Global Warming???

[kewp]

“My final question that I find worth asking, if at least rhetorical: if AGW is obviously true, then why isn’t the IPCC acting with the same routine scientific integrity expected of any science body? In science, results are supposed to speak for themselves.”

They are, you are just too blinded by your own biases to accept it.

The IPCC gets routinely criticized in the science circles for being *too* conservative, if they are criticized at all.

Speaking of routine scientific integrity, you do realize that the sites you often reference, such as climateaudit and junkscience.org, have exactly none? No original research, no peer review?

[FutureSDguy]

“They are, you are just too blinded by your own biases to accept it.”

And you’re not blinded and unbiased?

“The IPCC gets routinely criticized in the science circles for being *too* conservative, if they are criticized at all.”

Most of the criticism of IPCC is that they make too many assumptions in their data, and do not follow the usual rigour in scientific methodology (including peer-reviews.)

“Speaking of routine scientific integrity, you do realize that the sites you often reference, such as climateaudit and junkscience.org, have exactly none? No original research, no peer review?”

In a proof by contradiction, one only needs to point out a flaw in reasoning. That’s not a publication, just of critique of one. The burden of proof is with IPCC, not the critics.

[Anonymous]

In a proof by contradiction, one only needs to point out a flaw in reasoning. That’s not a publication, just of critique of one. The burden of proof is with IPCC, not the critics.

No it isn’t. This isn’t an austere abstract logical argument, it is science.

Even if “the burden of proof” were with the IPCC, but the proof (actually ‘evidence’, as this is science, not mathematics) has been given with enormous effort and seriousness. This has resulted in a self-consistent logically and scientifically justified consensus. At the moment, the nay-sayers need to actually present their own contrary physical theory and supporting data instead of relying on sterile “null hypthothesis” BS. An amateur just cleverly thinking up some random wild-ass-guess conceivably relevant mechanism without further investigation does not fly. There’s no “so there, gotcha!”, and by now there is no large obvious physical mechanism which the entire scientific community has somehow missed (and even if it were so, the presently known mechanisms do NOT stop working).

You can look that the 944 page report on the scientific basis (which itself quotes probably thousands of journal articles over the years, representing maybe 10000 man-years of work)

From 2001 you can see here:

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/index.htm

And the list of authors, and their affiliations:

http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/558.htm

And this is but one of the IPCC reports.

http://www.junkscience.org is just plain FoxNoise level junk and deserves no consideration.

climateaudit.org appears to be a McKitrick blog.
McKitrick has been the attempted “hockey stick” breakers, but he’s been basically wrong. (McKitrick is an economist)

False Claims by McIntyre and McKitrick regarding the Mann et al. (1998) reconstruction

On Yet Another False Claim by McIntyre and McKitrick

Rutherford et al 2005 highlights

Hockey sticks: Round 27

In another circumstance when he & co-workers attempted to show spurious temperature correlations with economic activity (in an attempt to impeach {a tiny fraction} of the global-warming data), it turned out he made a large calculational error by improperly failing to convert from degrees to radians in the regression analysis.

[FutureSDguy]

If it took an economist to “break” the hockey stick analysis, wouldn’t that be a case of extremely sloppy climate science? Seriously, this was my first observation upon hearing about the Mann hockey stick: that a layman exposed its flaw so easily. Even more disturbing is that the whole initial Kyoto campaign rode upon it and that IPCC (to relax my earlier statement) included it in its earlier reports.

“So there, gotcha” is sufficient in sending a paper back to the drawing board. Again, the burden of proof is upon the author, especially when it comes to trillion-dollar policy making.

Your dependence on realclimate.org is also disturbing. That’s an advocacy site that parrots anything IPCC. Its bias is nauseating. (I’m also turned off by knee-jerk anti-AGW bias also.)

Of course people make mistakes. That’s no excuse for forever ignoring all sides of the issue, which seems to be what you would prefer to do. (People do not like to be given data that conflicts with belief, and people who can’t handle that shouldn’t be scientists.)

Thanks for the list. It may come in handy someday. I have a feeling that in 5 years or so–however long it takes for IPCC’s credibility to fall apart from its own weight of inconsistencies and false predictions–that several of these authors are going to have difficulty looking for a job.

[Anonymous]

I hope that this IPCC fiasco falls flat on its face for the sake of separating science from politics. It’s a extremely toxic combination that (in my skeptic opinion) is causing the wrong steps to be made. Its attitude that “the science is settled” is insulting to scientists who oppose. This is not unlike what happened to Galileo when it came to characterizations of the solar system.

This is quite ironic, because in fact Galileo’s theories and observations were very well accepted and believed in his lifetime by everybody else who could remotely be called a “scientist” (natural philosopher) at the time.

Galileo of course was going up against a very conservative and rigid political ideology for which he was punished for un-scientific and essentially political reasons.

And in what way is the IPCC supposedly ‘infected’ with politics? I see things the other way around. The current climate results are a product of thirty to fourty years of long-term and serious study based on physics. For a long time it was science. Only just now has the other side come in and the other side is much more closely affiliated with political and financial agendas who suddenly feel threatened by the results.

Objective science has no obligation to ‘split the difference’ on any politically-impacted question.

DrChaos, I’m very much impressed with your ability to cover the GW topic, but I also do get the impression that you’re trying to overwhelm the audience with science-talk as a means for validation, either consciously or subconsciously.

I’m not trying to “overwhelm” anybody but I am certainly attempting to educate the audience with ‘science-talk’. Since the issue is actually understanding science, it’s appropriate.

I’m of course an amateur compared to an actual expert in this field, but I am able to understand what the experts say.

Most things in science actually do have simple explanations–feedbacks, forcings, and the arcane physics of atmospheric CO2 might help in a more accurate model of climate,

And indeed Arrhenius did estimate roughly the climate sensitivity to CO2 back in the 19th century, based on something very simple.

but I suspect the longer-term cycles ultimately must have extra-terrestial causes.

Maybe. But so what? Why does that change the physics of what is observed NOW? In a realistic assessment, one has to consider that if there are significant presently unmodeled extra-terrestrial unknowns than this increases the judiciously estimated variance on future outcomes, but gives no information about the trend, since there is no reason to suppose these influences will happen to be particularly beneficial or harmful. Since the true catastrophic outcomes from global warming happen on the extremes (like how a Category 5 hurricane can be 100 times more damaging than a category 3, even if winds are only 40% stronger), then this gives even stronger impetus for humans to do something about the influences that they do have some control over, to lower the tail probability of disaster.

By the way, regarding cosmic rays and solar influences:

Recent Warming But No Trend in Galactic Cosmic Rays

Taking Cosmic Rays for a spin

The trouble with sunspots

[Anonymous]

If it took an economist to “break” the hockey stick analysis, wouldn’t that be a case of extremely sloppy climate science?

You don’t understand. The supposed “breaking” was itself broken, and the original conclusions were vindicated by the National Academy of Scines.

http://www.realclimate.org is not run by one person but multiple contributors who are practicing climate scientists.

Indeed there is a viewpoint, but the bias is towards explaining the best science.

Does the American Chemical Society have an “anti-atom” contingent, and should it split the difference on whether molecules are made out of atoms on the periodic table?

It may come in handy someday. I have a feeling that in 5 years or so–however long it takes for IPCC’s credibility to fall apart from its own weight of inconsistencies and false predictions

In four assessment reports, the evidence supporting essential core of the originally predicted hypothesis, generated long before the IPCC organization existed, has remained true and is growing stronger.

Anthropogenic global warming was indeed suggested as a prediction for the future back in the 1960’s or 1970’s before the instrumental record clearly showed an abnormal trend. It was a prediction, based on physics. It turned out to be true.

[drunkle]

Submitted by FutureSDguy on February 20, 2007 – 1:37pm.
I think people give humans too much credit for its ability to affect the climate.
…

continuing character attacks upon me and calling me ignorant needs to come to a rest.

clearcutting, paving, eutrophication, acid rain, desertification, irrigation…

are you serious? if you dont want to be treated as an ignorant, don’t act it. what do they say?

it’s better to be quiet and be thought ignorant than to speak and be proven ignorant

something like that.

First, I am yet to see a completely definitive reason for ice ages: is it due to Milankovich cycles, or a combination of things? Second, whatever the cause, I’m extremely skeptical that man can do anything about it, unless he really wants to mess up the environment.

man most likely cannot stop natural changes, but he can cause his own changes. when a system is in equilibrium such as the time between ice ages or during an ice age or between meteor strikes or between volcanic eruptions, etc etc, man becomes the primary influence on the environment as he is the dominant creature.

he doesn’t even have to want to mess it up, by nature of his dominance, he will affect it.

the sunspot cycle has always occured to me as the most meaningful piece of evidence. Who knows, this could be the nail in the coffin?

you ask for objectivity and “neutrality” and yet you’ve already jumped to conclusions here yourself. *you* need to drop the bias.

and think about this. sun spot cycles are on periods of around 10-11 years and yet that has no correlation with the temperature variations over the same period. sun spots most likely do affect the environment, but the degree in which they do is not apparent.

but I do think it’s distracting resources from the ultimate resolution of the puzzle

no one’s stopping you.

think this issue of CO2-induced GW is to many just a proxy for the ongoing battle against burning fossil fuels

what on going battle? if fossil fuels had no pollution involved, no foreign wars attached, no limits to supply, do you think fossil fuels would still be “battled”? of course not. fossil fuels have draw backs, part of which *is* contribution to global warming.. duh. it’s like you’re telling people not to blame terrorists for their terrorist actions.

I hope that this IPCC fiasco falls flat on its face

oh yeah, no bias here, move along.

look again and start reading the views from the other side.

so far, it’s all bad. that steve m blog on “missing data” or whatnot was crap. he jumped to a conclusion without giving objective and unbiased analysis of the methods and methodology used.

My final question that I find worth asking, if at least rhetorical: if AGW is obviously true, then why isn’t the IPCC acting with the same routine scientific integrity expected of any science body? In science, results are supposed to speak for themselves.

prove that they aren’t.

[drunkle]

Submitted by FutureSDguy on February 20, 2007 – 4:15pm.
If it took an economist to “break” the hockey stick analysis, wouldn’t that be a case of extremely sloppy climate science? Seriously, this was my first observation upon hearing about the Mann hockey stick: that a layman exposed its flaw so easily. Even more disturbing is that the whole initial Kyoto campaign rode upon it and that IPCC (to relax my earlier statement) included it in its earlier reports.

you merely *want* to believe that.

it’s funny that that accountant proclaimed accountants to be better record keepers than the volunteer data collectors of the temps. as if the recent accounting scandals hadn’t occured, as if the volunteers are being paid in percentages of corporate financial “savings”.

[FutureSDguy]

Lovely strawman. Bleat on.

[drunkle]

Submitted by FutureSDguy on February 20, 2007 – 5:13pm.
Lovely strawman. Bleat on.

what? no more handwaving and empty rhetoric? too easy.

[ucodegen]

Wow.. a lot of ‘stuff’ posted since I checked..

Ok, real quickly. I have noticed how realclimate.org has been put up as an example of truth while junkscience.com has been put up as a site that misrepresents the truth. Big problem though. realclimate.org does not footnote or show references for the underpinnings of its statements. On the other hand, junkscience.com has a considerable number of references as its underlying work. As far as how scientific papers are really written, junkscience.com is doing it right and realclimate.org is doing it wrong. It has to do with strength of evidence.

Because realclimate.org references or derives from very few if any underlying scientific papers in its statements, it is easy to argue against the points made by realclimate.org because they are not supported by presented evidence (ie: if no derived papers, need actual unfiltered source data and any filters applied and why).

Because junkscience.com heavily footnotes its pages with references to the original work, the only way to invalidate its statements is to do one of the two following: 1) must show that the derivation or conjecture derived from the underlying work is incorrect and how it is not supported by the underlying work OR 2) must prove that the underlying work being referenced is itself incorrect. If the underlying work also further references more underlying work.. that may also have to be proven to be invalidated. The key word is prove… using similar reference techniques to support the counter arguments.

It is like chess where the checkmating queen is supported by a rook and knight. To prove the queen can be taken, you have to also prove the rook and or knight are not there (or have already been taken).

In addition, any scientist would know that doing all your references from one site, a blog no less (realclimate.org) would get you laughed out of the scientific community.

I am waiting to see if anyone can counter the references that junkscience.com has used(with more recent scientific papers that directly contradict the papers that he used, and prove them false)…

[Borat]

Here’s the Source Watch entry about junkscience.com, as well as the background about it’s creator, Steven J. Milloy.

[drunkle]

Submitted by ucodegen on February 20, 2007 – 6:54pm.
Wow.. a lot of ‘stuff’ posted since I checked..

Ok, real quickly. I have noticed how realclimate.org has been put up as an example of truth while junkscience.com has been put up as a site that misrepresents the truth. Big problem though. realclimate.org does not footnote or show references for the underpinnings of its statements. On the other hand, junkscience.com has a considerable number of references as its underlying work. As far as how scientific papers are really written, junkscience.com is doing it right and realclimate.org is doing it wrong. It has to do with strength of evidence.

which article on junkscience.com are you refering to?

http://www.junkscience.com/Greenhouse/Cosmic_rays_and_climate.html

this is one i skimmed and found lacking in references. notably:

“How big a deal is this indirect cloud effect? Huge, actually. In just 5 years it was responsible for a 2% decrease in low clouds (the kind that reflect incoming solar radiation by day) which, in turn, equates to an increase in surface warming of 1.2 Wm-2 from incident radiation — equivalent to some 85% of the IPCC’s estimate for the effect of all carbon dioxide increase since the Industrial Revolution. ”

vague comments like this are off putting. which 5 years? is it a pattern? does the pattern match the cycles of sun spot activity? does it correlate with the temperature data?

not to mention this:

“So, now we know that the more active sun warms the planet directly with increased incident radiation and indirectly both by reducing low cloud and likely by elevating the proportion of gaseous water — the most important greenhouse gas. ”

he omits the fact that water vapor is also a component of exhaust.

In addition, any scientist would know that doing all your references from one site, a blog no less (realclimate.org) would get you laughed out of the scientific community.

and yet you point to junkscience? huh?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Milloy

[1jrp1]

ucodegen wrote:

realclimate.org does not footnote or show references for the underpinnings of its statements. On the other hand, junkscience.com has a considerable number of references as its underlying work. As far as how scientific papers are really written, junkscience.com is doing it right and realclimate.org is doing it wrong. It has to do with strength of evidence.

Neither site is equivalent to a peer-reviewed scientific journal. Furthermore, the Realclimate.org posts tend to be short and to the point wth appropriate references to the scientific literature. Junkscience.com, on the other hand, seems to subscribe to the more is more philosphy, throwing all the spaghetti at the wall, hoping some of it sticks. That’s just how I see it. But people can judge for themselves: go to

Index

To FutureSDoilguy:

Here’s a personal attack: I think you are a cynical and dishonest debater. Several people (especially DrChaos) have respectfully tried to educate you on the state of climate science, have answered all of your questions, have rebutted your inane arguments, have forgiven your unsubstantiated personal attacks on the integrity of thousands of working scientists whom you have never met (and you accuse them of propaganda, fearmongering, data manipulation). And then you have the gall to imply that DrChaos is trying to overwhelm (read intimidate) his audience? His explanations have been textbook examples of clear, concise writing. Your arguments, on the other hand, are weak, ever shifting, and now the best you can come up with is some vague feeling that the mechanism for AGW is extra-terrestrial in origin (BTW, I think you are extra-terrestial in origin). People in this forum have spent a lot of time trying to respond in the clearest possible way to your dishonest questions, and … poof … it takes you 30 seconds to grab another insubstantial, inane “argument” off the web, all so that you can keep your little game going.

You are not interested in the truth. You will never acknowledge the evidence that AGW is occuring, no matter how overwhelming the evidence. The only thing I can’t figure out is if you actually work for the oil industry, or if you are just one of those “smart” people who is more interested in the ego-trip of arguing than the truth. It is vital to acknowledge the validity of several decades of scientific effort and conclusions, so that we can actually start addressing AGW. But you would rather treat it all as some high-school debate. You should feel ashamed. You are acting like a spoiled teenager. (You aren’t a teenager are you?)

Anyway, I’m done responding to you directly. Anytime you post something especially misleading from now on, I’ll probably just post some automated boilerplate that readers should know that you are insincere and that they should read the entirety of this thread to see just how obtuse you actually are.

[FutureSDguy]

dup

[Author]

Posts