Well you haven't provided any proof of your earlier statement at all
We're not talking about *proof* - we're talking about a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement. Proof (in terms of documented attempts to find falsifications that end in failure), is something entirely different - it comes *after* the first step:)
. I fully expect there to be some financial impact to doing something about taking action to save the environment therefore the world.
And therein lies your problem - you've got zero idea as to whether or not your cure is worse than the disease you suspect. You're asking us to cut off our arm because you think we might have an infected pinky finger.
I for one would rather be living in a cardboard box under a bridge eating ramen I bartered for, than definately dead from dehydration or starvation
When you destroy economies, you make the poorest of the poor dead from dehydration and starvation because they can't get clean water or food. The worst you can imagine is sufficient shelter and food to survive on - your proposals for making energy more expensive will actually *kill* people who are currently barely hanging on.
I'm not sure if it's obvious to you yet, but you've got religion. I don't begrudge you your religion, but I'm not going to engage in human sacrifice in order to save the world from Satan, and I'm not going to engage in human sacrifice in order to save the world from the CO2 boogeyman either. If you can at least admit that what you have is faith, rather than fact, you'll be on the path to wisdom:)
I am worried by a wider trend that science is gradually being influenced by political views
And there's the rub. Whether or not the pressure is systematic and preconceived (which, given the climategate emails, there is *some* evidence of that), the pressure is there and it *stops* science in its tracks.
Science is not about "the message" - that's clearly a political issue. To get back to science, it needs to be about the necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement, and the earnest attempt to falsify even one's own pet theories - being "on message" is a corruption of the scientific method, period.
"Professor Bengtsson’s resignation shows that the alleged “consensus” on dangerous global warming involves suppressing dissent by academic bullying. He emphasises that there is no consensus about how fast and how far greenhouse warming will go, let alone what can be done in response.
Evidence of such bullying emerged in the “Climategate” scandal of 2009, where some climate scientists’ emails revealed them to be ready to threaten and blackball colleagues, reporters and editors who expressed sceptical views. I talk frequently to scientists who are unconvinced that climate change is even close to being the world’s most pressing environmental problem, but who will not put their heads above the parapet for fear of what it would do to their careers."
If someone can justify why he's going off message with good evidence he gets a publication out of it.
So you're adding the additional "you need to justify going off message" criteria to the scientific method? Who decides if the going off message is "justified"? The "pal-review" guys from climategate?:)
This is about a predicted consequence of AGW, not a prediction of AGW.
I don't understand the semantics you're trying to assert here - a "consequence" prediction and a "non-consequence" prediction is a distinction without a difference in the scientific method. If your hypothesis predicts that you cannot find a modern rabbit fossil in the precambrian (for evolution), how do we decide if that is a "consequence" or not?
Further, isn't it possible to have *some* predictions of say, astrology be right, and others be wrong...would astrology become science if we simply said that all wrong predictions weren't "consequential"?
Here's the real problem - without a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement, you've got no way to tell if some of the "hits" you get with your prediction are just coincidence, or actual support for your hypothesis.
that doesn't mean we're completely wrong, just that we're not completely right.
Astrology isn't "completely right" - are we to consider it a science now?
Sure no problem - here are observations that would falsify my hypothesis of economic catastrophe:
1) any alternative fuel source to natural petroleum products becomes cheaper in absolute dollars;
This one is really important - if the "save the environment" action is in fact, absolutely cheaper (not artificially subsidized or manipulated or costed in inflated dollars), then of course, the "action" to move to say, solar and wind, wouldn't cause catastrophe. Thus far, solar and wind are an order of magnitude more expensive, in absolute terms, than natural petroleum.
2) any alternative fuel source to natural petroleum products becomes 100% reliable, 24/7
This is also pretty important - unless you cost in making alternative energy sources 100% reliable 24/7 (currently done by building additional natural gas plants to take over when either solar or wind variability doesn't provide power), you can't move to them without severe disruption. Surely there are all kinds of possible technical solutions here, but it's also bounded by #1.
3) find any example of lower-per capita energy usage but a higher quality of life
Last, but not least, my hypothesis depends on the assertion that higher per-capita energy usage is linked to higher quality of life. If we find one example of a country that *lowered* per-capita energy usage, and *increased* quality of life, then my hypothesis would fail. See: http://www.geni.org/globalener...
So, now, back to you - can you quote a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement for CAGW? Or was your question simply a dodge to avoid giving an answer? Be honest.:)
Here's the thing - say you're coordinating a message about things you "already agree with". What happens to the first guy who re-evaluates the information, and changes his mind? What happens to the guy who goes "off message"?
If physicists had a "coordinated message" about string theory, and blackballed the first guy who thought of loop quantum gravity, would you see a problem?
But you've failed to explain why this particular gap in knowledge is critical.
Here's the point - your retort is applicable for *any* prediction thus made by AGW supporters. Like astrologists, you throw a bunch of stuff against the wall, ignore the failures, and then focus on whatever "hits" you get.
Put another way - what predictions have to be wrong in order for AGW to be wrong? Flat temperatures and continually rising CO2 for over 20 years? What gaps in knowledge *would* be meaningful?
And be honest, if sea ice *extent* had been decreasing, but ice *mass* had been increasing, would you be making the same argument just with different failed predictions?
The problem isn't that we don't know everything about climate - the problem is that we can't tell *when* we don't know something about climate, and people keep insisting that we *do* know something about the climate when and where we don't.
At the end of the day there's warmer air temperatures, larger ice extents, and lower ice volumes. Whatever the mechanism it's clearly possible to have that combination of factors.
Sure - here's the IPCC AR5 Chapter 10:
"Overall we conclude that there is low confidence in the scientific understanding of the observed increase in Antarctic sea ice extent since 1979, due the larger differences between sea-ice simulations from CMIP5 models and to the incomplete and competing scientific explanations for the causes of change and low confidence in estimates of internal variability."
It's clearly possible that the air temperature has little or nothing to do with larger ice extents and lower ice volumes - they simply *don't understand*.
The fact they're trying to coordinate their message doesn't mean the coordinated message is wrong.
Yes, it does. The purpose of science isn't to put forth a "coordinated message" -> that's *politicks*. The purpose of science is to draw closer to the truth through the application of the scientific method, through the rigorous application of skepticism to ones' own preferred hypotheses. The moment you've decided to coordinate a message, rather than seek the truth, you've exited the realm of science.
Even if the ice extent is a surprising result it's not changing the thing they were worried about.
But the fact that it contradicts their predictions means that their central conceit is wrong...except they won't admit it, and ignore the observations in contrast to their models.
The fact of the matter is this - the earth changes, always has always will. Attributing catastrophe to our sins is a religious impulse, not a scientific one.
To me that sounds like you're trying to get to agree to a ridiculous sounding simplification just for the purpose of making me sound ridiculous.
Sorry, but to be honest, it was ridiculous before the simplification - and you come pretty close to admitting it, acknowledging the spin and overplayed certainty. And *this* is what poisons the well - you're quoting people who are positing a convoluted explanation for observations inconsistent with their original predictions in order to preserve their dubious central conceit, and when you get past the song and dance, the reduction of their position is clearly contradictory.
But that doesn't mean the consistent message given by climate scientists is just hype.
Any "consistent message" is a political one, and you know it. There is broad disagreement on climate sensitivity, impacts, drivers, and the role of natural variation. Science isn't about *messages* - it's about necessary and falsifiable hypothesis statements, and the earnest attempt to find those falsifications.
And I'll still come back to the original assertion you made, about the increasing extent, is itself misleading compared to the decreasing volume.
"For the latter, the issue is reconciling the observed expansion of Antarctic sea-ice extent during the satellite era with robust modelling evidence that the ice should melt as a result of stratospheric ozone depletion (and increases in GHGs)."
So to be clear, the "robust modeling evidence" was what predicted increased antarctic ice extent - but the nature of a non-falsifiable hypothesis, such as AGW, means that even when observations are *opposite* of predictions, ad hoc special pleadings are made. In this case, the ad hoc special pleading "we didn't really mean ice extent, what counts is ice mass".
So, if measuring extent is misleading, let's at least admit that this bad path was the very one mapped out by GCMs:)
That's the argument from authority - because 96% of bishops, cardinals and popes, all theological experts, believe that Mary was a virgin, and that homosexual marriage is an abomination, then it's a real issue and we need to act!
Science gives power to the masses - even if you're *not* an expert, you can ask for a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement. You may not be able to grok the source code, or the advanced math, but if the experts can't do the *basic* work of the scientific method, then relying on their authority is essentially outsourcing your critical thinking to a higher authority (which is what all religions do).
You assume that if they're wrong, and we bankrupt the world, and drive people into poverty and pain and suffering in order to get "cleaner air", that this is a good thing - your prescription is a *guarantee* for catastrophe, whereas the threat is only a *possible* catastrophe. You're asking us to cut off our arms just in case we get wrist cancer later on.
Not at all. The car is heading down the road, and there's fog on the interstate. We need to get to the hospital, because someone in the car is wounded, but you want us to stop, and pull over, just in case the interstate is broken 100 miles down the road.
Again though, the point here is that without a falsifiable hypothesis statement, you're not doing science. You may have an unshakable faith in your religion, and believe that without accepting the grace of Christ we're all going to hell, but don't expect me to act like Pascal and simply believe in God because the horrors you claim will happen in the afterlife are so terrible.
The fact that your explanations are logically flawed, and even fanciful, doesn't make the listener of those explanations dense:)
You tried to make an analogy between evaporating water (evaporating from the top) as surface area increases, and magically melting ice (melting from the bottom) as surface area increases, somehow driven by the air *above* the ice. It simply doesn't follow.
A *reaction* that stabilizes temperature to an equilibrium is effectively the same as a *compensation* that stabilizes temperature to an equilibrium -> that is to say, temperature can be stable during the melting of ice...in fact, it is the melting of ice that *keeps* it stable.
Further, rate of ice melting isn't driven solely, or arguably even *primarily* by atmospheric drivers:
The null hypothesis is that current climate changes for the same reasons why it changed before humans existed - natural climate change. That's the hypothesis you need to *exclude*.
Of course global warming (and cooling), has anthropogenic components - just like it has butterfly components (since butterflies give out CO2). But the assertion that those components are at all discernible from background natural variation is a novel and thus unsupportable idea.
Proof lies in the affirmative - you can't ask someone "prove that god doesn't exist", or "prove that there isn't a magical teapot hidden at a lagrange point".
Put another way, evolution has a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis (find a modern rabbit in the precambrian). Creationism and CAGW does not.
Any small benefit from this will be massively outweighed by the droughts and other negative changes in weather patterns.
That's an unsupported assertion, contradicted by the evidence of ever increasing crop yields along with higher CO2 and temperature globally.
Do seriously think that the size of someone's electricity bill will be whats uppermost on poor peoples minds
Yes. Power costs drive food costs and water costs. Make the electricity more expensive, and you condemn people in poverty to more poverty.
Even a few minutes with Google will show that over 95% of the most prestigious academic and independent research (as opposed to that performed or funded by entities with vested interests) strongly indicates man is having a direct and major bad effect on global warming. Why do you refuse to acknowledge that?
Science is not done by consensus, surely Galileo taught you that:)
The root of your argument just seem to be that if there's even a slight possibility of doubt that global warming (or that humans are at least partially responsible for it ) exists, then you will magically translate that into the whole thing being necessarily not true.
No, you've completely misunderstood falsifiability - it isn't about what *percent* something is possible to be wrong, it is about whether or not there is any logical argument that it *can* be wrong at all.
The root of your argument is that "heads I win, tails you lose" is a fair bet:)
Here, read some Popper to educate yourself on falsifiability and then get back to me:)
Mod parent up - it is *culture* that drives academic achievement. If you have a thug culture, which denigrates those who "talk white", or get straight As, or embrace "white values" instead of ghetto values, you get generation after generation of failure. If you have a culture of personal responsibility, which insists on proper english, attention to grades, and integration into the upper class culture rather than the denigration of upper class culture, you get generations of success.
The real question is this - barring taking children away from their parents for proper enculturation, what can government possibly do to turn the toxic tide of such cultural values?
The problem is that even *decadently* funded universal government schools that don't have the ability to discipline or expel problem behavior students suffer from the tragedy of the commons in the worst way - a small set of bad apples ruins the whole damn bunch.
When children succeed in schools, it has much less to do with the school than with the child's family and it's attitude towards education. Asserting that success stories are due to money, and failures are due to the lack of money, is to ignore the first order terms in the equation.
You're trying to get me to agree to a ridiculous sounding oversimplification of my position
No, that's *literally* your position as stated.
"If the warmer temperatures led to the water having lower salinity that could cause more ice."
You are *literally* asserting that warmer temperatures decrease salinity, and therefore cause a mitigation of the typical freezing point depression, and therefore cause more ice.
They said it's going to be fairly slow for the next century or so and didn't hide the fact. How is that hype?
I'll quote the article I cited:
"As seems to always be the case the climate fear propaganda news media have completely mislead the public once again regarding climate related issues this time by alleging claims of 4 meter high future sea level rise increases supposedly addressed in two recent studies which performed analysis of glacier melt behavior of six large glaciers in West Antarctica.
One study was published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) and titled “Sustained increase in ice discharge from the Amundsen Sea Embayment, West Antarctica, from 1973 to 2013“. This study is available here:
The second study was published in Science and titled “Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Under Way for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica“. This study is available here:
Both studies evaluate the relatively recent melt rate history of these glaciers with one focusing on the use observed satellite data to estimate melt rate behavior while the other uses computer models to estimate melt rate behavior.
Amazingly enough and considering how the press manufactured headlines about sea level rise increases being determined from these studies neither of the studies addresses or make any claims about the impact of their research results on specific future sea level rise projections.
In fact GLC study mentions nothing specific about future sea level rise projections while the Science study clearly notes that their research models “are not coupled to a global climate model to provide forcing nor do they include an ice-shelf cavity-circulation model to derive melt rates. Few if any such fully coupled models presently exist (13). As such, our simulations do not constitute a projection of future sea level in response to projected climate forcing.”
Also unreported by the same climate alarmist propaganda focused media were the significant qualifications, limitations and cautions noted in these studies concerning their glacier melt research findings.
The GRL published study noted for example the following qualifiers regarding its analysis:
“These observations are a possible sign of the progressive collapse of this sector in response to the high melting of its buttressing ice shelves by the ocean.”
“Until numerical ice sheet models coupled with realistic oceanic forcing are able to replicate these observations, projections of the evolution of this sector of West Antarctica should be interpreted with caution.”
The Science published study contained the following similarly related qualifiers regarding its analysis:
“Although our simple melt parameterization suggests that a full-scale collapse of this sector may be inevitable, it leaves large uncertainty in the timing. Thus, ice-sheet models fully coupled to ocean/climate models are required to reduce the uncertainty in the chronology of a collapse.”
Why aren’t these significant research finding qualifiers regarding the preliminary nature of these studies results addressed by the main stream media?
The main stream media manufactured numbers alleging sea level rise projections not addre
Of course I understand how "falsifiable" applies to science:
1) a set of observations, which if observed, would cause us to abandon our hypothesis; 2) a logical argument that the lack of those observations leads *only* to our hypothesis.
The fact that you can't understand that doesn't mean that it's a mindless mantra - it means you're incapable of groking some pretty basic features of the scientific method:)
And this is an *actual* critique - you, and your fellow travelers, have *never* been able to come up with a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement of CAGW or AGW - and the lack of that makes what you preach *not* science:)
CO2 traps energy in the atmosphere heating up the air, the warmer the air is the less energy is transferred from the water or ground into the air
And according to your hypothesis, this warmer air causes more ice to form because salinity is reduced. So, warm air makes ice.
Without the thick sea ice surrounding them the land sheets will flow into the oceans and raise sea levels.
Over a period of hundreds, if not thousands of years:) The changes in sea ice and land ice are driven by forces other than atmospheric temperature.
I might as well write an article about how guns can't kill people because the kinetic energy in a bullet is nothing compared to the mass of a human.
So now you're saying that the heat from the atmosphere magically concentrates and targets a very small portion of the ice to melt it down, the way a bullet transfers its kinetic energy to just one small spot on a human's body?:)
Can you at least admit that the article over hyped the issue?
"An increase in air temperature does not heat oceans or melt ice which floats. Anyone who studies science should know this; yet carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is said to be heating the oceans and melting Arctic ice.
First, air has such a low heat capacity that it doesn't hold enough heat to influence water or the ice within it significantly. Secondly, heat moves upward, not downward, which prevents it from moving from air to water or ice on water.
Why would the tropics be warmer, when air does not absorb much sunshine? The atmosphere is nearly the same in the tropics. It's because the water and land absorb the sunlight and transfer the heat to the atmosphere, not the other way around.
The numbers show the absurdities. Here are calculations for heating Arctic ice and the amount of globally warmed air required to melt it. These simple numbers are found in numerous places on the internet.
The amount of Arctic ice is said to be 12x106 km2 (square kilometers). In the winter of 2010 it is said to be two meters thick, though in some areas it would be thicker. So we will calculate the amount of heat required to melt that much ice when two meters thick.
Converting to meters results in one million square meters per square kilometer; and two meters thick results in 24x1012 m3. The density of ice is slightly less than water, or 917 kg/m3. Multiplying these two numbers yields 22x1015 kg of ice.
The heat required to melt the ice is called heat of fusion. It is 334 kj/kg. That's kilojoules per kilogram. Multiplying this times the number of kilograms yields 7.4x1018 kj.
So how much air would have to be heated 0.6C (the supposed global warming caused by humans, lately sliding up to 0.7C, even though global cooling has been occurring) to provide this amount of heat? The heat capacity of air is about one fourth that of water on a gram basis, which is 1 kj/kg-K for air. That's one kilojoule per kilogram per degree Kelvin or centigrade. For 0.6C, it's 0.6 kj/kg.
To get 7.4x1018 kj would require that many kilograms for one degree and 0.6 times as much for 0.6C, which is 4.4x1018 kg of air.
The density of the atmosphere is 1.2 kg/m3 for the first kilometer of height. So we divide the 4.4x1018 kg by 1.2 kg/m3 to get the number of cubic meters, which is 3.7x1018 m3 of air. There are a billion cubic meters per cubic kilometer, so this number is reduced to 3.7x109 km3.
This is the amount of square surface area of atmosphere, one kilometer thick, which will hold the necessary amount of heat to melt all Arctic ice when two meters thick. It's 3.7 billion square kilometers of atmosphere. That's 61,000 kilometers on each side of a square. The total area of the earth's surface is only 510x106 km2, which is 23,000 kilometers on a side. The required amount of air is 7.25 times the total amount on the earth.
Notice that the surface area of the ice was 12x106 km2, while the surface area of the air for melting it was 3.7x109 km2. The surface area is 308 times as much for the air as for the ice. This means that even if the ice is not all melted, whatever portion is melted requires 308 times as much air per surface area as ice. If one square kilometer of ice is melted, 308 square kilometers of air must be moved over it with all 0.6C of AGW heat removed.
There are an infinite number of complexities stemming from the fact that no one can describe exactly what is happening or produce a consistent theory for what is supposed to happen. For example, where is the heat supposed to be located? The 0.6C is supposed to be near the earth's surface. How much heating is there supposed to be in the higher atmosphere? None can be detected, yet it is supposed to be back-radiatin
Now, ice is only a fraction of the ocean, but atmosphere is also only a tiny fraction of the ocean. My bet is that back of the napkin, you're looking at the same order of magnitude...
Specific heat capacity, ice: 2.108 kJ/kg-K Specific heat capacity, water: 4.187 kJ/kg-K Heat capacity of air: 1.005 kJ/kg/K
It doesn't require a colder temperature to form the ice
Now, checking with physics, ice is formed at 0C. Checking with chemistry, adding salt to water causes both boiling point elevation, and freezing point depression, making ice form at 0C.
In what world can you have a *warmer* temperature form more ice?
Slashdot Mirror
We're not talking about *proof* - we're talking about a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement. Proof (in terms of documented attempts to find falsifications that end in failure), is something entirely different - it comes *after* the first step :)
And therein lies your problem - you've got zero idea as to whether or not your cure is worse than the disease you suspect. You're asking us to cut off our arm because you think we might have an infected pinky finger.
When you destroy economies, you make the poorest of the poor dead from dehydration and starvation because they can't get clean water or food. The worst you can imagine is sufficient shelter and food to survive on - your proposals for making energy more expensive will actually *kill* people who are currently barely hanging on.
I'm not sure if it's obvious to you yet, but you've got religion. I don't begrudge you your religion, but I'm not going to engage in human sacrifice in order to save the world from Satan, and I'm not going to engage in human sacrifice in order to save the world from the CO2 boogeyman either. If you can at least admit that what you have is faith, rather than fact, you'll be on the path to wisdom :)
And there's the rub. Whether or not the pressure is systematic and preconceived (which, given the climategate emails, there is *some* evidence of that), the pressure is there and it *stops* science in its tracks.
Science is not about "the message" - that's clearly a political issue. To get back to science, it needs to be about the necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement, and the earnest attempt to falsify even one's own pet theories - being "on message" is a corruption of the scientific method, period.
Here's a great article on "going off message":
http://www.rationaloptimist.co...
"Professor Bengtsson’s resignation shows that the alleged “consensus” on dangerous global warming involves suppressing dissent by academic bullying. He emphasises that there is no consensus about how fast and how far greenhouse warming will go, let alone what can be done in response.
Evidence of such bullying emerged in the “Climategate” scandal of 2009, where some climate scientists’ emails revealed them to be ready to threaten and blackball colleagues, reporters and editors who expressed sceptical views. I talk frequently to scientists who are unconvinced that climate change is even close to being the world’s most pressing environmental problem, but who will not put their heads above the parapet for fear of what it would do to their careers."
So you're adding the additional "you need to justify going off message" criteria to the scientific method? Who decides if the going off message is "justified"? The "pal-review" guys from climategate? :)
I don't understand the semantics you're trying to assert here - a "consequence" prediction and a "non-consequence" prediction is a distinction without a difference in the scientific method. If your hypothesis predicts that you cannot find a modern rabbit fossil in the precambrian (for evolution), how do we decide if that is a "consequence" or not?
Further, isn't it possible to have *some* predictions of say, astrology be right, and others be wrong...would astrology become science if we simply said that all wrong predictions weren't "consequential"?
Here's the real problem - without a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement, you've got no way to tell if some of the "hits" you get with your prediction are just coincidence, or actual support for your hypothesis.
Astrology isn't "completely right" - are we to consider it a science now?
Sure no problem - here are observations that would falsify my hypothesis of economic catastrophe:
1) any alternative fuel source to natural petroleum products becomes cheaper in absolute dollars;
This one is really important - if the "save the environment" action is in fact, absolutely cheaper (not artificially subsidized or manipulated or costed in inflated dollars), then of course, the "action" to move to say, solar and wind, wouldn't cause catastrophe. Thus far, solar and wind are an order of magnitude more expensive, in absolute terms, than natural petroleum.
2) any alternative fuel source to natural petroleum products becomes 100% reliable, 24/7
This is also pretty important - unless you cost in making alternative energy sources 100% reliable 24/7 (currently done by building additional natural gas plants to take over when either solar or wind variability doesn't provide power), you can't move to them without severe disruption. Surely there are all kinds of possible technical solutions here, but it's also bounded by #1.
3) find any example of lower-per capita energy usage but a higher quality of life
Last, but not least, my hypothesis depends on the assertion that higher per-capita energy usage is linked to higher quality of life. If we find one example of a country that *lowered* per-capita energy usage, and *increased* quality of life, then my hypothesis would fail. See: http://www.geni.org/globalener...
So, now, back to you - can you quote a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement for CAGW? Or was your question simply a dodge to avoid giving an answer? Be honest. :)
So, are you saying with a straight face that they don't pressure people who don't adhere to the "message"?
http://www.thegwpf.org/matt-ri...
Here's the thing - say you're coordinating a message about things you "already agree with". What happens to the first guy who re-evaluates the information, and changes his mind? What happens to the guy who goes "off message"?
If physicists had a "coordinated message" about string theory, and blackballed the first guy who thought of loop quantum gravity, would you see a problem?
Here's the point - your retort is applicable for *any* prediction thus made by AGW supporters. Like astrologists, you throw a bunch of stuff against the wall, ignore the failures, and then focus on whatever "hits" you get.
Put another way - what predictions have to be wrong in order for AGW to be wrong? Flat temperatures and continually rising CO2 for over 20 years? What gaps in knowledge *would* be meaningful?
And be honest, if sea ice *extent* had been decreasing, but ice *mass* had been increasing, would you be making the same argument just with different failed predictions?
The problem isn't that we don't know everything about climate - the problem is that we can't tell *when* we don't know something about climate, and people keep insisting that we *do* know something about the climate when and where we don't.
Sure - here's the IPCC AR5 Chapter 10:
"Overall we conclude that there is low confidence in the scientific understanding of the observed increase in Antarctic sea ice extent since 1979, due the larger differences between sea-ice simulations from CMIP5 models and to the incomplete and competing scientific explanations for the causes of change and low confidence in estimates of internal variability."
It's clearly possible that the air temperature has little or nothing to do with larger ice extents and lower ice volumes - they simply *don't understand*.
Yes, it does. The purpose of science isn't to put forth a "coordinated message" -> that's *politicks*. The purpose of science is to draw closer to the truth through the application of the scientific method, through the rigorous application of skepticism to ones' own preferred hypotheses. The moment you've decided to coordinate a message, rather than seek the truth, you've exited the realm of science.
But the fact that it contradicts their predictions means that their central conceit is wrong...except they won't admit it, and ignore the observations in contrast to their models.
The fact of the matter is this - the earth changes, always has always will. Attributing catastrophe to our sins is a religious impulse, not a scientific one.
Sorry, but to be honest, it was ridiculous before the simplification - and you come pretty close to admitting it, acknowledging the spin and overplayed certainty. And *this* is what poisons the well - you're quoting people who are positing a convoluted explanation for observations inconsistent with their original predictions in order to preserve their dubious central conceit, and when you get past the song and dance, the reduction of their position is clearly contradictory.
Any "consistent message" is a political one, and you know it. There is broad disagreement on climate sensitivity, impacts, drivers, and the role of natural variation. Science isn't about *messages* - it's about necessary and falsifiable hypothesis statements, and the earnest attempt to find those falsifications.
Okay, so check this: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com...
"For the latter, the issue is reconciling the observed expansion of Antarctic sea-ice extent during the satellite era with robust modelling evidence that the ice should melt as a result of stratospheric ozone depletion (and increases in GHGs)."
So to be clear, the "robust modeling evidence" was what predicted increased antarctic ice extent - but the nature of a non-falsifiable hypothesis, such as AGW, means that even when observations are *opposite* of predictions, ad hoc special pleadings are made. In this case, the ad hoc special pleading "we didn't really mean ice extent, what counts is ice mass".
So, if measuring extent is misleading, let's at least admit that this bad path was the very one mapped out by GCMs :)
That's the argument from authority - because 96% of bishops, cardinals and popes, all theological experts, believe that Mary was a virgin, and that homosexual marriage is an abomination, then it's a real issue and we need to act!
Science gives power to the masses - even if you're *not* an expert, you can ask for a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement. You may not be able to grok the source code, or the advanced math, but if the experts can't do the *basic* work of the scientific method, then relying on their authority is essentially outsourcing your critical thinking to a higher authority (which is what all religions do).
You assume that if they're wrong, and we bankrupt the world, and drive people into poverty and pain and suffering in order to get "cleaner air", that this is a good thing - your prescription is a *guarantee* for catastrophe, whereas the threat is only a *possible* catastrophe. You're asking us to cut off our arms just in case we get wrist cancer later on.
lmfao!
So, somehow, the loss in ice mass is on some *different* ice that doesn't actually have a connection to surface ice?
Can you draw a picture showing the path of heat from the atmosphere, bypassing the surface ice, and going to the other "piece of ice" underneath?
Not at all. The car is heading down the road, and there's fog on the interstate. We need to get to the hospital, because someone in the car is wounded, but you want us to stop, and pull over, just in case the interstate is broken 100 miles down the road.
Again though, the point here is that without a falsifiable hypothesis statement, you're not doing science. You may have an unshakable faith in your religion, and believe that without accepting the grace of Christ we're all going to hell, but don't expect me to act like Pascal and simply believe in God because the horrors you claim will happen in the afterlife are so terrible.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
No, that's silly - there is no evidence that a colder world is a better world. In fact, we've got quite a bit of evidence to show the contrary.
Compare 1914 to 2014. The world warmed. Forget if it warmed naturally or not. Are you insisting that 1914 was better for humanity than 2014?
The precautionary principle which you're positing fails to take into account the absolute harm caused by your proposed interventions.
The fact that your explanations are logically flawed, and even fanciful, doesn't make the listener of those explanations dense :)
You tried to make an analogy between evaporating water (evaporating from the top) as surface area increases, and magically melting ice (melting from the bottom) as surface area increases, somehow driven by the air *above* the ice. It simply doesn't follow.
compensating == reacting
That's just semantics.
A *reaction* that stabilizes temperature to an equilibrium is effectively the same as a *compensation* that stabilizes temperature to an equilibrium -> that is to say, temperature can be stable during the melting of ice...in fact, it is the melting of ice that *keeps* it stable.
Further, rate of ice melting isn't driven solely, or arguably even *primarily* by atmospheric drivers:
http://nov79.com/gbwm/icemelt....
That's called reversing the burden of proof :)
The null hypothesis is that current climate changes for the same reasons why it changed before humans existed - natural climate change. That's the hypothesis you need to *exclude*.
Of course global warming (and cooling), has anthropogenic components - just like it has butterfly components (since butterflies give out CO2). But the assertion that those components are at all discernible from background natural variation is a novel and thus unsupportable idea.
Proof lies in the affirmative - you can't ask someone "prove that god doesn't exist", or "prove that there isn't a magical teapot hidden at a lagrange point".
Put another way, evolution has a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis (find a modern rabbit in the precambrian). Creationism and CAGW does not.
That's an unsupported assertion, contradicted by the evidence of ever increasing crop yields along with higher CO2 and temperature globally.
Yes. Power costs drive food costs and water costs. Make the electricity more expensive, and you condemn people in poverty to more poverty.
Science is not done by consensus, surely Galileo taught you that :)
No, you've completely misunderstood falsifiability - it isn't about what *percent* something is possible to be wrong, it is about whether or not there is any logical argument that it *can* be wrong at all.
The root of your argument is that "heads I win, tails you lose" is a fair bet :)
Here, read some Popper to educate yourself on falsifiability and then get back to me :)
http://www.stephenjaygould.org...
Thank you so much for that link - Cosby is a shining ray of cultural hope in a morass of thugs and punks.
Mod parent up - it is *culture* that drives academic achievement. If you have a thug culture, which denigrates those who "talk white", or get straight As, or embrace "white values" instead of ghetto values, you get generation after generation of failure. If you have a culture of personal responsibility, which insists on proper english, attention to grades, and integration into the upper class culture rather than the denigration of upper class culture, you get generations of success.
The real question is this - barring taking children away from their parents for proper enculturation, what can government possibly do to turn the toxic tide of such cultural values?
The problem is that even *decadently* funded universal government schools that don't have the ability to discipline or expel problem behavior students suffer from the tragedy of the commons in the worst way - a small set of bad apples ruins the whole damn bunch.
When children succeed in schools, it has much less to do with the school than with the child's family and it's attitude towards education. Asserting that success stories are due to money, and failures are due to the lack of money, is to ignore the first order terms in the equation.
No, that's *literally* your position as stated.
"If the warmer temperatures led to the water having lower salinity that could cause more ice."
You are *literally* asserting that warmer temperatures decrease salinity, and therefore cause a mitigation of the typical freezing point depression, and therefore cause more ice.
I'll quote the article I cited:
"As seems to always be the case the climate fear propaganda news media have completely mislead the public once again regarding climate related issues this time by alleging claims of 4 meter high future sea level rise increases supposedly addressed in two recent studies which performed analysis of glacier melt behavior of six large glaciers in West Antarctica.
One study was published in Geophysical Research Letters (GRL) and titled “Sustained increase in ice discharge from the Amundsen Sea Embayment, West Antarctica, from 1973 to 2013“. This study is available here:
http://www.ess.uci.edu/researc...
The second study was published in Science and titled “Marine Ice Sheet Collapse Potentially Under Way for the Thwaites Glacier Basin, West Antarctica“. This study is available here:
http://sciences.blogs.liberati...
Both studies evaluate the relatively recent melt rate history of these glaciers with one focusing on the use observed satellite data to estimate melt rate behavior while the other uses computer models to estimate melt rate behavior.
Amazingly enough and considering how the press manufactured headlines about sea level rise increases being determined from these studies neither of the studies addresses or make any claims about the impact of their research results on specific future sea level rise projections.
In fact GLC study mentions nothing specific about future sea level rise projections while the Science study clearly notes that their research models “are not coupled to a global climate model to provide forcing nor do they include an ice-shelf cavity-circulation model to derive melt rates. Few if any such fully coupled models presently exist (13). As such, our simulations do not constitute a projection of future sea level in response to projected climate forcing.”
Also unreported by the same climate alarmist propaganda focused media were the significant qualifications, limitations and cautions noted in these studies concerning their glacier melt research findings.
The GRL published study noted for example the following qualifiers regarding its analysis:
“These observations are a possible sign of the progressive collapse of this sector in response to the high melting of its buttressing ice shelves by the ocean.”
“Until numerical ice sheet models coupled with realistic oceanic forcing are able to replicate these observations, projections of the evolution of this sector of West Antarctica should be interpreted with caution.”
The Science published study contained the following similarly related qualifiers regarding its analysis:
“Although our simple melt parameterization suggests that a full-scale collapse of this sector may be inevitable, it leaves large uncertainty in the timing. Thus, ice-sheet models fully coupled to ocean/climate models are required to reduce the uncertainty in the chronology of a collapse.”
Why aren’t these significant research finding qualifiers regarding the preliminary nature of these studies results addressed by the main stream media?
The main stream media manufactured numbers alleging sea level rise projections not addre
Of course I understand how "falsifiable" applies to science:
1) a set of observations, which if observed, would cause us to abandon our hypothesis;
2) a logical argument that the lack of those observations leads *only* to our hypothesis.
The fact that you can't understand that doesn't mean that it's a mindless mantra - it means you're incapable of groking some pretty basic features of the scientific method :)
And this is an *actual* critique - you, and your fellow travelers, have *never* been able to come up with a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement of CAGW or AGW - and the lack of that makes what you preach *not* science :)
And according to your hypothesis, this warmer air causes more ice to form because salinity is reduced. So, warm air makes ice.
Over a period of hundreds, if not thousands of years :) The changes in sea ice and land ice are driven by forces other than atmospheric temperature.
So now you're saying that the heat from the atmosphere magically concentrates and targets a very small portion of the ice to melt it down, the way a bullet transfers its kinetic energy to just one small spot on a human's body? :)
Can you at least admit that the article over hyped the issue?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...
pure water freezes at 0C
salt water freezes If the warmer temperatures led to the water having lower salinity that could cause more ice.
So warmer temperatures will magically cause more ice? :) Really?
http://nov79.com/gbwm/icemelt....
"An increase in air temperature does not heat oceans or melt ice which floats. Anyone who studies science should know this; yet carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is said to be heating the oceans and melting Arctic ice.
First, air has such a low heat capacity that it doesn't hold enough heat to influence water or the ice within it significantly. Secondly, heat moves upward, not downward, which prevents it from moving from air to water or ice on water.
Why would the tropics be warmer, when air does not absorb much sunshine? The atmosphere is nearly the same in the tropics. It's because the water and land absorb the sunlight and transfer the heat to the atmosphere, not the other way around.
The numbers show the absurdities. Here are calculations for heating Arctic ice and the amount of globally warmed air required to melt it. These simple numbers are found in numerous places on the internet.
The amount of Arctic ice is said to be 12x106 km2 (square kilometers). In the winter of 2010 it is said to be two meters thick, though in some areas it would be thicker. So we will calculate the amount of heat required to melt that much ice when two meters thick.
Converting to meters results in one million square meters per square kilometer; and two meters thick results in 24x1012 m3. The density of ice is slightly less than water, or 917 kg/m3. Multiplying these two numbers yields 22x1015 kg of ice.
The heat required to melt the ice is called heat of fusion. It is 334 kj/kg. That's kilojoules per kilogram. Multiplying this times the number of kilograms yields 7.4x1018 kj.
So how much air would have to be heated 0.6C (the supposed global warming caused by humans, lately sliding up to 0.7C, even though global cooling has been occurring) to provide this amount of heat? The heat capacity of air is about one fourth that of water on a gram basis, which is 1 kj/kg-K for air. That's one kilojoule per kilogram per degree Kelvin or centigrade. For 0.6C, it's 0.6 kj/kg.
To get 7.4x1018 kj would require that many kilograms for one degree and 0.6 times as much for 0.6C, which is 4.4x1018 kg of air.
The density of the atmosphere is 1.2 kg/m3 for the first kilometer of height. So we divide the 4.4x1018 kg by 1.2 kg/m3 to get the number of cubic meters, which is 3.7x1018 m3 of air. There are a billion cubic meters per cubic kilometer, so this number is reduced to 3.7x109 km3.
This is the amount of square surface area of atmosphere, one kilometer thick, which will hold the necessary amount of heat to melt all Arctic ice when two meters thick. It's 3.7 billion square kilometers of atmosphere. That's 61,000 kilometers on each side of a square. The total area of the earth's surface is only 510x106 km2, which is 23,000 kilometers on a side. The required amount of air is 7.25 times the total amount on the earth.
Notice that the surface area of the ice was 12x106 km2, while the surface area of the air for melting it was 3.7x109 km2. The surface area is 308 times as much for the air as for the ice. This means that even if the ice is not all melted, whatever portion is melted requires 308 times as much air per surface area as ice. If one square kilometer of ice is melted, 308 square kilometers of air must be moved over it with all 0.6C of AGW heat removed.
There are an infinite number of complexities stemming from the fact that no one can describe exactly what is happening or produce a consistent theory for what is supposed to happen. For example, where is the heat supposed to be located? The 0.6C is supposed to be near the earth's surface. How much heating is there supposed to be in the higher atmosphere? None can be detected, yet it is supposed to be back-radiatin
Compare the specific heat of water to the specific heat of the atmosphere.
The amount of heat that it takes to melt ice is pretty significant compared to any sort of atmospheric changes.
Ocean vs. atmosphere:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/201...
Now, ice is only a fraction of the ocean, but atmosphere is also only a tiny fraction of the ocean. My bet is that back of the napkin, you're looking at the same order of magnitude...
Specific heat capacity, ice: 2.108 kJ/kg-K
Specific heat capacity, water: 4.187 kJ/kg-K
Heat capacity of air: 1.005 kJ/kg/K
The atmosphere has a mass of about 5×1018 kg
http://nov79.com/gbwm/icemelt....
Let's review:
Now, checking with physics, ice is formed at 0C. Checking with chemistry, adding salt to water causes both boiling point elevation, and freezing point depression, making ice form at 0C.
In what world can you have a *warmer* temperature form more ice?