bjack on 17/3/2015 at 16:29
Quote Posted by dj_ivocha
Will it, though? If we "try" hard enough, it could get to the point where the runaway greenhouse effect is irreversible and the Earth ends up like Venus. If something like that happens, probably all multicellular life would perish.
It's the sulfuric acid clouds that are the issue on Venus + CO2 levels that are far beyond what we could ever do. In addition, the crazy rotation does it no good either. Run away green house is a ghost tale they tell you so that you'll give up 50% of your wealth to the 3rd world. Meanwhile, China, Russia, and India will increase their CO2 by more than we reduce ours. We lose our wealth and they are rises up at our expense. Take from the rich and give to the relative poor.
BTW - I am not saying CO2 is not the cause. I am saying that is may not be and to say that it is 100% settled is NOT science. And, if I had cherry picked data like some of these researchers have done, I would have been sent to jail! The fact that these guys adjust data to fit their models and completely damning and one of the reasons so many Americans do not believe the hype.
By saying Man Man Climate Change is settled, it becomes a faith based religion. And just like the church, you symbolically burn a potential Galileo at the stake when you deny contradictory evidence. Or you are being like Dr. Zaius in the cave.
Pyrian on 17/3/2015 at 17:06
Quote Posted by bjack
One does not cook or adjust measurements to make them fit one's hypothesis, and that is exactly what some of the research has done. One must accept all the data, even those data that contradict your views. I don't see that happening.
Actually, real climate science does this all the time, and quite visibly at that. Throwing out the contested calibrations almost invariably results in warmer numbers, not colder ones.
Quote Posted by bjack
So, are we warming at this time? Yes. Is it caused by CO2, CH4, etc? That is not yet proven.
We know there's more CO2. We know the CO2 absorbs heat. We know there's more heat. And that "more heat" looks an awful lot like the quantity of heat absorbed by the quantity of excess CO2. None of the numbers add up as exactly as anybody would like, but the shoe is very much on the other foot.
The only thing that isn't proven one way or the other is the speculation that other factors are more important. Notably, this speculation is effectively impossible to disprove, so deniers can hide behind it indefinitely. It's just another flying spaghetti monster, really.
Quote Posted by bjack
Correlation is not not proof of causation.
Any doof with a sealable chamber, some gas mixes, a heatlamp and a thermometer can prove the underlying causation. Indeed, the causation was demonstrated long before the correlation became evident. Calculating a causation, hypothesizing a correlation, and then observing that correlation in nature is a basic unit of scientific research.
I've been in this debate long enough to watch the denier argument go from "it won't happen" to "it isn't happening" to "we didn't cause it" without the slightest gap, shame, or cognitive dissonance.
Quote Posted by bjack
Warming makes CO2 rise, not the other way around. The rise is CO2 is an effect of higher temps, not the cause.
This speculation is easily disproven by available data, as in either case the effect will lag the cause. The rise in CO2 most closely tracks industrial output and predates temperature change. Nor does this hypothesis in any way explain where the extra heat absorbed by the CO2 (which we
know happens) is going - if demonstrated, this would be an argument for a runaway greenhouse effect.
Quote Posted by bjack
Yes, we are adding more CO2 than the "natural" amount, but the percentage is far below the levels of CO2 during much cooler periods of time.
Uh, generally time periods with higher CO2 were hotter. Cherry picking a datapoint here and there is not only not scientific practice, it is profoundly dishonest and a clear mark of bias. This is like claiming that global warming isn't happening because it's snowy in Boston right now.
Quote Posted by bjack
The Koch brothers and petroleum companies are funding alternative research because governments will not.
They're investing to maximize profit. Period. Amusingly, even their studies are having difficulty doing anything more than pointing out that we don't know the things we don't know.
Quote Posted by bjack
And no, I will not site the numerous sources of information about GW.
Of course you won't.
Tony_Tarantula on 17/3/2015 at 19:52
Whenever anyone starts saying that "The science about [X issue] is settled, therefore any further discussion is useless" you know to immediately stop listening. If previous generations of scientists only cared about "settled science" rather than questioning the dominant assumptions of their day then neither the internet nor this website would exist.
faetal on 17/3/2015 at 20:16
We know that CO2, methane and sulphur oxides create a greenhouse effect by allowing sunlight to pass through the atmosphere while trapping heat in, that is fact. We know that the concentrations of all three in the atmosphere have increased by unprecedented amounts due to human industrial activity in the last 200 years, this is fact. We know that global average temperatures have increased at an unprecedented rate which corresponds to the increase in the gases we know cause warming. Where the uncertainty lies in how accurately we can predict the amount of warming and what the exact effects will be.
I can understand why some people with insufficient education might cling to this uncertainty as being somehow the same as "everything might be ok", but really, that's just standard cognitive dissonance with a side of Dunning-Kruger.
faetal on 17/3/2015 at 20:20
Quote Posted by bjack
Lastly, I see attacks against a person's viewpoint based upon popularity numbers. So it is wrong to say Jeremy is a cool guy because so many support him, but correct to say man made GW is correct because 97% of a selected group of scientists say it is? Can't have it both ways. Oh wait, you follow Insoc. Of course you can have it both ways. :thumb:
What the fffuuuuck? How is peer-reviewed research the same thing as people's opinion of an entertainer? Also, wtf is Insoc?
Tony_Tarantula on 17/3/2015 at 20:36
It's very closed minded. No matter how thoroughly peer reviewed any study is, that doesn't mean that new studies that use a better analytical method or incorporate new data won't disprove the results of said peer reviewed studies......even if we pretend that the practice of rigging peer reviews doesn't exist.
I also think you've got a bit of a skewed opinion. In multiple conversations I've gotten the impression that if a study is "peer reviewed" it holds a status equivalent to papal infallability whereas if it's not then it's garbage not worth reading.
There's some legitimate criticisms of how the entire system works:
(
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1420798/)
Quote:
The evidence on whether there is bias in peer review against certain sorts of authors is conflicting, but there is strong evidence of bias against women in the process of awarding grants.5 The most famous piece of evidence on bias against authors comes from a study by DP Peters and SJ Ceci.6 They took 12 studies that came from prestigious institutions that had already been published in psychology journals. They retyped the papers, made minor changes to the titles, abstracts, and introductions but changed the authors' names and institutions. They invented institutions with names like the Tri-Valley Center for Human Potential. The papers were then resubmitted to the journals that had first published them. In only three cases did the journals realize that they had already published the paper, and eight of the remaining nine were rejected—not because of lack of originality but because of poor quality. Peters and Ceci concluded that this was evidence of bias against authors from less prestigious institutions.
This is known as the Mathew effect: `To those who have, shall be given; to those who have not shall be taken away even the little that they have'. I remember feeling the effect strongly when as a young editor I had to consider a paper submitted to the BMJ by Karl Popper.7 I was unimpressed and thought we should reject the paper. But we could not. The power of the name was too strong. So we published, and time has shown we were right to do so. The paper argued that we should pay much more attention to error in medicine, about 20 years before many papers appeared arguing the same.
The editorial peer review process has been strongly biased against `negative studies', i.e. studies that find an intervention does not work. It is also clear that authors often do not even bother to write up such studies. This matters because it biases the information base of medicine. It is easy to see why journals would be biased against negative studies. Journalistic values come into play. Who wants to read that a new treatment does not work? That's boring.
faetal on 17/3/2015 at 21:08
Oddly enough Tony, I know all of that given that it is my career. But if you are asking me:
A) Who do I trust more, the opinions of internet guys who clearly just want to keep going as usual without worrying vs. the vast majority of climate scientists, then I'm going with the latter.
B) Do we err on the side of caution or carry on like normal? It's a more empirically sound version of Pascal's wager. Better to over-plan and then dial back if the projections were exaggerated than to adopt a laisser-faire "fuck the doomsday prophecies, let's buy bigger cars" attitude and then find out that we're fucked.
Either way, your very lazy and hand-wavy paragraph isn't actually a decent, concise or even targeted critique of climate science.
faetal on 17/3/2015 at 21:16
Quote Posted by Tony_Tarantula
I also think you've got a bit of a skewed opinion. In multiple conversations I've gotten the impression that if a study is "peer reviewed" it holds a status equivalent to papal infallability whereas if it's not then it's garbage not worth reading.
Then you haven't been paying close attention. If something is peer-reviewed, then that is the baseline of where we can start to take something seriously. By all means that doesn't mean that everything which is peer-reviewed is of good quality. There's tonnes of peer-reviewed bullshit out there. What I normally look for is a systematic review, or other form of meta-analysis, whereby reviews (themselves a summation of the published literature to date) are collated and their results used to a form a "current consensus" weighted for the the quality of the studies involved.
In the absence of any knowledge, you are trying to use the old tired tactic of trying to undermine my capability to form a proper argument by trying to attach some blanket flaw in my overall reasoning. Fair enough, it is quicker than learning about how science works and reading a tonne of literature to get an idea of the current state of the accepted research. You'd forgive if I flat out dismiss it though.
bjack on 17/3/2015 at 21:42
Quote Posted by faetal
What the fffuuuuck? How is peer-reviewed research the same thing as people's opinion of an entertainer? Also, wtf is Insoc?
First, I do not know any of you here, but would probably enjoy a pint or two with most of you. In my advancing years, I now try to keep out of religion and political discussions, but bite from time to time. Since you cannot hear how I would express these following words, they can come off as harsh to some. They are meant to be more thoughtful and questioning. Devil's advocate, if you will. Think of Morgan Freeman's voice as you read this. Enjoy the fun, hatred, or indifference to them as you will. Cheers - Bjack
Ok to the answers:
The 97% did not peer review the research. From what I have read and heard many times over, they only expressed their opinions based on reports of the research, or simply their overall opinion. Sort of what you and I are doing with the dumbed down data produced to the masses.
As for Insoc, that is the political/social system in Orwell's 1984. It is an extremely famous book that I highly recommend - also Animal Farm. The term INSOC is short for English Socialism and makes the Nazis look like puppies. The party instills the idea and practice of doublethink as a social control device, which is holding two or more completely opposing viewpoints at once, while completely failing to recognize the paradox. It is the failure to grasp even the simplest analogies. It is saying 2 + 2 = 5, but knowing it is 4 if the situation requires it, then saying it is 6 if the party says it is. It is blind obedience to "authority". It is the belief that their in no objective reality except that which the state says exists.
In today's world, a mind form of Insoc is seen in the PC movement. One may support rap music, yet must damn white people for saying the same words, even in jest. Doublethink is used when hating Jeremy Clarkson for intolerance, but calling for his painful death. Delighting in the pain of another just because you do not like their viewpoint is pretty psychotic to me. Maybe it was just having a laugh? Maybe Jeremy is too? :cheeky:
Using doublethink is being a conscious hypocrite, believing in science and not accepting scientific evidence when it does not fit the parties belief. It is holding onto socialism, which is extremely unfair to those that contribute more, in the name of fairness. It is expressing hate in the name of freedom and love. It is bombing abortion clinics.
At least Clarkson is an honest bigoted loud mouth. You know he will be a prick at all times. While I do not always like him, I do respect his right to be an idiot. What is important is not what he says, but his freedom to say it. Those that want to shut him up are PC fascists. We are talking about the BBC though. I do watch BBC America for more than just Top Gear. Along with CNN, I watch BBC to see what the left fascists are up to. I then watch Fox News to see what the right fascists are up to.
But I don't worry much about it really, as long as the pendulum continues to swing. The next conservative swing is around the corner and the PC crowd will be swept aside for another 10 or so years. It will swing too far right and the left will come back, only to fail again, and so it will go… over and over for generations. What I fear is one side will permanently win. Read 1984 for one way to keep one side always in power. We already have much of the infrastructure in place. It just comes down to who will be the tyrannical monster at the top. To me it will be terrible is either are in 100% control. Whomever is in control, there will be thought police, either PC or some other faction that will not allow free thought to occur. When you state that the "Science is Settled", you send a chill down my spine. In 1984, it is eternal war that keep people in check. In our new world, it will be climate change. It is a device of control. That fact that data is being cooked to prove it is telling.
Tony_Tarantula on 17/3/2015 at 22:11
Quote Posted by faetal
Oddly enough Tony, I know all of that given that it is my career. But if you are asking me:
Given that your arguments regarding other topics have been based on the assumption that if the majority of peer reviewed studies say one thing(see previous arguments about "settled science says that...."), then no bias exists, I would assume that you know that fact but conveniently neglect it when it suits your purposes.
