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Judge Orders EPA To Produce Science Behind Pruitt's Climate Claims (scientificamerican.com)
EPA must produce the opposing body of science Administrator Scott Pruitt has relied upon to claim that humans are not the primary drivers of global warming, a federal judge has ruled. From a report: The EPA boss has so far resisted attempts to show the science backing up his claims. His critics say such evidence doesn't exist, even as Pruitt has called for greater science transparency at the agency. Now, a court case may compel him to produce research that attempts to contradict the mountain of peer-reviewed studies collected by the world's top science agencies over decades that show humans are warming the planet at an unprecedented pace through the burning of fossil fuels. Not long after he took over as EPA administrator, Pruitt appeared on CNBC's "Squawk Box," where he was asked about carbon dioxide and climate change. He said, "I would not agree that it's a primary contributor to the global warming that we see." The next day, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, or PEER, filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking the studies Pruitt used to make his claims. Specifically, the group requested "EPA documents that support the conclusion that human activity is not the largest factor driving global climate change." On Friday, the chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Beryl Howell, ordered the agency to comply.
that's why it takes someone with knowledge and experience to lead this effort. Just kidding, the POTUS and I are golf buddies...
It was nice knowing you. But now you're just getting in the way of the current administration. You were signed into law by a Democrat, so expect to be repealed soon by a Republican majority Congress.
You know... because asking someone to provide proof of a claim is anti-conservative.
Watch this become the new one. Then we all can sit back and watch in horror at our society as it continues to define itself as the worshiper of lies.
OK then, it sounds like you can provide the stack of peer-reviewed papers that Pruitt is being directed to cough up. Links?
Furthermore, correlation does not imply causation. And all cats are animals, but not all animals are cats. Help Modus Ponens, I'm caught in a P Hole!
You cn label this as a Troll, but do not fool yourselves, it is exactly his "science". P.. There are people who paid a lot of money to buy his opinion. Do not cross them - in Today's America, money determines physics.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
precisely! "me thinks you protest too much" via the "mountain of studies" if the hypothesis is wrong so is the conclusion... look at the argument against dark matter - the mountain of evidence is entirely inconclusive as to what it is.
nothing to see here - move along
It's a demand for evidence. Perhaps in your world evidence is not scientific? Methinks you haven't the foggiest notion what does or doesn't constitute a scientific demand.
Does not Agree does not necessarily require more scientific studies.
Does not agree needs an explanation. The concept that human inserted CO2 and methane into th eatomsphere requires invalidating some laws of physics.
You don't validate a theory by claiming everyone else is wrong. Gotta show the work proving your theoty is the right one.
Otherwise you can simply say Humans do not prodoce CO2 warming because God ignores it and won't let the temperatures change. That's as valid an idea as any of the denial ideas. It isn't science, because it can't be proven wrong, but there we go.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
They didn't pin him down. They simply are asking for the research behind his statements. If you're the head of the EPA and make a statement such as he made I think it's totally rational to ask for the research.
Sent from my TARDIS
Technically, the judge has not ruled that the EPA must prove the claim. The judge has ruled that the evidence must be released under the FOIA request. Even if the EPA only releases one rough non-reviewed report and says "that's all we have", they're in compliance with the court.
Then it's up to the American public to recognize this is ridiculous, and vote for something better. Good luck with that.
You do not have a moral or legal right to do absolutely anything you want.
The mere fact that this is even a thing is frustrating as hell.
Now, the EPA SHOULD be utilizing science to come up with its recommendations and conclusions, but it's just gut level instinct at this point, most of which is driven by corporate or political mandate.
Actual science looks at a situation and asks questions, attempting to find the answers to those questions, or presenting theories attempting to break those theories. That takes time, effort, and some modicum of intelligence. I don't see much of any of that being presented by either "side" of this case. Just one person saying, "uh huh," and another saying, "nuh huh." And round and round we go.
In other words, science doesn't give a damn about your personal options.
I read at +2. If your post doesn't reach that level I will not see or respond to it.
What is the "other side" to Copernicus' view that the Earth revolves around the Sun? It's been almost half a millennium, so you've had plenty of time to come up with something.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yeah he's just going to be releasing his used toilet paper and calling it a day, nobody is going to be shocked he just pulled it out of his ass.
Political hack organization trying to pin down a politician. Nothing to see here.
Proper science never has just one side. There is tons of evidence Man/Humankind/CO2 is not the primary cause of changing climate.
As I learned in grammer school, Ocean currents play a pivotal role is weather. Ocean currents have changed. Ocean currents are not generally been part of the climate models... sigh this is not the place to debate science anymore.
melt
Judging by your last paragraph, I would take anything you learned in your "grammer" school with a grain of salt......
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Ahh, you lie
Also, they aren't technically required to have any documents that a FOA asks for. If they legitimately have no such documents they can say "we don't have any" and be complying with the request and it's still up to the public to fix it via the roundabout method of voting for somone who has the authority to do something about who us in change of doing something about the policy decisions.
Proper science has no junkscience paid liars positing claims not published in peer reviewed formal journals of climatology.
Does not Agree does not necessarily require more scientific studies.
It does when you are the head of a purported scientific agency and have been using Does not Agree as the basis for rolling back policies and programs that have been backed by scientific studies. He doesn't agree that humans contribute to global warming? Fine. Show us the the studies that led him to that belief. It's the Environmental Protection Agency. Their default action should always be "what protects the environment".
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
It isn’t possible to met the judges demand.
Sure it is. All he has to do is show evidence of what is the primary driver of global warming. If that primary driver isn't humans, then voila, it's done!
First, you have to prove global warming is happening
That's already been demonstrated by the temperature of the sea rising.
Pruitt may contend this is a normal fluctuation.
If this is true then there would be evidence of it (which there is not).
The “consensus view” on global warming being manmade is based on a flawed study of the papers at a climate conference where the famed 97% figure arose.
A lot of good research has been done on the topic. No single study shapes the view of the scientific community. Living in denial is fine... as long as you don't stand in the way of people trying to address the issue.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Yes it is. You produce whatever it was that made you make the assertion in the first place. No, you can't prove a negative, but if you make an assertion, you're not being asked to prove a negative, you're being asked to show your work.
If Pruitt has said that global warming is not caused by humans, then he needs to produce the evidence behind that, or shut the fuck up.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
The “consensus view” on global warming being manmade is based on a flawed study of the papers at a climate conference where the famed 97% figure arose. But the actual authors of the papers used to generate this statistic say the study is in error, because their paper was misinterpreted, they didn’t conclude there was global warming, they said global warming was occurring but it wasn’t manmade, they said global warming was occurring but it was a normal fluctuation, they said global warming was occurring but the effects would not me drastic, or global warming was occurring but it would be potentially beneficial. So, consensus is not at all been achieved.
So it should be simple then for Pruitt to provide follow-up studies proving flawed methodology or data with the original research and providing evidence that climate change is a completely natural occurrence with minimal human influence. That's all the court is asking for. I'll just leave my car running since I'm sure it won't take too long.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
An organizational leader shouldn't make informed decisions?
What kind of leader do you want?
Oh wait, I think I know.
As I learned in grammer school, Ocean currents play a pivotal role is weather.
Yet oddly, in this "grammer" school you learned neither spelling, correct sentence case, nor syntax.
Any scientific organizational leader that doesn't make policy based on scientific research is incompetent.
FTFY
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
If Mr. Pruitt thinks that there is research going on casting serious doubts on the results the IPCC is basing its recommendations on, then he surely is able to point to that research. Because it was Mr. Pruitt who demands that the EPA needs more scientific transparency. This is just the demand to actually cast some light to make the science more transparent for us to judge.
A few minor niggles:
1) science, of any sort, doesn't imply any specific policy - assuming that it does is a fallacy;
2) "scientific research" must be distinguished from "sciencey research", the former requiring a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement, the latter requiring only lab coats and control over the peer review process;
3) the EPA is a government organization, not a "scientific" one.
Neither will anyone else.
We will be feeding you to the Frost Giants, however.
Carry on your pitiful life.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
The scientific method requires starting with the foundation of a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement.
To wit:
1) a list of observations that would invalidate your hypothesis;
2) an argument that the lack of these observations would exclude all other hypotheses, including the null.
Having mounds of evidence "consistent with" your hypothesis is not sufficient to make it scientific - after all, astrology has mounds upon mounds of evidence and measurements. What makes a hypothesis scientific is falsifiability.
Yes, AGW would be falsified by CO2 not existing, but the mere existence of CO2 doesn't imply that AGW must be true. Same with the wavelength absorption properties of CO2 - their existence might be *necessary* for AGW to be true, but it is not *sufficient* to exclude natural (or other different man made) climate drivers.
To date, there has never been presented any necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement of AGW, much less CAGW (which would at that point possibly drive policy).
This must be John Bannon, posting from the commode again.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
That's a silly reductionist position. The EPA is a government agency that has both a fiduciary responsibility to taxpayers, as well as a responsibility to the well being of *citizens*. The "environment" is only a proxy here for protecting humans, and we must *obviously* take off the table those things that protect the "environment" but harm people.
Their default action should always be "what policy balances the costs and benefits for the people".
There is tons of evidence Man/Humankind/CO2 is not the primary cause of changing climate.
However, that is irrelevant. It doesn't matter if man is the primary cause. If we're exacerbating a bad situation, we still need to stop.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You're right, but in regards to number 3, I would argue that a government agency has a duty and obligation to make informed policy decisions. Granted though that many are not and have not for some time, but that is the ideal that should be strived for.
The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Except the Democratic party actually finds ways to pay for what they spend. The Republicans love their deficit spending. Bush Sr did it. Clinton had to clean it up which is why a lot of military folks hate him for closing all those bases except that Republicans forced him to balance the budget so he did what he hand to. Bush Jr created a whole new cabinet position with DHS while cutting taxes so again we couldn't pay for it. Of course going to war at the same time as tax cuts was pretty foolish as well. That lead to Obama having to clean up except he had zero support for anything. Republicans at least worked with Clinton to clean up the mess prior.
With Obama's weak leadership paving the way for the Trump era I don't expect our deficit to be in good shape for the next President especially with even deeper tax cuts while still being involved in Iraq and Afghanistan among many other hot spots that aren't cheap. Nevermind all the increased spending on border security which again can't be paid for without raising taxes which he just cut or severely cutting other programs which will cause issues like childhood hunger which was a solved problem in the Clinton era to come back with a vengeance as it has through Bush and Obama years.
People keep talking about entitlements being a problem when they were created to solve a specific issue. If you remove the entitlement you better prepare to address that issue in a new way or at the very least admit your solution is for people to die in the streets instead of getting public assistance.
So, let's not prove the negative, lets prove it is man made. I don't think that's possible. We've had as much success with our climate models as we have of finally eradicating cancer. Lots and lots of research, but nothing that even comes close. When you have thousands of models, and thousands of different results, seems that there is something that points more toward uncertainty than certainty in the models. Is it likely that man is causing SOME warming? Without a doubt. How much? Cannot be proven, nor disproved.
please promptly find a roof to walk off.
He'd just float. Gravity is liberal fake science bullshit too. Stupid ivory tower intellectuals with their "experiments" and "proofs". There are opposing views to every theory, and mine is that the surface of the planet is all sticky and that falling is just liberals throwing the Earth at you when you try to leave it.
You rarely hear from them anymore, but there are still some conservatives in the Republican party, even though most of them have become non-idealistic. But there's just enough of them, and conservatives are pro-science (you don't just throw away practical knowledge; leave that kind of bullshit to Stalin!) and they support the regulation of pollution, mainly because such regulation is so much cheaper than mitigating the damage caused by the pollution.
As it happens, the conservative position is totally compatible with Democrats, so there just aren't the votes to switch to a pro-pollution stance.
How do you make the retrograde motion of planets work in a geocentric system? You really going to try to make planets jumping around in space "work"?
You are welcome on my lawn.
What the 'courts are expecting' is there to be something better than what appears to be a purely politically-motivated 'opinion' from one man (or one political party) that actively quashes any opposing viewpoint. The entire subject of 'global warming' is FAR from being 100% settled (mainly because the scientific method demands it stay open to intelligent debate) but defunding and disbanding climate science research, issuing gag orders to government-employed scientists, and (my favorite one of all) actually destroying scientific data and research that doesn't agree with his 'opinion' is all diametrically opposed to the scientific method and the science community in general. It's all closer to something I'd have expected from the Catholic Church during the Inquisition era: make a claim that runs counter to what the Church's official position is? Have your life ruined, and perhaps be killed as a heretic. Some of the stories I've read in the news since Pruitt took over are chillingly similar: you're a goverment scientist who says human-caused climate change is real? Have your professional life more or less ruined, as you're censured and reassigned to some backwater of science you'll be stuck in forever, simply because Pruitt doesn't like what you had to say.
no one ever asked epa to provide "proof" that global warming exists
Conservatives have asked, on numerous occasions. It has been provided as research papers, peer reviewed. And in some cases the data has been collected from multiple sources. And the hypothesis are testable and in some cases independently reproduced.
Just because you don't like the answer doesn't mean you weren't given an answer.
tl;dr- climate change is occurring. oceans are warming. global changes in weather is inevitable. these changes is caused, at least partially, by human activity. these are the things we know. ask me in 10 years and I can give you an answer with more detail and be able to predict even more.
You can look to the Flat Earth people for that; you could put them in orbit, or send them around the Moon and back, and they'd still claim it's all smoke and mirrors. In that scenario I wouldn't at all be surprised if they tried to open the door of the capsule while in transit, convinced they were on a Hollywood sound stage.
First, you have to prove global warming is happening
Yes, I believe this is called "end of the last ice age".
Show us your PhD in Climate Science (with timestamp) to back up your 'opinions' on this anonymous news aggregation-and-discussion site. Otherwise you're just one more climate-change-denying jackass with an 'opinion' you can't back up with anything more than the lint in your pockets. I'm no scientist either, but I'd sooner listen to a room full of people who spent 6-8-10 years getting their degrees plus however many decades of experience than I would some fool (or politician, same difference) when it comes to something like this -- and I'm far from alone.
I guess the problem is that uncertainty is a thing, and even where we may be certain about specific bits of science, our "science" of economics is notoriously uncertain, and a straight line cannot be drawn between where we know things, like the absorption spectrum of CO2, and to a field where we obviously don't, like economics.
So even if you accept that AGW is real, significant, measurable, and unprecedented, there is no fundamental justification for believing it would be catastrophic, much less what economic policies would be the most efficient in addressing the problem (say, dramatically curtailing energy usage versus funding adaptation strategies).
I'll leave with this - I believe that if any viable economic model existed that could reliably predict the future, we would have found it by now. The entire western world is incentivized towards it, with the base greed inherent in humanity fueling its fire. But there is no possible way that we can predict what 2050 is going to look like economically, just as the people of 1968 had no possible way of predicting what the economies of 2018 would look like. Heck, we've got no reliable model of economics on *any* timescale :)
Now, to really screw with your head, compare world economics to world climate, and ask yourself which is the simpler problem to solve :)
Ocean temperature rise may or may not be human-caused, that's why the research needs to continue. The current administration wants to just say "it's not human caused, case closed", and start burning the research, censuring or outright firing scientists that disagree, and actively discouraging anyone, government or private, from doing any further research. That's the sort of bullshit that needs to be stopped; it smacks of Dominionism, of religious zealots who actually believe the Earth is only 6000 years old, and that we don't have to give a damn about it because it's all going to end soon anyway. This isn't just about climate change, it's about Real Facts and the neverending search for Real Truth versus dogma.
58%? Citation needed.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
Copernicus could not prove his opinion, that was not done until Newton.
Ocean currents are not generally been part of the climate models... sigh this is not the place to debate science anymore.
Dude, you are so wrong; wrong enough that I've wasted quite a few mod points to post this.
5 seconds with Bing and the search term 'gcm that includes ocean currents' had Evaluation of the GISS GCM ModelE in the top few results. This article is dated 2002 and talked about how ocean currents are included in the GISS GCM. Ocean currents have been part of GCMs (General Circulation Models) for at least that amount of time.
Now, I am skeptical of the robustness of GCMs. Their predictive power appears to be weak over time (look at how accurate the CFSV2 is over a three month period, for example); and probably because their resolution is quite low; GCMs typically having a horizontal resolution of between 250 and 600 km, 10 to 20 vertical layers in the atmosphere and sometimes as many as 30 layers in the oceans. But that will change as computers get faster or more massively paralleled.
Disagree with GCSs all you want. But at least try and do some rudimentary research on why you disagree with them..
In the 1970s scientists floated the premise we were on the cusp of an ice age, and to mitigate that threat proposed melting the polar ice caps by spreading lampblack over them.
This was a tiny minority of the scientists studying climate, and nobody now would even remember this except that the mainstream media of the time picked up on it and ran with it, perhaps because the average citizen would conflate this with another big problem back then, the concept of nuclear winter. Fast forward a few decades and cretinous turds with a few dozen brain cells are trying to present this as if the majority of climate scientists bought into this concept, that the whole community flipped from believing in cooling to believing in warming, and that somehow this is fucking relevant despite the huge advances in technology and data acquisition since then.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
I'm looking at Pruitt's wording, and I have to say, he isn't incorrect the way he worded it. CO2 isn't the primary cause of climate change. That would be the Milankovich cycles. CO2 is causing it to change at an accelerated rate though. Semantics, but whatever.
Some days I get the sinking feeling Orwell was an optimist.
Except the Democratic party actually finds ways to pay for what they spend. The Republicans love their deficit spending. Bush Sr did it. Clinton had to clean it up which is why a lot of military folks hate him for closing all those bases except that Republicans forced him to balance the budget so he did what he hand to.
So basically you are saying one Democrat president found a way to pay for what was being spent because the republicans forced him to?
And yes, I'm frustrated that the only time the Republican's have managed to balance the budget is when we had a Democrat for president. Just as I am sure Democrats are frustrated that the Democrats wait for a Republican congress before attempting amnesty. It's a shame it takes losing power to spur our parties into action.
What is the "other side" to Copernicus' view that the Earth revolves around the Sun?
Agreed. Since Copernicus' view was later proven correct we should assume all views will later be proved as correct.
Then give us a link to a kilo or two of this
I'm just curious... Is there any link that could honestly be supplied that would change your mind?
So, you're agreeing with the original poster who believes "proper science never has just one side"?
You're setting up a strawman to refute something I never said.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Good job!
You found two. Now you only need a few thousand more.
Beyond that, show me a model that has currents included in it, then remove the currents. Show me how removing currents affects the results.
Here is one, by Professor Don Easterbrook, based on the PDO. And his model nicely fits the data - including the 1940 to 1970 cooling trend and the pause/drop from 2000 to 2015 - that is available. In other words, it is the oceans (and the currents therein, that distribute the heat), not the atmosphere that drives things. Which makes sense, given the amount of heat that can be stored/distributed by each...
:Sigh: ... these high UID kids these days don't know how to debate science anymore...
Low UID doesn't seem to matter much, either...
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
IOW, you cannot provide EVIDENCE that something DIDN'T occur.
You can prove something didn't happen. For example, person X didn't go inside the bank lobby between 1 and 3pm. however that person was in jail with a constant video feed, thus assuring that it didnt happen.
With respect to something not repeatable, like the earths climate, on one hand you can't run multiple trials, but on the other hand it's disingenuous, ignorant, and in blatant denial of reality to say we can make no claims or predictions. Adding CO2 and methane are easily shown by repeatable experiment to increase the worlds temperature. If someone wanted to make a scientific claim as to why they wouldn't, in practice, they would need to actually come up with a better explanation, say some feedback mechanism such as increased cloud cover, or plant growth. But to just hand wave it away without a rational explanation is moronic and may simply be dismissed without evidence.
How do you make the retrograde motion of planets work in a geocentric system? You really going to try to make planets jumping around in space "work"?
I'd suggest you do a quick primer on frames of reference in the theory of relativity. But who knows, maybe Einstein was wrong about all that stuff... An Earth-centered frame of reference is perfectly valid as the GP stated; the math is ugly, and the motions of the planets become extremely complex from an equation standpoint, but it is completely consistent and nothing "jumps" around. Unless you think Einstein is wrong?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Why is that strange? CO2 concentration started rising in early 1800-s: https://robertscribbler.files....
but there's Youtube videos of a guy debating flat earthers. They've got all sorts of explanations.
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
Actually, no. His model makes no sense whatsoever. It's basically "Pacific ocean warm, Ogg happy". Meanwhile, the warming in the recent 20 years is now way over 95% significance threshold. The acceleration of the global warming rate is also now statistically significant.
Oldie, but goodie: https://skepticalscience.com/g...
Epicycles. You have your planets moving in circles which are centered upon points which are themselves moving in circles. Add more circles if you need to. That's how the geocentric astronomers did it. They didn't realise it, but they'd gotten half-way towards inventing the fourier transform. The model actually does work to some extent - it's unwieldy, but it will predict the motions of the planets with a good degree of accuracy. The geocentrists of old were not idiots - they simply had limited observational data with which to test their models.
"Grammar school" is a type of school in the British education system. It does not actually focus upon grammar any more than other schools. There was a time they did, some generations ago when knowledge of latin and greek was respected, and the name is just a vestige of that era.
The main characteristic of a grammar school is an academically selective admission. Potential students need to demonstrate good grades to be accepted, while the regular comprehensive schools will take students regardless of academic ability.
As Richard Feynman so clearly pointed out, if your model does not fit data, then it is wrong. The model proffered says that CO2 drives our climate. However, we see that even Phil Jones, lead researcher of the IPCC (and the IPCC itself) admit that the same heating occurred from 1975 to 1998, as occurred in 1910 to 1940 (very low CO2 output) and from 1860 to 1880 (essentially no CO2 output). So if the temperature changes are the same for essentially zero, very little, and a lot of CO2 output, then can we conclusively state that CO2 is the driver of temperature change?
Feynman has another great segment on this very thing where you make a vague and unverifiable model, and thus you cannot be proven wrong; but the model should be discounted entirely to begin with.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Unfortunately, the two are intrinsically linked, so any solution will be complex.
I highly suggest reading the book Doughnut Economics on this topic. The essential argument the author makes is that ultimately our economies are based upon the systems of the earth. We can make things out of wood without trees, we can't grow food without soil, etc. Even things like mineral extraction and fossil fuel use are also ultimately rooted in earth systems.
If we want to have a robust world economy that creates opportunity for everybody, it *must* be ecologically sustainable. Anything else is just borrowing from future generations and will eventually collapse when resources run out.
The doughnut economics book also traces a lot of the history of economic theory to sets of mathematical models invented to describe things limited in scope that have now been taken grossly out of the original context.
There are also plenty of economic models that are just too damn simple. A number of these came about shortly after Newton wrote down the basic laws of planetary motion, which inspired other disciplines to describe the world with mathematics. Of course, the systems are radically different. Planetary systems are relatively simple when compared to economics, which can involve literally millions of people making independent decisions.
Not really needed, if you remember the quote from Einstein. One simple experimental result that shows your model is wrong is all it takes.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The models claim that temperature correlates with CO2. But here is data that shows the two do not correlate. So which is right - the data or the model?
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The scientific method requires starting with the foundation of a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement.
To wit:
1) a list of observations that would invalidate your hypothesis;
2) an argument that the lack of these observations would exclude all other hypotheses, including the null.
Having mounds of evidence "consistent with" your hypothesis is not sufficient to make it scientific - after all, astrology has mounds upon mounds of evidence and measurements. What makes a hypothesis scientific is falsifiability.
Yes, AGW would be falsified by CO2 not existing, but the mere existence of CO2 doesn't imply that AGW must be true. Same with the wavelength absorption properties of CO2 - their existence might be *necessary* for AGW to be true, but it is not *sufficient* to exclude natural (or other different man made) climate drivers.
To date, there has never been presented any necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement of AGW, much less CAGW (which would at that point possibly drive policy).
So give me the current work that invalidates the Greenhouse effect on a planetart scale.
Remember current work. Everything I have seen so far has been invalidated. This is usually based on cherry picking data, and anything that isn't understood is waved like a smoking gun -showing that all of the data is wrong. The best example of this was the smoking gun difference between satellite observations and high altitude balloon measurements. This differnce was touted as the destruction of any and all Global warming period. I was referred to many pages touting this work.
Problem is, later work brought the differences into agreement - including by the team who wrote the paper notint the anomalies.
Regardless, the US Environmental Protection agency is presumably not a organization that marches in lockstep to the Republican administration, andrelies on science. to make it's decisions,
Surely they have this evidence that completely refutes AGW, and perhaps The entire physic of energy retention (or rejection) of certain gases based on their presence. Seems a little odd that the head of the EPA refuses to show the work. that will silence the purveyors of incorrect science - I mean, he is using truth and not politics, amirite?
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Correct. The temperature depends on the CO2 concentration, in an equilibrium system with long-time inertia and hysteresis. In early 1880-s the CO2 concentration had started to rise because of the rising fossil fuel use (coal) and so the temperature began to grow.
Then you didn't look at his model. It matches the temperature record quite well (better than most of the IPCC as Dr. Roy Spencer has shown), and is based on the PDO. In other words, it is the PDO (and to a lesser extent the AMO) that drive the climate, not CO2.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Except they DID provide the evidence global warning exists, now the current administration is claiming otherwise without presenting any evidence for why they changed conclusions.
The thing is, his model is basically curve fitting. It's a purely phenomenological model with lots of tunable parameters. And as Fermi said: "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk."
Meanwhile, CO2-based climate forcing has purely theoretical explanation. In the end it's a simple heat balance equation.
And you get stars travelling in circular paths at speeds far greater than lightspeed. But nobody really knew (although the were working on it - parallax works up to a point) back then how far away the stars are. Now we do know...
AC
As Richard Feynman so clearly pointed out, if your model does not fit data, then it is wrong. The model proffered says that CO2 drives our climate.
CO2 is only part of what drives the energy retention effects of Earth's atmosphere. It provides around 20 percent of this energy retention Water vapor is the biggest greenhouse "gas" - in quotes because it is vapor.
Regardless, it is great that Pruitt will present us with the unimpeachble and true science rigorously performed that will once and for all and without question kill thie idea that silly gases have some dort of effect on the earth's climate. Only God can do that, and he loves us and wants us to be happy.
I can hardly wait.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Anthropogenic carbon emissions exceed the amount that can be taken up or balanced out by natural sinks.[91] As a result, carbon dioxide has gradually accumulated in the atmosphere, and as of 2013, its concentration is almost 43% above pre-industrial levels.
That would imply that the remainder, 57%, would be from non-human sources.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I'm pretty sure the top cause of warming is the heat given off by nuclear reactions. Some in the sun, but mostly the heat from nuclear decay in the Earth's core. Remove those and we wouldn't be warming.
That's not what he meant though of course. He meant "lalalalalala tax cuts and regulation cuts for donors lalalalalalala". Same as most of the Republicans in office the last thirty odd years.
CO2 isn't the primary cause of climate change. That would be the Milankovich cycles.
It is a significant contribution but not strictly true. Milankovich cycles count for up to 23% from trough to peak. We're not starting from either the top or bottom so we're looking at an even smaller contribution than that theoretical maximum.
Maybe if Bernie won and the next generation learned some basic mathematics with their free college education we'd be able to have better discussions and make better policy decisions. Until then we have a lot of nitwits sharing their opinions. Worse, some of the really clever nitwits sound scientific or speak in half truths.
The technology exists to greatly reduce our net emissions. It's the responsible thing to do. Climate change or not, we should pollute less.
"Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless."
Our falsely elected leader, who is working directly for Putin, has devolved America into Chaos over his 500 days in office.
His only "Accomplishment" was giving all his billionare buddies a Huge tax cut, and everyone else a sixpack.
In the meantime, his cronies have been arrested, charged, and are either awaiting trial, or have served a sentence and been deported.
I'm just waiting for them to fly Air Force One to russia with all the criminals onboard, and try to set up a "Government in Exile."
This is what happens when you remove school funding for 30 years; Americans are too stupid to recognize Propaganda, and Outright Lies.
Welcome to America!
Now get the fuck off my lawn, or we shoot you.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
How do you make the retrograde motion of planets work in a geocentric system? You really going to try to make planets jumping around in space "work"?
I'd suggest you do a quick primer on frames of reference in the theory of relativity. But who knows, maybe Einstein was wrong about all that stuff...
Bringing up Special Relativity when the subject is rotating non-inertial reference
frames doesn't really help your case. You might want to dial down your smugness.
He's broken so many laws, he better hope the Repubs stay in power forever, or that the Russian President is saving a pardon for him.
I hope they send him and Trump to Angola (Deep South, not the country), they'd like the other inmates, I'm sure. :)
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
He'd like it there.
Hunter S. Thompson was a bastard, but a heck of a guy; this guy using his Nick obviously never knew him, or read any of his books.
We've been in Bat(shit crazy) country for 500 days and counting, lol.
Truth isn't Truth - Guliani
You are seriously delusional.
Any time the entire worlds scientists in any field have more than a 90% consensus on it, there is literally tons of proof (as in published peer reviewed papers on the subject supporting it printed in the old dead tree format so it can be weighed.)
It's up to the dissenters to provide proof to overturn the plethora of evidence we already have. So far you deniers have provided squat if we don't bother to count all the hot air you've been spewing. By the way, your breath stinks of corruption.
You know... because asking someone to provide proof of a claim is anti-conservative.
When you only ask one side to provide proof of something, that's bullshit.
When the one side making the absurd claims is the side that has not conducted any repeatable experiments on the matter, has not been able to accurately predict things, and keeps revising both their models and data points in order to fit their hypothesis, yet they're the "accepted" side, that's bullshit.
But the most bullshit thing is not realizing the simple fact that carbon dioxide is absolutely not the primary cause of global warming. Not only is CO2 a weak greenhouse gas, human production of it doesn't account for the majority of it. The primary cause of warming and cooling is the fucking sun, by far. If you want to get into secondary factors, then plain ol' water vapor beats out CO2 by a country mile.
Christ loves you anyway.
Consider that the United States obesity epidemic has been caused by a government policy to promote carbohydrate consumption and discourage fat consumption. That policy was based on scientific research.
Not true.
These recommendations emanated from hearings held in the mid-to-late 1970s by the Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and Human Needs, despite a “boisterous mob of critics,” including those within the scientific community who pleaded with the Committee to wait for more research “before we make announcements to the American public.” In response, Committee Chairman Sen. McGovern responded that “Senators don’t have the luxury that the research scientist does of waiting until every last shred of evidence is in.”
This was a classic case of, "We have to do something, this is something, we have to do this." The scientists were very clear that there was no research supporting the policy recommendation.
Nope, no sig
So we're in an airplane ready for our parachute jump and realize we've forgotten our chutes. We know we just wasted $200 if we don't jump. We can't prove for certain we'll die if we jump. In fact there are a few sparse reports of people surviving.
So in your opinion, we should definitely jump?
true science rigorously performed that will once and for all and without question
Why should he do anything that any undergraduate who has taken a course on the philosophy of science can tell you completely contradicts the scientific method.
Any and every advocate who prattles that 'the science is settled' needs to be ignored. That's just how it works. The science is NEVER settled.
The same hysterical bullshit was batted around furiously when Reagan was president.
Don't be such fucking patsies for the Democrats. They do NOT care about you. They are owned by the Corporations just like the Republicans.
Yes. Its the equivalent of 'I don't remember' which was H. Clinton's mantra in the recent past.
Because our q-bit earth's location state is represented by vibration, technically the Earth does NOT revolve around the Sun!
So the Beach Boy's song "Good Vibrations" is actually a quantum-science statement?
Fascinating!
Strat :)
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
People in these forums are determined that The Truth be known and that Government Muscle be exercised to enforce actions based on that Truth.
It's almost like the Science practiced in Moscow in 1936.
See, Pruitt thought you meant reviewed by the Peer-in-Chief.
That's the only peer-reviewed science he "believes" in.
That and the Little Red Handbook of Russian Operatives Destroying America ...
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Dogma-Cow is just a silly and indeterminate Icon on the Mac desktop.
Is it a cow?
Is it a dog?
Oh, how the clever people of 1986 would argue the issue!
1: Pretend to take a reasoned view
2: Cite some sciency-sounding but nonsensical factoids
3: Attempt to shift the goalposts
4:
Christ loves you anyway.
The next step will probably be trying to argue the Bible has something to say about the issue.
And as Fermi said: "With four parameters I can fit an elephant, and with five I can make him wiggle his trunk."
Why go through so much work. A simple hockey stick shape will suffice.
There are no complete climate models, and, in addition, there cannot be. Weather is chaotic, and therefore climate is also chaotic. You cannot collect sufficient data to have a complete model.
What you can have is models that work fairly well. Normally what they do is create an ensemble of models that work well on past data and project the places where they agree. Unfortunately, for, among other reasons, political reason, the ICCC eliminated from consideration models that made extreme forecasts. This caused them to underestimate the amount of warming to expect. They felt they had to do that to avoid being seen as alarmist if the projections were wrong.
OTOH, since controls of CO2 haven't been applied even as strongly as has been agreed upon, things are looking rather ... unpleasant. Expect continued slowing of the jet stream and for hurricanes, heat waves and cold spells to continue to become more extreme (due to lingering in one place for longer).
Please note that the prediction includes more extreme cold spells as the result of global warming. This is why they called it climate change rather than global warming, because people have a hard time understanding that a local cold snap can be due to warming elsewhere. Most of the warming, however, has been in the Arctic and Antarctic areas, as was expected. This has resulted in slower jet streams. It's not yet clear how ocean currents will be affected. It's possible that the Greenland melt will shut down the northern branch of the gulf stream, which could lead to extreme freezing on the US East Coast and in Europe. So far it's weakened, but has maintained it's direction, if not speed. OTOH, if it slows sufficiently, then the sea level rise along the US East coast should be diluted by being spread elsewhere. I don't know how this would affect Europe.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Peer reviewed journals of scientology?
Does elron know about this?
Actually, it's quite possible to create a set of equations that are Earth-centric, and fully compatible with Relativity. They'd be a real pain in the ass to work out, even compared to the Einsteinian equations, but they'd be completely compatible.
IIUC, the first thing you do is rescale your metric so that all spacial variations are restated as temporal variations. I'm not sure what the next step is, as that first one was enough of a pain.
But Geocentric coordinate systems can be just as accurate as Heliocentric. They're just a huge much more pain to calculate with.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
Actually, if things are going to hell, we might need to harness all possible resources to deal with the problems that will soon manifest.
If we're facing a really bad situation, we might need to keep trying like hell, not handicap our economy.
I know, I know, that doesn't fit in well with what Gaia wants us to do.
Nevertheless, he's correct about ocean current being pivotal in the climate and weather. What he's missing is that they don't change without cause. Yes, they've changed, and that has had a great impact on the weather. But their change was not some random happening, but has a multitude of causal antecedents, many of which are summed up in the phrase "global warming".
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
They are all clowns. Mostly all the same sort of clowns just manipulating the issues they've capitalized on to feel important and powerful.
The idea of an outsider like Trump is kinda reassuring in a way. The traditional Republicans hate his guts. He killed the Bush Dynasty and while he plays golf, the Country Club Republicans despise him.
We just need to remain skeptical, because things necessarily will go to shit again. Trump's presidency is a Drano mechanism. It will eventually be neutralized. You can count on that from Politicians, if not much else.
very reproducible as we actually have these things called greenhouses.
The idea that we can model the earth's climate in a little glass box is ludicrous. Do you have anything else stupid to contribute?
5: Prophet!
true science rigorously performed that will once and for all and without question
Why should he do anything that any undergraduate who has taken a course on the philosophy of science can tell you completely contradicts the scientific method.
Any and every advocate who prattles that 'the science is settled' needs to be ignored. That's just how it works. The science is NEVER settled.
No kidding. Here's your Whoosh.
But for all of the truth in "The science is never settled", at some point things cross from good theory to that 99.99 percent certainty level. Maybe gravity doesn't actually exist. It's possible that the speed of light is quite variable, and what looks like an ancient universe is fully compatible with the 6000 some year old age of the universe. It is possible that the so called greenhouse effect - or anti-greenhouse effect - doesn't hold up on a planetarty scale. Or perhaps it doesn't exist in the first place.
Well then - make the hypotheses, test them, and report back. Do you realize the fame and likely Nobel prize(s) for the scientist who proves AGW nee GW does not exist? Damn, that would be a relief. I'd bust open the Tequila, and to hell with the popcorn - we're gonna have caviar nachos at this party! But if your weapon is merely sowing doubt, In tactics ripped from the Tobacco lawyers playbook, that is showing that the "science" you are depending on is one of the soft sciences of psychology.
I've seen a lot of science, and never one paper plausibly debunking AGW. Did you kow that scientists look for papers like that so they can debunk deniers claims? I'm waiting though - because as you insist - the science is never settled. But I'm not holding my breath. Although it might be possible that we really do not need to breathe, and don't need oxygen - that science isn't settled either.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yeah he's just going to be releasing his used toilet paper and calling it a day, nobody is going to be shocked he just pulled it out of his ass.
Flag as Inappropriate
Personally I just wipe. Is shoving the paper actually up there something we expect from those in high office?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Welp found the contrarian.
They laughed at Einstein. They also laughed at Bozo the Clown. You ain't Einstein.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
To date, there has never been presented any necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement of AGW, much less CAGW (which would at that point possibly drive policy).
Found the fuckwit. Wow there are a lot on this thread.
The first IPCC report had predictions of the future based on climate models. We are well into the future now and the predictions fell within the error bars. Failure to do so would have falsified the result.
Second, we can measure the absorbance spectrum of CO2. If we found the measurement was wrong that would be a way of falsifying it.
There are far too many plonkers who think that "falsifiable" really means "falsified".
It doesn't.
Deal with it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
And that is quite possibly the case - but it makes them look REALLY bad if they have to admit that the agency charged with protecting the environment has taken an official position in direct opposition to the scientific consensus, without having ANY evidence to back their position. Makes Pruitt look like a traitorous corporate whore, and the rest of the agency like his complicit bitch.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
The scientific method requires starting with the foundation of a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement.
To wit:
1) a list of observations that would invalidate your hypothesis;
2) an argument that the lack of these observations would exclude all other hypotheses, including the null.
Having mounds of evidence "consistent with" your hypothesis is not sufficient to make it scientific - after all, astrology has mounds upon mounds of evidence and measurements. What makes a hypothesis scientific is falsifiability.
Yes, AGW would be falsified by CO2 not existing,
> I did not claim that it did not exist, I am claiming that someone needs to illustrate that it has no effect. The experiments and the physics are simple and reproducible.
but the mere existence of CO2 doesn't imply that AGW must be true.
Hey friend. We can have a nice discussion on this, but trying to imply that I ever said that is hopefully just a poor argument tactic
The concept of other people being required to prove you wrong when you are saying all of them are wrong is a mistaken concept common to denialism.
Reminds me of an experience I once had with an RF technician. He had a hypothesis that the way that radio worked was that little particles came off of the transmitting antenna, and collected on the receiving antenna. That would seem to indicate that a transmitting antenns would get smaller and smaller, and the receiving antenna would get larger and larger. I could think of a few good experiments he could do that would show him the error in his hypothesis, but he demanded that I had to do the work to prove him wrong, elswise I was declaring the century plus of RF research wrong, and declaring him the person who figured it all out. He did get a little pissed at me when I declared his hypothesis Little Radio Turds in Space theory. Good.
So anyhow, thanks for the terms and fancy words - but you aren't even replying to anything I wrote.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Do you even believe in your own existence at this point?
I dunno about that, but for all the falsifiable words in here, none have falsified anything.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Agreed. Since Copernicus' view was later proven correct we should assume all views will later be proved as correct.
Well, that's the first time I've seen someone genuinely honest about denialism.
Usually the argument of "someone who was right was once thought wrong. I'm though wrong, ergo I'm right" is made implicitly. At least you're being direct.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
Science is more than a "set of equations". There's also observation to take into account. And we have observations now from Voyager and other long-range spacecraft.
You are welcome on my lawn.
If we're facing a really bad situation, we might need to keep trying like hell, not handicap our economy.
False dichotomy. Our economy needs sustainability for feasibility.
I know, I know, that doesn't fit in well with what Gaia wants us to do.
Sorry, me laddo. I'm not a hippie, I'm a believer in physics.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
When I see a highly active story, I like to look for funny comments. Lately there have been quite few.
About 10 levels down in this thread there was a slightly funny and visible comment, which motivated me to crawl up the thread to try to understand more about the joke. Turned out it was full of hidden AC trolls and your hidden-by-down-moderation troll-play comment. I think you helped the ACs waste that much of my time, so...
Please don't feed the trolls.
There are solution approaches, but Slashdot doesn't have the capabilities (certainly not financial and probably not technical, either) to move towards implementing any of them. I myself favor the EPR approach.
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
Oh bugger!
I knew I missed a trick there.
I'm not sure if it's clear what "ecologically sustainable" means in the context of an eternally changing ecological system.
I can think off the top of my head, two completely opposite interpretations:
1) behaving in such a way that the status quo is sustained eternally;
2) behaving in such a way that any human growth is sustained eternally.
My guess is that neither is possible.
If only we could agree on the definition of "pollution" :)
And even after we agreed on that, there's the question of costs and benefits - is it okay to emit one unit of "pollution" if it causes $1 of harm, and $100 of benefit?
I still remember the whole elementary school lesson on photosynthesis and respiration - it was always so amazing to me that the "pollution" of plants was actually required for animals, and vice versa.
Your analogy isn't really very persuasive.
Try and build an analogy where you have $1000, and you have to decide whether or not to do a call or put option on Tesla stock today.
Do you have a foolproof model for the price of Tesla stock?
Does this model work for all other stocks?
In your opinion, what stock should we buy calls on, and what stock should we buy puts on?
That's *necessary*. That doesn't exclude all other hypotheses, including the null.
What we're asking for is necessary and *sufficient*.
1) a list of observations that would invalidate your hypothesis;
2) an argument that the lack of these observations would exclude all other hypotheses, including the null.
Even an astrologer can make predictions that fall within error bars. What they haven't done is show that by their predictions hitting within the error bars, that they've excluded all other explanations.
Science is harder to do than you think it is :)
I think we're on even ground if that's your criteria for judgement :)
What I'm asking for is pretty well defined in the literature by Karl Popper on falsifiability, specifically regarding the demarcation problem.
1) a list of observations that would invalidate your hypothesis;
2) an argument that the lack of these observations would exclude all other hypotheses, including the null.
What you *seem* to be saying is that you can have an idea, and it can be right, without excluding other explanations. So, say you believe in God, and well, pretty much God can explain anything, from why you lost your keys, to why your wife cheated on you, or why the sun was shining this morning. It's a really, really good and versatile explanation.
But it's not scientific.
The key to finding the demarcation line between "scientific" and "non-scientific" is falsifiability - the two criteria I mentioned above.
What you should have asked the RF technician for is those two criteria. Walking through it, perhaps he would have hit upon the experimental ideas you thought would clearly falsify it - but the point is that these criteria must be announced a priori.
Far from being persuasive, your example with your RF technician undercuts your point - you stated, "I am claiming that someone needs to illustrate that it has no effect", just as your RF technician "demanded that I had to do the work to prove him wrong".
Now, the real question is, now that I've laid out your cognitive dissonance here, how are you going to resolve it? Will it be acceptance and reconciliation? Perhaps a word salad doubling down? Maybe moving to ad hominem?
Your analogy fails to capture the magnitude of the consequences. It also fails to consider the considerable externalities.
He should provide all the documentation which demonstrates that he has stopped beating his wife.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
You're right - those two scenarios are not reasonable.
Ecological sustainability is basically the question of whether or not a given practice could be done for a long time without causing damage. Think for example of the air we breath. A question of sustainability is a measure of how much pollution we are putting out. Is it little enough that it can break down at least as fast as we make it? What is washing into the various lakes, rivers, etc and what is the half life on all of those things? How does that rate compare to the rate of input? Another example is the rate of soil formation compared to the rate of soil loss with industrial agriculture. Too much of that leads to desertification. What is the rate of groundwater formation compared to aquifer extraction?
We are not doing well at most of these metrics right now, which is only going to bite us in the ass down the road. This is all without even mentioning climate change.
This balancing of the load we put on the rest of the planet with our own outputs is exactly what is meant by ecologically sustainable.
Naturally, this will be ever evolving.
There's zero science in the current EPA, as well as most of Trump's administration. He cannot produce any real science because he has none. Or at most, he'll be giving a bunch of stuff that have some pretty curious links to coal corporations, produced in the late 70s or something.
And it'll either be blatant lies that wouldn't pass peer review, or just something vague like "more evidence is needed", which btw, we already have.
I needs no repeating, but there is OVERWHELMING evidence and consensus that climate change is man made by the entire scientific community. And this includes people who have been studying it for a good part of their lifetimes. It includes an incredibly substantial body of evidence from multiple perspectives. It comes from analysis with historical records, measurements taken from recent years, modeling and prediction, how the planet is already changing, and the relationship with all sorts of pollution that you can go out and see today.
I don't think deniers get how massive the body of evidence is. We even have researchers from a couple of decades ago hired by oil companies saying it was happening back then, only of course these companies chose to hide the research and exploit the information for themselves instead of releasing it in public.
"I doubt it" by brainless politicians and by the coal industry do not get a pass. I don't know what else is needed for deniers to get this, but I suspect it's gotten to such an extreme that they'd rather drown in a coastal city while shouting it's not happening rather than considering the idea that they might just have been wrong all this time. It doesn't take a whole lot to step out of your cult-like status and think a bit.
All the extreme weather events that are likely related to climate change happening several times a year and somehow it's still hard to believe. This sort of stubborness only ends in death. Asking to produce science will do nothing, because it was never backed by it. It will eventually get to a point where it's either them with their baseless claims or it's us paying the price for their ignorance.
The worst thing of it all is that even in the fictional scenario that they were right, there is simply no reason to be against the general measures against climate change. US is just like the anti-social entitled asshole idiot that behaves like a baby while the rest of the world is taking responsibility. Coal, oil and gas dependancy have always been a health hazard, it benefits no one to keep it, and even countries that were highly dependant on those are realizing after too long a time that it's simply not worth the damages it causes... you know, countries like China, famous for cities so heavily polluted during some days of the year with coal mines that people were simply collapsing and dying on the streets. Both China and India already have some generations condemned to live with lung related and respiratory diseases, why would anyone want to follow their past model?
Do people really want to get into scenarios like those, or go back to industrial revolution era pollution levels? Like, fortunately the global economy, scientific community, people who already accepted man made climate change as a reality, and people overall against Trump's EPA have enough power to continue the transition... coal dependancy will end whether politicians like it or not. But if it wasn't for that, de-regulation and climate change denial would logically end up resulting in pollution levels of the same scale of China and India.
And it's not like the US isn't already littered with superfund sites to show what happens when things like that gets ignored.
It's incredibly sad to see how entire groups of people cannot learn anything from history. Makes me think that in the end, our species will meet it's mass extinction event way sooner than other species because of our so called great "intelligence".
I'm happy to stipulate to the "greenhouse effect". That may very well be a necessary component of any necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement for AGW.
Explain how humans releasing sequestered Carbon Dioxide does not act as present day Carbon dioxide does. Is it a different Carbon dioxide? The CO2 that humans and much of natural sources like volcanos is merely re-relasing of sequestered CO2. Explain how it is different.
Here's your problem. If you were sitting before me in a thesis defense, I would ask questions like this.
Your answers all of which imply I am wrong and not following your rules, would earn you a quick failure.
I present some simple questions.
Does Carbon Dioxide retain energy to a greater or lesser extent than other gases as they are present in an atmosphere? Yeah - there's a bit of a trick her. But if you understand the trick you would answer me with a question - by percentage or by energy retention by the molecule? Preferably expound on both, because there are other gases that retain more energy.
If you answer in the negative, I would ask you to reconcile the discrepancy. You would then need to prove that either the energy retention does not exist, or how something eliminates the effect.
If your thesis is that it doesn't exist, you would be asked to reconcile how there is the appearance of the effect, when given the amount of insolation that the earth receives. How the combination of all of the other greenhouse gases - and do not forget that water vapor and Sulfur dioxide aerosols figure into the mix - then show how if CO2 has no effect, then how either all of the other gases eithr have more of an effect than expected, and why the average temperature is above freezing, which it should be.
And on an on and on. You are making a claim that does not match up with science. You are very much encouraged to prove the current knowledge wrong, but the uncertainty at this point is pretty small. But all you have to do is defend it successfully, and science will change, and you will be the most famous scientist in the world, mentioned along with names like Crick - the scientist who proved that there is no such thing as AGW, and re-wrote Physics at the same time.
Gives me goose bumps. Now get to work. Give me the data, not insult me like I have no idea what I'm talking about - The data please, I know the big words, and so far you've given me only shit - not a bit of data. Sheesh at least the fundies just say it is God's will that the climate is as it is. "While the earth remains, seedtime and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, shall not cease. Genesis 8:22
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
I think we're on even ground if that's your criteria for judgement :)
What I'm asking for is pretty well defined in the literature by Karl Popper on falsifiability, specifically regarding the demarcation problem.
You need to show the falseness. So far you criticize anything I write. Falsification? Show me how what you write proves that there is no AGW? You obviously think you are on a higher plane of existence, smarter and know more, but I challenge you to falsify the greenhouse effect, or falsify the thesis that it fails on a global level. You know how it starts. What is your hypothesis? Show me some science. Use my challenge to show me and the world. Challenge accepted?
And no, I'm not going to do your work for you - look at it as expecting your professors and advisors to do your thesis for you. If you've ever had to do that, you might be surprised at your success or lack thereof.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Of course it is. In the glorious past, people didn't need no science to believe in stuff, no matter how crazy it was. Conservatives would like to conserve it.
Ezekiel 23:20
I'm pretty sure that saturation plays a role in this. 100x of concentration does not give you 100x the effect.
Ezekiel 23:20
Yeah like this gem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
brandelf -t FreeBSD
Mod me down if you want, but it is the truth.
The Invisible Pink Unicorn places the planets in their supposedly observed positions whenever those "pesky astronomers" make their studies, then moves them back again afterwards to their correct positions orbiting the planet Pluto!
That sound? Is of the IPU traveling at 0.75c, relativistic effects included!
It's a transparent salad bowl turned upside down, a co2 cartridge, and a thermometer. Feel free to do the experiments yourself.
Sometimes it is difficult to produce evidence though, for things that are clearly correct. It's a bit like when geeks challenge Homeopathy and call it fake. Millions of people use it daily yet 'science' labels it fiction. Just because science is lagging shouldn't stop people being able to use powerful homeopathic medicine. I like to call it 'Post-Science' - things that people know in their gut but cannot prove to boffins in white coats - yet!
Maybe you didn't understand the BBC link. (It does go against your core beliefs.) He is basically saying that yes, you can pick and choose small timescales where the data will match, but it's meaningless to consider such things. They are no more than coincidences. You could sift through stock market chats and find similar patterns too it you like, equally as meaningless. Except to the true believers that it.
Science logic math, is there nothing you can't completely fail at?
I hear Pruitt's scientific proof will be based on the fact that a particularly nasty storm having no connection at all to Global Warming apparently blew up out of a bunch of Chick-fil-A emails.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
No, he is incorrect. It is not milankovich cycles that are the biggest driver because the cycle is currently in a cooling phase, so since it is warming, there must be a change BIGGER than the milankovich cycle changing it in the other direction.
You moronic asshole.
My trees and plants continue to thank me for the great benefit my CO2 gives them :)
They thank you for your CO2 as well :)
Back to Pascal's wager :)
Since the consequence for not believing in the savior Lord Jesus Christ is eternal damnation, obviously, given the magnitude of the consequences, belief in God is the right choice :)
Okay, so let's play with that one - how do we weigh feeding people and supporting population with possible desertification in specific regions?
I think it would probably be better to focus on efficiency when we talk about sustainability - the more efficient we are, the more people we can support, with less per capita impact. Considering the huge beneficial impact of the industrial age, it's hard to argue that we would be better off with several billion less people and the technology of 1850.
You're assuming that the CO2 in the atmosphere is driven by completely independent variables, rather than by dynamically dependent variables.
Let's move to a different example you might be more willing to hear - the common wisdom for 40 years has been that fat accumulation is caused by eating too much, and exercising too little. We dump calories in, and don't take enough calories out.
Except this isn't the case. We're complex biological machines, not heat engines, and fat accumulation is actually driven by the hormone insulin. Insulin is driven by blood sugar levels. Blood sugar levels are driven by carbohydrate intake. So, despite the fact that of course we still obey the laws of thermodynamics, it is not a reduction of calories in and increase of calories out that is informative, but rather paying attention to the drivers of insulin.
It is not only possible, it is almost certainly the case that CO2 levels in the atmosphere are moderated by numerous coupled sources and sinks, that dynamically react to perturbations of the system, regardless of source.
I'll leave this for you to think about - despite our continued CO2 emissions, increasing more and more every year, CO2 levels in the atmosphere haven't risen as expected. Called "the missing sink", we have observed over the past 100 years that rather than simply being additive to CO2 in the atmosphere, it appears that the biosphere actually dynamically reacts to changes. What it is that moderates that reaction is a completely open question.
I'll give you another one back - is the absorption effect of CO2 logarithmic? :)
Again, I think you've misunderstood the scientific method. Energy retention has existed before humans existed. While it is a *necessary* portion of your hypothesis, it is simply not sufficient. Everything you claim is true, and still does not exclude natural climate change.
So again, if you want to play the science game:
1) a list of observations that would invalidate your hypothesis;
2) an argument that the lack of these observations would exclude all other hypotheses, including the null.
Pruitt already looks like traitorous corporate whore and is making his agency rubbish. That's way el Presidente Tweetie says he likes what he's doing at EPA. The shit won't hit the fan until these jokers are out of office.
The greenhouse effect is real. And that fact does not invalidate the null hypothesis of natural climate change.
You really don't seem to understand the burden of the scientific method.
1) a list of observations that would invalidate your hypothesis;
2) an argument that the lack of these observations would exclude all other hypotheses, including the null.
Note, I'm not saying that you have to prove your hypothesis false, I'm simply saying that you must have both necessary and sufficient falsification criteria. Yes, basic physics is required for your hypothesis to be true. However, the mere existence of basic physics doesn't mean you've excluded the null hypothesis.
Here's my hypothesis:
"There is no necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis for AGW."
Falsification criteria: Any direct quote of a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis for AGW from any scientific paper, journal, or *anyone*.
Argument that the lack excludes the null: Obviously, given the large amount of scientific research on the topic, one would expect this would be an easy task, but if it's never presented or seen, even after looking for it really hard, then it's quite likely it doesn't exist.
Having a sense of proportion matters: discretionary spending is 1/3 of the budget and defense spending is about half of that 1/3. Most economists who have looked at the budget say that the 2/3's on entitlements is going to break the U.S. via debt. Defense spending is roughly $700 Billion out of about a $4 Trillion budget. The yearly deficit will be about $700 Billion but may rise to $1 Trillion. And with the Republican giveaways in the last tax bill boondoggle, economists expect $1 Trillion deficits every year until Congress does something.
Don't hold your breath. The Republicans' big idea is to grant more tax giveaways. The Democrats' big idea is to boost domestic spending. I don't see either side aiming to raise taxes. Whacking defense won't solve the problem. Taking money away from the Blue Haired is not going to pass.
LOL! Too bad I remember earlier "arguments" from you otherwise this had been moderated funny, now it's just tragic. But funny too!
That policy was based on scientific research.
No it wasn't. It was based on soundbite summaries of scientific research providing small digestible (pun intended) headlines for the complex topics studied and the complex conclusions which were drawn.
I remember reading the research behind "omg fat bad" stories. Most of them weakly identified correlations between certain foods while concluding that you should be eating a balanced diet.
But that didn't sound sexy.
Denial of an assertion does not infer a counterfactual contrapositive.
An article on science and the best comment using relevant logic stays at 0...
Since the poster seems unclear on the difference between infer and imply they're not off to a good start in the persuasiveness stakes.
And, rather more to the point, if his (Pruitt's) denial of the (subject of) climate change and the predicated assertion that it's caused by CO2 emissions wasn't based on facts what exactly was he basing it on? Wishful thinking, perhaps, or the voices in his head? Just to avoid any accusation of a false dichotomy, feel free to ignore those two tongue in cheek options and suggest your own, favoured, explanation.
As a public official, requiring him to reveal the reasons behind his official opinion is not, in this instance anyway, unreasonable.
And the American public supports both parties in their excesses. Oh, there is talk of self control, but anyone who raises taxes or cuts benefits gets voted out of office. So there it is: you can expect to see this through to bankruptcy, however long that takes.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Seems to me, given your acknowledgement of the problem...
Here are your two currently possible scenarios:
1) the greenhouse effect is real, and observed global warming is natural in origin;
2) the greenhouse effect is real, and observed global warming is anthropogenic in origin.
...that "who's" to blame, us or nature (or both), is irrelevant.
At this point the question becomes what will the effects be, and what can we do to mitigate them in order to ensure our future on this planet is more, rather than less, pleasant?
Wouldn't you agree?
Holy crap!
While I rarely agree with much that you write I can at least see how you might arrive at your conclusions, and your posts are, usually, well thought out.
This one however is a whole new level of WTF?...
Here is an interesting one
An interesting paper, thanks. I'd say the authors have substantially contributed to our understanding of the long term evolution of ice sheets, and their models will (within boundaries and with significant uncertainties) go some way towards predicting how the northern hemisphere ice sheets will change over the coming decades.
Still, it's worth pointing out that the fact that it was briefly warmer 5000 years ago doesn't contradict either the notions that CO2 traps heat or that increasing CO2 levels in the atmosphere causes global warming, or the notion that mankind is responsible for rapidly increasing the concentration of atmospheric CO2.
As regards your other nugget:
...which is what led Phil Jones, Director of the CRU of East Anglia and a primary contributor to the IPCC, to agree that
according to the global temperature record used by the IPCC, the rates of global warming from 1860-1880, 1910-1940 and 1975-1998 were identical
. So if the heating over those periods - two well before the rapid rise in CO2 - are the same as the "big trigger" that caused the whole IPCC/global warming issue in the first place, then how do we know that it's because of CO2?
That's a good question, and I guess the answer is "We don't, completely". Numerous factors influence the climate, not just levels of CO2. The fact remains though that we are rapidly increasing the levels of atmospheric CO2, whereas we have no control over the other factors.
I feel it's worth pointing out, just in case someone reads your post and doesn't follow the links, a couple of things:
Firstly, unlike your "quote" which is actually the question that was asked (missing the question mark), Phil Jones' response was that "the warming rates for all 4 periods are similar and not statistically significantly different from each other. Ascribing false certainty, as you do, might lead one to question the integrity of your argument.
Secondly, it's also worth pointing out that, since the rates are similar, it also follows that temperatures have been consistently rising, and are continuing to rise. One might think that this alone justifies concern over what will happen as they continue to rise, with regards sea levels, weather patterns and behaviour, and so on.
Finally, since you linked to the article, why don't we give Phil's answer to the question "Would it be reasonable looking at the same scientific evidence to take the view that recent warming is not predominantly manmade?". His answer: "No"
I assume it is harder to wipe with 100% cotton, foil embossed paper that was paid for with money appropriated to clean water in some superfund site.
So then, the decline in temperatures from ~1940 to 1975 was caused by rising CO2? Or the pause for most of this millenia (and we're almost back down to that temperature, now the big El Nino of 2016 is over) is also caused by rising CO2? Perhaps it's not CO2 that is the big culprit here - if the trends don't correlate, than the chance for causation is essentially nil.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I've worked on EPA grants before, they're legit. Not so many these days, this admin has been pretty bad for research. Luckily, congress has mostly ignored the president's budget proposals or biomedical research in the US would be smoke in the wind.
Pretty sure that that argument of saturated gas was shown wrong over a century ago. The effect is logarithmic.
...uh..that's what "saturation" mean.
Ezekiel 23:20
1) a list of observations that would invalidate your hypothesis;
Try again troll. In already listed two.
Your post sounds like you took a philosophy class in freshman year of university and figured you actually knew stuff. And WTF are you banging on about astrology for: that has zero predictive power and no concept of error bars.
The hypotheses are: our knowledge of physics is correct and our measurement of the system is enough to provide predictive modeling. The null hypothesis is that we can't predict what the earth's temperature well do.
And finally since you attended freshman internet arguing classes you should very well know that it is impossible to exclude all other possible hypotheses.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This is not an easy question, and you are certainly right that going back to 1850 is not the answer. You are also right that part of sustainability is directly tied to efficiency, but efficient by what measure?
The free market is immensely powerful at optimizing, but it is largely just concerned with a single variable - short term, direct financial cost. Our food system is based partly on this variable and partly on the government efforts to avoid food shortages which take the form of food subsidies.
I once did the calculation - if you take the total government subsidies around corn, compare that to the bulk commodity prices, and divide by the total US population, you find that the US government buys every single person in the country about a ton of corn each year. The ripple effect of this policy is that there is a glut of corn, so there is cheap animal feed (and cheap meat), plus a lot of cheap raw material for the industrial food system. Corn syrup is the tip of the iceberg. Read some packaged food ingredients and many of the strange names (xanthan gum, maltose, dextrose, etc.) are made from corn.
I digress, though, one of the biggest issue around food and sustainability is really tied to meat production. This corn feed is brought to concentrated animal feeding operations (CAPO). Although efficient by a measure of money, these operations cause lots of secondary problems. The animal density is so high, diseases are common, hence the push for antibiotics, which then leads to antibiotic resistant microbes, which leads to human health issues. There is also a glut of manure from these operations, which easily turns into another health risk as it trickles downstream into the waterways.
Again, there is no magic bullet solution, but this current system is hugely wasteful. The manure, which is full of all kinds of nutrients, is allowed to just wash away while the original soils get depleted. A step in the right direction is capturing some of this manure and direct injecting it into the soil (to prevent runoff), and people are working on other approaches.
In the end, though, I think food prices are going to have to go up, especially for meat. This then brings us right back around to my original point - the issues of ecological sustainability are directly tied to issues of poverty and global equity.
The exact future system is not clear, but that doesn't mean we can't start working on it. I am lucky enough that I make enough money that I can afford to pay the premium for the local, more sustainably raised foods. It's also tastier. The pasture raised pork I get from a local farm is orders of magnitude tastier than what is sold in the chain grocery stores.
So again, if you want to play the science game:
1) a list of observations that would invalidate your hypothesis;
2) an argument that the lack of these observations would exclude all other hypotheses, including the null.
I'm arguing with a bot.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Hi Sweetie! Where ya been? We get a little concerned when we don't hear from ya every so often.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
See subject SOYBoy (rotflmao) in your UNIDENTIFIABLE anonymous "courageous" trolling you "not man" - LMAO!
There ya go! And translated from the original Sanskrit as well! You are a true jewel and a Slashdot treasure.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Yeah he's just going to be releasing his used toilet paper and calling it a day, nobody is going to be shocked he just pulled it out of his ass.
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Personally I just wipe. Is shoving the paper actually up there something we expect from those in high office?
The paper is to keep the poo off his head when he has it up there.
THE SOFTWARE, IT NO WORKY!!!
I realize this isn't central to the thread, but we can still do a caviar nacho party without that anti-AGW paper right? I'm getting hungry.
Except the Democratic party actually finds ways to pay for what they spend.
Keep enabling the status quo. What is with the heavily democratic Anonymous Cowards today? The system is BROKEN. Choosing either side is choosing a broken system. Just fuck off.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
Except the Democratic party actually finds ways to pay for what they spend.
Um, no, they don't. Nobody does.
Historical Debt Outstanding
1900-1949
1950-1999
2000-2015
Yes, everyone at my Church knows that the "Theory of Gravity" is really just a plot to turn children gay and atheist. That's why we're organizing to have our schools teach Intelligent Falling instead of the completely debunked and not-at-all-true "Theory of Gravity".
Fanatically anti-fanatical
The cooling during that period was very slight. It's pretty clear that it was caused by the increased particulates in the air at that time.
https://www.skepticalscience.c...
You are however correct about one thing, CO2 isn't our only big problem
Greed is the root of all evil.
I disagree. I'm pretty Pruitt will produce a thick, professional looking folder that is literally overflowing with all of his evidence, which, of course, will be several hundred photocopies of his butt.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
This "a plague on both their houses" bullshit is so transparently risible. As David Sedaris put it:
"I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of shit with bits of broken glass in it?”
To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
I mean, really, what’s to be confused about?"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
So then, the decline in temperatures from ~1940 to 1975 was caused by rising CO2?
Yeah, what could possible have happened between Sep 1, 1939 and Sep 2, 1945 that could have an effect on the world? I'm sure everything was totally peaceful and nothing at all changed during those years.
Or the pause for most of this millenia (and we're almost back down to that temperature, now the big El Nino of 2016 is over) is also caused by rising CO2?
What pause?
Perhaps it's not CO2 that is the big culprit here - if the trends don't correlate, than the chance for causation is essentially nil.
Who says the trends don't correlate? You? Did you account for confounding variables when you were measuring your correlations?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Pascal's wager suffers both credibility issues and the problem that one cannot actually believe something because belief is the safe route, one can only act as if they believe.
Elected people (like presidents) should be running the EPA.
Not judges. Not "their evidence" or whatever.
Not helping is that Mueller wants to decide who is in the White House.
that's bad news. Because if the sun is the driver of the increase in world average temperature since the beginning of the industrial revolution, it's basically slowly going nova and we're all toast.
This is absolutely true if you pursue mitigation strategies (if even necessary - could be that global warming is a net positive, which would not only make it "not a problem", it could make it "a good thing we should try to encourage").
I believe the reason why people who believe in AGW feel like it is relevant is because they can ask humanity to stop using natural petroleum, but they can't ask oceans to stop outgassing CO2 :)
The null hypothesis is that observed climate changes are natural.
While our knowledge of physics must be correct for AGW predictive modeling to be true, it is *not* sufficient to show AGW is correct - which is different, in fact, from asking the question if our models are correct. (i.e., AGW could be true, and our models could be wrong, or AGW could be false, and our models could be "right").
Remember - astrology has predictive models. Just because someone's horoscope is statistically significant to a large group of people doesn't make astrology scientific. The key is the necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement.
You've got the necessary point down. Yes, physics must be true. Yes, humans must exist. But the mere existence of humans and physics does not imply AGW.
What we're asking for is necessary and *sufficient*.
1) a list of observations that would invalidate your hypothesis;
2) an argument that the lack of these observations would exclude all other hypotheses, including the null.
Sorry, but almost everything you wrote is wrong.
When you only ask one side to provide proof of something, that's bullshit.
That's true, however...
When the one side making the absurd claims is the side that has not conducted any repeatable experiments on the matter, has not been able to accurately predict things, and keeps revising both their models and data points in order to fit their hypothesis, yet they're the "accepted" side, that's bullshit.
I absolute agree with you that Pruitt needs to produce some evidence to support his position. But, of course, in you thought you were attacking climate scientists. However, nothing you wrote actually applies to them. They provide the data, the methods, the models and the repeatable experiments for virtually everything they do. Curiously, however, your statements apply well to every single alternative theory that tries to explain the observed facts of climate change. None of them have been able to survive even casual scrutiny from interested reviewers.
But the most bullshit thing is not realizing the simple fact that carbon dioxide is absolutely not the primary cause of global warming.
Except, of course, that it actually is. It's the primary driver of global warming because of the volume and longevity of CO2 produced by human activity.
Not only is CO2 a weak greenhouse gas, human production of it doesn't account for the majority of it.
The majority of the total CO2 in the atmosphere? That's true, for now, since pre-industrial levels are estimated to have been lower than 290 ppm and we're currently around 411 ppm. However, human activity has produced all of the increase in CO2 since pre-industrial levels. We know that because natural factors have been acting as a CO2 sink and absorbing more CO2 than they release. CO2 is a relatively weak CO2 gas but again we produce a lot more of it and it last a very long time in the atmosphere so it's the primary driver of the change, and then it is amplified because a little bit of warming from CO2 increases the average amount of water in the air which drives further warming. It's similar to pennies, they might not be worth much individually, but a million pennies is worth a lot more than a dozen hundred dollar bills.
The primary cause of warming and cooling is the fucking sun, by far.
No, it's not. The sun has cooled slightly while the average temperature continues to rise, and that's a good thing because the earth would be warming even faster if the sun were actually warming. In any case, the effect of the sun's tiny variation in output is far smaller than the effects of the increase in the greenhouse effect.
If you want to get into secondary factors, then plain ol' water vapor beats out CO2 by a country mile.
Because water vapour content is driven by average temperature, it's considered an amplifier rather a primary cause of warming. It applies the effect of every other greenhouse gas, but it can not be increased or decreased independently and that's why CO2 is considered more important as a greenhouse gas than water vapour.
You've got a few things right, but you've failed to understand what those things actually mean.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I'd measure it by joules per unit of output.
I'm agreeing with you as hard as I can. And this is exactly the reason why I'm suspicious of grand plans to use the force of government to create a "sustainable" anything :)
I believe that regardless of the inefficiencies of free and open markets, they are superior to any governmental subsidy or regulation programs.
That's not much of an argument :)
Here's perhaps some material that will help you understand the concept of falsifiability and the demarcation problem: http://stephenjaygould.org/ctr...
Have a read, and see if that helps you understand what I'm getting at.
Falsifiability is the most basic criteria for the scientific method.
And yes, M-theory is "sciencey", but until they have a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis, it's simply navel gazing, like economics, or other social sciences :)
Which is exactly why I find the "extreme catastrophic consequences are possible!" argument unpersuasive.
Just within the past 100 years, we've had about 1C of warming. There is no clear indication that 1918 was better than 2018, on *any* measure. In fact, I'd argue that in almost every measure of well being of the biosphere, things have gotten *better*.
The null hypothesis is that observed climate changes are natural.
Or the null hypothesis is that CO2 doesn't affect the climate.
Remember - astrology has predictive models.
It does not have models that predict better than random. Physics does.
1) a list of observations that would invalidate your hypothesis;
If the climate didn't match the prediction, that would falsify the model. The fact that it hasn't been falsified by that doesn't make it not falsifiable.
That's the core of science that you don't seem to get. You make a prediction. If your prediction turns out to be correct, your model has not been falsified. If the prediction turns out incorrec then your model was flawed.
Climate science made predictions. They did not falisfy the model.
It will make more predictions. When the time rolls around to test them you will be able to see if the model was falisfied.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
No, just a clever idiot who thinks he's smarter than everyone else and also believes that he's winning arguments when he exhausts his opponents with endless inane questions. He doesn't understand the difference between winning and being shunned.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Even an astrologer can make predictions that fall within error bars.
Really? What are the error bars on this prediction:
Plus or minus 10%, 19 times out of 20?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I'm agreeing with you as hard as I can :)
If you had 20 out of 20 people who read that horoscope say "wow, that matched me perfectly!", it wouldn't validate the source of that prediction. We'll call that scenario 1:
"correct model prediction, incorrect model"
You can also have the converse, where due to bad data input, your otherwise perfect model fails to make a prediction. We'll call that scenario 2:
"incorrect model prediction, correct model"
Of course, you can derive two more (correct prediction/correct model, incorrect prediction/incorrect model).
The whole point of falsifiability is that it allows us to discern between these cases - when you *don't* have falsifiability, the ambiguity is wicked.
Well, to be more specific, you could make the question "is CO2 a cause, or an effect of climate"?
But again, the predictive value of a model better than random does *not* make something scientific. You could simply be getting lucky :)
Okay, so you have 27 models, with hundreds of runs each. All of them assume that CO2 drives temperature. 15 of them have predictions that fail. Have we falsified the central conceit that CO2 drives temperature?
So, let's be clear "model" is a poor proxy for "hypothesis", especially when they have multiple degrees of freedom for tuning parameters.
Or the data was flawed. But what part of the model was flawed?
No, just a clever idiot who thinks he's smarter than everyone else and also believes that he's winning arguments when he exhausts his opponents with endless inane questions. He doesn't understand the difference between winning and being shunned.
Yeah, I've given up. Its difficult to argue with a person whose posts read like those postmodern thesis generators http://www.elsewhere.org/pomo/
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Human-caused global warming has been predicted by scientists since Svante Arrhenius in 1896 (See this list of early global warming papers).
Many of these papers were produced during the global cooling trend before 1975. Climate scientists predicted global warming before it happened and now over 90% of climate scientists are in agreement on the subject. Numerous studies show humans as the cause of recent global warming. Yet you think mainstream scientists haven't made their case?
Until you add feedback mechanisms such as the increased absolute humidity that corresponds to increased temperatures (water vapor is a strong greenhouse gas). Then it has a much greater effect.
Sort of. We started with 280 ppm in the atmosphere, now we're up to 410 ppm, so I guess humans are responsible for less than half!
However I assume you are referring to the myth that humans release less than 4% of all the CO2 that is "released" each year.
In a very twisted way, this is correct. A glass of water evaporating in a room with 90% humidity does not just "release" water molecules, it also absorbs them from the air. But if someone uses this fact to argue that water glasses will fill up in a humid room, there is something wrong with that, isn't there?
Similarly the ocean "releases" more CO2 every year than humans, but it absorbs more than it releases. Drawing attention to CO2 coming out of the ocean while completely ignoring the CO2 going into the ocean is highly misleading. The ocean's pH is dropping, why do you think that is?
Humidity depends on environmental conditions. When temperatures increase, the water vapor concentration (absolute humidity aka vapor pressure) also increases.
The 11-year average of solar irradiance has varied by only about 0.1% over the last century and solar output has decreased in recent decades.
You should ask people in coastal Texas about that...
Heat flow from the earth's core is 0.08W/m^2, compared with an average solar insolation of 340 W/m^2 (which has been known to trend by 0.5W/m^2 over periods of several decades) and an additional forcing of almost 2 W/m^2 from the CO2 humans have recently added.
... unless you're suggesting that the souls recently added to Hell from our burgeoning population have caused satan's furnaces to suddenly heat up?
So, no, heat from the earth's core is not really a top contender. And why should it be? Even if this number were much larger, there's no reason Earth's core should suddenly warm the earth much faster than it did in previous centuries and millenia
Correction: the peak insolation at the top of atmosphere (1361 W/m^2) has been known to trend by 0.6W/m^2 over periods of several decades, not the average insolation. See insolation graph.
Are there more people in costal Texas in 2018 than 1918?
Are those people healthier by any measure? Living longer? More prosperous?
Has the foliage greened? Is there more biomass?
More personally, would you rather live in costal Texas in 2018, or in 1918, and *why*?
He should just use all the accurate data provided by Michael Mann to prove his argument in his legal prosecution of Mark Steyn. Oh, wait....
What Phil Jones said was, "Temperature data for the period 1860-1880 are more uncertain, because of sparser coverage, than for later periods in the 20th Century. The 1860-1880 period is also only 21 years in length. As for the two periods 1910-40 and 1975-1998 the warming rates are not statistically significantly different (see numbers below)."
The temperature record of the 19th century is not considered particularly precise among experts who study it, nor is a 20-year trend considered important by climate experts because ocean fluctuations lasting several years can affect the trend over such a short time.
But if we assume the early records are accurate, the temperature increase from 1910-1940 can be explained as a combination of (1) human greenhouse gas emissions, as we were indeed burning them before 1960, (2) volcanic activity much lower than average (stratospheric aerosols from volcanoes cause cooling, thus their absence causes warming), (3) increasing average solar irradiance in that time frame, and (4) internal variability, such as differences in ocean currents.
The lack of certain observations excludes all hypotheses except one? How does a lack of observations exclude these hypotheses exactly?
Says you.
Of course not, but climate scientists agreed fairly consistently in the 1970s that human CO2 emissions would cause the gradual cooling trend of the previous 30 years to reverse, and it most certainly did! A few highly successful predictions from climate scientists don't prove AGW either, but neither can you show it's "not science" by claiming it isn't falsifiable, when it most obviously is.
You are however correct about one thing, CO2 isn't our only big problem
And that is my point. In fact, the connection between CO2 and global warming is rather tenuous, there are other, bigger forces at play. Some natural, some man-made. But by focusing on CO2 to the exclusion of all else, we're doing really the wrong thing. CO2 is easy to "monitor and control" (read: tax), but it's the wrong thing to focus on. Unfortunately, too many want to "do something" instead of "do the right thing" and thus we're where we're at.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Well, taken as a mickey mouse example, "all swans are white", means any observation of a non-white swan excludes the hypothesis. The *lack* of any non-white swans observed (after looking really hard for them), clearly excludes competing hypotheses like "there are black swans" or "there are brown swans", or any of the varied hypotheses of that sort.
In the case of AGW, the obvious ones you'd have to exclude are solar influence, ocean heat influence - but the larger "natural climate change" is particularly difficult to exclude. Thus far, no observations of weather or climate have ever been inconsistent with the null hypothesis of natural climate change. Ever.
Being naively falsifiable is not the same has having a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis. Yes, if humans don't exist, that would falsify AGW - but the mere existence of humans doesn't mean AGW must be true (nor does it even imply it).
Of the two requirements for the scientific method, it is absolutely correct to say that #2 is the hardest and most difficult to understand:
1) a list of observations that would invalidate your hypothesis;
2) an argument that the lack of these observations would exclude all other hypotheses, including the null.
For further reference: http://stephenjaygould.org/ctr...
The decline was until the mid 1970s, it didn't stop in the 1940s. Additionally, there was that massive heating (worldwide, might I add) that happened in the 1930s. And the pause is "eliminated" by inclusion of bad satellite data, which the folks who run the satellite system itself (Dr. Roy Spencer and others) say you shouldn't do. Drop the bad data, and we have a pause - even as CO2 continued to increase.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Don't you have more than that to contribute to the discussion?
These equations would predict the same experimental observation. That's what's meant by being compatible.
As a simple analogy, 4 + 2 = 6, but so does 3 + 3 = 6. The equations are different, but the underlying reality is the same. The thing is, in physics the underlying reality is subtler than we can directly detect, so even with choosing the simplest equations that fit the data we end up with multiple consistent interpretations. What this means nobody really knows, though you'll certainly get people who will tell you that this or that interpretation is correct or unreasonable.
Some people prefer to believe the simpler equation, so you get the heliocentric theories. Then it turns out that you need to recast those into the galactic central theories, but that's not really defensible either. Any coordinate system that matches the observations can have at least one set of equations fitted to it. But some are more difficult to work with than others. The ones with a stable fixed point on earth are easy for local values, but become increasingly difficult as you need to consider things more distant. However, if you do them correctly, they remain correct. It's just that epicycles were a gross oversimplification.
Somehow people tend to prefer the forms that are easier to calculate on. And there's nothing wrong with that. There are isomorphic transforms between them.
Now models that deform the earth into a form not topologically equivalent to a sphere are another case. I have a strong suspicion that those cannot be consistent models.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The utter irony that the head of the Environmental Protection Agency should be a climate change denier.. do you people understand what the rest of the world thinks of you?
I see a goalpost moving. There are a great many reasons for people to be healthier now than then. However, you might recall a little rain shower they had a little while ago that left them swimming for their lives. Do you believe they would like to see more or less such events in the future?
They might predict the observation from Earth, but not from say, the ISS or the Moon or Voyager. That's what's meant by being not compatible.
You are welcome on my lawn.
You're turning a multivariate equation into a single variable equation. Do you believe they would be willing to see less of those events, if it required them to return to the technology and lifestyle of 1918? Or do you believe that they would be willing to see more of those events, and live in the technological golden age of 2018?
It is prima facie evident that 2018 is better than 1918. Anyone who would prefer the world of 1918 is deluded or lying, or perhaps really really racist and looking to see Birth of a Nation in the white house again.
There is no reason to believe that 2118, even with another 1C of warming, would be worse than 2018.
You present a false dichotomy. That's why my comment about the goalposts moving.
More correctly, do I think they would be willing to move to carbon neutral sources of power and see less of those events, or stay with fossil fuels and see more such events. I am not aware of anyone saying we never should have used fossil fuels. There may be a few kooks who do, but absent a time machine, so what? The reality based question before us is should we move to renewables and/or nuclear power now.
Personally I just wipe. Is shoving the paper actually up there something we expect from those in high office?
It's a new order from Trump to prevents leaks from the White House.
Well, to be more specific, you could make the question "is CO2 a cause, or an effect of climate"?
That's you trying to be fancy with language, it doesn't fundamantally alter the hypothesis.
But again, the predictive value of a model better than random does *not* make something scientific. You could simply be getting lucky :)
That's not even wrong. Getting lucky isn't the same as having predictive power. Pyhsic has immense predictive power.
?Okay, so you have 27 models, with hundreds of runs each. All of them assume that CO2 drives temperature. 15 of them have predictions that fail. Have we falsified the central conceit that CO2 drives temperature?
First define fail. If you have 27 models, then p So, let's be clear "model" is a poor proxy for "hypothesis", especially when they have multiple degrees of freedom for tuning parameters.
Nope. We can model and predict all sorts of stuff.
Or the data was flawed.
Sure.
But what part of the model was flawed?
Moving the goalposts.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
I think you better check out your physics. Explaining orbital motion correctly is impossible without using Relativity, since Mercury's orbit is Relativistic due to it's position in the sun's gravity field.
No. When people say things like "science is never proven" they are referring to the fact that inductive reasoning doesn't "prove" something unobserved can't happen or doesn't exist. (Granted, as a practical matter, assuming there are no black swans until one is observed is often the smartest thing to do. Similarly, assuming CO2 will probably have the effects predicted by laws of physics and observed in the paleoclimate record is the smart thing to do.)
I think you better check out your physics. Explaining orbital motion correctly is impossible without using Relativity, since Mercury's orbit is Relativistic due to it's position in the sun's gravity field.
And how exactly would Special Relativity help me there?
The decline was until the mid 1970s, it didn't stop in the 1940s.
I suppose all those dead people magically sprang back to life, and all the shattered industry magically repaired itself at the end of the war too? And that's just one factor that you blithely ignored because it was inconvenient.
Additionally, there was that massive heating (worldwide, might I add) that happened in the 1930s.
What massive heating in the 1930s?
And the pause is "eliminated" by inclusion of bad satellite data, which the folks who run the satellite system itself (Dr. Roy Spencer and others) say you shouldn't do. Drop the bad data, and we have a pause - even as CO2 continued to increase.
That post is about an article "Sensitivity of satellite derived tropospheric temperature trends to the diurnal cycle adjustment" which most people would realize is about the troposphere warm spot, and not about the actual temperature record. Do you bother to read or understand things before you link to them or is this just you desperately grasping at any straw to reaffirm you preconceived notions?
Maybe you should do some actual research and come up with something actually coherent before you start playing this mind-numbingly stupid game of whataboutisms? Cherry-picking random facts and claiming they disprove something because you don't understand, is just illustrating that you don't understand.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
There is no doubt that CO2 in the atmosphere behaves in ways predicted by the laws of physics. The difficulty is when you assume that CO2's further interactions with say, water vapor, create a tripling effect of heat retention, or when you assume that all other sources and sinks of CO2 do not react to perturbations (say, like plant growth). None of those effects have reliable models, and given their stochastic nature, may never have reliable runs even if they are 100% accurate (that is to say, small differences in the input criteria may yield wildly varying results, making the predictive utility of even a perfectly written physical model essentially zero).
The effect observed in the paleoclimate record is tricky, because the paleoclimate record is much lower resolution, and actually shows us that CO2 levels *lag* temperature changes, rather than lead them. This is contra to the hypothesis of AGW.
The challenge is this - if the observations can be explained by three-thousand competing hypotheses, how do you figure out which one is true? They must somehow be excluded, through an argument of implications, or through differing falsification criteria.
Thus far, all observations in the modern era are consistent with the null hypothesis of natural climate change.
I'm going to call projection on this one.
You literally took a multivariate equation (well being on a number of axes, including number of storms per decade), and narrowed it down to a single variable (number of storms per decade), and then presented a false dichotomy (either you like more storms per decade, or you hate more storms per decade).
Whether we start at 1918 and go to 2018, or start at 2018 and go to 2118, there's no reason to believe that the benefits of natural petroleum will not outweigh the costs. From 1918, we know this is true through observation. From 2018, this might be a bit more fuzzy, but it is so in both directions - nobody in 1918 could have made accurate economic predictions for 2018, and there's no rational person who assumes we can write an economic model in 2018 that will accurately represent 2118.
My goalposts start at 1918, and end at 2018. They include all the costs and benefits of natural petroleum during that time.
Okay, let me try non-fancy language for you:
Does more CO2 from a single source make temperature around the world go up, or does more temperature around the world make CO2 go up?
No, that's just the scientific method :) You can't just have a tunable model with 20-degrees of freedom, and continually tune it to match observations - ad hoc special pleadings (sorry for the fancy language) are a sign of weakness, not strength.
Climate models fail all the time. Even the tuned ones will have runs that fail to match observations. They fail to accurately predict, or even accurately hindcast known data, all the time. The essential question when observing these failures is this:
1) is the model flawed
2) is the data flawed
If you've determined that the model is flawed, and you've got 20-degrees of freedom to tune it, it is nigh impossible to diagnose exactly which part of the model is flawed, but your breakdown is this:
1) model parameters are flawed
2) model algorithms are flawed
So far, the excuse has always been #1 (oh, we just need to tune these three arbitrary co-efficients, and things are fine). The problem is that essentially makes #2 unfalsifiable (it can always be rescued by tuning the side parameters, rather than the central conceit).
My guess is this will be difficult for you to read as well, and I apologize in advance. Communicating clearly without using academic vocabulary can be a challenge.
Indeed.
That you're being voted down for asking for evidence....presumably it's simple to provide.
Ferret
Sic gorgiamus allos subjectatos nunc
In that case, your goalposts are irrelevant to any decision making process (since we cannot now decide what we should do yesterday) and are irrelevant to the discussion (which is about what we should do now.
I agree that there is no reason to believe that the benefits of using petrolium going forward outweigh the costs. That's why I advocate transitioning away.
Well, past results do not guarantee future performance and all that, but your assertion of costs outweighing benefits just isn't persuasive given the observed history.
Literally, from 1918 to 2018, over a hundred years, we've got 1C of warming, and grand expansion of humanity and the biosphere. Now you're asserting that if we see another 1C of warming from 2018 to 2118, we're going to see some sort of grand contraction of humanity and the biosphere.
Of course, I know lots of evangelicals who believe in Revelations and the coming apocalypse, but it's never been persuasive enough for me to become a believer :)
And you don't think there were any significant changes in technology during that time?
Do you think there will be no significant technology changes from 2018 to 2118? :)
Seriously, the idea that we've hit some sort of stable state of technology that we can extrapolate out to 2118 is *really* silly. You might have been able to make the case from 1200AD to 1300AD was predictable, or maybe even 1500AD to 1600AD, but given the speed of change in technology from 1900AD to 2000AD, can we really be so bold as to declare we know what 2100AD is going to look like?
Actually, I'm quite sure we will see technology changes. I am also quite sure the laws of physics will NOT change. filling our atmosphere with CO2 will remain a bad idea. We are now at a point where alternatives are pretty close to break even with fossil fuels as long as we don't do anything stupid like subsidize coal and other fossil fuels (oops) or let polluters be as nasty as they want to be (oops).
The same hysterical bullshit when Reagan was president.
But have your fun.
And you don't think that the technology changes of 2018 to 2118 will make our worries about another 1C of warming completely irrelevant?
You've already seen that 1918 to 2018 that any measurable cost of 1C warming was completely overwhelmed by the technology changes during that period.
Sincerely, trying to understand your position - do you really believe that the technology changes of the next 100 years will be less impressive than the technology changes of the past 100 years?
This big bump in the 1930s, as documented by Dr. James Hansen, noted global warming advocate, in a peer reviewed journal and posted on NASA's server. Of course, it was later "adjusted away" because it didn't support the proper conclusions, so the record was changed. As so aptly put in 1984, "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past."
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I believe that if the only offer is get 1 million bucks AND a kick in the crotch, it's probably worth it, but if there is an offer of a million bucks WITHOUT the crotch kick, take that deal.
In 1918, due to our limited technology, the 1st offer was all we had. We were right to take it. Now, the second is also on offer. We'd have to be stupid to take the first offer again.
Not true.
Horseshit.
"The depth of science...is even more impressive than that for tobacco and health in 1964"
That is from the 1988 Surgeon General's Report on Nutrition Health which identified reduction of fat consumption as "The No. 1 dietary priority of the nation"
There you have it. Stated directly by the government officials setting the policy, the policy was based on what they believed to be strong science.
The scientists were very clear that there was no research supporting the policy recommendation.
Collectively, they most certainly were not. Almost all print and broadcast coverage of the issue in that era stated that dietary fats were harmful and cited scientists and scientific research.
Look, I was around at the time arguing with everyone I knew, telling them the anti-fat stuff was bunk. And they all argued back, telling me that I was wrong because the science supported their side. That was what the government said, what the scientists which it cited said and what Time Magazine and other mainstream news outlets reported. Now some dipshit on Slashdot is telling me that never happened.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
In 1918, you had to take a kick to the crotch to get 1 million.
In 2018, now you're trying to avoid the crotch kick, and still get the 1 million.
I don't think that's the offer on the table. I think that our technology acceleration from 1918 to 2018 is *directly* related to the incredibly low absolute cost of natural petroleum energy - and to think that we can get the same benefit by crippling our energy costs, by making them absolutely costlier, is to misunderstand the choice at hand.
Now, if you can do wind, solar, or nuclear, without any subsidies, and provide cheap, reliable electricity 24/7 without mining a bunch of rare metals in batteries, then great! Maybe you can get the 1 million without the crotch kick! But if in order to avoid the crotch kick, you need to cut your balls off, that's not so good :)
Do you think your comment somehow has more impact the second time round? Especially when you quote the part I was not responding too?
We're right around that tipping point now. But without subsidies is apples to oranges unless we dump the many direct and indirect subsidies fossil fuels enjoy as well.
Also, don't let the term "rare earth" fool you. Those elements aren't at all rare, they just don't tend to be found in high concentrations like metal ores.
I don't recommend a crash conversion, but rather encouraging a transition over a decade or two. At the same time, I don't recommend kicking back to see what happens or "letting the market decide" the market is thoroughly corrupted by the actions of the fossil fuel industry.
Well, I'd avoid counting standard corporate tax deductions available to any industry (depreciation, etc), and I think once you take that away, natural petroleum gets effectively $0/kWh of subsidy. I'd be happy if the $/kWh of subsidy was kept equal, although the best world would be $0/kWh.
If you can beat natural petroleum on the open market, both in terms of price and reliability, there's no need to encourage anything - human greed will do the job for you. Both solar and wind have serious price and reliability problems, but that doesn't mean they can't figure things out eventually. For those who want to invest in companies taking that risk, that's great, but redistributing our wealth to make investments seems like a poor idea to outsource to the government.
Here's the basic truth - we setup systems of incentives, and it will encourage behavior. Setup enough government subsidies, and Elon Musk will create a company to take advantage of it. Create a reliable, stable source of energy that is cheaper than the alternatives, without any subsidies, and every venture capitalist will want a piece of that pie.
No central government 5 year plan ever worked, and no centrally planned initiative has any hope of dealing with the complexities of economies of free individuals. The thought that some infinitely wise technocrats could possibly map out a perfect system of incentives to get to their end goal of replacing 90% of the world's energy in 10 or even 20 years doesn't pass the giggle test.
You have a fairly naive view of things. Do you really think hydro-electric took off based on investors? Look up Hoover Dam. Or that petroleum has not gotten a LOT of subsidies in the form of military support, diplomacy, and a whole lot of looking the other way?
I', not advising any five year plans of anything of the sort. If you want to take a proper libertarian stance, that's fine as long as the fossil fuel industry is ready to pay for the damage caused by storms made worse (you wouldn't be proposing that we socialize the liabilities, would you?). They've got a lot of work ahead of them cleaning up all that lead as well.
Yeah, except for the fact that the butterfly effect blows that all out of the water - can't sue a butterfly on the other side of the planet :)
I guess I would imagine it this way - pretend it takes 200 trillion to reduce emissions. And pretend that we discover a CO2 extraction process in 2075 that only costs 200 billion, to get back to 350ppm. Does it really make sense to start spending the 200 trillion now?
Given the wild impact of technology from 1918 to 2018, I have no idea what we can expect from 2018 to 2118 - and to pretend that today, we could have any rational idea of what the *right* thing to do is, just seems like hubris.
I mean, really, think about just how many billion people we can support today because of natural petroleum and the haber process - we've made life *incredibly* better, even in shithole countries, over the past 100 years. CO2 issues seem like a rounding error in comparison.
Why not jump out of the plane, it's always possible that a stiff updraft will brake our fall.
It's looking a lot like you just want to stick the next generation and employ wishful thinking to absolve your guilt.
So, I'm sitting in 1918. We know about CO2, and about the potential impact it has on global average temperatures.
Do I jump on the natural petroleum bandwagon, and create the miracles of the industrial age and technology, or do I insist that we don't jump out of that plane, and just keep on going with our horse and buggies? :)
I agree, uncertainty can definitely look like wishful thinking - but can you see how your certainty can be seen in the same light?
If we had it to do again, we probably would have taken Diesel's suggestion to run his engine on vegetable oil. We also probably would have stuck with ammonia as a refrigerant. We would have a lot more solar thermal power now. Battery development would likely have gone faster. We probably would have had the Haber process sooner and the Middle East would be a lot less terroristy today.
If we were being especially sensible, we wouldn't have then (or now) tried to change everything overnight, just made sure we were going in the right direction so we wouldn't find ourselves in a bind later.
I'm agreeing with you as hard as I can - there are definitely things we could have done in the early 1900s that could have helped, like making sure the archduke ferdinand was better protected, or killing Ancel Keys in the womb before he was able to promulgate his low-fat hypothesis into our dietary advice :).
But all things considered, besides a few side trips into massive wars and socialist genocides of hundreds of millions of people, I think we've been moving in the right direction for the past 100 years. I mean, as much as I hate jihadis, and love the idea of eradicating them from the planet, they did less harm than either Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot. The twin towers falling was much more symbolic than it was absolutely devastating...and our oversized response to it, while perfectly understandable from a visceral and even an example setting perspective, is arguably a misjudgment of absolute risk.
By the same token, I think our fascination with 1C/century warming, while understandable from a visceral level, and maybe even justifiable in terms of say, driving efficiency, is much more symbolic than say, the evils of socialism and collapse of economies the size of venezuela.
So there's a conspiracy because you can't read the labels on graphs? U.S. temperature is not the same as global temperature.
Is everything stupid you write and do explained away by a mysterious cabal of conspirators who seek to undermine you?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
Climate scientists were not surprised when it was confirmed that CO2 lagged temperature - AFAIK it was predicted in advance based on the expectation that orbital forcing / milankovich cycles drove the 100,000-year past warming/cooling cycles. I believe the lag was first observed in this paper by Neftel et al. (1988). This video explains how orbital forcing alone is insufficient to explain the magnitude of the observed warming/cooling and thus a CO2 cycle, thought to be driven largely by CO2 solubility in oceans, was posited to explain the rest of the warming/cooling.
But no doubt someone has explained all this to you before. (aside: CO2 leading temperature change has been observed in the northern hemisphere - Shakun et al. 2012.)
Again, it's not an "assumption", it was predicted based on the laws of physics.
Wrong. We know for a fact that other sources and sinks of CO2 will react to perturbations, and scientists have been hard at work producing studies to quantify those effects. Plant growth is one effect, soil erosion is another, there's lower solubility of CO2 in the ocean as it warms up... the list goes on.
A perfect example of how climate science denial is built around grains of truth which themselves have always been openly acknowledged. Initial conditions can indeed change the outcome and there are significant differences between climate models, but it doesn't follow that their predictive power is zero. Best estimates of ECS from experts and models range from 1.5 to 4.5 Celcius - a wide range, yet we can predict with high confidence that observed ECS will be somewhere in that range.
The funny thing is that deniers imply that high levels of uncertainty mean there is nothing to fear, as if the climate system's instability somehow guarantees we won't experience a high ECS like 4.5. That just doesn't make sense.
So,you can't read?
Cicylsid today?
Okay, so CO2 is a effect of temperature, not a cause.
Glad you accept that. We've got a lot less to worry about now :)
There is no law of physics that says every joule of greenhouse effect from CO2 will create 3 joules of additional greenhouse effect from H2O. That's a tunable model parameter, put in there to support an argument, not because it is self evident.
Excellent. We once again agree that simply adding a source of CO2 will not flatly increase atmospheric CO2 levels. Can you agree that we don't have accurate models for those internal reactions?
I believe the work that Curry has done has drawn that down to about 1.05 - 4.05, with a best estimate of about 1.64 (close to the low end of the prior range).
That being said, there's no reason for us to expect that ECS 1.05 is harmful, nor is there reason for us to expect ECS 4.05 is harmful.
I'll also note that ECS doesn't relate to emissions, it relates to eventual atmospheric CO2 concentration - after all of the reactions of sources and sinks are factored in.
The funny thing here is that alarmists imply that the high level of uncertainty means we know that the central conceit, that human CO2 emissions are the dominant factor in atmospheric CO2 levels, is true. That is an open question, and one that can only be addressed scientifically if we put together a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement.