No, philosophy is a different field, with different methods.
In science, we are interested in insights about the object of study, in this case the physical world. Insights into a theory itself are only interesting if the theory turns out to be correct, i.e describes the object of study. If the string theory turns out to be incorrect, all insight into it will be thrown out together with the theory itself.
On the contrary, the history of science is full of theories that turned out to be wrong, but inspired productive research: the Bohr atom, the static universe. Scientists are interested in theories that have the potential of describing the physical universe, to be sure, but It is rare indeed that the ideas and methods that are developed in pursuit of one theory end up being completely discarded when that theory is superseded.
Not the same thing, since enough aspects of quantum mechanics were testable to prove that it was largely correct.
"Largely correct" is not the same thing as correct. We don't know if quantum theory is correct. And many aspects that were fundamental to the theory were dismissed as untestable for many years. It could easily have turned out to be very misguided.
So scientists cannot judge the value of a theory based on some guess as to the probability that it will turn out to be correct, or by some arbitrary deadline for producing testable results. The only index of value that we have is whether those who use the theory as a tool continue to attain new insights. It is certainly conceivable that a theory will turn out to be so far from correct that none of the ideas and concepts developed in pursuit of that theory will turn out to be useful in the future, but that is rare (frankly, I can't think of any examples). The reverse is far more common--ideas and methods developed in pursuit of abstract mathematics turn out to be useful for science, often many decades after they were created.
If the time comes when physicists working on string theory cease to have anything new to say--when they have pursued the endeavor as far as it will go--then physicists will move on to focus on other theoretical approaches.
The problem is that string theory's value doesn't seem to lie in its usefulness as a tool, since it doesn't make testable predictions, and hasn't lead to any spin-offs.
You are thinking of engineering, not science. In science, a theory is useful as a tool for discovery if it rewards investigation by yielding additional insights. These may be purely mathematical.
This can be contrasted with, for example, quantum mechanics, which very quickly turned out to be useful in predicting experiments, and spawned new areas of research, despite being very controversial during the first few decades of the 20th century, and still not being completely understood.
And yet many aspects of quantum mechanics were dismissed as "untestable" for decades, until scientists eventually understood the theory well enough to devise tests and even technological applications. There is no deadline for a theory to be applied or to generate spin-offs. A theory may well turn out to be a "dry hole" that leads nowhere, but until it is fully explored, there is no way to know that. If, eventually, investigation of string theory ceases to yield new insights into the structure of the theory, then more and more physicists will lose interest in it, and gravitate to other theories, and the funding will shift accordingly.
Except that I haven't "rejected" it. I merely accept it as a possibility that has failed to yield further insights that are of interest to me. I find the working hypothesis of an objective reality to be more interesting, so that is the one that I choose invest my time in.
Well, just as a for-instance, games theory shows that a simple tit-for-tat algorithm is one of the most effective strategies in an iterated Prisoner's Dilemma.
Games theory shows us that tit-for-tat is a good strategy for maximizing payoff in interactions that can be modeled as an iterated prisoner's dilemma. But it doesn't tell us if maximizing payoff is the right thing to do.
I'm a scientist, and I can't imagine why anybody else would care what I, or any other scientist, thinks about religion. I have no particular expertise in religion. I'm not even very interested in it. I might be interested in the religion of a scientist who is a close friend, in the same way that I'm interested in their family or their sex life--because I'm interested in the things that matter to my friends. But the general question of what scientists think about religion seems to me quite without value. Why don't we ask instead what fishermen think about religion? Or prostitutes?
You have no rational reason to abandon solipsism. You abandon it, precisely as you say, because it doesn't lead anywhere interesting, not because it can be shown to be false. In doing so, you are making assumptions about what is interesting
No, I no more make assumptions about what is interesting than I make assumptions about what is my favorite color. I perceive how much I like a color directly, thus as I directly perceive how much I am interested in a line of thought. I prefer to be surrounded by colors that I like, and I enjoy being interested in things. These are emotions, not assumptions. Perhaps somebody else enjoys contemplating solipsism all day. That is perfectly valid for them, although I'm unlikely to be interested in what they have to say.
Nobody knows whether a theory will turn out to be right or wrong, or indeed whether any current theory is right. Much of the progress of science has been the result of experiments and observations that were inspired by theories that we now know to be incorrect.
To a scientist, a theory is not a final product, but rather a tool--a tool for discovery. A theory that is wrong can nevertheless be valuable tool for discovery if it inspires research that leads to further knowledge.
So scientists do not value a theory based upon some guess as to how close it might be to some Ultimate Truth, but rather upon whether it is productive--whether it inspires research that leads to advances in knowledge and understanding.
These aren't faith, but working assumptions. Some working assumptions are shallow, they lead nowhere interesting--solipsism for example, or the assumption that there are no consistent laws of nature. It is very easy to follow those lines of thought to their end, and then you are finished. Once you've done that, you choose another one--one that leads somewhere more interesting. You don't have to faith in those assumptions to follow where they lead.
There are certainly fashions in science. It is always easier to get funding if you are working in an area that many people are interested in and doing a kind of work that appears productive in terms of yielding new discoveries. If you don't agree with string theory--a field which has been productive in yielding mathematical insights even though the physical relevance remains to be established--then you better have something else equally compelling to offer if you want to convince people to give you money.
Except that many DO make "science" an ideology, particularly when attempting to use science as a hammer to force another ideology upon a skeptical populace that will result in worsened economic conditions and reduced freedoms for that populace.
I've only heard this "science is an ideology" claim from cranks--the people who want to deny the moon landing, or global warming, or the effectiveness of vaccines, or evolution. It is just a rhetorical strategy, an attempt to distract from the fact that science is a technology--a technology of disciplined thought and discovery that has been repeatedly validated by discoveries that impact all parts of life.
Both parties are punished because it's usually impossible to tell who started it. Work with young kids sometime and see how often they tell the truth.
And yet we have a legal system that at least makes a good-faith effort to determine the truth and impose penalties appropriately. We have a legal principle that it is better to let 100 guilty men go free than to unjustly punish an innocent man. But school authorities routinely punish the victim because "It's too HAAAAARD" to do the right thing.
Sure, it is not always possible to determine the truth, and mistakes will be made. But that is very different from punishing the innocent as a matter of policy. The fundamental assumption behind "zero tolerance" policies is "nobody is innocent" -- a point of view that the entire history of our entire legal system repudiates, and whose chief advocates in the present day are school administrators and terrorists
Yes, Americans have a very limited notion of the range of political discourse. Unless they encountered it in a college class or have lived abroad, most have never encountered serious leftist political philosophy. The extreme right wing is given free reign on the news shows, but genuine leftists are considered beyond the pale. I think this is the true political function of media right wing cranks like Beck and Limbaugh--not to get more than a tiny fraction of people to agree with them, but to cause politicians who are only slightly less crazy to seem reasonable by comparison.
I took Texas history back in the 60's, and once I had the chance to read some real history, I was shocked to discover how dishonest and misleading the curriculum had been, mostly in ways that seemed designed to promote racism.
When I took history in the Texas schools, they worked very hard to diminish or obscure the importance of slavery in the Civil War. Instead, we were taught that it was all about states rights (what rights? well, mainly the right to keep slaves--but it's the principle of the thing, you see). Freeing the slaves was a merely cynical ploy by Abraham Lincoln to build public support, encourage unrest in the South, and recruit black soldiers.
While there are numerous problems with the curriculum, isn't teaching students to be skeptical of government a good thing?
I had a 5th grade teacher who liked to brag that she encouraged "creativity," but I quickly learned that she didn't actually want students to have their own ideas--she wanted them to express "her" creativity. Similarly, teaching students to be skeptical and to think for themselves is certainly a good thing. On the other hand, singling particular things out as targets for skepticism is not teaching skepticism--it is teaching a specific point of view. There are certain "key words" that reveal when a curriculum is pushing a particular point of view under the guise of "skepticism." For example, instead of being asked to "compare" two things, students will be asked to "compare and contrast." At first glance this seems reasonable, if a bit redundant (because of course comparison entails consideration of similarities as well as differences). But when the assignment includes "contrast," students will be given a lower grade if they fail to come up with reasons why two things are different--the approved reasons, of course.
Well, it would definitely be interesting to determine the exact physical mechanism which has created the sawtooth saturation pattern in the ice core records - it's most likely a matter of the physical properties of CO2 and the limits of its transference of heat to other gases, and the reaction of water to increase temperatures (evaporation), causing a maximum heat level possible.
This is typical of the type of vague hand-waving arguments made by those who, for either emotional or political reasons, feel compelled to deny global warming. Climate science long ago progressed beyond the point where such vague nonquantitative arguments have any credibility. It is indeed possible to create a mathematical climate model that is consistent with historical and prehistorical climate evidence, as well as climate on other planets, and yet does not predict several more degrees of warming from anticipated CO2 increases, then produce it. Given the amount of opposition to global warming from powerful, wealthy interests that stand to lose financially from CO2 mitigation efforts, it seems certain that somebody would have developed such a model. Unless, of course, they have tried and failed, because it isn't possible....
Here's are some interesting pieces on that
More vague handwaving.
Sure, how about this opinion, stated very clearly by Andrew Lacis
This sort of deceptive quote-mining is another reason why global warming deniers have so little credit with actual scientists. This is not a criticism of the final summary, but a comment on an early draft.
Have you read the Climategate emails? Or the HARRY_README.TXT? Be honest:)
Certainly. It was obvious to me from the outset (as I think it would be to any scientist not blinded by bias) that there is no evidence of malfeasance here. Much of it was obviously just pissed off scientists blowing off steam in what they thought was private correspondence. There is no actual evidence of anybody doing anything improper. The HARRY_README.TXT is obviously somebody's first efforts at understanding and adapting old code. I don't think any objective reader could possibly see it as evidence of falsification.
Whoa, unjustified generalization alert! The scales at which gravitational theories diverge are orders upon orders upon orders of magnitude greater than the scales that climate predictions
Who said anything about the scales being exactly the same? It remains the case that there are multiple gravitational theories, and the ones that are used routinely to predict things like spaceship trajectories and planetary orbits are known to be approximations. This is not particularly unusual in science.
Look, it's obvious you're a smart guy, but how is it you've got such a blind spot on this? Is it just an emotional attachment to the idea of environmentalism? Was it just that the warmists got to you first? You're
No, it's the other way around. I started out skeptical, and was convinced by the science. The other thing that has persuaded me was the kinds of arguments being used by warming deniers, exemplified by the ones that you, yourself have invoked in our discussion. Being familiar with the argumentation of other cranks--creationists, antivaccinationists, HIV deniers, Obama birthers, moon landing deniers, etc.--I recognize the characteristic style of argumentation employed by cranks--the embracing of any argument, no matter how transparently invalid, that supports their point of view, repeating long ago rebutted arguments without so much as acknowledging the existence of rebuttals or contrary evidence, quote mining (like your misrepresentation of a criticism of a first draft as a criticism of the final report), etc. etc. The flagrant misapplication of the ideal gas law to try to "explain away" the temperature
I'm sure Lindzen would disagree, as well as the others at the ICCC this week, but let's say we allow that -> imagine that no matter what CO2 we pump out, the maximum effect will be an additional 2C, period, whether it happens in 1 year or 100 years. Where's the problem with that?
So here, you are postulating some unidentified physical mechanism that will somehow "kick in" to keep global warming well below the range of plausible projections under scenarios of unrestrained CO2 output, as discussed in the AR4 report. That seems like rather extreme wishful thinking.
Hey, just wanted to give you a chance to cite exactly what you wanted to cite, rather than picking through your references and finding all the ridiculously implausible and indefensible parts to lay around your neck. Do you really want to assume the entire IPCC AR4 Summary as your point of view?
If you have reasonable grounds for taking issue with the AR4 summary, feel free to state them (although I've yet to see any indication that you've even read it).
Really? The "same overall conclusion"? And what conclusion is that, if there are 23 different models that vary greatly in the magnitude of the changes predicted?
Not greatly enough to change the conclusion that mitigation efforts are needed.
Given the confirmation bias exposed by Climategate, I'm actually quite disturbed to see multiple approaches reach the same conclusions as a known falsified one.
It is not true that any evidence of falsification has been exposed by Climategate. This was pretty clear from the outset, and two separate inquiries have reached the conslusion that the stolen correspondence provides more evidence of falsification.
What's the other one? General relativity?
I am not an expert on gravitational physics, so all I can name off the top of my head are general relativity, loop gravity, and string theory. There are doubless more. Just as the various climate models provide predictions that are very similar at a large scale, but differ in the fine details, the gravitational theories make similar large-scale predictions, but diverge at small scales
That's a really hard and fast prediction. You think you could stick by that one?:)
Sompe predictions are hard and fast, some are not. This is often the case in science. Runaway global warming is not a prediction of the models at all (I guess you still haven't worked your way through the AR4 summary yet, or you'd know this). However, not predicting it is not the same as being confident that it won't happen. There is near universal agreement among climate scientists on the atmospheric physics that predicts several degrees of global warming. I don't think that anybody claims to understand the detailed physics of undersea methane stores well enough to say what it would take to destabilize them and cause truly catastrophic climate change.
Really? What concerns would that be? 10m of sea level rise over 100 years? More hurricanes? Disappearing himalayan glaciers by 2035?
Once again, I refer you to the AR4 summary. I'm not going to type it in here just because you can't be bothered to read it yourself.
Imagine if there were 23 versions of gravitation laws, of which Newton's was just one.
There are indeed multiple versions of gravitation theory, of which Newton's is just one--one that is known not to be entirely correct. That hasn't stopped us from making predictions of satellite orbits, because there are some things for which all of the theories are in pretty good agreement. Similarly, the climate models agree well enough with respect to the effects of atmospheric CO2. For scientists, the fact that multiple approaches to modeling a system lead to the same overall conclusions increases, rather than decreases, confidence in those conclusions.
Actually, I think you have that one backwards -> they're models of the human mind, not physics.
Nope. They are explicit physical models, the product of a century of theoretical and experimental work. But they don't predict how much CO2 will be in the atmosphere, because that depends upon what we will do to limit CO2 release. So instead, the models have been run for a variety of CO2 scenarios. For this reason, some climate scientists insist that the model runs should be called "projections" rather than "predictions" because they are dependent upon guesses as to how successful we will be in limiting CO2 release.
Comparing Newton's gravitation theory to AGW is quite a stretch, even for you
Both are examples of physical models that make hard predictions. We known that Newton's Law of Gravitation is not quite correct, and we don't actually have a complete law of gravitation. Nevertheless, if calculations based on Newton's Law indicated that we were about to take serious damage from falling from a height, we would not let the weaknesses in the theory dissuade us from taking immediate action to avoid disaster.
Okay, so what is it exactly that you believe -> is it possible for use to have runaway global warming on earth based on, let's say, increasing CO2 levels tenfold, or is there a saturation point at which CO2 is no longer a factor? Okay, so what is it exactly that you believe -> is it possible for use to have runaway global warming on earth based on, let's say, increasing CO2 levels tenfold, or is there a saturation point at which CO2 is no longer a factor?
Look it up yourself in the IPCC report; I've already given you the reference. The current models do not predict runaway global warming from anticipated increases in CO2. However, there is no saturation point that prevents such a scenario; it simply is not predicted from the anticipated CO2 levels. On the other hand, nobody is entirely confident that it could not occur, because there are some factors that are not considered in the models, the major one being possible destabilization of methane clathrates. So it is safe to say that runaway global warming is not predicted, but also not completely excluded.
23 models. Which one is the correct one?
It doesn't really matter. All reasonably plausible models lead to the same concerns
This Working Group I assessment does not evaluate the plausibility or likelihood of any specific emission scenario. {10.1, 10.3}"
Wow. Great stuff. No idea what the plausibility or likelihood of ANYTHING is, but we've got to listen to them because the SCIENCE IS SETTLED.
Sounds like you don't understand what an emission scenario is (although you would if you'd really bothered to read the report). The models calculate what the effect on temperature will be of a particular amount of CO2 release. But they are models of physics, not the human mind; they do not attempt to predict, or assign probabilities to, the decisions that people will make regarding controlling CO2 release.
Wow, have your cake and eat it too -> they're not statistical models, but they're somehow "consistent with this body of data"?
What do you find difficult to understand about comparison of causal physical models to data? Newton's theory of gravitation is a causal model, but one reason why it was accepted was that it was consistent with the observational data on the motion of planets across the sky.
Some of it radiates down, some of it radiates up. At the boundaries of the atmosphere, the radiation out escapes, and you have the whole "hot air rises" convection routine that transports heat from the high pressure surface to the lower pressure outer atmosphere. None of it gets magically stuck in the lower atmosphere to cause a "runaway" greenhouse effect.
That's not what the models--the real ones that take into account actual conditions of a planet rather than assuming a sealed, insulated box--say. What they do say is that the atmosphere becomes less efficient as a radiator of the heat energy absorbed from the sun, such that the temperature has to be greater--much greater--in order to radiate away the energy absorbed by the clouds.
So what's your definition of "substantial", and what's your prediction of maximum temperature increase (saturation point)?
Once again, you illustrate the point that you haven't taken the time to learn anything about the model that you are attacking so energetically. Read the IPCC report yourself. You might learn something. One thing that you might learn is that the maximum temperature increase is not limited by saturation, but by the fact that that CO2 is not projected to increase indefinitely, due to replacement of CO2 generating technologies with carbon-neutral technologies.
For volume, we take a representative sample at a given altitude (say 1m^3), so that remains a constant.
Sorry, you've already violated the assumptions upon which the ideal gas law is founded--a fixed volume container with perfectly rigid, perfectly insulated walls. No excuses. Once you've violated the assumptions, you can't use the theory--you need a new theory, derived for the conditions that you really have (which is, of course, what climate scientists have done).
It's what I was talking about. If you're interested in the troposphere, I'm assuming you mean this:
The tropospheric temperature readings are the satellite temperatures for which we have long-term records. They are the ones that are commonly cited as showing global warming. And they are the ones that crackpots like Monckton have falsely claimed to be calibrated against ground readings. I take it that you now concede that they are not?
Sigh. So tell me tgibbs, exactly what does the IPCC *predict*? Apparently I can't just read it plainly and assume that their citations actually mean what they say they mean -> do you have the IPCC-guide-to-what-they-really-predict-and-what-they're-just-"mentioning"-for-entertainment-purposes?
These guys quote the IPCC like it's the gospel truth, rather than actually handling any of the critiques!
The IPCC is a summary of the conclusions of the most expert climate scientists across the world, so it is appropriate to give it a high weight.
But in fact the main point that the EPA made in this particular response had little to do with the IPCC report. You missed the point. A plausible model has to be consistent with historical and prehistorical climate data, the response to "natural experiments" such as volcanic explosions, and conditions on other planets, such as Mars and Venus.
AGW deniers like to imagine that the physical models that predict global warming are poorly constrained, and can be tweaked predict anything you choose, yet nobody has been able to come up with a model that is consistent with these constraints and does not predict serious warming in response to the anticipated rise in CO2. This is a an example of such a failed model.
Hard predictions? Which one? And since when does your statistical model determine causality if any observation fits your model?
No, once again, these models are not statistical models; they are causal models based upon the known physics. The make predictions about long term changes in global temperature as a function of CO2 levels, about the climatic impact of "natural experiments" such as volcanic eruptions, as well as predictions about the climate of other planets, such as Mars and Venus. So far, nobody has been able to come up with any model that is consistent with this body of data and does not predict substantial temperature increases due to the CO2 that humans are adding to the atmosphere.
You're playing causality now when you shouldn't be -> pressure is related to temperature.
This isn't some kind of statistical correlation; it is causal. Temperature is a measure of the kinetic energy of molecules, and the faster they move, the more they push on the walls of the container when they bounce of it. Higher temperature->greater velocity->greater impact. That's causality.
And no atmosphere -> like I said, PV=nRT, the model holds true for Mercury
It is insane to take a theory that was derived under very limiting simplifying assumptions--an ideal gas uniformly distributed in a container with fixed volume and perfectly rigid, perfectly insulated walls--and insist that it is applicable to a planetary atmosphere. Even the most cursory examination of the equation should give you a clue: What is the volume of a planet's atmosphere? Why isn't there a term for gravity? How can a planet that radiates energy to space be regarded as a perfectly insulated box? One can, of course, build models that deal with these complexities, but it takes work and computation, not simply parroting an equation out of a textbook with no real notion of its meaning.
But your 100% cloud cover brings up an interesting question -> how can CO2 be responsible for warming if most of it is actually blocked by clouds from any photons coming from the sun?
Never took a course in thermodynamics either, I see. Where do you suppose that the energy that is absorbed by those clouds goes? Just magically vanishes?
You just did a search and you didn't bother to try to figure out what it was actually about, didn't you? This isn't a paper about calibrating the satellite measurements of troposphere temperature (which are the satellite measurements that we are talking about with respect to climate) based on surface measurements--which would be pretty stupid, since the satellites measure the temperature of the troposphere, not the surface. The paper describes the development of a method for deriving surface temperature based upon radiance. A worthwhile thing to do, but not at all what we are talking about.
I did. Here's the full text so you don't have to bother clicking:
Except that here is no prediction of a runaway greenhouse effect here either, just a definition of what it means. The IPCC report certainly discusses the concept of a runaway greenhouse--it just doesn't predict it. Which you'd know if you'd actually read it, instead of just doing keyword searches. I find it incredibly revealing that you care so much about climate modeling that you would engage in this extensive debate, that you read crank websites on the subject like WUWT, and yet you haven't even bothered to educate yourself by actually reading the most authoritative account of the current scientific consensus. Very much like the creationists who are full of bogus arguments against "darwinism," but have never even read Darwin, much less a modern textbook in evolutionary biology.
Why? Typical crank handwaving, no attempt at mathematical rigor, ignoring the extensive theoretical and observational literature on the earth's radiation spectrum. And then the foolish "sawtooth" argument. Anybody who has ever looked at a noisy signal knows it looks this way. Seeing some kind of feedback mechanism in it has about as much scientific meaning as seeing bunny rabbits in the clouds. And he makes a really stupid error by arguing that the greenhouse effect cannot explain the temperature of Venus's atmosphere because sunlight is absorbed before he reaches the ground (apparently, he never took thermodynamics, so it doesn't occur to him to wonder what happens to that energy after it's absorbed).
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No, philosophy is a different field, with different methods.
On the contrary, the history of science is full of theories that turned out to be wrong, but inspired productive research: the Bohr atom, the static universe. Scientists are interested in theories that have the potential of describing the physical universe, to be sure, but It is rare indeed that the ideas and methods that are developed in pursuit of one theory end up being completely discarded when that theory is superseded.
"Largely correct" is not the same thing as correct. We don't know if quantum theory is correct. And many aspects that were fundamental to the theory were dismissed as untestable for many years. It could easily have turned out to be very misguided.
So scientists cannot judge the value of a theory based on some guess as to the probability that it will turn out to be correct, or by some arbitrary deadline for producing testable results. The only index of value that we have is whether those who use the theory as a tool continue to attain new insights. It is certainly conceivable that a theory will turn out to be so far from correct that none of the ideas and concepts developed in pursuit of that theory will turn out to be useful in the future, but that is rare (frankly, I can't think of any examples). The reverse is far more common--ideas and methods developed in pursuit of abstract mathematics turn out to be useful for science, often many decades after they were created.
If the time comes when physicists working on string theory cease to have anything new to say--when they have pursued the endeavor as far as it will go--then physicists will move on to focus on other theoretical approaches.
You are thinking of engineering, not science. In science, a theory is useful as a tool for discovery if it rewards investigation by yielding additional insights. These may be purely mathematical.
And yet many aspects of quantum mechanics were dismissed as "untestable" for decades, until scientists eventually understood the theory well enough to devise tests and even technological applications. There is no deadline for a theory to be applied or to generate spin-offs. A theory may well turn out to be a "dry hole" that leads nowhere, but until it is fully explored, there is no way to know that. If, eventually, investigation of string theory ceases to yield new insights into the structure of the theory, then more and more physicists will lose interest in it, and gravitate to other theories, and the funding will shift accordingly.
Except that I haven't "rejected" it. I merely accept it as a possibility that has failed to yield further insights that are of interest to me. I find the working hypothesis of an objective reality to be more interesting, so that is the one that I choose invest my time in.
Games theory shows us that tit-for-tat is a good strategy for maximizing payoff in interactions that can be modeled as an iterated prisoner's dilemma. But it doesn't tell us if maximizing payoff is the right thing to do.
I'm a scientist, and I can't imagine why anybody else would care what I, or any other scientist, thinks about religion. I have no particular expertise in religion. I'm not even very interested in it. I might be interested in the religion of a scientist who is a close friend, in the same way that I'm interested in their family or their sex life--because I'm interested in the things that matter to my friends. But the general question of what scientists think about religion seems to me quite without value. Why don't we ask instead what fishermen think about religion? Or prostitutes?
No, I no more make assumptions about what is interesting than I make assumptions about what is my favorite color. I perceive how much I like a color directly, thus as I directly perceive how much I am interested in a line of thought. I prefer to be surrounded by colors that I like, and I enjoy being interested in things. These are emotions, not assumptions. Perhaps somebody else enjoys contemplating solipsism all day. That is perfectly valid for them, although I'm unlikely to be interested in what they have to say.
Nobody knows whether a theory will turn out to be right or wrong, or indeed whether any current theory is right. Much of the progress of science has been the result of experiments and observations that were inspired by theories that we now know to be incorrect.
To a scientist, a theory is not a final product, but rather a tool--a tool for discovery. A theory that is wrong can nevertheless be valuable tool for discovery if it inspires research that leads to further knowledge.
So scientists do not value a theory based upon some guess as to how close it might be to some Ultimate Truth, but rather upon whether it is productive--whether it inspires research that leads to advances in knowledge and understanding.
These aren't faith, but working assumptions. Some working assumptions are shallow, they lead nowhere interesting--solipsism for example, or the assumption that there are no consistent laws of nature. It is very easy to follow those lines of thought to their end, and then you are finished. Once you've done that, you choose another one--one that leads somewhere more interesting. You don't have to faith in those assumptions to follow where they lead.
There are certainly fashions in science. It is always easier to get funding if you are working in an area that many people are interested in and doing a kind of work that appears productive in terms of yielding new discoveries. If you don't agree with string theory--a field which has been productive in yielding mathematical insights even though the physical relevance remains to be established--then you better have something else equally compelling to offer if you want to convince people to give you money.
I've only heard this "science is an ideology" claim from cranks--the people who want to deny the moon landing, or global warming, or the effectiveness of vaccines, or evolution. It is just a rhetorical strategy, an attempt to distract from the fact that science is a technology--a technology of disciplined thought and discovery that has been repeatedly validated by discoveries that impact all parts of life.
And yet we have a legal system that at least makes a good-faith effort to determine the truth and impose penalties appropriately. We have a legal principle that it is better to let 100 guilty men go free than to unjustly punish an innocent man. But school authorities routinely punish the victim because "It's too HAAAAARD" to do the right thing.
Sure, it is not always possible to determine the truth, and mistakes will be made. But that is very different from punishing the innocent as a matter of policy. The fundamental assumption behind "zero tolerance" policies is "nobody is innocent" -- a point of view that the entire history of our entire legal system repudiates, and whose chief advocates in the present day are school administrators and terrorists
Yes, Americans have a very limited notion of the range of political discourse. Unless they encountered it in a college class or have lived abroad, most have never encountered serious leftist political philosophy. The extreme right wing is given free reign on the news shows, but genuine leftists are considered beyond the pale. I think this is the true political function of media right wing cranks like Beck and Limbaugh--not to get more than a tiny fraction of people to agree with them, but to cause politicians who are only slightly less crazy to seem reasonable by comparison.
I took Texas history back in the 60's, and once I had the chance to read some real history, I was shocked to discover how dishonest and misleading the curriculum had been, mostly in ways that seemed designed to promote racism.
When I took history in the Texas schools, they worked very hard to diminish or obscure the importance of slavery in the Civil War. Instead, we were taught that it was all about states rights (what rights? well, mainly the right to keep slaves--but it's the principle of the thing, you see). Freeing the slaves was a merely cynical ploy by Abraham Lincoln to build public support, encourage unrest in the South, and recruit black soldiers.
I had a 5th grade teacher who liked to brag that she encouraged "creativity," but I quickly learned that she didn't actually want students to have their own ideas--she wanted them to express "her" creativity. Similarly, teaching students to be skeptical and to think for themselves is certainly a good thing. On the other hand, singling particular things out as targets for skepticism is not teaching skepticism--it is teaching a specific point of view. There are certain "key words" that reveal when a curriculum is pushing a particular point of view under the guise of "skepticism." For example, instead of being asked to "compare" two things, students will be asked to "compare and contrast." At first glance this seems reasonable, if a bit redundant (because of course comparison entails consideration of similarities as well as differences). But when the assignment includes "contrast," students will be given a lower grade if they fail to come up with reasons why two things are different--the approved reasons, of course.
This is typical of the type of vague hand-waving arguments made by those who, for either emotional or political reasons, feel compelled to deny global warming. Climate science long ago progressed beyond the point where such vague nonquantitative arguments have any credibility. It is indeed possible to create a mathematical climate model that is consistent with historical and prehistorical climate evidence, as well as climate on other planets, and yet does not predict several more degrees of warming from anticipated CO2 increases, then produce it. Given the amount of opposition to global warming from powerful, wealthy interests that stand to lose financially from CO2 mitigation efforts, it seems certain that somebody would have developed such a model. Unless, of course, they have tried and failed, because it isn't possible....
More vague handwaving.
This sort of deceptive quote-mining is another reason why global warming deniers have so little credit with actual scientists. This is not a criticism of the final summary, but a comment on an early draft.
Certainly. It was obvious to me from the outset (as I think it would be to any scientist not blinded by bias) that there is no evidence of malfeasance here. Much of it was obviously just pissed off scientists blowing off steam in what they thought was private correspondence. There is no actual evidence of anybody doing anything improper. The HARRY_README.TXT is obviously somebody's first efforts at understanding and adapting old code. I don't think any objective reader could possibly see it as evidence of falsification.
Who said anything about the scales being exactly the same? It remains the case that there are multiple gravitational theories, and the ones that are used routinely to predict things like spaceship trajectories and planetary orbits are known to be approximations. This is not particularly unusual in science.
No, it's the other way around. I started out skeptical, and was convinced by the science. The other thing that has persuaded me was the kinds of arguments being used by warming deniers, exemplified by the ones that you, yourself have invoked in our discussion. Being familiar with the argumentation of other cranks--creationists, antivaccinationists, HIV deniers, Obama birthers, moon landing deniers, etc.--I recognize the characteristic style of argumentation employed by cranks--the embracing of any argument, no matter how transparently invalid, that supports their point of view, repeating long ago rebutted arguments without so much as acknowledging the existence of rebuttals or contrary evidence, quote mining (like your misrepresentation of a criticism of a first draft as a criticism of the final report), etc. etc. The flagrant misapplication of the ideal gas law to try to "explain away" the temperature
correction: that should read, "the stolen correspondence provides no evidence of falsification."
So here, you are postulating some unidentified physical mechanism that will somehow "kick in" to keep global warming well below the range of plausible projections under scenarios of unrestrained CO2 output, as discussed in the AR4 report. That seems like rather extreme wishful thinking.
If you have reasonable grounds for taking issue with the AR4 summary, feel free to state them (although I've yet to see any indication that you've even read it).
Not greatly enough to change the conclusion that mitigation efforts are needed.
It is not true that any evidence of falsification has been exposed by Climategate. This was pretty clear from the outset, and two separate inquiries have reached the conslusion that the stolen correspondence provides more evidence of falsification.
I am not an expert on gravitational physics, so all I can name off the top of my head are general relativity, loop gravity, and string theory. There are doubless more. Just as the various climate models provide predictions that are very similar at a large scale, but differ in the fine details, the gravitational theories make similar large-scale predictions, but diverge at small scales
Sompe predictions are hard and fast, some are not. This is often the case in science. Runaway global warming is not a prediction of the models at all (I guess you still haven't worked your way through the AR4 summary yet, or you'd know this). However, not predicting it is not the same as being confident that it won't happen. There is near universal agreement among climate scientists on the atmospheric physics that predicts several degrees of global warming. I don't think that anybody claims to understand the detailed physics of undersea methane stores well enough to say what it would take to destabilize them and cause truly catastrophic climate change.
Once again, I refer you to the AR4 summary. I'm not going to type it in here just because you can't be bothered to read it yourself.
There are indeed multiple versions of gravitation theory, of which Newton's is just one--one that is known not to be entirely correct. That hasn't stopped us from making predictions of satellite orbits, because there are some things for which all of the theories are in pretty good agreement. Similarly, the climate models agree well enough with respect to the effects of atmospheric CO2. For scientists, the fact that multiple approaches to modeling a system lead to the same overall conclusions increases, rather than decreases, confidence in those conclusions.
Nope. They are explicit physical models, the product of a century of theoretical and experimental work. But they don't predict how much CO2 will be in the atmosphere, because that depends upon what we will do to limit CO2 release. So instead, the models have been run for a variety of CO2 scenarios. For this reason, some climate scientists insist that the model runs should be called "projections" rather than "predictions" because they are dependent upon guesses as to how successful we will be in limiting CO2 release.
Both are examples of physical models that make hard predictions. We known that Newton's Law of Gravitation is not quite correct, and we don't actually have a complete law of gravitation. Nevertheless, if calculations based on Newton's Law indicated that we were about to take serious damage from falling from a height, we would not let the weaknesses in the theory dissuade us from taking immediate action to avoid disaster.
Look it up yourself in the IPCC report; I've already given you the reference. The current models do not predict runaway global warming from anticipated increases in CO2. However, there is no saturation point that prevents such a scenario; it simply is not predicted from the anticipated CO2 levels. On the other hand, nobody is entirely confident that it could not occur, because there are some factors that are not considered in the models, the major one being possible destabilization of methane clathrates. So it is safe to say that runaway global warming is not predicted, but also not completely excluded.
It doesn't really matter. All reasonably plausible models lead to the same concerns
Sounds like you don't understand what an emission scenario is (although you would if you'd really bothered to read the report). The models calculate what the effect on temperature will be of a particular amount of CO2 release. But they are models of physics, not the human mind; they do not attempt to predict, or assign probabilities to, the decisions that people will make regarding controlling CO2 release.
What do you find difficult to understand about comparison of causal physical models to data? Newton's theory of gravitation is a causal model, but one reason why it was accepted was that it was consistent with the observational data on the motion of planets across the sky.
That's not what the models--the real ones that take into account actual conditions of a planet rather than assuming a sealed, insulated box--say. What they do say is that the atmosphere becomes less efficient as a radiator of the heat energy absorbed from the sun, such that the temperature has to be greater--much greater--in order to radiate away the energy absorbed by the clouds.
Once again, you illustrate the point that you haven't taken the time to learn anything about the model that you are attacking so energetically. Read the IPCC report yourself. You might learn something. One thing that you might learn is that the maximum temperature increase is not limited by saturation, but by the fact that that CO2 is not projected to increase indefinitely, due to replacement of CO2 generating technologies with carbon-neutral technologies.
Sorry, you've already violated the assumptions upon which the ideal gas law is founded--a fixed volume container with perfectly rigid, perfectly insulated walls. No excuses. Once you've violated the assumptions, you can't use the theory--you need a new theory, derived for the conditions that you really have (which is, of course, what climate scientists have done).
The tropospheric temperature readings are the satellite temperatures for which we have long-term records. They are the ones that are commonly cited as showing global warming. And they are the ones that crackpots like Monckton have falsely claimed to be calibrated against ground readings. I take it that you now concede that they are not?
Oh yes, it is terribly hard to find. They hid their projections in the Technical Summary in a section entitled "Projections of Future Changes in Climate"
The IPCC is a summary of the conclusions of the most expert climate scientists across the world, so it is appropriate to give it a high weight.
But in fact the main point that the EPA made in this particular response had little to do with the IPCC report. You missed the point. A plausible model has to be consistent with historical and prehistorical climate data, the response to "natural experiments" such as volcanic explosions, and conditions on other planets, such as Mars and Venus.
AGW deniers like to imagine that the physical models that predict global warming are poorly constrained, and can be tweaked predict anything you choose, yet nobody has been able to come up with a model that is consistent with these constraints and does not predict serious warming in response to the anticipated rise in CO2. This is a an example of such a failed model.
No, once again, these models are not statistical models; they are causal models based upon the known physics. The make predictions about long term changes in global temperature as a function of CO2 levels, about the climatic impact of "natural experiments" such as volcanic eruptions, as well as predictions about the climate of other planets, such as Mars and Venus. So far, nobody has been able to come up with any model that is consistent with this body of data and does not predict substantial temperature increases due to the CO2 that humans are adding to the atmosphere.
This isn't some kind of statistical correlation; it is causal. Temperature is a measure of the kinetic energy of molecules, and the faster they move, the more they push on the walls of the container when they bounce of it. Higher temperature->greater velocity->greater impact. That's causality.
It is insane to take a theory that was derived under very limiting simplifying assumptions--an ideal gas uniformly distributed in a container with fixed volume and perfectly rigid, perfectly insulated walls--and insist that it is applicable to a planetary atmosphere. Even the most cursory examination of the equation should give you a clue: What is the volume of a planet's atmosphere? Why isn't there a term for gravity? How can a planet that radiates energy to space be regarded as a perfectly insulated box? One can, of course, build models that deal with these complexities, but it takes work and computation, not simply parroting an equation out of a textbook with no real notion of its meaning.
Never took a course in thermodynamics either, I see. Where do you suppose that the energy that is absorbed by those clouds goes? Just magically vanishes?
You just did a search and you didn't bother to try to figure out what it was actually about, didn't you? This isn't a paper about calibrating the satellite measurements of troposphere temperature (which are the satellite measurements that we are talking about with respect to climate) based on surface measurements--which would be pretty stupid, since the satellites measure the temperature of the troposphere, not the surface. The paper describes the development of a method for deriving surface temperature based upon radiance. A worthwhile thing to do, but not at all what we are talking about.
Except that here is no prediction of a runaway greenhouse effect here either, just a definition of what it means. The IPCC report certainly discusses the concept of a runaway greenhouse--it just doesn't predict it. Which you'd know if you'd actually read it, instead of just doing keyword searches. I find it incredibly revealing that you care so much about climate modeling that you would engage in this extensive debate, that you read crank websites on the subject like WUWT, and yet you haven't even bothered to educate yourself by actually reading the most authoritative account of the current scientific consensus. Very much like the creationists who are full of bogus arguments against "darwinism," but have never even read Darwin, much less a modern textbook in evolutionary biology.
The EPA has dealt with this one. See comment 3-34
Why? Typical crank handwaving, no attempt at mathematical rigor, ignoring the extensive theoretical and observational literature on the earth's radiation spectrum. And then the foolish "sawtooth" argument. Anybody who has ever looked at a noisy signal knows it looks this way. Seeing some kind of feedback mechanism in it has about as much scientific meaning as seeing bunny rabbits in the clouds. And he makes a really stupid error by arguing that the greenhouse effect cannot explain the temperature of Venus's atmosphere because sunlight is absorbed before he reaches the ground (apparently, he never took thermodynamics, so it doesn't occur to him to wonder what happens to that energy after it's absorbed).