So if global warming is going to kill billions, and, as per your analysis, that would be a *good* thing, what's the problem? Do you want humanity to be culled or do you want humanity to have the ability to continue its growth indefinitely?
Would it be more moral to pre-emptively kill off billions of people, so that they aren't killed off by evil global warming?
If some Psychic Tarot reader tells me that catastrophe is going to strike me down unless I throw a big fat wad of 50s into her bowl, should I simply take the alarm at face value? Let's say she shows me something in a crystal ball, or in astrological charts, or in twenty decks of cards that all show me the Death card - should that make me more apt to believe her?
Heck, while we're talking about diet and exercise, why the fuck should I listen to a doctor who insists that I need a low-fat/low-calorie/high-exercise regimen to curb my obesity, when caloric restriction and increase exercise *increases hunger*? Why not listen to the doctor who says, "dude, you're insulin resistant, and the consumption of starches and sugars is causing your fat cells to hold onto fat, your liver to package cholesterol into dangerous particle sizes. Kick the insulin levels down, and things will get better, no matter what your overall caloric intake or exercise level is." Doctor #1 will see any success of yours as an affirmation, and any failure of yours as a sign that you didn't comply. Doctor #2 actually has a falsifiable hypothesis backed up by clinical research.
The problem, Crypto, is that you've got no idea what the "BEST" plan is, but you want us to assume that it's yours:)
You're assuming that the shit in our nest doesn't have a purpose.
Think back to the Chinese purge of sparrows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign). Sparrows were pollution. Something to be rid of. Of course, after decimating (or more) the population, it turns out that it was the Sparrows keeping insects in check, and BAM, welcome to famine city.
CO2 (our shit in this case), feeds plants, keeps the next ice age at bay, and a dearth of it could slap us into iceball earth territory.
What ever gave you the novel idea that the Earth has ever been in balance? We live in a universe predicated on chaos, entropy, and dynamic change - there's no such thing as "balance":)
What if drastic climate change is *beneficial*? What if *without* drastic climate change, the world becomes a colder, darker place, with less plant life, less arable land, and a diminished biosphere?
The problem is that you assume that you've diagnosed the doom properly, and that your solution is not worse than the problem itself. You have no credible argument that your "solution" is either ideal, productive, or neutral.
Now, here's an interesting thought - the actual *distribution* of temperatures matter, not the trend. We don't care if the average temperature goes up by 5C, but we *do* care if one half of the planet sits at -100C, and the other half of the planet sits at 100C. What matters is distribution - what matters is *weather*. Climate is simply an average, an abstraction that *loses* data, that has no real meaning.
Now, let's get a model that can predict the specific *distribution* of temperatures, rather than just some mythical average global temperature. Get something like that going, and you'll have my attention.
Here's a credible hypothesis for you - CO2 is buffered by the oceans. Temperature increases drive CO2 out of the oceans and adjust the set point, as it were, of the concentration of CO2 in the air. Solar heating of the oceans occurs (moderated by the albedo of clouds), and long deep cycles of currents cause a significant lag in time before such heat can convect through the system. Given that the oceans hold orders of magnitude more heat, it's much more likely that they drive the temperature cycle, rather than the atmosphere (other than, again, the albedo of clouds, which behaves in uncertain ways).
But here's the thing, you can take my hypothesis, and break it - you can show me an observation of say, an immediate heating of oceans based on surface atmospheric temperatures, and my hypothesis falls. Or you could show a discontinuity between ocean CO2 levels and atmospheric CO2 levels (i.e., falsifying the idea of outgassing). Or you could show that there is no solar heating of the oceans.
Of course, me being wrong doesn't make you right, but at least you've got some chance at falsification.
What observations will cause your hypothesis to fall? Where is your falsifiability?
Well, first off, you've got the buffer solution model you can think of - the oceans essentially buffer CO2, so its concentration is governed by its temperature, not other outputs/inputs.
Wow. The alarmists must have saved up a bunch of mod points:)
As for the cites of the ozone layer (which surprise, continues to fluctuate cyclicly no matter what the CFC emission rate is - http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Ingles/Crista.html), acid rain (which, surprise, was another overhyped alarm - http://debunkhouse.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/the-acid-rain-scam/), and the Y2K bug (which frankly, given the ability of average cobol coders to do anything right on time, was certainly overhyped), well, let's just say those hardly prove persuasive:)
The source of the problem here, though, is that when people have beliefs that have no falsifications, you simply cannot have rational discourse. Once you've accepted Jesus into your heart, and can interpret *any* event in terms of divine providence, you're beyond logic and reason. Once you've accepted CO2 and humanity is evil, and can interpret *any* event in terms of the damage humanity is doing to the world around us, you're beyond logic and reason.
What we need is a return to the basics of the scientific method - the good ol' Popperian falsifiable hypothesis statement. The Feynman-like skepticism of our own deeply held beliefs.
With the understanding that the world hasn't burnt itself down to a crisp thanks to all the bad software out there, the logical next step is to figure out just how bad you can write software with it still being good enough to run the world. Save the money and spend it on something else you think is more important.
What about people who have health insurance, but are high utilizers? People who get a hundred thousand dollars worth of treatment per dollar of premium they pay? Do you consider them leeches that pass on their costs to their fellow insurance holders?
Insurance is gambling, plain and simple. Would you like to expand this to say, food insurance? Or clothing insurance? Just pay a monthly premium, and get your porterhouse steak for a co-pay of $2.50, and your new shoes for a co-pay of $1.00?
Subsidies cause costs to go up - be it with solar panels or with health care. If you've got money pumping artificially into the system, you're not rewarding affordability.
Health insurers have had a convenient and accurate scapegoat for decades now - government thumbs on various scales creates a system of waste.
Given that you didn't rebut my argument on thermodynamics, I'll assume your acknowledgement that this assertion is proved.
What are you talking about? You make a fallacious assertion, I question your premises, and then you consider your assertion acknowledged? Really?:)
You said: I'll assert to you that they key factor is that the more scientifically informed you are, the better you understand that science begins with a falsifiable hypothesis. Understanding that basic part of the scientific method naturally leads to skepticism of prophets of doom who don't have a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement for their assertions.
In other words, for you to be right the researchers must have enquired specifically about the scientific method
Follow along for a second - I made an assertion. That assertion can be perfectly correct, no matter *what* the specifics of the questions asked by the researchers. How we go about disproving my assertion is an open question, but I'm giving you a plausible, and given your inability to understand the falsifiable hypothesis, an appropriate explanation:)
You therefore DID assert that they specifically tested for that snippet of information - if they did not (as you now seemed to be admitting), then there is no way that the study could support your assertion - and thus the assertion is disproved.
Your mind movie is getting away with yourself again:)
I did not say that they specifically asked about the scientific method. I asserted a possible explanation, one especially appropriate given your inability to comprehend the falsifiable hypothesis concept. You are confusing something *I said* with something you think *I said they said*. The two are not the same.
As with the common mantra of alarmists, the study was *consistent* with my assertion:)
1. Your hypothesis assumes that our own GHG emissions have a nil or otherwise immeasurable effect on climate. Provide observational data and a falsifiable model.
You're arguing with the null - that's not how the scientific method works. You're assuming that natural climate change has stopped, and that 20th century observations can exclude natural climate variation. You are using models as "proof", rather than giving any sort of necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement. And then, to boot, when you can't come up with a falsifiable hypothesis statement, you're trying to shift the burden of proof to the negative (prove God doesn't exist!).
Really?
2. Your hypothesis assumes that there is a variation in one the natural inputs into climate.
No, the null hypothesis assumes that natural variations, in anything, be it inputs, outputs, or side puts, is the cause of changes in climate. More specifically, the universe of things not human caused climate change before humanity existed - until you can exclude all things not human (requiring near omniscience about a stochastic system), you're not really getting very far.
Nobody owes you an explanation. Nobody has to, or will, describe the science in great detail or defend it, as if the burden of proof lies with anyone but you.
You seem to believe I can't tell the difference between someone owing me an explanation, and someone *having* an explanation:) You simply don't *have* an explanation, and your inability to specify your necessary and falsifiable hypothesis statement essentially leaves the dear reader to accept you as some sort of believable authority. Given your inability to understand the scientific method, forgive me if I have my doubts:)
For clarity - the timeframe in question is the timeframe post the industrial revolution - when
In detail: You asserted specific detail about what the study measured that is, you asserted that they asked the test subjects about whether or not climate science needed a falsifiable hypothesis. This you claim, would prove that denialists are more 'informed' than the rest of us.
Wow, you really do make up stuff out of whole cloth - it's like you've got a mind movie going on that nobody else sees:)
I asserted the following: "they found that the more scientifically informed one was, the less likely one was to believe that human CO2 emissions are going to cause unprecedented, catastrophic global warming".
I did not assert that they asked any sort of specific question.
What *you* asked was "what kind of magical information would skeptics have that alarmists don't that would explain their superior grasp of science". *I* answered your question by trying to give you a tutorial on the idea of a falsifiable hypothesis. Sadly, I understand science better than I can explain it to someone who has very strong beliefs:)
In which case, denialists claiming that AGW is disproved because of a (supposed) lack of a null hypothesis do so out of ignorance
You gotta put down the sauce. There is no lack of a null hypothesis - it clearly is that observed climate change in the 20th century had the same causes as observed climate change in past century - natural causes. What is lacking is a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement for the proposition that human CO2 emissions are going to cause catastrophic warming, on *any* time period.
1. What is causing the change in temperature? What specific forcing is varying over the timeframe in question?
So just to be clear, you're asserting that if we cannot enumerate all of the specific forcings, say, from 200,000BC to 100,000BC, that it cannot be natural climate change?
You seem to misunderstand the fact that the null hypothesis of natural climate change doesn't require enumeration of every single last molecular interaction - before humans ever emitted CO2, climate changed. We know this. We accept this. Natural climate change has been around for billions of years. Natural climate change has had variation at every time scale, and nothing we've seen in the 20th century goes outside the bounds of that natural variation we've observed in the past.
Now explain how you can exclude natural climate change. Simply failing to create models using natural factors is *not* a disproof, since natural climate change is an empirical observation, not a modeled prediction:)
You see thing with the null hypothesis is, the person conducting the science gets to say what it is
Um, no. That's not how it works at all:) You can definitely choose a poor null hypothesis, as most religious zealots do - "the null hypothesis is that God exists. Now prove that he doesn't":)
You are the one asserting that the current climate change is from a yet unspecified cause, unrelated to our emissions.
Sure, climate changed well before our existence, at all time scales and by all magnitudes ever observed - are you going to deny that climate changed naturally before humanity existed if we don't enumerate every specific cause? Really?
You meant to say: despite those limitations, they have consistently provided a robust and unambiguous picture of significant climate warming in response to increasing greenhouse gases.
Now you're twisting their words again - the never said the word "despite".
Let's be clear - the model pictures have been "robust and unambiguous" (mostly because all the models start off with the same central conceit - of course they'll be consistent with each other), but they have *significant
You are gibbering on about some technicality. Either the study supports your assertion or it doesn’t.
My assertion is about what the study *observed*. Are you actually trying to say that they *didn't* observe that the more scientifically informed one was, the less likely one was to believe that human CO2 emissions are going to cause unprecedented, catastrophic global warming? Really?
Bone up on the scientific method and get back to us.
It seems that you're the one having a problem understanding it...and seeing as they found that the more scientifically informed one was, the less likely one was to believe that human CO2 emissions are going to cause unprecedented, catastrophic global warming, one might make the argument that your belief shows that you're less scientifically informed than me:) Maybe you should be listening a bit more closely to me:)
So: (a) You admit that there is a greenhouse gas component of the atmosphere – and thus GHGs are climate forcing.
You've made a unsubstantiated logical leap. H2O is a greenhouse gase component of the atmosphere. Are you now going to argue that water vapor is a climate forcing, in contrast to the role it takes as a feedback in most GCMs?:)
The existence of GHGs does not mean that they *force* anything. That's an assertion, not a given:)
Hence, you imagine that you can bargain:"Give my your specific, necessary and falsifiable hypothesis statement, and I'll stop attacking straw men:)"
That's not a bargain, that's a promise:)
Very well, I propose we get back to the topic on hand, and discuss your alternate theory on the recent climate change phenomenon.
Alternate theory? You mean the null hypothesis that climate change is natural? What is your question about natural climate change?
you admit that GHGs act entirely the same in a large sample of gas as they do in in a small one – i.e. their effect is the same (mathematically and thermodynamically speaking).
You're confusing, once again, with behavior and *effect*. Yes, GHG molecules absorb and emit the same wavelengths in the test tube as they do in the atmosphere. Their *behavior* is consistent. The *effect* of this behavior in a test tube does *not* scale to any *effect* that can be observed in the atmosphere.
Let me see if I can give you an example you can understand better - water behaves in a very specific way when transferring heat - it has a specific conductivity of heat, that can be measured in the laboratory, and this conductivity of heat, in the laboratory, can be observed as a heating element on one side of a body of water causes the sensor on the other side of that body of water to register warmth.
So, the heat conductivity of water, in the laboratory, can show an effective delay between when we turn on a heating element, and when a sensor on the other side of the tank warms up. With me so far?
Okay, now, humans are mostly water, and of course, just because water is inside of a human doesn't mean it has different physical properties - it *behaves* the same. But put a heating element on your left hand, and a sensor on your right hand, and will you be able to observe the laboratory effect of the heat conductivity of the water in your body?
Now, sit back and ask yourself, "why can I see the *effect* in the lab, but not in a complex system like a human?" Take your time:)
I understand that you are making a specific assertion about the effects of anthropogenically generated GHGs in the atmosphere (nil effect)
That's called the null hypothesis. Climate has changed in the past. Climate has changed in the pres
Well, you'll never know unless you substantiate your claim with evidence.
I gave you direct quotes from the ACTUAL STUDY, and you ignored them with the weak sauce argument that "scientifically informed" means "scientifically informed about something specific and unstated about climate science":)
Implicit in that assertion is that denialists know the correct context in which a hypothesis is used in science, and the rest of us do not.
The fact that you think that a falsifiable hypothesis has a "correct context" in science is a sure fire sign that you don't understand how *fundamental* it is:)
The science game *starts* with a falsifiable hypothesis. You can talk about tachyon pulses, warp engines, red matter, in all the glory of pseudo-scientific sounding babble, but until you've got a falsifiable hypothesis, you're not playing the science game.
More likely then, denialists are merely ignorant of what that hypothesis is (that CO2 absorbs light in a short spectra and emits it in a longer spectra - it's a greenhouse gas),
Now you're projecting your own ignorance - skeptics don't doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, what skeptics doubt is that you can move from the simple proposition that CO2 is a greenhouse gas to the following unfounded leaps:
1) human CO2 emissions drive global average temperature; 2) higher global average temperatures are going to be catastrophic.
If the only hypothesis you wish to defend is "CO2 is a greenhouse gas", then you'll get no argument from me. Expecting me to believe that simply because CO2 is a greenhouse gas that human activity must be curtailed to save the planet, now *that's* a stretch:)
Just to be clear, you are not in a position to make bargains. You are free to continue to propose and then attack straw men
So you see this as some sort of negotiation?:) When you don't propose a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis you're willing to stand behind, all I have is straw men to attack - if you prefer complaining about the straw men I construct on your behalf, you're more than welcome to actually *propose* something:)
Please elaborate on why a molecule of CO2 would behave differently in the atmosphere compared to an experimental sample.
It doesn't *behave* differently, it has a different *effect*. Yes, it absorbs the same spectra in the wild as in the test tube, but effect it has on the ambient temperature of the test tube, under simplified and controlled conditions, simply cannot scale to model the effect it would have on the ambient temperature of the entire atmosphere.
You do understand the complexity of the atmosphere, don't you?
What precisely changes between the small amount (sample) and the large amount?
Well, let's see, the test tube doesn't have oceans, a biosphere or clouds. Care to cain that those factors can be blithely ignored?:)
Which model, precisely, are you referring to that excludes cloud formation and albedo?
Whoa there slick, you've taken one statement and morphed it again by accident - I stated that no GCM gets cloud formation or albedo close to right, not that they exclude it. As for the cite, see the IPCC -
I don't make a habit of "admitting" to assertions that are not supported by evidence
And apparently you can't admit to assertions that are supported by evidence either:)
As for informed => discrete information It always implies that. The difference between an informed person and an uninformed person is a discrete set of information that the informed person has and the uninformed person doesn't.
You're again failing to listen well - remember, I've specified that the discrete information in question (being "scientifically informed") is the understanding of the importance of the falsifiable hypothesis statement. You keep trying to turn it into some specific bit of climate science information.
Fair enough - then perhaps you actually meant to use the term in the sense that the study uses the term "scientifically literate" in that the subject denialist in question was generally intelligent, and perhaps knew a lot about other branches of science, but was in fact ignorant of the science of climate change
That's an unsupported conclusion from the observations. Remember their original hypothesis of SCT - their flawed assumption was that the "consensus" view on climate change is in fact, true. Their results, which invalidated their hypothesis, is a challenge to their basic assumption there - trying to cast it as "generally intelligent people about science are willfully ignorance of climate change science" is a wild stretch.
The postulation on CCT (an alternative theory explaining the unjustified evaluation of climate change risks) was simply postulation and they didn't claim it was proven by their study.
My point exactly - their *observations* are clear - the more scientifically informed one was, the less likely one was to believe that human CO2 emissions are going to cause unprecedented, catastrophic global warming. Their postulation was neither proven, nor tested for.
You've applied both a strawman "proposition that human activity now dominates climate control" and a false equivalence "Ah, so from a single radiative property of say, H2O, we can jump to the conclusion that human emissions of H2O are going to lead to catastrophic warming?"
Give my your specific, necessary and falsifiable hypothesis statement, and I'll stop attacking straw men:)
Please elaborate on why a molecule of CO2 would behave differently in the atmosphere compared to an experimental sample.
Please elaborate on why a molecule of CO2 will behave in an identical manner in a complex atmosphere, compared to a limited and simplified experimental model:)
Look, if you can't understand just how complex the real-world carbon cycle is compared to a test of the radiative properties of a molecule type, you're really lost. You're conflating the behavior of a single molecule, and the *effect* of its behavior in a complex system. The two are *not* the same.
1. What is causing the change in temperature?
The same natural forces that have always caused changes in temperature in the past. No reason to invoke any sort of special pleading for observations that fall well within natural variability.
2. If the extra CO2 in the atmosphere is from natural causes, what happened to the CO2 that we emitted?
Google "buffer solution".
3. Why would the radiative properties of CO2 change from a sample atmosphere into the actual atmosphere?
They don't. But the *effect* of the radiative properties of CO2 change from a laboratory sample versus the actual, highly complex biosphere. The radiative properties of H2O don't change from a sample atmosphere from the actual atmosphere, but do you have a cite f
No, you simply ignored it, and decided to try to make a distinction between "scientifically informed" and "scientific literacy":)
Why can't you admit that the study's observations clearly support my statement "The more scientifically informed one was, the less likely one was to believe that human CO2 emissions are going to cause unprecedented, catastrophic global warming."?
I'll now elaborate in full (again) I'd recommend you read what I say before rushing out to shoot your mouth off.
Okay, let's take a look at your elaboration:
"You asserted that the difference between these subjects is some discrete knowledge (K) on climate change, such that: s(l) = s(h) + K "
Now, how exactly did you come up with "more scientifically informed" == "some discrete knowledge on climate change"? "More scientifically informed" is not the same as "more scientifically informed on chemistry" or "more scientifically informed on the radiative properties of nuclear materials" or "more scientifically informed on astronomy" -> it is simply a *general* measure of scientific understanding.
You keep trying to fit my words into something you can attack, but you're arguing with your own straw men, not my position:)
The study proposes to test the underlying assumptions of SCT. In order to do that, they use a hypothesis. This hypothesis turns out to be false. From this you draw a conclusion that was not tested for.
No, from this *they* drew a conclusion that was not tested for:) I'm simply stating their observations, and pointing out the silliness of their untested conclusion:)
Actually the baseline calculation (based on the atmosphere as a single cell and averaging the results of secondary effects (sinks and secondary forcings)) does lead to significant warming. This is simply a matter of applying the laws of thermodynamics.
Ah, so from a single radiative property of say, H2O, we can jump to the conclusion that human emissions of H2O are going to lead to catastrophic warming?:) Your assertion that simply "applying the laws of thermodynamics" allows you to jump from a physical constant, to the laughable proposition that human activity now dominates climate control doesn't pass the chuckle test:)
For the present climate change to be natural there would have to be zero net effect from increased concentrations of CO2.
That's not true at all. The earth's climate system could simply act as a CO2 buffer, so that natural changes in temperature drive CO2 levels. If you add "extra" CO2 to this buffer, it simply gets absorbed (turned into plant matter, absorbed by other sinks). If you remove "extra" CO2 from this buffer, it simply gets replaced (exuded out of oceans, plant matter, etc). Just like a buffer solution doesn't care if you add acid or base to it, you can clearly have a climate system that buffers other bits of gas.
You're making assumptions, and instead of looking for ways your hypothesis might be false (pretending for a moment you've presented something falsifiable), you're doing nothing but defending your preconceived beliefs. You're treating this like religion, rather than rational thought.
Looking forward to your elaborations.
You want elaborations, and I want your necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement. Simply saying that "CO2 has a specific absorption spectrum, and therefore, the only way to prove that human CO2 emissions aren't going to destroy civilization as we know it is to prove CO2 doesn't have that absorption spectrum" is a great example of a *poor* attempt:)
Next time read the ACTUAL STUDY before shooting your mouth off about what it says.
I did read the actual study, and apparently you didn't:)
Again, from the ACTUAL STUDY:
"Contrary to SCT predictions, higher degrees of science literacy and numeracy are associated with a small decrease in the perceived seriousness of climate change risks. "
So again You can't tell the difference between generalised scientific literacy/numerical ability and knowledge of a very specific subject?
I can absolutely tell the difference, but apparently you can't - let's try again. Here's my statement:
"The more scientifically informed one was, the less likely one was to believe that human CO2 emissions are going to cause unprecedented, catastrophic global warming."
Apparently you don't understand that "scientifically informed" == "scientific literacy":)
You deny previously admitting that the science was falsifiable - except below you admit it again.
You're being obtuse, yet again. You apparently cannot tell the difference between "CO2 has specific absorption properties" and "human CO2 emissions are going to cause catastrophic global warming". The two are *not* equivalent:)
You assert a very precise theory: that the effects of all that CO2 will be no effect to trivial effect on global climate.
I've said no such thing. The null hypothesis is that climate change today is natural, just as climate change has been natural for aeons. It is your burden, in the affirmative, to show that natural climate change no longer applies to our observations. And I still await your necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement to that effect:)
Seriously, do you read what you're writing before you hit "submit"? You do understand that you're continually avoiding the specific question, and willfully misunderstanding the careful and specific distinctions I'm making, right? Or does the world just get all red and fuzzy in an angry haze when you think about how many people are going to be killed by the use of natural petroleum products? I seriously couldn't create a caricature of a rabid warmist more extreme than you've been so far:)
"One, already adverted to, can be called the science comprehension thesis (SCT). As members of the public do not know what scientists know, or think the way scientists think, they predictably fail to take climate change as seriously as scientists believe they should3....
SCT asserts, first, that ordinary members of the public underestimate the seriousness of climate change because of the difficulty of the scientific evidence3. If this is correct, concern over climate change should be positively correlated with science literacy—that is, concern should increase as people become more science literate."
What they've observed is the opposite of their SCT hypothesis - that "ordinary members of the public" seem to *overestimate* the seriousness of climate change because of the difficulty of the scientific evidence. But in order to avoid that conclusion (that the scientific evidence leads to a greater understanding of the limited effect humanity can have on climate change), they come up with an ad hoc special pleading called "CCT":
"The alternative explanation can be referred to as the cultural cognition thesis (CCT). CCT posits that individuals, as a result of a complex of psychological mechanisms, tend to form perceptions of societal risks that cohere with values characteristic of groups with which they identify4, 5."
This allows them to preserve their unspoken assumption that true scientists must believe in "climate change risks".
So you couldn't cite the relevant finding? Safe to assume then, that there was no such finding.
Sure I could - but it doesn't seem you had the same reading comprehension ability. Let me help you:
From the article: "A US government-funded survey has found that Americans with higher levels of scientific and mathematical knowledge are more sceptical regarding the dangers of climate change than their more poorly educated fellow citizens."
Read it twice, slowly. If you have problems with any words, please google them for definition.
From the actual nature article: "Contrary to SCT predictions, higher degrees of science literacy and numeracy are associated with a small decrease in the perceived seriousness of climate change risks. "
But you said previously that there is a falsifiable hypothesis. So which you should we believe?
Now you're just making stuff up. If you have a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement to describe your belief that human CO2 emissions are going to cause catastrophic global warming, please state it.
I agree entirely with your previous statements that there is a falsifiable hypothesis for the basic theory,
Now you're being obtuse again. While the specific absorption spectrum of CO2 (the "basic theory" as I would define it), clearly has falsifiability, taking that physical constant and extrapolating it to a complex system of climate without the additional falsifiable factors to chain it up to "human CO2 is going to cause catastrophic warming" is simply in your imagination. You seem to misunderstand both my past statements, as well as my current ones - why don't you quote me directly, and I'll clear up any misunderstandings you have:)
Not sure why you disagree with yourself though.
I don't disagree with myself - I just apparently have a difficult time getting past your ideological blinders:)
In a nutshell - firstly, I proved my point with the paper with direct cites, both from the paper and the article citing it. The more scientifically informed one was, the less likely one was to believe that human CO2 emissions are going to cause unprecedented, catastrophic global warming. I wonder if you'll continue to deny that though:)
Secondly, you simply have no necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement for the proposition that human CO2 emissions are going to cause unprecedented catastrophic global warming. You can assert that I've come up with this mythical falsifiable hypothesis statement to your heart's content, but again, your assertion doesn't make it true:) Clearly state the necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement *you're* willing to stand for, and then we can play the science game - until then, I'm simply trying to help you with english comprehension:)
Slashdot Mirror
Here's some dispute: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/01/09/scripps-paper-ocean-acidification-fears-overhyped/
So if global warming is going to kill billions, and, as per your analysis, that would be a *good* thing, what's the problem? Do you want humanity to be culled or do you want humanity to have the ability to continue its growth indefinitely?
Would it be more moral to pre-emptively kill off billions of people, so that they aren't killed off by evil global warming?
If some Psychic Tarot reader tells me that catastrophe is going to strike me down unless I throw a big fat wad of 50s into her bowl, should I simply take the alarm at face value? Let's say she shows me something in a crystal ball, or in astrological charts, or in twenty decks of cards that all show me the Death card - should that make me more apt to believe her?
Heck, while we're talking about diet and exercise, why the fuck should I listen to a doctor who insists that I need a low-fat/low-calorie/high-exercise regimen to curb my obesity, when caloric restriction and increase exercise *increases hunger*? Why not listen to the doctor who says, "dude, you're insulin resistant, and the consumption of starches and sugars is causing your fat cells to hold onto fat, your liver to package cholesterol into dangerous particle sizes. Kick the insulin levels down, and things will get better, no matter what your overall caloric intake or exercise level is." Doctor #1 will see any success of yours as an affirmation, and any failure of yours as a sign that you didn't comply. Doctor #2 actually has a falsifiable hypothesis backed up by clinical research.
The problem, Crypto, is that you've got no idea what the "BEST" plan is, but you want us to assume that it's yours :)
Oh, sea level rise is allowed - we're just not allowing speculators in to distort the market and cause a bubble that will burst :)
You're assuming that the shit in our nest doesn't have a purpose.
Think back to the Chinese purge of sparrows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Pests_Campaign). Sparrows were pollution. Something to be rid of. Of course, after decimating (or more) the population, it turns out that it was the Sparrows keeping insects in check, and BAM, welcome to famine city.
CO2 (our shit in this case), feeds plants, keeps the next ice age at bay, and a dearth of it could slap us into iceball earth territory.
Heck, even literal *shit* is important :) - http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/103963/the-circle-of-poo
One being's shit is another being's fertilizer.
What ever gave you the novel idea that the Earth has ever been in balance? We live in a universe predicated on chaos, entropy, and dynamic change - there's no such thing as "balance" :)
What if drastic climate change is *beneficial*? What if *without* drastic climate change, the world becomes a colder, darker place, with less plant life, less arable land, and a diminished biosphere?
The problem is that you assume that you've diagnosed the doom properly, and that your solution is not worse than the problem itself. You have no credible argument that your "solution" is either ideal, productive, or neutral.
Now, here's an interesting thought - the actual *distribution* of temperatures matter, not the trend. We don't care if the average temperature goes up by 5C, but we *do* care if one half of the planet sits at -100C, and the other half of the planet sits at 100C. What matters is distribution - what matters is *weather*. Climate is simply an average, an abstraction that *loses* data, that has no real meaning.
Now, let's get a model that can predict the specific *distribution* of temperatures, rather than just some mythical average global temperature. Get something like that going, and you'll have my attention.
Here's a credible hypothesis for you - CO2 is buffered by the oceans. Temperature increases drive CO2 out of the oceans and adjust the set point, as it were, of the concentration of CO2 in the air. Solar heating of the oceans occurs (moderated by the albedo of clouds), and long deep cycles of currents cause a significant lag in time before such heat can convect through the system. Given that the oceans hold orders of magnitude more heat, it's much more likely that they drive the temperature cycle, rather than the atmosphere (other than, again, the albedo of clouds, which behaves in uncertain ways).
But here's the thing, you can take my hypothesis, and break it - you can show me an observation of say, an immediate heating of oceans based on surface atmospheric temperatures, and my hypothesis falls. Or you could show a discontinuity between ocean CO2 levels and atmospheric CO2 levels (i.e., falsifying the idea of outgassing). Or you could show that there is no solar heating of the oceans.
Of course, me being wrong doesn't make you right, but at least you've got some chance at falsification.
What observations will cause your hypothesis to fall? Where is your falsifiability?
Well, first off, you've got the buffer solution model you can think of - the oceans essentially buffer CO2, so its concentration is governed by its temperature, not other outputs/inputs.
But more importantly, even if you assert additional CO2 creates additional warming, you've still got the hurdles of "is warming bad" and "how much will it warm". Jury seems out on that: http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/08/26/lies-damn-lies-and-anoma-lies/
Wow. You've got someone with mod points and your name on them.
But then again, that seems to be modus operandi for you're average Team member, as beautifully detailed in the Climategate leaks :)
Wow. The alarmists must have saved up a bunch of mod points :)
As for the cites of the ozone layer (which surprise, continues to fluctuate cyclicly no matter what the CFC emission rate is - http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Ingles/Crista.html), acid rain (which, surprise, was another overhyped alarm - http://debunkhouse.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/the-acid-rain-scam/), and the Y2K bug (which frankly, given the ability of average cobol coders to do anything right on time, was certainly overhyped), well, let's just say those hardly prove persuasive :)
The source of the problem here, though, is that when people have beliefs that have no falsifications, you simply cannot have rational discourse. Once you've accepted Jesus into your heart, and can interpret *any* event in terms of divine providence, you're beyond logic and reason. Once you've accepted CO2 and humanity is evil, and can interpret *any* event in terms of the damage humanity is doing to the world around us, you're beyond logic and reason.
What we need is a return to the basics of the scientific method - the good ol' Popperian falsifiable hypothesis statement. The Feynman-like skepticism of our own deeply held beliefs.
...is just good enough.
With the understanding that the world hasn't burnt itself down to a crisp thanks to all the bad software out there, the logical next step is to figure out just how bad you can write software with it still being good enough to run the world. Save the money and spend it on something else you think is more important.
What about people who have health insurance, but are high utilizers? People who get a hundred thousand dollars worth of treatment per dollar of premium they pay? Do you consider them leeches that pass on their costs to their fellow insurance holders?
Insurance is gambling, plain and simple. Would you like to expand this to say, food insurance? Or clothing insurance? Just pay a monthly premium, and get your porterhouse steak for a co-pay of $2.50, and your new shoes for a co-pay of $1.00?
I'll choose freedom instead, thank you.
Subsidies cause costs to go up - be it with solar panels or with health care. If you've got money pumping artificially into the system, you're not rewarding affordability.
Health insurers have had a convenient and accurate scapegoat for decades now - government thumbs on various scales creates a system of waste.
Hey, the people who passed it didn't read it - why would you expect the public to? :)
Heck, I'd bet you a thousand dollars that Obama didn't read it before he signed it!
What are you talking about? You make a fallacious assertion, I question your premises, and then you consider your assertion acknowledged? Really? :)
Follow along for a second - I made an assertion. That assertion can be perfectly correct, no matter *what* the specifics of the questions asked by the researchers. How we go about disproving my assertion is an open question, but I'm giving you a plausible, and given your inability to understand the falsifiable hypothesis, an appropriate explanation :)
Your mind movie is getting away with yourself again :)
I did not say that they specifically asked about the scientific method. I asserted a possible explanation, one especially appropriate given your inability to comprehend the falsifiable hypothesis concept. You are confusing something *I said* with something you think *I said they said*. The two are not the same.
As with the common mantra of alarmists, the study was *consistent* with my assertion :)
You're arguing with the null - that's not how the scientific method works. You're assuming that natural climate change has stopped, and that 20th century observations can exclude natural climate variation. You are using models as "proof", rather than giving any sort of necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement. And then, to boot, when you can't come up with a falsifiable hypothesis statement, you're trying to shift the burden of proof to the negative (prove God doesn't exist!).
Really?
No, the null hypothesis assumes that natural variations, in anything, be it inputs, outputs, or side puts, is the cause of changes in climate. More specifically, the universe of things not human caused climate change before humanity existed - until you can exclude all things not human (requiring near omniscience about a stochastic system), you're not really getting very far.
You seem to believe I can't tell the difference between someone owing me an explanation, and someone *having* an explanation :) You simply don't *have* an explanation, and your inability to specify your necessary and falsifiable hypothesis statement essentially leaves the dear reader to accept you as some sort of believable authority. Given your inability to understand the scientific method, forgive me if I have my doubts :)
Wow, you really do make up stuff out of whole cloth - it's like you've got a mind movie going on that nobody else sees :)
I asserted the following: "they found that the more scientifically informed one was, the less likely one was to believe that human CO2 emissions are going to cause unprecedented, catastrophic global warming".
I did not assert that they asked any sort of specific question.
What *you* asked was "what kind of magical information would skeptics have that alarmists don't that would explain their superior grasp of science". *I* answered your question by trying to give you a tutorial on the idea of a falsifiable hypothesis. Sadly, I understand science better than I can explain it to someone who has very strong beliefs :)
You gotta put down the sauce. There is no lack of a null hypothesis - it clearly is that observed climate change in the 20th century had the same causes as observed climate change in past century - natural causes. What is lacking is a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement for the proposition that human CO2 emissions are going to cause catastrophic warming, on *any* time period.
So just to be clear, you're asserting that if we cannot enumerate all of the specific forcings, say, from 200,000BC to 100,000BC, that it cannot be natural climate change?
You seem to misunderstand the fact that the null hypothesis of natural climate change doesn't require enumeration of every single last molecular interaction - before humans ever emitted CO2, climate changed. We know this. We accept this. Natural climate change has been around for billions of years. Natural climate change has had variation at every time scale, and nothing we've seen in the 20th century goes outside the bounds of that natural variation we've observed in the past.
Now explain how you can exclude natural climate change. Simply failing to create models using natural factors is *not* a disproof, since natural climate change is an empirical observation, not a modeled prediction :)
Um, no. That's not how it works at all :) You can definitely choose a poor null hypothesis, as most religious zealots do - "the null hypothesis is that God exists. Now prove that he doesn't" :)
Sure, climate changed well before our existence, at all time scales and by all magnitudes ever observed - are you going to deny that climate changed naturally before humanity existed if we don't enumerate every specific cause? Really?
Now you're twisting their words again - the never said the word "despite".
Let's be clear - the model pictures have been "robust and unambiguous" (mostly because all the models start off with the same central conceit - of course they'll be consistent with each other), but they have *significant
My assertion is about what the study *observed*. Are you actually trying to say that they *didn't* observe that the more scientifically informed one was, the less likely one was to believe that human CO2 emissions are going to cause unprecedented, catastrophic global warming? Really?
It seems that you're the one having a problem understanding it...and seeing as they found that the more scientifically informed one was, the less likely one was to believe that human CO2 emissions are going to cause unprecedented, catastrophic global warming, one might make the argument that your belief shows that you're less scientifically informed than me :) Maybe you should be listening a bit more closely to me :)
You've made a unsubstantiated logical leap. H2O is a greenhouse gase component of the atmosphere. Are you now going to argue that water vapor is a climate forcing, in contrast to the role it takes as a feedback in most GCMs? :)
The existence of GHGs does not mean that they *force* anything. That's an assertion, not a given :)
That's not a bargain, that's a promise :)
Alternate theory? You mean the null hypothesis that climate change is natural? What is your question about natural climate change?
You're confusing, once again, with behavior and *effect*. Yes, GHG molecules absorb and emit the same wavelengths in the test tube as they do in the atmosphere. Their *behavior* is consistent. The *effect* of this behavior in a test tube does *not* scale to any *effect* that can be observed in the atmosphere.
Let me see if I can give you an example you can understand better - water behaves in a very specific way when transferring heat - it has a specific conductivity of heat, that can be measured in the laboratory, and this conductivity of heat, in the laboratory, can be observed as a heating element on one side of a body of water causes the sensor on the other side of that body of water to register warmth.
So, the heat conductivity of water, in the laboratory, can show an effective delay between when we turn on a heating element, and when a sensor on the other side of the tank warms up. With me so far?
Okay, now, humans are mostly water, and of course, just because water is inside of a human doesn't mean it has different physical properties - it *behaves* the same. But put a heating element on your left hand, and a sensor on your right hand, and will you be able to observe the laboratory effect of the heat conductivity of the water in your body?
Now, sit back and ask yourself, "why can I see the *effect* in the lab, but not in a complex system like a human?" Take your time :)
That's called the null hypothesis. Climate has changed in the past. Climate has changed in the pres
I gave you direct quotes from the ACTUAL STUDY, and you ignored them with the weak sauce argument that "scientifically informed" means "scientifically informed about something specific and unstated about climate science" :)
The fact that you think that a falsifiable hypothesis has a "correct context" in science is a sure fire sign that you don't understand how *fundamental* it is :)
The science game *starts* with a falsifiable hypothesis. You can talk about tachyon pulses, warp engines, red matter, in all the glory of pseudo-scientific sounding babble, but until you've got a falsifiable hypothesis, you're not playing the science game.
Now you're projecting your own ignorance - skeptics don't doubt that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, what skeptics doubt is that you can move from the simple proposition that CO2 is a greenhouse gas to the following unfounded leaps:
1) human CO2 emissions drive global average temperature;
2) higher global average temperatures are going to be catastrophic.
If the only hypothesis you wish to defend is "CO2 is a greenhouse gas", then you'll get no argument from me. Expecting me to believe that simply because CO2 is a greenhouse gas that human activity must be curtailed to save the planet, now *that's* a stretch :)
So you see this as some sort of negotiation? :) When you don't propose a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis you're willing to stand behind, all I have is straw men to attack - if you prefer complaining about the straw men I construct on your behalf, you're more than welcome to actually *propose* something :)
It doesn't *behave* differently, it has a different *effect*. Yes, it absorbs the same spectra in the wild as in the test tube, but effect it has on the ambient temperature of the test tube, under simplified and controlled conditions, simply cannot scale to model the effect it would have on the ambient temperature of the entire atmosphere.
You do understand the complexity of the atmosphere, don't you?
Well, let's see, the test tube doesn't have oceans, a biosphere or clouds. Care to cain that those factors can be blithely ignored? :)
Whoa there slick, you've taken one statement and morphed it again by accident - I stated that no GCM gets cloud formation or albedo close to right, not that they exclude it. As for the cite, see the IPCC -
http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch1s1-5-2.html
"the amplitude and even the sign of cloud feedbacks was noted in the TAR as highly uncertain"
In the end, you've quite effectively demonstrated the ignorance of climate alarmists:
1) a falsifiable hypothesis isn't used in a *context* of science, it is the *foundation* of science;
2) CO2 being a greenhouse gas does not
And apparently you can't admit to assertions that are supported by evidence either :)
You're again failing to listen well - remember, I've specified that the discrete information in question (being "scientifically informed") is the understanding of the importance of the falsifiable hypothesis statement. You keep trying to turn it into some specific bit of climate science information.
That's an unsupported conclusion from the observations. Remember their original hypothesis of SCT - their flawed assumption was that the "consensus" view on climate change is in fact, true. Their results, which invalidated their hypothesis, is a challenge to their basic assumption there - trying to cast it as "generally intelligent people about science are willfully ignorance of climate change science" is a wild stretch.
My point exactly - their *observations* are clear - the more scientifically informed one was, the less likely one was to believe that human CO2 emissions are going to cause unprecedented, catastrophic global warming. Their postulation was neither proven, nor tested for.
Give my your specific, necessary and falsifiable hypothesis statement, and I'll stop attacking straw men :)
Please elaborate on why a molecule of CO2 will behave in an identical manner in a complex atmosphere, compared to a limited and simplified experimental model :)
Look, if you can't understand just how complex the real-world carbon cycle is compared to a test of the radiative properties of a molecule type, you're really lost. You're conflating the behavior of a single molecule, and the *effect* of its behavior in a complex system. The two are *not* the same.
The same natural forces that have always caused changes in temperature in the past. No reason to invoke any sort of special pleading for observations that fall well within natural variability.
Google "buffer solution".
They don't. But the *effect* of the radiative properties of CO2 change from a laboratory sample versus the actual, highly complex biosphere. The radiative properties of H2O don't change from a sample atmosphere from the actual atmosphere, but do you have a cite f
No, you simply ignored it, and decided to try to make a distinction between "scientifically informed" and "scientific literacy" :)
Why can't you admit that the study's observations clearly support my statement "The more scientifically informed one was, the less likely one was to believe that human CO2 emissions are going to cause unprecedented, catastrophic global warming."?
Okay, let's take a look at your elaboration:
"You asserted that the difference between these subjects is some discrete knowledge (K) on climate change, such that:
s(l) = s(h) + K "
Now, how exactly did you come up with "more scientifically informed" == "some discrete knowledge on climate change"? "More scientifically informed" is not the same as "more scientifically informed on chemistry" or "more scientifically informed on the radiative properties of nuclear materials" or "more scientifically informed on astronomy" -> it is simply a *general* measure of scientific understanding.
You keep trying to fit my words into something you can attack, but you're arguing with your own straw men, not my position :)
No, from this *they* drew a conclusion that was not tested for :) I'm simply stating their observations, and pointing out the silliness of their untested conclusion :)
Ah, so from a single radiative property of say, H2O, we can jump to the conclusion that human emissions of H2O are going to lead to catastrophic warming? :) Your assertion that simply "applying the laws of thermodynamics" allows you to jump from a physical constant, to the laughable proposition that human activity now dominates climate control doesn't pass the chuckle test :)
That's not true at all. The earth's climate system could simply act as a CO2 buffer, so that natural changes in temperature drive CO2 levels. If you add "extra" CO2 to this buffer, it simply gets absorbed (turned into plant matter, absorbed by other sinks). If you remove "extra" CO2 from this buffer, it simply gets replaced (exuded out of oceans, plant matter, etc). Just like a buffer solution doesn't care if you add acid or base to it, you can clearly have a climate system that buffers other bits of gas.
You're making assumptions, and instead of looking for ways your hypothesis might be false (pretending for a moment you've presented something falsifiable), you're doing nothing but defending your preconceived beliefs. You're treating this like religion, rather than rational thought.
You want elaborations, and I want your necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement. Simply saying that "CO2 has a specific absorption spectrum, and therefore, the only way to prove that human CO2 emissions aren't going to destroy civilization as we know it is to prove CO2 doesn't have that absorption spectrum" is a great example of a *poor* attempt :)
Try again! Harder!
I did read the actual study, and apparently you didn't :)
Again, from the ACTUAL STUDY:
"Contrary to SCT predictions, higher degrees of science literacy and numeracy are associated with a small decrease in the perceived seriousness of climate change risks. "
I can absolutely tell the difference, but apparently you can't - let's try again. Here's my statement:
"The more scientifically informed one was, the less likely one was to believe that human CO2 emissions are going to cause unprecedented, catastrophic global warming."
Apparently you don't understand that "scientifically informed" == "scientific literacy" :)
You're being obtuse, yet again. You apparently cannot tell the difference between "CO2 has specific absorption properties" and "human CO2 emissions are going to cause catastrophic global warming". The two are *not* equivalent :)
I've said no such thing. The null hypothesis is that climate change today is natural, just as climate change has been natural for aeons. It is your burden, in the affirmative, to show that natural climate change no longer applies to our observations. And I still await your necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement to that effect :)
Seriously, do you read what you're writing before you hit "submit"? You do understand that you're continually avoiding the specific question, and willfully misunderstanding the careful and specific distinctions I'm making, right? Or does the world just get all red and fuzzy in an angry haze when you think about how many people are going to be killed by the use of natural petroleum products? I seriously couldn't create a caricature of a rabid warmist more extreme than you've been so far :)
From the paper in question:
"One, already adverted to, can be called the science comprehension thesis (SCT). As members of the public do not know what scientists know, or think the way scientists think, they predictably fail to take climate change as seriously as scientists believe they should3. ...
SCT asserts, first, that ordinary members of the public underestimate the seriousness of climate change because of the difficulty of the scientific evidence3. If this is correct, concern over climate change should be positively correlated with science literacy—that is, concern should increase as people become more science literate."
What they've observed is the opposite of their SCT hypothesis - that "ordinary members of the public" seem to *overestimate* the seriousness of climate change because of the difficulty of the scientific evidence. But in order to avoid that conclusion (that the scientific evidence leads to a greater understanding of the limited effect humanity can have on climate change), they come up with an ad hoc special pleading called "CCT":
"The alternative explanation can be referred to as the cultural cognition thesis (CCT). CCT posits that individuals, as a result of a complex of psychological mechanisms, tend to form perceptions of societal risks that cohere with values characteristic of groups with which they identify4, 5."
This allows them to preserve their unspoken assumption that true scientists must believe in "climate change risks".
Sure I could - but it doesn't seem you had the same reading comprehension ability. Let me help you:
From the article: "A US government-funded survey has found that Americans with higher levels of scientific and mathematical knowledge are more sceptical regarding the dangers of climate change than their more poorly educated fellow citizens."
Read it twice, slowly. If you have problems with any words, please google them for definition.
From the actual nature article: "Contrary to SCT predictions, higher degrees of science literacy and numeracy are associated with a small decrease in the perceived seriousness of climate change risks. "
(http://www.nature.com/nclimate/journal/vaop/ncurrent/full/nclimate1547.html#/f1)
Now you're just making stuff up. If you have a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement to describe your belief that human CO2 emissions are going to cause catastrophic global warming, please state it.
Now you're being obtuse again. While the specific absorption spectrum of CO2 (the "basic theory" as I would define it), clearly has falsifiability, taking that physical constant and extrapolating it to a complex system of climate without the additional falsifiable factors to chain it up to "human CO2 is going to cause catastrophic warming" is simply in your imagination. You seem to misunderstand both my past statements, as well as my current ones - why don't you quote me directly, and I'll clear up any misunderstandings you have :)
I don't disagree with myself - I just apparently have a difficult time getting past your ideological blinders :)
In a nutshell - firstly, I proved my point with the paper with direct cites, both from the paper and the article citing it. The more scientifically informed one was, the less likely one was to believe that human CO2 emissions are going to cause unprecedented, catastrophic global warming. I wonder if you'll continue to deny that though :)
Secondly, you simply have no necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement for the proposition that human CO2 emissions are going to cause unprecedented catastrophic global warming. You can assert that I've come up with this mythical falsifiable hypothesis statement to your heart's content, but again, your assertion doesn't make it true :) Clearly state the necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement *you're* willing to stand for, and then we can play the science game - until then, I'm simply trying to help you with english comprehension :)