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The Limits To Skepticism
jamie found a long and painstaking piece up at The Economist asking and provisionally answering the question: "Does the spirit of scientific scepticism really require that I remain forever open-minded to denialist humbug until it's shown to be wrong?" The author, who is not named, spent several hours picking apart the arguments of one Willis Eschenbach, AGW denialist, who on Dec. 8 published what he called the "smoking gun" — it was supposed to prove that the adjustments climate scientists make to historical temperature records are arbitrary to the point of intentional manipulation. The conclusion: "[H]ere's my solution to this problem: this is why we have peer review. Average guys with websites can do a lot of amazing things. One thing they cannot do is reveal statistical manipulation in climate-change studies that require a PhD in a related field to understand. So for the time being, my response to any and all further 'smoking gun' claims begins with: show me the peer-reviewed journal article demonstrating the error here. Otherwise, you're a crank and this is not a story. And then I'll probably go ahead and try to investigate the claim and write a blog post about it, because that's my job. Oh, and by the way: October was the hottest month on record in Darwin, Australia."
It's called hindcasting. It's done quite frequently. I point this out not because I know lots about climate science or anything, rather to show that you know even less than me.
You people are just as retarded as the Apollo denialists.
If you look at the website of actual scientists, and in particular, if you want to weed out the crap, science bloggers who haven't created a web site solely to peddle their American Enterprise Institute-sponsored, Fox New-inspired, American Petroleum Institute-approved AGW denialism crap, they all (99%) support the consensus.
In other words, if you find an AGW denialist website, it's one of the following:
- political rag (no scientific credentials)
- industry-sponsored self-serving outlet (scientific creds tainted by obvious conflict of interest when it's not 100% PR)
- denialist scientist with nothing else to tell the public but denialism
Look at scienceblogs.com. Not one denialist. Or maybe 1 in 100. Look at all the publically speaking scientists; no, I'm not asking you to trust them more for that, I'm asking you to look at them because they spoke to the public before talking of GW. They don't just talk of that. The occasional scientist denialist only creates his blog to speak of that.
A little geography. Darwin is a VERY small city so your weird statement is bullshit grasping at straws.
I don't know why I bother. Facts are not going to help against those that are convinced that everything said by scientists and educated clergy is a lie. Climate is just the next anti-intellectual soft target after evolution for groups that see education as a threat.
from day 1 i've never met an AGW believer who i've been able make pause for even a second when i mention warming on other planets in the solar system, the fact CO2 only supplies 2% of the warming effect, the fact CO2 rise lags warming, the fact the warmest years on record were in the 1940's. all of this nevers gets a look in, even in the mid 90's when this whole debarcle was gaining momentum. The discussion always degrades into an emotive name calling exercise from them. accusations of being paid off are frequent.
I think at it's core, the promblem for AGW believers is they have invested so much in the arguement that the gaps in their hypothesis are filled with faith rather then science. and i'm all for faith in an idea before it's proven (many break throughs have happened this way), but NOT when your forcing me to agree and forcing trillions of dollars to be spent to combat what could well be a non issue.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
I am thoroughly convinced [in other words you refuse to think about it at all lest you come into doubt - tell me again who is the one with the closed mind?] that no amount of evidence at this point can convince the Warmerists.
Calling them Scientists is a bastardization of what science is actually about. It's like calling holocaust deniers "holocaust skeptics" [Ah dragging out the bigoted ad hominem, how predictably irrational of you to demonize your opponent instead of addressing the arguments]. It's correct in a purely technical sense, but it's a slap in the face to Scientific organizations around the world. True science is supposed to be grounded in open data, open analysis and reason, not personal bias and misinformation.
There, FTFY in light of the CRU emails, their stacking of the deck for editorial bias in what is allowed to be published in journals, their refusal to produce the data and algorithms and share them with critics in their field as well as those outside the field and their politicization of what is obviously a very important issue into a vehicle for massive forced political collectivism the likes of which the world hasn't seen since Mao. There is plenty of room to disagree that any significant climate change is caused by humans, or can be remedied by humans. UNless youre; as politically and economically ties to a statist solution that is forced on peopel despite the lack of conclusive evidence that the problem is real and that the solutions proposed will be effective; both of which are open to reasonable doubt -- the latter even more so than than former (although the continued rise in CO2 and the cooling of the last decade bring into question the AGW-CO2 hypothesis' validity).
the Human-caused GW side is making extraordinary claims and demanding extraordinary actions that threaten individual liberty, social justice and the quality of life on a global scale. I suggest you remember a quote by Carl Sagan (and held by many real skeptics): Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.. So far the proof offered hasn't done too well in normal scrutiny, much less reached a level of being "extraordinary" in any real expect that of a vehicle for political collectivism.
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We have a few examples of classic denialist behaviour here. You start off by acting like the suppressed whistleblower. You've got the facts, but the man is trying to keep you down.
The weather exhibits chaotic behavior and to find precisely one single cause for variation is futile, like CO2 emissions from human activities
Denialist behaviour: keep making the same point that has been discredited time and time again. Weather is not the same as climate. If you toss a coin a hundred times, it will come up heads approximately 50% of the time. But that doesn't mean that you will know what the result will be on the 101st toss.
The hottest day on record! screams the summary. Er, well since 1941. Well and good, how do you know the hottest day last century in Australia didn't happen in 1940?
(No, it says the hottest month on record.) Now you have a bit of denialist misdirection. You couldn't argue with the fact that it was the hottest month on record, so you tried to change what they said to being the hottest month in the last century.
In any case, do you have any reason to think that some month in 1940 was hotter than any in the years after that? Or maybe are you trying to introduce unjustified doubt. This is textbook stuff: you don't have any facts with which to argue, so you just ask questions (that you can't answer yourself - I'll give you a hint, RTFA) to make it appear that opposition haven't considered all the possibilities.
The Earth has been getting warmer since about 10,000 years ago. Truth. AGW doesn't explain that
This one is my favourite. What makes you think that it is getting warmer? Oh, you suddenly believe what the scientists say! The hockey stick graph gets discredited because we apparently can't accurately measure the temperatures before 1850, but we can measure it 110,000 years ago. It is this that cherry picking of results of which both sides accuse the other.
But is it relevant? Can the sudden increase in warming over the last century really be attributed to the end of the last ice age? As a comparison, 1998 was dramatically hotter than the surrounding years. This is not attributed (by anyone reliable) to global warming, but rather to El Nino. Do you think that it is possible that the similar sudden increase in temperature seen over the century may also be attributable to something other than the extremely mild warming the planet saw prior to that?
I have always maintained that it is not the amount of temperature change that is the problem, but the speed of which it occurs. If it happens too fast, the all animals (including humans) have problems adapting. This results in a large number of species going extinct.
No weather model can correctly predict past, known, climate; how can one believe that the future predictions are correct?
That's a pretty bold statement. Which models have you look at? This might be one of those "Something doesn't exist, although I have never bothered to check" moments.
Medieval Warm period?
Even so, simple historical knowledge should convince you AGW can't be true. Greenland used to be GREEN with vegetation. It is presently covered in ice. What does that tell you? England, during the Roman Empire, was a major exporter of WINE.
What do have medieval warm periods to do with climate change? Human made even?
How can you write such bullshit and not se your self that you are so wrong? England right now is also again a booming wine country!!! You know what? It became tis the last 20 YEAR. Never in earth history a climate change happened during such a short period of time.
The medieval micro warm period was a natural one ... and because of that you believe the current one is natural as well? Hello??? On what basis? In medieval times when it was warm. (less warm then now ... you don't even seem to understand that ice in greenland needs a few 1000 years to build up and a few 1000 years to melt ... normally) However in medieval times we had a warm period that 100% for certain was not caused by CO2 produced by humans. So how can you compare a not CO2 based and not human based warm period with a CO2 based on, human made one which we have now? How can you draw conclusions from a natural phenomena to an artificial one? How can you be so stupid? No not ignorant ("ignorant" means, you don't know basic stuff, probably not your fault) But stupid (stupid means, with the stuff you know, no matter how less it is, why do you come to such braindead conclusions?
The rest you wrote about water clouds, water vapour, sun activity and your ice core probe claims is just so utter nonsense I don't have the nerves to enlighten you ....
angel'o'sphere
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Feel pretty dumb that you wrote this bit, don't you? :-) If you don't, then you have a bigger problem.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
This is utter nonsense, Climate data, unlike say Quantum string theory, does not require more than school mathematics and some (scientific) and other common sense.
The data, and lack of it, and the unreliability of proxies eg tree rings and ice cores is clear. The effects of poor experimental methods on modern data and the fact that, even then, recent data does not, in a statistically significant sense, support a warming hypothesis is obvious. If you plot, say, the last 10 years data it fits a slowly DECLINING line, not a Hockey Stick.
The mathematical models used by Climatologists have never been demonstrated to work, and almost always demonstrably fail, exactly as Chaos theory predicts, ie instability of the solutions of differential manifolds with respect to small variations of initial conditions.
UK climate scientists have been at this for fifty years, especially at the Met Office and have NEVER got it to work.
You need no PhD to conclude that AGW is populist un-scientific Bullshit, and is no more than a media scare story eg Flu Pandemic. It is also a symptom of the group-think here to label opponents as "deniers".
You think the smartest graduates go into the private sector straight off and the dumbest go into PhDs? I bet you buy into this 'university of life' bullshit don't you?
You are part of the problem. You don't really respect academic qualification (despite what you claim) and you think that the pursuit of money will somehow lead to scientific advancement. Put down Atlas Shrugged and get a fucking clue.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
And if said scientists don't have the inclination to explain themselves as to why I should change my lifestyle/agree to huge new taxes/accept massive new government controls, I don't have the inclination to vote for these things or ask my elected representative to do so. "Because I said so" is not an acceptable reason when you are reaching for my wallet.
---dragoness