Oh, what the hell, I want government agents to determine our life path from birth until death, and control every step of our lives, and every decision that we make, and provide for all of our needs in the way they best see fit./sarc
Mod parent up. Whereas in the past local newspapers and local radio stations were the only outlets for national news, we've gotten far, far away from that.
When the vast majority of listeners are downloading and streaming, the justification for a local radio station drops to well below worth it.
My apologies that you find my good humor offensive - but frankly, I do find your dogmatic belief system humorous, even if it is dangerous and pernicious:)
But when someone denies that low frequency proxy measurements aren't properly comparable to high frequency direct observations...well, gosh, it just makes me giggle:)
I'm not sure if I know what "rumbled" means in this context. If it refers to you dodging the refutation of your assertions, okay...good rumble!
The simple fact of the matter is that I didn't deny anything except the futility of comparing high resolution observations with low resolution proxies. Your denial of the quantitative and qualitative difference in these measurements, on the other hand, belies your impulses:)
This are not "natural fluxes" this is the ordinary CO2 cycle.
And the ordinary CO2 cycle is filled with natural fluxes.
We already have server problems due to ocean acidifying.
No, we don't. We have alarmist articles claiming there are problems, but the truth is there is no sign that pH flux of.1 over a long period of time will have any effect on biomes that fluctuate an order of magnitude than that on a daily basis.
I stated a fact - the proxy records for CO2 aren't nearly as high resolution as the modern data we have. Our modern data has a resolution of *hours*. The proxy data has a resolution of *hundreds of years*.
You cannot possibly discern high frequency change in a low frequency signal.
So whether you call it weather or climate, you simply cannot compare a historical record of low resolution to a modern record of high resolution with any sort of confidence.
Or maybe you can, but your confidence is misplaced:)
4000 ARGO floats for less than 20 years is hardly a sufficient measurement grid to exclude the possibility of a decades long trend, though, won't you agree? When we have limited information, speculation abounds...for example, "the oceans ate my warming" excuse for the pause:
But the heat transfer necessary to warm the atmosphere is actually smaller than they could measure - remember, water has not only a greater heat capacity than air, but it's got a much larger mass.
Now certainly, we're speculating here - but if you can at least admit that the speculation is *possible*, we've got an area we can direct more effort to study, in this case the complexities of ENSO and possible natural secular trends that occur over many cycles.
Are you asserting that NOAA has hidden somewhere a proxy record that is either yearly or hourly?
That sounds a lot like "well, even though you can't see God, you don't know he doesn't exist!"
Go ahead, find the highest resolution proxy you can for CO2. Let us know when you can discern the difference between 66 million years ago, and 66 million and one years ago:)
I'm simply arguing a point - the cult of AGW, and the Church of Global Warming, for all of their sweet looking laboratory scientist uniforms, is a religious dogma, not science.
Why are you avoiding addressing the challenges to your religion? Instead of addressing the actual NOAA ice core data, which directly contradicts your statement "the results are better than that", you accuse me of being in debate club?
If there's anyone making misleading noise, it's you sir:)
So, from the 1800s to 2016, we've had less than half a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the biosphere has gotten more vibrant, and humans have become better off with a minor global average temperature rise....so then what's the problem? Why do we expect the beneficial warming of the last 150 years to become painful in the next 150 years? We can't possibly emit enough CO2 to beat the logarithmic nature of the CO2 absorption curve, so where is the emergency?
(it's still called 'acidification' even when the pH doesn't go above neutral)
Of course it is, because that's scarier:) But don't let the fact that the ocean is incredibly *insensitive* to pH changes, and varies orders of magnitude more than any predicted average increase:
So, yes, there are in fact natural fluxes orders of magnitude greater than human activity. And as for evidence that we have an actively adaptive system:
Our observations have shown a matching increase natural sinks as we've input more CO2 from human activity. The absorption isn't marginal, it is literally proportionate to the increases in emissions.
What does this mean? It means that it is quite possible that CO2 levels on the larger scale are driven by other factors, and in fact the biosphere and geosphere react dynamically to keep CO2 at a given set point which may change over time unrelated to any given source or sink.
That means add CO2, and some sink may reactively absorb it. Remove CO2, and some source may reactively release it. Just like a buffered solution, perturbations in either direction are neutralized.
Imagine for a moment, that rather than CO2 driving temperature, that temperature drives CO2 - and that it is the temperature level that drives the appropriate sources and sinks to behave in a way that brings CO2 levels in the atmosphere to a specific point. It's almost trivial to think of this in terms of partial pressures (where the temperature of the oceans drive outgassing and absorption).
Oh, as for ocean pH neutralization, even if you burnt every molecule of petroleum on this planet, and shoved the CO2 directly into the oceans, you wouldn't change the pH appreciably - the oceans are *literally* a world wide reservoir that outweighs any amount of CO2 we could conceivably throw at it.
It [astrology] can be made to yield testable predictions, which (surprise!) show up failing the test.
And the defenses astrologists come up with are ad hoc special pleadings - much like the ad hoc special pleadings of other non-falsifiable assertions, like AGW.
Climate science has an empirical basis. We do have assorted measurements, and proxies that extend the range of our studies backward.
Astrology measures the orbits of planets, the movement of stars, and galaxies - simply having an empirical basis doesn't make something falsifiable.
We can find things that correlate very well, despite being unrelated. That's why we need further support, ideally a causal relation.
This "further support" is called falsifiability. More than a plausible idea, you need to be very specific about what observations would falsify the central conceit of your hypothesis. Put another way, in scientific terms, the *general* burden is this:
1) list the observations that are *excluded* by your hypothesis; 2) make the logical argument that without those observations, the only remaining possibility is your favored hypothesis (rather than the null).
We've excluded all the halfway reasonable ones people have proposed, and that's all we can do.
And that's simply not sufficient.
Now, this is a far cry from saying nothing should be studied - on the contrary, it calls out for even more intense study on things like ocean circulation, clouds, and indirect solar influences. In fact, the "science is settled" mantra is the one that implies we are done with any study:)
Sure, let's use "inflection point" - I'll pick the maunder minimum...or the medieval warm period...or the holocene optimum:)
We've got plenty of evidence of inflection points. Plenty of moments where temperatures started ticking up, and plenty of moments where temperatures started ticking down. The ice core records actually show a fairly regular pulse, with pleasant interglacials (like the one we're in now) much rarer than the cold, deadly earth.
Let's try this thought experiment - what if you're right, and AGW is both real and significant - and it's the only thing that delays or mitigates the next ice age? What happens if it is our CO2 emissions that *save* the planet? Would you be on the other side of the fence, demanding more offshore oil exploration, or natural gas drilling? Would you be demanding the dismantling of solar plants and wind farms? Would you encourage a massive program of scientists to study ways of injecting more CO2 into the atmosphere?
Now, some people are honestly thinking their thoughts and actions regarding AGW are just to save the planet, with no other motives. Others have the amazing ability to prescribe the exact same remedy no matter what the problem is (for example, the late Stephen Schneider - http://www.climatedepot.com/20...).
Good! A fellow atheist! Then perhaps you can be more skeptical of the Church of Global Warming!
The fact of the matter is that the CO2 *does* come from elsewhere - lots of elsewheres. The natural fluxes of CO2 between our atmosphere, our non-human biosphere, the oceans, are orders of magnitude *greater* than any human contribution.
More important though, is this - it's quite possible CO2 in the atmosphere is regulated by natural processes, much like a buffer solution. If you've ever done any chemistry, you'll remember a buffer solution as a liquid that will both neutralize additions of acid (low pH), and bases (high pH). If the CO2 in the atmosphere acts anything like this, it means that even if humanity *withdrew* as much CO2 from the atmosphere as they do currently *inject*, nature would make up the difference.
And when you look at the data, lo and behold, that's how it looks like:
As we emit more and more CO2, natural processes magically decide to *absorb* more CO2 - these atmospheric CO2 levels are actually influenced by dependent variables, not independent and unconnected sources and sinks.
We don't have a measurement of the entire ocean, so it's quite possible for heat from the areas of the ocean we don't have good measurements for (say, the deep ocean beneath the thermocline) to be transferred to the atmosphere, and no sign of it will show up in our limited measurements of ocean heat content.
On *every* term distribution matters - say for example you're told that you need to prepare a class for an average age of 15. This could mean 10 fifteen year olds. This could mean five 25 year olds and five 5 year olds. Any average is literally a *loss* of information - and it's that immediate spatiotemporal information that is important to humanity, and other life on this planet.
Another example - average lifespan - if the average lifespan is 27 years old, does that mean that everyone kicks the bucket in their late 20's, or does it mean that lots of people still live until age 90, but infant mortality is through the roof?
I saw a few places where you seem to take an approach of "we can't fully fix this, so let's not even try to do anything" which seems to me like a rather defeatist attitude.
Well, you can call it defeatist or pragmatic:) But thank you for reading! Even if you don't agree with my comments, it is nice to be fascinating to someone:)
it's entirely possible that they did happen and that over time things worked their way back down.
But if it's a tipping point, once you "tip" it doesn't go back - the whole concept of a "tipping point" is that once you slide down that slope, there's no return.
Now, if you agree that "things worked their way back down", then these are hardly tipping points, but merely continuous changes within a specific band of variability.
Ever hear of Pascal's Wager? The rationale you're using to justify your belief is very similar to his justification for believing in god:)
The real problem is this - the proposed mitigations for possible future impacts might in fact be *worse* than any possible future impact. Yes, you can get rid of all your hangnails by amputating your feet and hands, but the cure is worse than disease. Driving energy prices higher and higher, and destroying economies on a vast scale, may in fact cause more death and destruction than any possible increase in hurricanes, or droughts, or floods, or plagues of locusts and rains of frogs caused by warming.
The precautionary principle, while emotionally comforting since "we're doing something" can make you feel better even if it's not effective, can be dangerous in its application. Yes, in theory, we should let governments have backdoors into all our communications so we can save ourselves from those nasty terrorists that will blow a nuke up at the superbowl, but is it really worth the cost?
Over decades or longer that is *absolutely* not true.
Why not? ENSO is a circulation pattern of ocean water. Is it impossible for a decades long trend of circulation to move more warmth into the atmosphere?
It is the total heat content of the system that matters. Over the long term the *distribution* evens out.
Apologies friend, but that's simply not true:) Unless you're talking about the eventual heat death of the universe, it is the specific distribution of atmospheric temperature that matters to humanity and the biosphere, not its average.
Say the global average temperature was 59 degrees today. How does that inform the actions you're going to take? Will you decide to plant or not plant? Wear a coat or not? Take an umbrella or not? The total heat content of the system has literally *no* direct effect on you - its specific distribution does.
That's an assertion, not a fact. ENSO certainly could have an underlying secular trend that slowly increases global atmospheric temperature cycle after cycle.
And asserting that because "greenhouse gases" exist, AGW must be true is forgetting that CO2, MH4, and water vapor have existed long before humanity:) You may not realize it, but you've joined the Church of Global Warming already:)
Sounds like astrology - "most of the time you're honest, but sometimes you lie":)
The problem here is that any two increasing trends will correlate, regardless if they have nothing to do with each other. The amount of porn on the internet has increased the same time CO2 has, but that doesn't mean one drives the other.
The open question is this - have we excluded all non-anthropogenic causes? The answer is certainly, "no", since nobody would ever claim they actually understand and can quantify all non-anthropogenic causes.
Until we can exclude the null, correlated trends are interesting, but not very informative.
Did they specifically define that term as their falsifiability criteria?
"The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
Now, you can assert that they still have a 5% chance of being right, or you can assert that only the models in their simulations have been falsified, but that begs the question, what observation will falsify the central conceit?
The pragmatic goal is not to falsify the theory exactly as it stands, but to develop a theory that has predictive value, so that decisions can be made on it.
None of the current climate models have any predictive value. Not only because they can't accurately predict global average temperature, but also because global average temperature is meaningless. Distribution of heat is what matters, not its average. You can decrease the average atmospheric temperature, and have more extreme weather, and you can increase the average atmospheric temperature, and have less extreme weather. Given the global average temperature today you get no predictive benefit when deciding what to wear, what to plant, or any other activity important to mankind. Put bluntly, there is no correlation between the global average temperature and the temperature any individual will experience.
Are you aware that many actual scientists (and I don't mean climate science here, but hard science like physics etc) are not particularly fond of Popper's take on it?
Surely - the whole Bayesian crowd has a real problem with the demarcation problem and Popper's take on it. That being said, falsifiability is a non-negotiable requirement of the scientific method - without it, you've got religion (which, may indeed have predictive value). And yes, that means a lot of the non-falsifiable navel gazing of theoretical physics isn't really science...yet:)
You have to imagine cherry picking in terms of your falsifiability criteria - that is to say, to falsify the hypothesis "all swans are white", you only need *one* black swan.
So when you choose your falsification criteria, you need to be careful:)
FWIW, the "20 years" number I just pulled out of my ass.
Fair enough. NOAA 2008 actually chose 15 years. Are you willing to listen to those scientists, and accept that their hypothesis was falsified?
On the other hand, you can conduct a controlled laboratory experiment showing greenhouse effect from CO2 quite easily, so that validates the basic premise of the theory.
Certainly. But since the climate system isn't just a laboratory, and has many interlocking and variable dependent drivers, the basic premise doesn't necessarily make it into the real world. For example, we can do an experiment in a lab showing the lapse rate of heat through a solid, by sticking one end of an aluminum bar in hot water, and seeing the other end warm up. In the real world, you put your left hand in hot water, and your right hand isn't going to ever show that same kind of lapse rate phenomenon - biology is much more complex (and climate, being driven by a lot of biological mechanisms as well as astronomical and geological and oceanic ones, is even more so).
then you need to come up with a reasonable explanation for it that can itself be tested.
And here's where you're wrong - you *don't* need an alternate explanation for someone to be wrong. You can simply assert "we don't know", and leave it at that, much like you don't need to explain an alternate God in order to falsify the Christian God.
Now, if you're willing to learn more, I'd suggest reading Karl Popper on falsifiability. On the other hand, if you've chosen to outsource your critical thinking skills to "climate scientists" (whom somehow you have the skill to pick good ones versus bad ones), then you're certainly welcome to do that as well.
Depending on the dataset, particularly the more accurate satellite datasets, we have many instances of 20+ years of statistically insignificant change with ever increasing emissions and ever increasing CO2 levels (regardless of source).
Now, you could argue that we should ignore certain datasets, but that begs the question of cherry picking. You could also move the goalposts to say, 30 years, but that also seems like an ad hoc special pleading.
So, given that we've got at least some instances of your falsifiability criteria observed, are you willing to accept your proposition as false?
There is however no known mechanism other than human activities
Argument from ignorance. Simply because we don't know the mechanism, doesn't mean we get to assign causality to the mechanism we've chosen to model.
As for your red dye model, remember, there *is* naturally occurring red pigment (after all, there is such a thing as non-anthropogenic warming, and it happened many times before humans ever existed). Your trick is to discern the anthropogenic signal from the natural one - and there's no guarantee that the system is a simple source and sink, it could be a buffer solution, or have complex internal homeostatic tendencies outside of any individual source or sink.
Well, in the case of CO2, the de facto asymptote is simple - 100% CO2 atmosphere, or 1,000,000 parts per million.
Or do you think we can have more than 100% atmosphere?:)
Here, as an exercise, calculate the temperature increase due to the last 500 ppm from 999,500 ppm to 1,000,000 ppm, assuming a sensitivity of 1C per doubling. Does your calculator even have enough digits for that?:)
Slashdot Mirror
I want public groceries.
I want public furniture.
I want public housing...for everyone.
I want public pornography.
Oh, what the hell, I want government agents to determine our life path from birth until death, and control every step of our lives, and every decision that we make, and provide for all of our needs in the way they best see fit. /sarc
Mod parent up. Whereas in the past local newspapers and local radio stations were the only outlets for national news, we've gotten far, far away from that.
When the vast majority of listeners are downloading and streaming, the justification for a local radio station drops to well below worth it.
My apologies that you find my good humor offensive - but frankly, I do find your dogmatic belief system humorous, even if it is dangerous and pernicious :)
But when someone denies that low frequency proxy measurements aren't properly comparable to high frequency direct observations...well, gosh, it just makes me giggle :)
I'm not sure if I know what "rumbled" means in this context. If it refers to you dodging the refutation of your assertions, okay...good rumble!
The simple fact of the matter is that I didn't deny anything except the futility of comparing high resolution observations with low resolution proxies. Your denial of the quantitative and qualitative difference in these measurements, on the other hand, belies your impulses :)
And the ordinary CO2 cycle is filled with natural fluxes.
No, we don't. We have alarmist articles claiming there are problems, but the truth is there is no sign that pH flux of .1 over a long period of time will have any effect on biomes that fluctuate an order of magnitude than that on a daily basis.
http://www.latimes.com/science...
Seriously, read the actual papers, not the newspaper mangled spin on them :)
I stated a fact - the proxy records for CO2 aren't nearly as high resolution as the modern data we have. Our modern data has a resolution of *hours*. The proxy data has a resolution of *hundreds of years*.
You cannot possibly discern high frequency change in a low frequency signal.
So whether you call it weather or climate, you simply cannot compare a historical record of low resolution to a modern record of high resolution with any sort of confidence.
Or maybe you can, but your confidence is misplaced :)
4000 ARGO floats for less than 20 years is hardly a sufficient measurement grid to exclude the possibility of a decades long trend, though, won't you agree? When we have limited information, speculation abounds...for example, "the oceans ate my warming" excuse for the pause:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...
Now, NASA has shown that the deep ocean hasn't warmed in any measurable way:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/n...
But the heat transfer necessary to warm the atmosphere is actually smaller than they could measure - remember, water has not only a greater heat capacity than air, but it's got a much larger mass.
Now certainly, we're speculating here - but if you can at least admit that the speculation is *possible*, we've got an area we can direct more effort to study, in this case the complexities of ENSO and possible natural secular trends that occur over many cycles.
Are you asserting that NOAA has hidden somewhere a proxy record that is either yearly or hourly?
That sounds a lot like "well, even though you can't see God, you don't know he doesn't exist!"
Go ahead, find the highest resolution proxy you can for CO2. Let us know when you can discern the difference between 66 million years ago, and 66 million and one years ago :)
I'm simply arguing a point - the cult of AGW, and the Church of Global Warming, for all of their sweet looking laboratory scientist uniforms, is a religious dogma, not science.
Why are you avoiding addressing the challenges to your religion? Instead of addressing the actual NOAA ice core data, which directly contradicts your statement "the results are better than that", you accuse me of being in debate club?
If there's anyone making misleading noise, it's you sir :)
So, from the 1800s to 2016, we've had less than half a doubling of CO2 in the atmosphere, and the biosphere has gotten more vibrant, and humans have become better off with a minor global average temperature rise. ...so then what's the problem? Why do we expect the beneficial warming of the last 150 years to become painful in the next 150 years? We can't possibly emit enough CO2 to beat the logarithmic nature of the CO2 absorption curve, so where is the emergency?
Of course it is, because that's scarier :) But don't let the fact that the ocean is incredibly *insensitive* to pH changes, and varies orders of magnitude more than any predicted average increase:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...
IPCC:
https://www.ipcc.ch/publicatio...
So, yes, there are in fact natural fluxes orders of magnitude greater than human activity. And as for evidence that we have an actively adaptive system:
http://theresilientearth.com/?...
Our observations have shown a matching increase natural sinks as we've input more CO2 from human activity. The absorption isn't marginal, it is literally proportionate to the increases in emissions.
What does this mean? It means that it is quite possible that CO2 levels on the larger scale are driven by other factors, and in fact the biosphere and geosphere react dynamically to keep CO2 at a given set point which may change over time unrelated to any given source or sink.
That means add CO2, and some sink may reactively absorb it. Remove CO2, and some source may reactively release it. Just like a buffered solution, perturbations in either direction are neutralized.
Imagine for a moment, that rather than CO2 driving temperature, that temperature drives CO2 - and that it is the temperature level that drives the appropriate sources and sinks to behave in a way that brings CO2 levels in the atmosphere to a specific point. It's almost trivial to think of this in terms of partial pressures (where the temperature of the oceans drive outgassing and absorption).
Oh, as for ocean pH neutralization, even if you burnt every molecule of petroleum on this planet, and shoved the CO2 directly into the oceans, you wouldn't change the pH appreciably - the oceans are *literally* a world wide reservoir that outweighs any amount of CO2 we could conceivably throw at it.
And the defenses astrologists come up with are ad hoc special pleadings - much like the ad hoc special pleadings of other non-falsifiable assertions, like AGW.
Astrology measures the orbits of planets, the movement of stars, and galaxies - simply having an empirical basis doesn't make something falsifiable.
This "further support" is called falsifiability. More than a plausible idea, you need to be very specific about what observations would falsify the central conceit of your hypothesis. Put another way, in scientific terms, the *general* burden is this:
1) list the observations that are *excluded* by your hypothesis;
2) make the logical argument that without those observations, the only remaining possibility is your favored hypothesis (rather than the null).
And that's simply not sufficient.
Now, this is a far cry from saying nothing should be studied - on the contrary, it calls out for even more intense study on things like ocean circulation, clouds, and indirect solar influences. In fact, the "science is settled" mantra is the one that implies we are done with any study :)
Sure, let's use "inflection point" - I'll pick the maunder minimum...or the medieval warm period...or the holocene optimum :)
We've got plenty of evidence of inflection points. Plenty of moments where temperatures started ticking up, and plenty of moments where temperatures started ticking down. The ice core records actually show a fairly regular pulse, with pleasant interglacials (like the one we're in now) much rarer than the cold, deadly earth.
Let's try this thought experiment - what if you're right, and AGW is both real and significant - and it's the only thing that delays or mitigates the next ice age? What happens if it is our CO2 emissions that *save* the planet? Would you be on the other side of the fence, demanding more offshore oil exploration, or natural gas drilling? Would you be demanding the dismantling of solar plants and wind farms? Would you encourage a massive program of scientists to study ways of injecting more CO2 into the atmosphere?
Now, some people are honestly thinking their thoughts and actions regarding AGW are just to save the planet, with no other motives. Others have the amazing ability to prescribe the exact same remedy no matter what the problem is (for example, the late Stephen Schneider - http://www.climatedepot.com/20...).
Which type do you think you are?
Good! A fellow atheist! Then perhaps you can be more skeptical of the Church of Global Warming!
The fact of the matter is that the CO2 *does* come from elsewhere - lots of elsewheres. The natural fluxes of CO2 between our atmosphere, our non-human biosphere, the oceans, are orders of magnitude *greater* than any human contribution.
More important though, is this - it's quite possible CO2 in the atmosphere is regulated by natural processes, much like a buffer solution. If you've ever done any chemistry, you'll remember a buffer solution as a liquid that will both neutralize additions of acid (low pH), and bases (high pH). If the CO2 in the atmosphere acts anything like this, it means that even if humanity *withdrew* as much CO2 from the atmosphere as they do currently *inject*, nature would make up the difference.
And when you look at the data, lo and behold, that's how it looks like:
http://theresilientearth.com/?...
As we emit more and more CO2, natural processes magically decide to *absorb* more CO2 - these atmospheric CO2 levels are actually influenced by dependent variables, not independent and unconnected sources and sinks.
We don't have a measurement of the entire ocean, so it's quite possible for heat from the areas of the ocean we don't have good measurements for (say, the deep ocean beneath the thermocline) to be transferred to the atmosphere, and no sign of it will show up in our limited measurements of ocean heat content.
On *every* term distribution matters - say for example you're told that you need to prepare a class for an average age of 15. This could mean 10 fifteen year olds. This could mean five 25 year olds and five 5 year olds. Any average is literally a *loss* of information - and it's that immediate spatiotemporal information that is important to humanity, and other life on this planet.
Another example - average lifespan - if the average lifespan is 27 years old, does that mean that everyone kicks the bucket in their late 20's, or does it mean that lots of people still live until age 90, but infant mortality is through the roof?
Here's the data:
ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/da...
There are gaps of up to hundreds of years between measurements.
Exactly which "results" do you think are better than NOAA's high resolution ice core series?
Well, you can call it defeatist or pragmatic :) But thank you for reading! Even if you don't agree with my comments, it is nice to be fascinating to someone :)
But if it's a tipping point, once you "tip" it doesn't go back - the whole concept of a "tipping point" is that once you slide down that slope, there's no return.
Now, if you agree that "things worked their way back down", then these are hardly tipping points, but merely continuous changes within a specific band of variability.
Ever hear of Pascal's Wager? The rationale you're using to justify your belief is very similar to his justification for believing in god :)
The real problem is this - the proposed mitigations for possible future impacts might in fact be *worse* than any possible future impact. Yes, you can get rid of all your hangnails by amputating your feet and hands, but the cure is worse than disease. Driving energy prices higher and higher, and destroying economies on a vast scale, may in fact cause more death and destruction than any possible increase in hurricanes, or droughts, or floods, or plagues of locusts and rains of frogs caused by warming.
The precautionary principle, while emotionally comforting since "we're doing something" can make you feel better even if it's not effective, can be dangerous in its application. Yes, in theory, we should let governments have backdoors into all our communications so we can save ourselves from those nasty terrorists that will blow a nuke up at the superbowl, but is it really worth the cost?
Why not? ENSO is a circulation pattern of ocean water. Is it impossible for a decades long trend of circulation to move more warmth into the atmosphere?
Apologies friend, but that's simply not true :) Unless you're talking about the eventual heat death of the universe, it is the specific distribution of atmospheric temperature that matters to humanity and the biosphere, not its average.
Say the global average temperature was 59 degrees today. How does that inform the actions you're going to take? Will you decide to plant or not plant? Wear a coat or not? Take an umbrella or not? The total heat content of the system has literally *no* direct effect on you - its specific distribution does.
That's an assertion, not a fact. ENSO certainly could have an underlying secular trend that slowly increases global atmospheric temperature cycle after cycle.
And asserting that because "greenhouse gases" exist, AGW must be true is forgetting that CO2, MH4, and water vapor have existed long before humanity :) You may not realize it, but you've joined the Church of Global Warming already :)
Sounds like astrology - "most of the time you're honest, but sometimes you lie" :)
The problem here is that any two increasing trends will correlate, regardless if they have nothing to do with each other. The amount of porn on the internet has increased the same time CO2 has, but that doesn't mean one drives the other.
The open question is this - have we excluded all non-anthropogenic causes? The answer is certainly, "no", since nobody would ever claim they actually understand and can quantify all non-anthropogenic causes.
Until we can exclude the null, correlated trends are interesting, but not very informative.
"The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.”
Now, you can assert that they still have a 5% chance of being right, or you can assert that only the models in their simulations have been falsified, but that begs the question, what observation will falsify the central conceit?
None of the current climate models have any predictive value. Not only because they can't accurately predict global average temperature, but also because global average temperature is meaningless. Distribution of heat is what matters, not its average. You can decrease the average atmospheric temperature, and have more extreme weather, and you can increase the average atmospheric temperature, and have less extreme weather. Given the global average temperature today you get no predictive benefit when deciding what to wear, what to plant, or any other activity important to mankind. Put bluntly, there is no correlation between the global average temperature and the temperature any individual will experience.
Surely - the whole Bayesian crowd has a real problem with the demarcation problem and Popper's take on it. That being said, falsifiability is a non-negotiable requirement of the scientific method - without it, you've got religion (which, may indeed have predictive value). And yes, that means a lot of the non-falsifiable navel gazing of theoretical physics isn't really science...yet :)
You have to imagine cherry picking in terms of your falsifiability criteria - that is to say, to falsify the hypothesis "all swans are white", you only need *one* black swan.
So when you choose your falsification criteria, you need to be careful :)
Fair enough. NOAA 2008 actually chose 15 years. Are you willing to listen to those scientists, and accept that their hypothesis was falsified?
Certainly. But since the climate system isn't just a laboratory, and has many interlocking and variable dependent drivers, the basic premise doesn't necessarily make it into the real world. For example, we can do an experiment in a lab showing the lapse rate of heat through a solid, by sticking one end of an aluminum bar in hot water, and seeing the other end warm up. In the real world, you put your left hand in hot water, and your right hand isn't going to ever show that same kind of lapse rate phenomenon - biology is much more complex (and climate, being driven by a lot of biological mechanisms as well as astronomical and geological and oceanic ones, is even more so).
And here's where you're wrong - you *don't* need an alternate explanation for someone to be wrong. You can simply assert "we don't know", and leave it at that, much like you don't need to explain an alternate God in order to falsify the Christian God.
Now, if you're willing to learn more, I'd suggest reading Karl Popper on falsifiability. On the other hand, if you've chosen to outsource your critical thinking skills to "climate scientists" (whom somehow you have the skill to pick good ones versus bad ones), then you're certainly welcome to do that as well.
Okay, fair enough. Let's look at the data:
http://moyhu.blogspot.com.au/p... (looks a bit broken on my browser, but I'm assuming it'll get fixed soon)
Depending on the dataset, particularly the more accurate satellite datasets, we have many instances of 20+ years of statistically insignificant change with ever increasing emissions and ever increasing CO2 levels (regardless of source).
Now, you could argue that we should ignore certain datasets, but that begs the question of cherry picking. You could also move the goalposts to say, 30 years, but that also seems like an ad hoc special pleading.
So, given that we've got at least some instances of your falsifiability criteria observed, are you willing to accept your proposition as false?
Argument from ignorance. Simply because we don't know the mechanism, doesn't mean we get to assign causality to the mechanism we've chosen to model.
As for your red dye model, remember, there *is* naturally occurring red pigment (after all, there is such a thing as non-anthropogenic warming, and it happened many times before humans ever existed). Your trick is to discern the anthropogenic signal from the natural one - and there's no guarantee that the system is a simple source and sink, it could be a buffer solution, or have complex internal homeostatic tendencies outside of any individual source or sink.
Well, in the case of CO2, the de facto asymptote is simple - 100% CO2 atmosphere, or 1,000,000 parts per million.
Or do you think we can have more than 100% atmosphere? :)
Here, as an exercise, calculate the temperature increase due to the last 500 ppm from 999,500 ppm to 1,000,000 ppm, assuming a sensitivity of 1C per doubling. Does your calculator even have enough digits for that? :)