perspective: we're discussing Supplementary Material and a response to one of those 90,000 review comments now, not even the report itself. You've been working hard to scandalize your personal quibbles with IPCC here - how consistent is this with your self-proclaimed role as "honest broker"? Stefan

That link leads to an in-depth comment, and neither seem to constitute "responding badly to reasoned criticism." In fact, it's not clear that Pielke's rant counts as "reasoned criticism" in the first place. As far as I can tell, he's got

Do you have any reputable citations showing professional climatologists engaging in groupthink or responding badly to reasoned criticism? I ask because, once again, your description of the climatology community sounds like a description of a cult... [Dumb Scientist]

You mean like how they circled the wagons around Phil Jones, even when actual bad behavior on his part was discovered? For example: [ShakaUVM]

“This has some similarity to the CRU email theft, where precious little was discovered from among thousands of emails, but a few sentences were plucked out of context, deliberately misinterpreted (like “hide the decline”) and then hyped into “Climategate”.” [RealClimate]

Presumably you meant to say that scientists in general are circling wagons and responding badly to reasoned criticism.

Or you can just read the editor’s comments left in the response sections of RC.org. Just skimming through that above article, here’s an interplay between Pielke and Stefan. [ShakaUVM]

Coincidentally, Pielke Jr. had similar things to say about that interplay. That's the interplay where he asked a bunch of 'questions' like "Was it appropriate for the IPCC to make stuff up about my views?". Then Stefan replied:

Clearly there are different views on this, which is why we called this graph "debatable". But let's keep things in perspective: we're discussing Supplementary Material and a response to one of those 90,000 review comments now, not even the report itself. You've been working hard to scandalize your personal quibbles with IPCC here - how consistent is this with your self-proclaimed role as "honest broker"? Stefan

That link leads to an in-depth comment, and neither seem to constitute "responding badly to reasoned criticism." In fact, it's not clear that Pielke's rant counts as "reasoned criticism" in the first place. As far as I can tell, he's got

Do you have any reputable citations showing professional climatologists engaging in groupthink or responding badly to reasoned criticism? I ask because, once again, your description of the climatology community sounds like a description of a cult... [Dumb Scientist]

You mean like how they circled the wagons around Phil Jones, even when actual bad behavior on his part was discovered? For example: [ShakaUVM]

“This has some similarity to the CRU email theft, where precious little was discovered from among thousands of emails, but a few sentences were plucked out of context, deliberately misinterpreted (like “hide the decline”) and then hyped into “Climategate”.” [RealClimate]

Presumably you meant to say that scientists in general are circling wagons and responding badly to reasoned criticism.

Or you can just read the editor’s comments left in the response sections of RC.org. Just skimming through that above article, here’s an interplay between Pielke and Stefan. [ShakaUVM]

Coincidentally, Pielke Jr. had similar things to say about that interplay. That's the interplay where he asked a bunch of 'questions' like "Was it appropriate for the IPCC to make stuff up about my views?". Then Stefan replied:

Clearly there are different views on this, which is why we called this graph "debatable". But let's keep things in perspective: we're discussing Supplementary Material and a response to one of those 90,000 review comments now, not even the report itself. You've been working hard to scandalize your personal quibbles with IPCC here - how consistent is this with your self-proclaimed role as "honest broker"? Stefan

That link leads to an in-depth comment, and neither seem to constitute "responding badly to reasoned criticism." In fact, it's not clear that Pielke's rant counts as "reasoned criticism" in the first place. As far as I can tell, he's got

Do you have any reputable citations showing professional climatologists engaging in groupthink or responding badly to reasoned criticism? I ask because, once again, your description of the climatology community sounds like a description of a cult... [Dumb Scientist]

You mean like how they circled the wagons around Phil Jones, even when actual bad behavior on his part was discovered? For example: [ShakaUVM]

“This has some similarity to the CRU email theft, where precious little was discovered from among thousands of emails, but a few sentences were plucked out of context, deliberately misinterpreted (like “hide the decline”) and then hyped into “Climategate”.” [RealClimate]

Presumably you meant to say that scientists in general are circling wagons and responding badly to reasoned criticism.

Or you can just read the editor’s comments left in the response sections of RC.org. Just skimming through that above article, here’s an interplay between Pielke and Stefan. [ShakaUVM]

Coincidentally, Pielke Jr. had similar things to say about that interplay. That's the interplay where he asked a bunch of 'questions' like "Was it appropriate for the IPCC to make stuff up about my views?". Then Stefan replied:

Clearly there are different views on this, which is why we called this graph "debatable". But let's keep things in perspective: we're discussing Supplementary Material and a response to one of those 90,000 review comments now, not even the report itself. You've been working hard to scandalize your personal quibbles with IPCC here - how consistent is this with your self-proclaimed role as "honest broker"? Stefan

That link leads to an in-depth comment, and neither seem to constitute "responding badly to reasoned criticism." In fact, it's not clear that Pielke's rant counts as "reasoned criticism" in the first place. As far as I can tell, he's got

Second, you mentioned the “0.3C per decade” prediction from emission Scenario A, but you’ve repeatedly ignored Scenario B which Hansen himself called “more plausible” in 1988. [Dumb Scientist]

That’s great, but I’m not talking about Hansen88, but AR1, which focuses on Scenario A. It’s possible this was done to scare politicians into action, but when one reads it, the +0.3C increase appears to be the best guess. [ShakaUVM]

No, what you and Michaels are doing isn't "great" in any sense of the word. Again, by "summarizing" the IPCC AR1 WG1 report as though it only gave one scenario, you pulled a "Pat Michaels".

As I've explained ad nauseum, the dynamical nature of climate models means that evaluating a GCM ensemble requires comparing projected forcings to the actual forcings. In other words, each scenario is an "if-then" statement: "If greenhouse gas concentrations rise at rate X, then temperatures will rise at rate Y." You and Michaels not only chopped off the first part of that sentence, you both presented it as the only scenario... which "coincidentally" makes it seem like scientists are discrediting themselves by making bad predictions.

The correct approach is to open the AR1 to the Annex on page 333, and examine the rates of CO2 rise given in the top-left of figure A.3. Scenario "A" (BaU in that plot) only applies if CO2 levels exceed 400ppm by 2010, which hasn't happened. The top right graph also shows that methane rises to over 2000ppm in that scenario by 2010, and once again that hasn't happened either.

Just like in Hansen88, AR1's scenario B is the closest match to the actual forcings. That's not really surprising, considering that Hansen was a contributing author for sections 6 and 8, table 2.2 on p52 repeatedly references Hansen88's radiative forcings and corrects a typo on p9360 of Hansen88, and chapter 3 repeatedly references Hansen88. Unsurprisingly, the emissions scenarios used in both studies seem very similar.

I thought you'd be able to learn something from the eerie parallels between your mistake and Michaels's, but apparently I was wrong. Again.

Unlike many other scientists, I don't think Michaels is lying because his "rebuttal" seems to indicate that he's trying to draw conclusions based entirely on each scenario's legend, and that he doesn't understand the difference between dynamical and empirical models. If he thinks that climate models are empirical, it makes sense that he wouldn't understand the reason for making three different projections. In that case

Second, you mentioned the “0.3C per decade” prediction from emission Scenario A, but you’ve repeatedly ignored Scenario B which Hansen himself called “more plausible” in 1988. [Dumb Scientist]

That’s great, but I’m not talking about Hansen88, but AR1, which focuses on Scenario A. It’s possible this was done to scare politicians into action, but when one reads it, the +0.3C increase appears to be the best guess. [ShakaUVM]

No, what you and Michaels are doing isn't "great" in any sense of the word. Again, by "summarizing" the IPCC AR1 WG1 report as though it only gave one scenario, you pulled a "Pat Michaels".

As I've explained ad nauseum, the dynamical nature of climate models means that evaluating a GCM ensemble requires comparing projected forcings to the actual forcings. In other words, each scenario is an "if-then" statement: "If greenhouse gas concentrations rise at rate X, then temperatures will rise at rate Y." You and Michaels not only chopped off the first part of that sentence, you both presented it as the only scenario... which "coincidentally" makes it seem like scientists are discrediting themselves by making bad predictions.

The correct approach is to open the AR1 to the Annex on page 333, and examine the rates of CO2 rise given in the top-left of figure A.3. Scenario "A" (BaU in that plot) only applies if CO2 levels exceed 400ppm by 2010, which hasn't happened. The top right graph also shows that methane rises to over 2000ppm in that scenario by 2010, and once again that hasn't happened either.

Just like in Hansen88, AR1's scenario B is the closest match to the actual forcings. That's not really surprising, considering that Hansen was a contributing author for sections 6 and 8, table 2.2 on p52 repeatedly references Hansen88's radiative forcings and corrects a typo on p9360 of Hansen88, and chapter 3 repeatedly references Hansen88. Unsurprisingly, the emissions scenarios used in both studies seem very similar.

I thought you'd be able to learn something from the eerie parallels between your mistake and Michaels's, but apparently I was wrong. Again.

Unlike many other scientists, I don't think Michaels is lying because his "rebuttal" seems to indicate that he's trying to draw conclusions based entirely on each scenario's legend, and that he doesn't understand the difference between dynamical and empirical models. If he thinks that climate models are empirical, it makes sense that he wouldn't understand the reason for making three different projections. In that case

Second, you mentioned the “0.3C per decade” prediction from emission Scenario A, but you’ve repeatedly ignored Scenario B which Hansen himself called “more plausible” in 1988. [Dumb Scientist]

That’s great, but I’m not talking about Hansen88, but AR1, which focuses on Scenario A. It’s possible this was done to scare politicians into action, but when one reads it, the +0.3C increase appears to be the best guess. [ShakaUVM]

No, what you and Michaels are doing isn't "great" in any sense of the word. Again, by "summarizing" the IPCC AR1 WG1 report as though it only gave one scenario, you pulled a "Pat Michaels".

As I've explained ad nauseum, the dynamical nature of climate models means that evaluating a GCM ensemble requires comparing projected forcings to the actual forcings. In other words, each scenario is an "if-then" statement: "If greenhouse gas concentrations rise at rate X, then temperatures will rise at rate Y." You and Michaels not only chopped off the first part of that sentence, you both presented it as the only scenario... which "coincidentally" makes it seem like scientists are discrediting themselves by making bad predictions.

The correct approach is to open the AR1 to the Annex on page 333, and examine the rates of CO2 rise given in the top-left of figure A.3. Scenario "A" (BaU in that plot) only applies if CO2 levels exceed 400ppm by 2010, which hasn't happened. The top right graph also shows that methane rises to over 2000ppm in that scenario by 2010, and once again that hasn't happened either.

Just like in Hansen88, AR1's scenario B is the closest match to the actual forcings. That's not really surprising, considering that Hansen was a contributing author for sections 6 and 8, table 2.2 on p52 repeatedly references Hansen88's radiative forcings and corrects a typo on p9360 of Hansen88, and chapter 3 repeatedly references Hansen88. Unsurprisingly, the emissions scenarios used in both studies seem very similar.

I thought you'd be able to learn something from the eerie parallels between your mistake and Michaels's, but apparently I was wrong. Again.

Unlike many other scientists, I don't think Michaels is lying because his "rebuttal" seems to indicate that he's trying to draw conclusions based entirely on each scenario's legend, and that he doesn't understand the difference between dynamical and empirical models. If he thinks that climate models are empirical, it makes sense that he wouldn't understand the reason for making three different projections. In that case

Second, you mentioned the “0.3C per decade” prediction from emission Scenario A, but you’ve repeatedly ignored Scenario B which Hansen himself called “more plausible” in 1988. [Dumb Scientist]

That’s great, but I’m not talking about Hansen88, but AR1, which focuses on Scenario A. It’s possible this was done to scare politicians into action, but when one reads it, the +0.3C increase appears to be the best guess. [ShakaUVM]

No, what you and Michaels are doing isn't "great" in any sense of the word. Again, by "summarizing" the IPCC AR1 WG1 report as though it only gave one scenario, you pulled a "Pat Michaels".

As I've explained ad nauseum, the dynamical nature of climate models means that evaluating a GCM ensemble requires comparing projected forcings to the actual forcings. In other words, each scenario is an "if-then" statement: "If greenhouse gas concentrations rise at rate X, then temperatures will rise at rate Y." You and Michaels not only chopped off the first part of that sentence, you both presented it as the only scenario... which "coincidentally" makes it seem like scientists are discrediting themselves by making bad predictions.

The correct approach is to open the AR1 to the Annex on page 333, and examine the rates of CO2 rise given in the top-left of figure A.3. Scenario "A" (BaU in that plot) only applies if CO2 levels exceed 400ppm by 2010, which hasn't happened. The top right graph also shows that methane rises to over 2000ppm in that scenario by 2010, and once again that hasn't happened either.

Just like in Hansen88, AR1's scenario B is the closest match to the actual forcings. That's not really surprising, considering that Hansen was a contributing author for sections 6 and 8, table 2.2 on p52 repeatedly references Hansen88's radiative forcings and corrects a typo on p9360 of Hansen88, and chapter 3 repeatedly references Hansen88. Unsurprisingly, the emissions scenarios used in both studies seem very similar.

I thought you'd be able to learn something from the eerie parallels between your mistake and Michaels's, but apparently I was wrong. Again.

Unlike many other scientists, I don't think Michaels is lying because his "rebuttal" seems to indicate that he's trying to draw conclusions based entirely on each scenario's legend, and that he doesn't understand the difference between dynamical and empirical models. If he thinks that climate models are empirical, it makes sense that he wouldn't understand the reason for making three different projections. In that case

... the paradox that I mention is this: even if we have no global warming, the +0C result is within the band of error bars, so this counts as verification of the prediction. But a +5C change counts as invalidating the prediction. ... [ShakaUVM]

If for some reason you decide to smooth the GCM output and sensor data at only 10 years, the error bars will be large. That's why professional climatologists usually smooth data and model output using ~20 year averages. [Dumb Scientist]

If you'd like to engage in a gedankenexperiment, consider if predictions after 20 years had error bars from +0C to +10C. (Error bars themselves are fuzzy things, but I digress.) The same paradox applies to the notions of falsification and verification. No change verifies AGW, but a massive +20C change falsifies AGW (technically, the current-best-guess-AGW theory). [ShakaUVM]

Huh? You quoted me and repeated "20 years" as though your statement was a response to mine. But you're talking about waiting "after 20 years" and implying that we need to perform gedankenexperiments rather than just reading the peer-reviewed literature? I haven't ever been talking about waiting 20 years. This whole time I've been talking about the applied smoothing. There's no waiting, no "after 20 years". So there's no need to make up numbers. In fact, I've already shown you the actual dependence of the error bars on the applied smoothing (or trend length- same idea.) Sadly, this isn't the first time you've ignored this point:

... short term trends are not useful (a point I've made repeatedly). But you can see that the longer temperature trends are going to start being useful ... [Gavin Schmidt]

So multiple scientists have already tried to tell you that longer temperature trends have smaller error bars than shorter trends, but you're still blissfully fantasizing that the opposite is true. According to #6, you get another 5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment.

Clearly, we need to review the difference between an empirical climate model and a dynamical climate model.

An empirical climate model:

1. Incorporates past temperature data into its sample data set, and predicts temperatures without requiring one to specify radiative forcings as the IPCC emission scenarios do.
2. Is guaranteed to perform well over the sample data set; the real test would come with new data. Thus anyone claiming accuracy over the sample data would be laughed out of any scientific conference.

A dynamical climate model:

1. Doesn't incorporate past temperature data into its sample data set, instead the model describes the laws of physics.
2. As a result, the model requires input in the form of estimated and projected radiative forcing histories which are specified in the IPCC emission scenarios.
3. Thus, a dynamical model predicts the climate's response to changes in forcings like the sun's brightness, CO2 levels, etc. One example prediction of modern GCM's is the value of the equilibrium climate sensitivity, which has units of (degrees C) / (doubling CO2 concentration).

... the paradox that I mention is this: even if we have no global warming, the +0C result is within the band of error bars, so this counts as verification of the prediction. But a +5C change counts as invalidating the prediction. ... [ShakaUVM]

If for some reason you decide to smooth the GCM output and sensor data at only 10 years, the error bars will be large. That's why professional climatologists usually smooth data and model output using ~20 year averages. [Dumb Scientist]

If you'd like to engage in a gedankenexperiment, consider if predictions after 20 years had error bars from +0C to +10C. (Error bars themselves are fuzzy things, but I digress.) The same paradox applies to the notions of falsification and verification. No change verifies AGW, but a massive +20C change falsifies AGW (technically, the current-best-guess-AGW theory). [ShakaUVM]

Huh? You quoted me and repeated "20 years" as though your statement was a response to mine. But you're talking about waiting "after 20 years" and implying that we need to perform gedankenexperiments rather than just reading the peer-reviewed literature? I haven't ever been talking about waiting 20 years. This whole time I've been talking about the applied smoothing. There's no waiting, no "after 20 years". So there's no need to make up numbers. In fact, I've already shown you the actual dependence of the error bars on the applied smoothing (or trend length- same idea.) Sadly, this isn't the first time you've ignored this point:

... short term trends are not useful (a point I've made repeatedly). But you can see that the longer temperature trends are going to start being useful ... [Gavin Schmidt]

So multiple scientists have already tried to tell you that longer temperature trends have smaller error bars than shorter trends, but you're still blissfully fantasizing that the opposite is true. According to #6, you get another 5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment.

Clearly, we need to review the difference between an empirical climate model and a dynamical climate model.

An empirical climate model:

1. Incorporates past temperature data into its sample data set, and predicts temperatures without requiring one to specify radiative forcings as the IPCC emission scenarios do.
2. Is guaranteed to perform well over the sample data set; the real test would come with new data. Thus anyone claiming accuracy over the sample data would be laughed out of any scientific conference.

A dynamical climate model:

1. Doesn't incorporate past temperature data into its sample data set, instead the model describes the laws of physics.
2. As a result, the model requires input in the form of estimated and projected radiative forcing histories which are specified in the IPCC emission scenarios.
3. Thus, a dynamical model predicts the climate's response to changes in forcings like the sun's brightness, CO2 levels, etc. One example prediction of modern GCM's is the value of the equilibrium climate sensitivity, which has units of (degrees C) / (doubling CO2 concentration).

... the paradox that I mention is this: even if we have no global warming, the +0C result is within the band of error bars, so this counts as verification of the prediction. But a +5C change counts as invalidating the prediction. ... [ShakaUVM]

If for some reason you decide to smooth the GCM output and sensor data at only 10 years, the error bars will be large. That's why professional climatologists usually smooth data and model output using ~20 year averages. [Dumb Scientist]

If you'd like to engage in a gedankenexperiment, consider if predictions after 20 years had error bars from +0C to +10C. (Error bars themselves are fuzzy things, but I digress.) The same paradox applies to the notions of falsification and verification. No change verifies AGW, but a massive +20C change falsifies AGW (technically, the current-best-guess-AGW theory). [ShakaUVM]

Huh? You quoted me and repeated "20 years" as though your statement was a response to mine. But you're talking about waiting "after 20 years" and implying that we need to perform gedankenexperiments rather than just reading the peer-reviewed literature? I haven't ever been talking about waiting 20 years. This whole time I've been talking about the applied smoothing. There's no waiting, no "after 20 years". So there's no need to make up numbers. In fact, I've already shown you the actual dependence of the error bars on the applied smoothing (or trend length- same idea.) Sadly, this isn't the first time you've ignored this point:

... short term trends are not useful (a point I've made repeatedly). But you can see that the longer temperature trends are going to start being useful ... [Gavin Schmidt]

So multiple scientists have already tried to tell you that longer temperature trends have smaller error bars than shorter trends, but you're still blissfully fantasizing that the opposite is true. According to #6, you get another 5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment.

Clearly, we need to review the difference between an empirical climate model and a dynamical climate model.

An empirical climate model:

1. Incorporates past temperature data into its sample data set, and predicts temperatures without requiring one to specify radiative forcings as the IPCC emission scenarios do.
2. Is guaranteed to perform well over the sample data set; the real test would come with new data. Thus anyone claiming accuracy over the sample data would be laughed out of any scientific conference.

A dynamical climate model:

1. Doesn't incorporate past temperature data into its sample data set, instead the model describes the laws of physics.
2. As a result, the model requires input in the form of estimated and projected radiative forcing histories which are specified in the IPCC emission scenarios.
3. Thus, a dynamical model predicts the climate's response to changes in forcings like the sun's brightness, CO2 levels, etc. One example prediction of modern GCM's is the value of the equilibrium climate sensitivity, which has units of (degrees C) / (doubling CO2 concentration).

... the paradox that I mention is this: even if we have no global warming, the +0C result is within the band of error bars, so this counts as verification of the prediction. But a +5C change counts as invalidating the prediction. ... [ShakaUVM]

If for some reason you decide to smooth the GCM output and sensor data at only 10 years, the error bars will be large. That's why professional climatologists usually smooth data and model output using ~20 year averages. [Dumb Scientist]

If you'd like to engage in a gedankenexperiment, consider if predictions after 20 years had error bars from +0C to +10C. (Error bars themselves are fuzzy things, but I digress.) The same paradox applies to the notions of falsification and verification. No change verifies AGW, but a massive +20C change falsifies AGW (technically, the current-best-guess-AGW theory). [ShakaUVM]

Huh? You quoted me and repeated "20 years" as though your statement was a response to mine. But you're talking about waiting "after 20 years" and implying that we need to perform gedankenexperiments rather than just reading the peer-reviewed literature? I haven't ever been talking about waiting 20 years. This whole time I've been talking about the applied smoothing. There's no waiting, no "after 20 years". So there's no need to make up numbers. In fact, I've already shown you the actual dependence of the error bars on the applied smoothing (or trend length- same idea.) Sadly, this isn't the first time you've ignored this point:

... short term trends are not useful (a point I've made repeatedly). But you can see that the longer temperature trends are going to start being useful ... [Gavin Schmidt]

So multiple scientists have already tried to tell you that longer temperature trends have smaller error bars than shorter trends, but you're still blissfully fantasizing that the opposite is true. According to #6, you get another 5 points for using a thought experiment that contradicts the results of a widely accepted real experiment.

Clearly, we need to review the difference between an empirical climate model and a dynamical climate model.

An empirical climate model:

1. Incorporates past temperature data into its sample data set, and predicts temperatures without requiring one to specify radiative forcings as the IPCC emission scenarios do.
2. Is guaranteed to perform well over the sample data set; the real test would come with new data. Thus anyone claiming accuracy over the sample data would be laughed out of any scientific conference.

A dynamical climate model:

1. Doesn't incorporate past temperature data into its sample data set, instead the model describes the laws of physics.
2. As a result, the model requires input in the form of estimated and projected radiative forcing histories which are specified in the IPCC emission scenarios.
3. Thus, a dynamical model predicts the climate's response to changes in forcings like the sun's brightness, CO2 levels, etc. One example prediction of modern GCM's is the value of the equilibrium climate sensitivity, which has units of (degrees C) / (doubling CO2 concentration).

... Depending on how puckish I’m feeling, climatology could or could not be a “science”. Science is defined by empirical observations, hypothesis generation, testing, and hypothesis confirmation or falsification. Climatology doesn’t meet up to this full set of requirements to be science, so it, like a lot of other fields, fall somewhere in the middle of the science divide. ... [ShakaUVM]

The last time you brought up this subject, I linked this similar exchange:

... Take the Big Bang. That takes a lot of faith to believe in a theory that has yet to actually be attempted - have we managed to run another big bang? ... [Brontosaurus]

That's not the way science works. In science, observations are compared to predictions, which are then used to modify the theory to make new predictions. There's no fundamental distinction between science performed in a lab like chemistry and science performed through telescopes like cosmology. (Or any other discipline like paleontology, forensic science or paleoclimatology, for that matter.) [Dumb Scientist]

But I actually like coby's version better:

In my experience, this claim is supported by the notion that wrt to earth's climate you can not run any controlled experiments and thereby falsify any hypotheses. No complete ocean-atmosphere system in the lab = impossibility of scientific experimentation = not a science. I think the only effective and direct rebuttal of that is listing all the other sciences that whomever is making this argument would have to likewise reject. Cosmology, astonomy, geology, evolutionary biology to get started, I'm sure the list would be very long. It is unlikely that you are arguing with a serious philosopher so they are not likely to like the direction their own argument logically takes them. [coby]

What's the root cause of this confusion?

Unique events can and do all the time (it's a consequence of the probabilistic nature of the universe). A unique event is simply one that we haven't observed before or since. Science can't deal with unique events, which are often the most interesting things to us. All scientific studies are uncertain to different degrees; as you stated, studies in physics are probably pretty reliable. ... [ShakaUVM]

Singular events. Science can't handle singular events very well, or not at all. ... It is fundamentally useless for knowledge about anything which cannot be reproduced ... The scientific method certainly doesn't deserve the religion-like attitude of worship Popper and many people on here seem to give it. [ShakaUVM]

Here's a good example of coby's point: despite the fact that cosmic inflation was a unique, singular event, your comments suggest that you aren't applying your definition of

... Depending on how puckish I’m feeling, climatology could or could not be a “science”. Science is defined by empirical observations, hypothesis generation, testing, and hypothesis confirmation or falsification. Climatology doesn’t meet up to this full set of requirements to be science, so it, like a lot of other fields, fall somewhere in the middle of the science divide. ... [ShakaUVM]

The last time you brought up this subject, I linked this similar exchange:

... Take the Big Bang. That takes a lot of faith to believe in a theory that has yet to actually be attempted - have we managed to run another big bang? ... [Brontosaurus]

That's not the way science works. In science, observations are compared to predictions, which are then used to modify the theory to make new predictions. There's no fundamental distinction between science performed in a lab like chemistry and science performed through telescopes like cosmology. (Or any other discipline like paleontology, forensic science or paleoclimatology, for that matter.) [Dumb Scientist]

But I actually like coby's version better:

In my experience, this claim is supported by the notion that wrt to earth's climate you can not run any controlled experiments and thereby falsify any hypotheses. No complete ocean-atmosphere system in the lab = impossibility of scientific experimentation = not a science. I think the only effective and direct rebuttal of that is listing all the other sciences that whomever is making this argument would have to likewise reject. Cosmology, astonomy, geology, evolutionary biology to get started, I'm sure the list would be very long. It is unlikely that you are arguing with a serious philosopher so they are not likely to like the direction their own argument logically takes them. [coby]

What's the root cause of this confusion?

Unique events can and do all the time (it's a consequence of the probabilistic nature of the universe). A unique event is simply one that we haven't observed before or since. Science can't deal with unique events, which are often the most interesting things to us. All scientific studies are uncertain to different degrees; as you stated, studies in physics are probably pretty reliable. ... [ShakaUVM]

Singular events. Science can't handle singular events very well, or not at all. ... It is fundamentally useless for knowledge about anything which cannot be reproduced ... The scientific method certainly doesn't deserve the religion-like attitude of worship Popper and many people on here seem to give it. [ShakaUVM]

Here's a good example of coby's point: despite the fact that cosmic inflation was a unique, singular event, your comments suggest that you aren't applying your definition of

... Depending on how puckish I’m feeling, climatology could or could not be a “science”. Science is defined by empirical observations, hypothesis generation, testing, and hypothesis confirmation or falsification. Climatology doesn’t meet up to this full set of requirements to be science, so it, like a lot of other fields, fall somewhere in the middle of the science divide. ... [ShakaUVM]

The last time you brought up this subject, I linked this similar exchange:

... Take the Big Bang. That takes a lot of faith to believe in a theory that has yet to actually be attempted - have we managed to run another big bang? ... [Brontosaurus]

That's not the way science works. In science, observations are compared to predictions, which are then used to modify the theory to make new predictions. There's no fundamental distinction between science performed in a lab like chemistry and science performed through telescopes like cosmology. (Or any other discipline like paleontology, forensic science or paleoclimatology, for that matter.) [Dumb Scientist]

But I actually like coby's version better:

In my experience, this claim is supported by the notion that wrt to earth's climate you can not run any controlled experiments and thereby falsify any hypotheses. No complete ocean-atmosphere system in the lab = impossibility of scientific experimentation = not a science. I think the only effective and direct rebuttal of that is listing all the other sciences that whomever is making this argument would have to likewise reject. Cosmology, astonomy, geology, evolutionary biology to get started, I'm sure the list would be very long. It is unlikely that you are arguing with a serious philosopher so they are not likely to like the direction their own argument logically takes them. [coby]

What's the root cause of this confusion?

Unique events can and do all the time (it's a consequence of the probabilistic nature of the universe). A unique event is simply one that we haven't observed before or since. Science can't deal with unique events, which are often the most interesting things to us. All scientific studies are uncertain to different degrees; as you stated, studies in physics are probably pretty reliable. ... [ShakaUVM]

Singular events. Science can't handle singular events very well, or not at all. ... It is fundamentally useless for knowledge about anything which cannot be reproduced ... The scientific method certainly doesn't deserve the religion-like attitude of worship Popper and many people on here seem to give it. [ShakaUVM]

Here's a good example of coby's point: despite the fact that cosmic inflation was a unique, singular event, your comments suggest that you aren't applying your definition of

... Depending on how puckish I’m feeling, climatology could or could not be a “science”. Science is defined by empirical observations, hypothesis generation, testing, and hypothesis confirmation or falsification. Climatology doesn’t meet up to this full set of requirements to be science, so it, like a lot of other fields, fall somewhere in the middle of the science divide. ... [ShakaUVM]

The last time you brought up this subject, I linked this similar exchange:

... Take the Big Bang. That takes a lot of faith to believe in a theory that has yet to actually be attempted - have we managed to run another big bang? ... [Brontosaurus]

That's not the way science works. In science, observations are compared to predictions, which are then used to modify the theory to make new predictions. There's no fundamental distinction between science performed in a lab like chemistry and science performed through telescopes like cosmology. (Or any other discipline like paleontology, forensic science or paleoclimatology, for that matter.) [Dumb Scientist]

But I actually like coby's version better:

In my experience, this claim is supported by the notion that wrt to earth's climate you can not run any controlled experiments and thereby falsify any hypotheses. No complete ocean-atmosphere system in the lab = impossibility of scientific experimentation = not a science. I think the only effective and direct rebuttal of that is listing all the other sciences that whomever is making this argument would have to likewise reject. Cosmology, astonomy, geology, evolutionary biology to get started, I'm sure the list would be very long. It is unlikely that you are arguing with a serious philosopher so they are not likely to like the direction their own argument logically takes them. [coby]

What's the root cause of this confusion?

Unique events can and do all the time (it's a consequence of the probabilistic nature of the universe). A unique event is simply one that we haven't observed before or since. Science can't deal with unique events, which are often the most interesting things to us. All scientific studies are uncertain to different degrees; as you stated, studies in physics are probably pretty reliable. ... [ShakaUVM]

Singular events. Science can't handle singular events very well, or not at all. ... It is fundamentally useless for knowledge about anything which cannot be reproduced ... The scientific method certainly doesn't deserve the religion-like attitude of worship Popper and many people on here seem to give it. [ShakaUVM]

Here's a good example of coby's point: despite the fact that cosmic inflation was a unique, singular event, your comments suggest that you aren't applying your definition of

... Depending on how puckish I’m feeling, climatology could or could not be a “science”. Science is defined by empirical observations, hypothesis generation, testing, and hypothesis confirmation or falsification. Climatology doesn’t meet up to this full set of requirements to be science, so it, like a lot of other fields, fall somewhere in the middle of the science divide. ... [ShakaUVM]

The last time you brought up this subject, I linked this similar exchange:

... Take the Big Bang. That takes a lot of faith to believe in a theory that has yet to actually be attempted - have we managed to run another big bang? ... [Brontosaurus]

That's not the way science works. In science, observations are compared to predictions, which are then used to modify the theory to make new predictions. There's no fundamental distinction between science performed in a lab like chemistry and science performed through telescopes like cosmology. (Or any other discipline like paleontology, forensic science or paleoclimatology, for that matter.) [Dumb Scientist]

But I actually like coby's version better:

In my experience, this claim is supported by the notion that wrt to earth's climate you can not run any controlled experiments and thereby falsify any hypotheses. No complete ocean-atmosphere system in the lab = impossibility of scientific experimentation = not a science. I think the only effective and direct rebuttal of that is listing all the other sciences that whomever is making this argument would have to likewise reject. Cosmology, astonomy, geology, evolutionary biology to get started, I'm sure the list would be very long. It is unlikely that you are arguing with a serious philosopher so they are not likely to like the direction their own argument logically takes them. [coby]

What's the root cause of this confusion?

Unique events can and do all the time (it's a consequence of the probabilistic nature of the universe). A unique event is simply one that we haven't observed before or since. Science can't deal with unique events, which are often the most interesting things to us. All scientific studies are uncertain to different degrees; as you stated, studies in physics are probably pretty reliable. ... [ShakaUVM]

Singular events. Science can't handle singular events very well, or not at all. ... It is fundamentally useless for knowledge about anything which cannot be reproduced ... The scientific method certainly doesn't deserve the religion-like attitude of worship Popper and many people on here seem to give it. [ShakaUVM]

Here's a good example of coby's point: despite the fact that cosmic inflation was a unique, singular event, your comments suggest that you aren't applying your definition of

... Depending on how puckish I’m feeling, climatology could or could not be a “science”. Science is defined by empirical observations, hypothesis generation, testing, and hypothesis confirmation or falsification. Climatology doesn’t meet up to this full set of requirements to be science, so it, like a lot of other fields, fall somewhere in the middle of the science divide. ... [ShakaUVM]

The last time you brought up this subject, I linked this similar exchange:

... Take the Big Bang. That takes a lot of faith to believe in a theory that has yet to actually be attempted - have we managed to run another big bang? ... [Brontosaurus]

That's not the way science works. In science, observations are compared to predictions, which are then used to modify the theory to make new predictions. There's no fundamental distinction between science performed in a lab like chemistry and science performed through telescopes like cosmology. (Or any other discipline like paleontology, forensic science or paleoclimatology, for that matter.) [Dumb Scientist]

But I actually like coby's version better:

In my experience, this claim is supported by the notion that wrt to earth's climate you can not run any controlled experiments and thereby falsify any hypotheses. No complete ocean-atmosphere system in the lab = impossibility of scientific experimentation = not a science. I think the only effective and direct rebuttal of that is listing all the other sciences that whomever is making this argument would have to likewise reject. Cosmology, astonomy, geology, evolutionary biology to get started, I'm sure the list would be very long. It is unlikely that you are arguing with a serious philosopher so they are not likely to like the direction their own argument logically takes them. [coby]

What's the root cause of this confusion?

Unique events can and do all the time (it's a consequence of the probabilistic nature of the universe). A unique event is simply one that we haven't observed before or since. Science can't deal with unique events, which are often the most interesting things to us. All scientific studies are uncertain to different degrees; as you stated, studies in physics are probably pretty reliable. ... [ShakaUVM]

Singular events. Science can't handle singular events very well, or not at all. ... It is fundamentally useless for knowledge about anything which cannot be reproduced ... The scientific method certainly doesn't deserve the religion-like attitude of worship Popper and many people on here seem to give it. [ShakaUVM]

Here's a good example of coby's point: despite the fact that cosmic inflation was a unique, singular event, your comments suggest that you aren't applying your definition of

The AGW community ... refuse to look at green technologies like nuclear because they’re ignorant. ... [ShakaUVM]

Already discussed, but note that nuclear plants do generate small amounts of CO2 due to current enrichment and mining methods, as well as the curing of concrete containment domes. Averaged over the projected life of the reactors, this CO2 is only a few percent of the emissions from an equivalently powerful coal plant. Pebble bed reactors might be capable of safe operation without containment domes, but that unfortunate incident in Germany makes it unlikely that they'll be built that way for a while. Nuclear power is our best hope of maintaining a prosperous civilization. Please don't oversell it by making claims it can't live up to yet.

... It is possible to reduce our CO2 by 50%, maily because we can attack the problem in a centralized way at the power plant level. 0 CO2 emission is simply not on the table, but the fact that climatologists think it is doable is yet another bit of evidence for the fact that being good at science doesn’t make you good at policy. [ShakaUVM]

Dr. Knutti's emissions graph makes it clear that he's examining a scenario in which CO2 emissions only drop to half of 2010 values by ~2030, and a quarter of 2010 values by ~2070. That doesn't seem too different from the Lieberman-McCain "Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007" which seemed doable.

Because much of the CO2 emitted by nuclear plants is emitted in a pulse as the concrete dome cures, any nuclear plants built in the next few decades won't be emitting CO2 past ~2070 (unless we still haven't perfected mining and enrichment in the next ~60 years.) As you say, centralized power plants are easiest to upgrade, but we've got ~60 years to perfect electric cars in order to hit Knutti's target. They certainly can't universally replace gasoline vehicles in time (especially in developing countries) but biofuels can be produced carbon-neutrally (albeit inefficiently at present) in a centralized fashion. Distributing biofuels just like gasoline will avoid the need to make and sell billions of electric cars by 2100. Even if that fails, I'd be astonished if ~60 years isn't enough time for humanity to devise and implement a carbon sequestration program capable of making up the difference.

In fact, the only way the human race could possibly fail to tackle climate change would be if there were legions of crackpots arguing that climate "scientists" are actually just deceitful, shady, laughably dishonest, perverting, badly reeking, dogmatic, anti-scientific, idiotic, disingenuous, scurrilous, nefarious, damned, indefensibly guilty, laughably wrong, fundamentally rotten, self-discrediting, fraudulent, bullshitting partisan hacks with something to hide who do bad things, don't fucking know

The AGW community ... refuse to look at green technologies like nuclear because they’re ignorant. ... [ShakaUVM]

Already discussed, but note that nuclear plants do generate small amounts of CO2 due to current enrichment and mining methods, as well as the curing of concrete containment domes. Averaged over the projected life of the reactors, this CO2 is only a few percent of the emissions from an equivalently powerful coal plant. Pebble bed reactors might be capable of safe operation without containment domes, but that unfortunate incident in Germany makes it unlikely that they'll be built that way for a while. Nuclear power is our best hope of maintaining a prosperous civilization. Please don't oversell it by making claims it can't live up to yet.

... It is possible to reduce our CO2 by 50%, maily because we can attack the problem in a centralized way at the power plant level. 0 CO2 emission is simply not on the table, but the fact that climatologists think it is doable is yet another bit of evidence for the fact that being good at science doesn’t make you good at policy. [ShakaUVM]

Dr. Knutti's emissions graph makes it clear that he's examining a scenario in which CO2 emissions only drop to half of 2010 values by ~2030, and a quarter of 2010 values by ~2070. That doesn't seem too different from the Lieberman-McCain "Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007" which seemed doable.

Because much of the CO2 emitted by nuclear plants is emitted in a pulse as the concrete dome cures, any nuclear plants built in the next few decades won't be emitting CO2 past ~2070 (unless we still haven't perfected mining and enrichment in the next ~60 years.) As you say, centralized power plants are easiest to upgrade, but we've got ~60 years to perfect electric cars in order to hit Knutti's target. They certainly can't universally replace gasoline vehicles in time (especially in developing countries) but biofuels can be produced carbon-neutrally (albeit inefficiently at present) in a centralized fashion. Distributing biofuels just like gasoline will avoid the need to make and sell billions of electric cars by 2100. Even if that fails, I'd be astonished if ~60 years isn't enough time for humanity to devise and implement a carbon sequestration program capable of making up the difference.

In fact, the only way the human race could possibly fail to tackle climate change would be if there were legions of crackpots arguing that climate "scientists" are actually just deceitful, shady, laughably dishonest, perverting, badly reeking, dogmatic, anti-scientific, idiotic, disingenuous, scurrilous, nefarious, damned, indefensibly guilty, laughably wrong, fundamentally rotten, self-discrediting, fraudulent, bullshitting partisan hacks with something to hide who do bad things, don't fucking know

The AGW community ... refuse to look at green technologies like nuclear because they’re ignorant. ... [ShakaUVM]

Already discussed, but note that nuclear plants do generate small amounts of CO2 due to current enrichment and mining methods, as well as the curing of concrete containment domes. Averaged over the projected life of the reactors, this CO2 is only a few percent of the emissions from an equivalently powerful coal plant. Pebble bed reactors might be capable of safe operation without containment domes, but that unfortunate incident in Germany makes it unlikely that they'll be built that way for a while. Nuclear power is our best hope of maintaining a prosperous civilization. Please don't oversell it by making claims it can't live up to yet.

... It is possible to reduce our CO2 by 50%, maily because we can attack the problem in a centralized way at the power plant level. 0 CO2 emission is simply not on the table, but the fact that climatologists think it is doable is yet another bit of evidence for the fact that being good at science doesn’t make you good at policy. [ShakaUVM]

Dr. Knutti's emissions graph makes it clear that he's examining a scenario in which CO2 emissions only drop to half of 2010 values by ~2030, and a quarter of 2010 values by ~2070. That doesn't seem too different from the Lieberman-McCain "Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007" which seemed doable.

Because much of the CO2 emitted by nuclear plants is emitted in a pulse as the concrete dome cures, any nuclear plants built in the next few decades won't be emitting CO2 past ~2070 (unless we still haven't perfected mining and enrichment in the next ~60 years.) As you say, centralized power plants are easiest to upgrade, but we've got ~60 years to perfect electric cars in order to hit Knutti's target. They certainly can't universally replace gasoline vehicles in time (especially in developing countries) but biofuels can be produced carbon-neutrally (albeit inefficiently at present) in a centralized fashion. Distributing biofuels just like gasoline will avoid the need to make and sell billions of electric cars by 2100. Even if that fails, I'd be astonished if ~60 years isn't enough time for humanity to devise and implement a carbon sequestration program capable of making up the difference.

In fact, the only way the human race could possibly fail to tackle climate change would be if there were legions of crackpots arguing that climate "scientists" are actually just deceitful, shady, laughably dishonest, perverting, badly reeking, dogmatic, anti-scientific, idiotic, disingenuous, scurrilous, nefarious, damned, indefensibly guilty, laughably wrong, fundamentally rotten, self-discrediting, fraudulent, bullshitting partisan hacks with something to hide who do bad things, don't fucking know

The AGW community ... refuse to look at green technologies like nuclear because they’re ignorant. ... [ShakaUVM]

Already discussed, but note that nuclear plants do generate small amounts of CO2 due to current enrichment and mining methods, as well as the curing of concrete containment domes. Averaged over the projected life of the reactors, this CO2 is only a few percent of the emissions from an equivalently powerful coal plant. Pebble bed reactors might be capable of safe operation without containment domes, but that unfortunate incident in Germany makes it unlikely that they'll be built that way for a while. Nuclear power is our best hope of maintaining a prosperous civilization. Please don't oversell it by making claims it can't live up to yet.

... It is possible to reduce our CO2 by 50%, maily because we can attack the problem in a centralized way at the power plant level. 0 CO2 emission is simply not on the table, but the fact that climatologists think it is doable is yet another bit of evidence for the fact that being good at science doesn’t make you good at policy. [ShakaUVM]

Dr. Knutti's emissions graph makes it clear that he's examining a scenario in which CO2 emissions only drop to half of 2010 values by ~2030, and a quarter of 2010 values by ~2070. That doesn't seem too different from the Lieberman-McCain "Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007" which seemed doable.

Because much of the CO2 emitted by nuclear plants is emitted in a pulse as the concrete dome cures, any nuclear plants built in the next few decades won't be emitting CO2 past ~2070 (unless we still haven't perfected mining and enrichment in the next ~60 years.) As you say, centralized power plants are easiest to upgrade, but we've got ~60 years to perfect electric cars in order to hit Knutti's target. They certainly can't universally replace gasoline vehicles in time (especially in developing countries) but biofuels can be produced carbon-neutrally (albeit inefficiently at present) in a centralized fashion. Distributing biofuels just like gasoline will avoid the need to make and sell billions of electric cars by 2100. Even if that fails, I'd be astonished if ~60 years isn't enough time for humanity to devise and implement a carbon sequestration program capable of making up the difference.

In fact, the only way the human race could possibly fail to tackle climate change would be if there were legions of crackpots arguing that climate "scientists" are actually just deceitful, shady, laughably dishonest, perverting, badly reeking, dogmatic, anti-scientific, idiotic, disingenuous, scurrilous, nefarious, damned, indefensibly guilty, laughably wrong, fundamentally rotten, self-discrediting, fraudulent, bullshitting partisan hacks with something to hide who do bad things, don't fucking know

The AGW community ... refuse to look at green technologies like nuclear because they’re ignorant. ... [ShakaUVM]

Already discussed, but note that nuclear plants do generate small amounts of CO2 due to current enrichment and mining methods, as well as the curing of concrete containment domes. Averaged over the projected life of the reactors, this CO2 is only a few percent of the emissions from an equivalently powerful coal plant. Pebble bed reactors might be capable of safe operation without containment domes, but that unfortunate incident in Germany makes it unlikely that they'll be built that way for a while. Nuclear power is our best hope of maintaining a prosperous civilization. Please don't oversell it by making claims it can't live up to yet.

... It is possible to reduce our CO2 by 50%, maily because we can attack the problem in a centralized way at the power plant level. 0 CO2 emission is simply not on the table, but the fact that climatologists think it is doable is yet another bit of evidence for the fact that being good at science doesn’t make you good at policy. [ShakaUVM]

Dr. Knutti's emissions graph makes it clear that he's examining a scenario in which CO2 emissions only drop to half of 2010 values by ~2030, and a quarter of 2010 values by ~2070. That doesn't seem too different from the Lieberman-McCain "Climate Stewardship and Innovation Act of 2007" which seemed doable.

Because much of the CO2 emitted by nuclear plants is emitted in a pulse as the concrete dome cures, any nuclear plants built in the next few decades won't be emitting CO2 past ~2070 (unless we still haven't perfected mining and enrichment in the next ~60 years.) As you say, centralized power plants are easiest to upgrade, but we've got ~60 years to perfect electric cars in order to hit Knutti's target. They certainly can't universally replace gasoline vehicles in time (especially in developing countries) but biofuels can be produced carbon-neutrally (albeit inefficiently at present) in a centralized fashion. Distributing biofuels just like gasoline will avoid the need to make and sell billions of electric cars by 2100. Even if that fails, I'd be astonished if ~60 years isn't enough time for humanity to devise and implement a carbon sequestration program capable of making up the difference.

In fact, the only way the human race could possibly fail to tackle climate change would be if there were legions of crackpots arguing that climate "scientists" are actually just deceitful, shady, laughably dishonest, perverting, badly reeking, dogmatic, anti-scientific, idiotic, disingenuous, scurrilous, nefarious, damned, indefensibly guilty, laughably wrong, fundamentally rotten, self-discrediting, fraudulent, bullshitting partisan hacks with something to hide who do bad things, don't fucking know

Last year Tanuki64 asked a similar question, and I referred him to an anecdote from my senior year of physics undergrad. In 2004, I presented a similar idea to an astrophysicist in my department:

I wonder if "dark matter" is the result of gravitational interactions with galaxies in parallel universes. Suppose parallel universes exist in the same physical "space" we inhabit, and only interact with each other (and us) via gravity. The galaxies in different universes would then clump together, but their disks wouldn't necessarily be aligned. So the total gravity would appear similar to a spherical halo of dark matter. This would explain the too-high velocities of stars at the edges of galaxies and the too-high velocities of galaxies in superclusters.

In 2004, I didn't have enough experience to understand why that astrophysicist rejected my idea by saying that I was trying to explain something we don't understand by invoking something else that we understand even less. Several years later, though, I started to see some cracks in this idea:

2009-07-25 Update: I don't think my hypothesis is consistent with the Bullet cluster data.

2009-07-27 Update: Also, I wonder if galaxies in my imaginary parallel universes really would clump together. They'd certainly be gravitationally attracted to each other, but if each universe has roughly the same density of galaxies, they'd typically have a long way to fall towards each other. As a result, they'd be moving so fast that I doubt any damping mechanisms could have brought them to rest in ~13.7 billion years. But... what if they formed in the same place initially? That would make sense because supermassive black holes likely play a large role in proto-galaxy formation. Gravitational collapse in one universe would trigger collapses in other universes leading to galaxies with small relative velocities. But in that case, it seems like the disks would be aligned because disk formation probably doesn't involve a large percentage of actual physical collisions (any actual astronomers want to help me here?). I think this would result in the wrong velocity profile for stars versus distance from the center of the galaxy? Oh, and all these stars in different universes would cause gravitational lensing events to occur with a much greater frequency than has been observed by the OGLE. Galaxies with non-aligned disks would look even weirder- that implies imply lensing with bizarre relative velocities.

It could also explain that Dark Flow thing.

Perhaps. But given the above problems with such an idea, it's more likely that the Great Attractor is simply a massive supercluster in our own universe, even if it's already passed over the horizon.

Last year Tanuki64 asked a similar question, and I referred him to an anecdote from my senior year of physics undergrad. In 2004, I presented a similar idea to an astrophysicist in my department:

I wonder if "dark matter" is the result of gravitational interactions with galaxies in parallel universes. Suppose parallel universes exist in the same physical "space" we inhabit, and only interact with each other (and us) via gravity. The galaxies in different universes would then clump together, but their disks wouldn't necessarily be aligned. So the total gravity would appear similar to a spherical halo of dark matter. This would explain the too-high velocities of stars at the edges of galaxies and the too-high velocities of galaxies in superclusters.

In 2004, I didn't have enough experience to understand why that astrophysicist rejected my idea by saying that I was trying to explain something we don't understand by invoking something else that we understand even less. Several years later, though, I started to see some cracks in this idea:

2009-07-25 Update: I don't think my hypothesis is consistent with the Bullet cluster data.

2009-07-27 Update: Also, I wonder if galaxies in my imaginary parallel universes really would clump together. They'd certainly be gravitationally attracted to each other, but if each universe has roughly the same density of galaxies, they'd typically have a long way to fall towards each other. As a result, they'd be moving so fast that I doubt any damping mechanisms could have brought them to rest in ~13.7 billion years. But... what if they formed in the same place initially? That would make sense because supermassive black holes likely play a large role in proto-galaxy formation. Gravitational collapse in one universe would trigger collapses in other universes leading to galaxies with small relative velocities. But in that case, it seems like the disks would be aligned because disk formation probably doesn't involve a large percentage of actual physical collisions (any actual astronomers want to help me here?). I think this would result in the wrong velocity profile for stars versus distance from the center of the galaxy? Oh, and all these stars in different universes would cause gravitational lensing events to occur with a much greater frequency than has been observed by the OGLE. Galaxies with non-aligned disks would look even weirder- that implies imply lensing with bizarre relative velocities.

It could also explain that Dark Flow thing.

Perhaps. But given the above problems with such an idea, it's more likely that the Great Attractor is simply a massive supercluster in our own universe, even if it's already passed over the horizon.

For example, what if a male heterosexual soldier discusses his sexual exploits in front of a woman soldier after she has made clear that she doesn't want to hear this, and she then lodges an official complaint?

Rightfully so, but notice that there isn't a law saying that the braggart should be discharged immediately, regardless of the presence or absence of extenuating circumstances.

This is actually quite sensible, as such a betrayal undermines the mutual trust that is an absolute requirement for soldiers who may go into battle.

In exactly the same way asking gay soldiers to hide their identities undermines that trust. In fact, "don't ask, don't tell" makes gay soldiers susceptible to blackmail for that very reason!

If the facts of the case are indeed as they are presented by the blogger that you linked, then I agree that the woman officer's punishment was outrageous and unjust. However, the link from the blog to the original news article is broken, so I'm left in some doubt about what really happened.

MSNBC covered the story, then the ACLU challenged the police department only to receive this reply which makes it clear that the police officer saw the marriage license through the window. Clearly Ms. Newsome's wife needs to answer the charges brought against her (who knows if they're valid?) but as far as I can tell Ms. Newsome didn't ask and didn't tell.

But now as I think about it, I wonder why there should be special rules for homosexuals. I think everyone should be bound by the common rules of courtesy and mutual respect.

EXACTLY.

What I'm afraid of is that the gay rights crowd wants to make homosexuals immune from all rules—perhaps permitting flagrant sexual acts in the barracks, and (oh, the horror) pink underwear. OK, maybe I'm being silly, but the activists don't seem to have made their goals clear.

That silliness is probably a result of the fact that social conservatives routinely say that gays want "special rights". Recently, a friend's younger brother realized he was gay after graduating from college. He's a very committed Republican, and I was horrified to hear him repeat similarly silly notions like "gays already have the right to get married." Later, he claimed that legalizing gay marriage would destabilize society, which seems absurd considering that only ~4% of the population is gay.

By the way, do you mind if I post this conversation to my gay marriage article? That's the place on my website where I'm putting topics like "don't ask, don't tell", and it's refreshing to talk to someone civilized.

I've fixed the spelling of "viscoscity" and fixed the link in the word "politician" in the permanent version. As I originally intended, it now points to the beginning of the article where last year I said in a popup over the word "politician's": "You have to realize that I view the word 'politician' as a VERY dirty word in order to get the full effect of this sentence".

There's yet to be any evidence the universe doesn't run on very specific mathematical rules. For example, there's a very good reason for inflation having to do with the 'pressure' at high energy states. [ShakaUVM]

Huh? Your customarily vague but authoritative comment which doesn't include an "IANAP" disclaimer will just reinforce the disturbingly common impression that physicists are bullshitting about concepts like inflation and dark matter.

The cosmology course I've mentioned was taught by Dr. Nanopoulos using Kolb's The Early Universe. He pointed out that physicists have known for decades that something like inflation is required to explain the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Kolb disusses these topics in chapter 8, though his overview is somewhat dated now. WMAP has since observed temperature fluctuations on the 10^(-5) level, which matches predictions based on modelling quantum fluctuations in the early universe. More precisely, inflation predicts that these fluctuations would deviate slightly from the perfect scale invariance expected in a universe without inflation. After 7 years, WMAP can exclude the possibility of a scale invariant spectrum by more than 3 sigma. The WMAP results also show that the universe is perfectly flat, at least to within the limits of measurement. Inflation isn't necessary for the universe to be perfectly flat, but it's sufficient to explain what may seem like "fine-tuning" at first glance.

That's why physicists think inflation happened, but it's an argument based on how relativistic causality affects the large-scale thermodynamics of the universe, not pressure. Pressure is at least tangentially relevant to almost every physics problem imaginable, though, and inflation is no exception. I've explained that dark energy's negative pressure acts as a kind of anti-gravity. Later, Dr. Stoeger (Jesuit priest, astrophysicist working for the Vatican Observatory) observed that "There is, of course, a much deeper connection between inflation and dark energy. The only way we can really conceive of inflation occurring in the early universe is under the influence of a large amount of vacuum energy, which is a type of dark energy. This dark energy must be quickly transformed into the particles and radiation at the end of inflation. So, it's not at all clear if there is a relationship between the dark energy which drove inflation and the dark energy which we have evidence is driving the gentle acceleration of cosmic expansion now. It may be that the dark energy now may be a remnant of the dark energy left over from the very early universe."

Then there's the problem of heavy exotic particles predicted by most GUT's; the only one I'm familiar with is the magnetic monopole. In my senior year, I took electrodynamics using the standard Griffiths 3rd ed. Page 327 shows how symmetric Maxwell's equations appear in the presence of magnetic monopoles, and Griffiths opines that they "beg for magnetic charge to exist." My fondest memory of that class is problem 8.12 on page 362, along with footnotes 11

There's yet to be any evidence the universe doesn't run on very specific mathematical rules. For example, there's a very good reason for inflation having to do with the 'pressure' at high energy states. [ShakaUVM]

Huh? Your customarily vague but authoritative comment which doesn't include an "IANAP" disclaimer will just reinforce the disturbingly common impression that physicists are bullshitting about concepts like inflation and dark matter.

The cosmology course I've mentioned was taught by Dr. Nanopoulos using Kolb's The Early Universe. He pointed out that physicists have known for decades that something like inflation is required to explain the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Kolb disusses these topics in chapter 8, though his overview is somewhat dated now. WMAP has since observed temperature fluctuations on the 10^(-5) level, which matches predictions based on modelling quantum fluctuations in the early universe. More precisely, inflation predicts that these fluctuations would deviate slightly from the perfect scale invariance expected in a universe without inflation. After 7 years, WMAP can exclude the possibility of a scale invariant spectrum by more than 3 sigma. The WMAP results also show that the universe is perfectly flat, at least to within the limits of measurement. Inflation isn't necessary for the universe to be perfectly flat, but it's sufficient to explain what may seem like "fine-tuning" at first glance.

That's why physicists think inflation happened, but it's an argument based on how relativistic causality affects the large-scale thermodynamics of the universe, not pressure. Pressure is at least tangentially relevant to almost every physics problem imaginable, though, and inflation is no exception. I've explained that dark energy's negative pressure acts as a kind of anti-gravity. Later, Dr. Stoeger (Jesuit priest, astrophysicist working for the Vatican Observatory) observed that "There is, of course, a much deeper connection between inflation and dark energy. The only way we can really conceive of inflation occurring in the early universe is under the influence of a large amount of vacuum energy, which is a type of dark energy. This dark energy must be quickly transformed into the particles and radiation at the end of inflation. So, it's not at all clear if there is a relationship between the dark energy which drove inflation and the dark energy which we have evidence is driving the gentle acceleration of cosmic expansion now. It may be that the dark energy now may be a remnant of the dark energy left over from the very early universe."

Then there's the problem of heavy exotic particles predicted by most GUT's; the only one I'm familiar with is the magnetic monopole. In my senior year, I took electrodynamics using the standard Griffiths 3rd ed. Page 327 shows how symmetric Maxwell's equations appear in the presence of magnetic monopoles, and Griffiths opines that they "beg for magnetic charge to exist." My fondest memory of that class is problem 8.12 on page 362, along with footnotes 11

There's yet to be any evidence the universe doesn't run on very specific mathematical rules. For example, there's a very good reason for inflation having to do with the 'pressure' at high energy states. [ShakaUVM]

Huh? Your customarily vague but authoritative comment which doesn't include an "IANAP" disclaimer will just reinforce the disturbingly common impression that physicists are bullshitting about concepts like inflation and dark matter.

The cosmology course I've mentioned was taught by Dr. Nanopoulos using Kolb's The Early Universe. He pointed out that physicists have known for decades that something like inflation is required to explain the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Kolb disusses these topics in chapter 8, though his overview is somewhat dated now. WMAP has since observed temperature fluctuations on the 10^(-5) level, which matches predictions based on modelling quantum fluctuations in the early universe. More precisely, inflation predicts that these fluctuations would deviate slightly from the perfect scale invariance expected in a universe without inflation. After 7 years, WMAP can exclude the possibility of a scale invariant spectrum by more than 3 sigma. The WMAP results also show that the universe is perfectly flat, at least to within the limits of measurement. Inflation isn't necessary for the universe to be perfectly flat, but it's sufficient to explain what may seem like "fine-tuning" at first glance.

That's why physicists think inflation happened, but it's an argument based on how relativistic causality affects the large-scale thermodynamics of the universe, not pressure. Pressure is at least tangentially relevant to almost every physics problem imaginable, though, and inflation is no exception. I've explained that dark energy's negative pressure acts as a kind of anti-gravity. Later, Dr. Stoeger (Jesuit priest, astrophysicist working for the Vatican Observatory) observed that "There is, of course, a much deeper connection between inflation and dark energy. The only way we can really conceive of inflation occurring in the early universe is under the influence of a large amount of vacuum energy, which is a type of dark energy. This dark energy must be quickly transformed into the particles and radiation at the end of inflation. So, it's not at all clear if there is a relationship between the dark energy which drove inflation and the dark energy which we have evidence is driving the gentle acceleration of cosmic expansion now. It may be that the dark energy now may be a remnant of the dark energy left over from the very early universe."

Then there's the problem of heavy exotic particles predicted by most GUT's; the only one I'm familiar with is the magnetic monopole. In my senior year, I took electrodynamics using the standard Griffiths 3rd ed. Page 327 shows how symmetric Maxwell's equations appear in the presence of magnetic monopoles, and Griffiths opines that they "beg for magnetic charge to exist." My fondest memory of that class is problem 8.12 on page 362, along with footnotes 11

There's yet to be any evidence the universe doesn't run on very specific mathematical rules. For example, there's a very good reason for inflation having to do with the 'pressure' at high energy states. [ShakaUVM]

Huh? Your customarily vague but authoritative comment which doesn't include an "IANAP" disclaimer will just reinforce the disturbingly common impression that physicists are bullshitting about concepts like inflation and dark matter.

The cosmology course I've mentioned was taught by Dr. Nanopoulos using Kolb's The Early Universe. He pointed out that physicists have known for decades that something like inflation is required to explain the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation. Kolb disusses these topics in chapter 8, though his overview is somewhat dated now. WMAP has since observed temperature fluctuations on the 10^(-5) level, which matches predictions based on modelling quantum fluctuations in the early universe. More precisely, inflation predicts that these fluctuations would deviate slightly from the perfect scale invariance expected in a universe without inflation. After 7 years, WMAP can exclude the possibility of a scale invariant spectrum by more than 3 sigma. The WMAP results also show that the universe is perfectly flat, at least to within the limits of measurement. Inflation isn't necessary for the universe to be perfectly flat, but it's sufficient to explain what may seem like "fine-tuning" at first glance.

That's why physicists think inflation happened, but it's an argument based on how relativistic causality affects the large-scale thermodynamics of the universe, not pressure. Pressure is at least tangentially relevant to almost every physics problem imaginable, though, and inflation is no exception. I've explained that dark energy's negative pressure acts as a kind of anti-gravity. Later, Dr. Stoeger (Jesuit priest, astrophysicist working for the Vatican Observatory) observed that "There is, of course, a much deeper connection between inflation and dark energy. The only way we can really conceive of inflation occurring in the early universe is under the influence of a large amount of vacuum energy, which is a type of dark energy. This dark energy must be quickly transformed into the particles and radiation at the end of inflation. So, it's not at all clear if there is a relationship between the dark energy which drove inflation and the dark energy which we have evidence is driving the gentle acceleration of cosmic expansion now. It may be that the dark energy now may be a remnant of the dark energy left over from the very early universe."

Then there's the problem of heavy exotic particles predicted by most GUT's; the only one I'm familiar with is the magnetic monopole. In my senior year, I took electrodynamics using the standard Griffiths 3rd ed. Page 327 shows how symmetric Maxwell's equations appear in the presence of magnetic monopoles, and Griffiths opines that they "beg for magnetic charge to exist." My fondest memory of that class is problem 8.12 on page 362, along with footnotes 11

I'm pressed for time as well so the slashdot article will be locked by the time I get around to linking everything properly. So I'll probably post them here. Incidentally, I asked you this question because I've already quoted your insightful comments in that article many times (just search for "Rei"), and wanted to get a second opinion regarding radtea's post without "contaminating" it with my criticisms first.

Radtea seems to assume that climate models are central to our understanding of the climate's response to rising CO2 levels. They're just methods of reducing the error bars on (for instance) modern estimates of the equilibrium climate sensitivity. Compared to pre-computer estimates like Hulbert's 1931 estimate of 4C per doubled CO2, computer models have actually reduced the maximum likelihood value to ~3C. They're also backed up by multiple independent experimental constraints on the climate sensitivity, in contexts where I doubt the problems he's been talking about are relevant.

I'm unaware of any model in computational physics (except perhaps lattice QCD?) which can claim to be completely "physical" in the sense that he seems to want. My own research which inverts gravity to solve for ocean tide heights assumes a constant density of water because GRACE measurements are due to changes in mass, not height directly. Not only do I ignore local seasonal fluctuations in temperature (which affects density), I also ignore local seasonal fluctuations in salinity because of calving glaciers (which also affects density).

Of course, my software is an empirical inversion of data rather than a dynamical physical model like a GCM. But in one sense my reason for neglecting salinity fluctuations (and noting it clearly in the upcoming JGR paper) is probably similar; the "unphysicality" was examined and the error estimated. In my case the error introduced by any reasonable density fluctuation is well beneath the noise floor for my desired observable. In a GCM, salinity likely has a negligible effect on global mean temperature which doesn't justify using it as a prognosticating variable. That would increase the degrees of freedom of the model and thus make it harder to test. Any serious effects of any of these examples of empirical "tuning" should have shown up in comparisons of the models to instrumental and proxy records of forcings and temperature. More likely, they play a minor role in the size of the established error bars.

In a completely different sense, long-term integrations of weather models certainly are thrown off by small errors. The predictive efficacy of weather predictions does indeed fall off exponentially because of this, and because of errors in measurements of the initial conditions. But the whole point of taking an initial condition ensemble is to average away this noise. By running dozens of simulations and changing the initial conditions each time, it becomes obvious that even though the weather noise is different, the extrema stay in the same "corridor" which we call the climate. The predictive efficacy of climate predictions doesn't fall off exponentially with time because the climate is a boundary condition problem, not an initial condition problem. Instead, the predictive efficacy of climate predictions depends primarily on taking a long enough temporal average (in addition to specifying the forcings).

For instance, a credible climate prediction would be "If natural forcings remain within established variances and human emissions of CO2 continue to rise at specified rate X, then the global temperature averaged from 2030-2050 will be higher than the equivalent average from 1990-2010.

On the other hand, a bogus climate prediction would be "The global temperature in 2030 will be higher than in 2010. That's bogus primarily because models have precisely the flaws he's talking about, in addition to our insufficient understanding of ENSO, PDO, NAO, etc turbulent heat transfer

How does something moving faster than light inherently violate causality?

Like this.

Oops! The "largely due" link should actually point here. This is the main graph from Meehl 2004 as mentioned in the article I'm constantly referencing, which is at the top of my "homepage" as listed here in Slashdot.

... the top 10 feet (3 meters) of the ocean contains as much heat energy as the entire atmosphere. The average depth of the oceans is over 10,000 feet. That gives some perspective on how much of a heat sink/buffer the oceans are ...

True, and a more relevant number is probably the one mentioned by the article just before yours: the ocean's so-called "upper mixing layer" that is roughly 30 m thick on average. The article comments that the water below that generally mixes with the top layer on times scales that are long compared with a human lifetime. The article's estimate is that the 30 m mixing layer has roughly 10 times the heat capacity of the troposphere (which is over 80% of the atmosphere's mass), and these two layer are exchanging heat on a reasonably short ( 1 year) time scale.

Measuring the temperature of the top 30 m of the oceans is easier than doing the same for the troposphere, and the water does a lot of averaging for us. As has been pointed out by others, the lower atmosphere has routine temperature changes in the 10-20 degrees C range on a daily time scale. You can see this by watching the thermometer out in your yard. The ocean surface changes much more slowly than this, adding to its value as a good temperature record. (Of course, it's not too handy if you live in Colorado or Bolivia or Chad or Kazakhstan.)

In any case, the ocean depths (below 30 or 50 m) and the stratosphere are not very relevant to the question of climate change. One changes too slowly; the other changes too quickly. The oceans' mixing layer and the lower atmosphere are the best places to get a useful record of global temperatures. But it still requires a bit of math to make the mass of measurements meaningful. It's fairly clear that most people don't understand the math at all.

Neither of you are providing links to peer-reviewed articles, so I won't bother trying to guess what specific event either of you are talking about. But most climate variability pre-1970 can't be "significantly" blamed on anthropogenic CO2 (i.e. "soot") because our population was small and the power generated was miniscule by today's standards. The inefficiency of 1800s era technology merely multiplied the total fossil fuel use by a larger coefficient than today's more efficient tech, but that total fossil fuel use was tiny compared to the demands of the modern world. Various proxies (middle graph) show variability over the last 1000 years, but most of this is explained by natural changes like the solar Maunder Minimum and occasional sustained "statistically significant" changes in volcanic activity (which normally adds aerosols to the atmosphere thus causing a brief "volcanic winter" but the CO2 emitted stays in the atmosphere longer so volcanic activity warms the long term climate). Also, notice that the top graph (the shorter instrumental record) shows no real change from 1800 to 1850, and both absolute temperatures are below the current temperature-- but this is from a period where they don't even bother to provide error bars because there are only a handful of recording stations. If you examine the middle graph (proxy reconstructions) again, you'll note that there's some disagreement about variability on ~30 year timescales, but even the increase around ~1000 CE is consistent among proxy reconstructions, and explained in terms of natural causes.

Remember that climate scientists aren't saying that natural variability doesn't exist. We're just saying that previous and current climate changes have natural causes which are relatively well understood, but the current increase in global average temperature as averaged over ~20 years is at least largely due to anthropogenic causes. Personally, I say this is a good reason to go nuclear. Yesterday.

Also, here's a rough approximation of the heat content of the oceans, troposphere, and stratosphere.

The heat capacity of the atmosphere and earth's surface is so low, that it varies drastically within a few hours every day. Bodies of water, on the other hand, hold about 100x as much heat per unit volume. I have been debating global warming for a damn long time, and NOBODY has ever had a damn thing to say about the real global heat content (including oceans), just debating bullshit air temperatures, which account for almost nothing compared to ocean temps. ... Anybody who knows about global warming knows that air temp doesn't matter in the big picture of the climate, and knows that the evidence is so overwhelming that somebody would have to disprove the info on ocean heating to make a valid argument. But again and again I just see the same shit come out of you people "air temps, air temps, air temps"

Incidentally, I've discussed ocean heat content several times, and agree that it's a better diagnostic than air temperatures (subject to the caveats referenced in that post and those quoted at the very bottom of this post.)

... the actually CO2 and methane levels, you don't have a clue how much society produces compared to natural causes, right now people make about 50x as much as nature puts out.

Well, it's a little more complicated than that. I've previously said that human CO2 emissions are ~100x than those from volcanoes. This is the comparison that matters, so your summary is essentially correct. But the biosphere's yearly fluctuations are much larger than our yearly emissions, as you can see by the fact that the red line's annual amplitude is much smaller than its linear trend. The biosphere is a closed system, though, so it's not relevant to abrupt climate change.

The heat capacity of the atmosphere and earth's surface is so low, that it varies drastically within a few hours every day. Bodies of water, on the other hand, hold about 100x as much heat per unit volume. I have been debating global warming for a damn long time, and NOBODY has ever had a damn thing to say about the real global heat content (including oceans), just debating bullshit air temperatures, which account for almost nothing compared to ocean temps. ... Anybody who knows about global warming knows that air temp doesn't matter in the big picture of the climate, and knows that the evidence is so overwhelming that somebody would have to disprove the info on ocean heating to make a valid argument. But again and again I just see the same shit come out of you people "air temps, air temps, air temps"

Incidentally, I've discussed ocean heat content several times, and agree that it's a better diagnostic than air temperatures (subject to the caveats referenced in that post and those quoted at the very bottom of this post.)

... the actually CO2 and methane levels, you don't have a clue how much society produces compared to natural causes, right now people make about 50x as much as nature puts out.

Well, it's a little more complicated than that. I've previously said that human CO2 emissions are ~100x than those from volcanoes. This is the comparison that matters, so your summary is essentially correct. But the biosphere's yearly fluctuations are much larger than our yearly emissions, as you can see by the fact that the red line's annual amplitude is much smaller than its linear trend. The biosphere is a closed system, though, so it's not relevant to abrupt climate change.

The heat capacity of the atmosphere and earth's surface is so low, that it varies drastically within a few hours every day. Bodies of water, on the other hand, hold about 100x as much heat per unit volume. I have been debating global warming for a damn long time, and NOBODY has ever had a damn thing to say about the real global heat content (including oceans), just debating bullshit air temperatures, which account for almost nothing compared to ocean temps. ... Anybody who knows about global warming knows that air temp doesn't matter in the big picture of the climate, and knows that the evidence is so overwhelming that somebody would have to disprove the info on ocean heating to make a valid argument. But again and again I just see the same shit come out of you people "air temps, air temps, air temps"

Incidentally, I've discussed ocean heat content several times, and agree that it's a better diagnostic than air temperatures (subject to the caveats referenced in that post and those quoted at the very bottom of this post.)

... the actually CO2 and methane levels, you don't have a clue how much society produces compared to natural causes, right now people make about 50x as much as nature puts out.

Well, it's a little more complicated than that. I've previously said that human CO2 emissions are ~100x than those from volcanoes. This is the comparison that matters, so your summary is essentially correct. But the biosphere's yearly fluctuations are much larger than our yearly emissions, as you can see by the fact that the red line's annual amplitude is much smaller than its linear trend. The biosphere is a closed system, though, so it's not relevant to abrupt climate change.