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Sanya12364 Posts
On February 25 2010 11:15 EmeraldSparks wrote:Show nested quote +On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote:
The thermometer chronology folks for example do all sorts of adjustments to revise the more recent temperatures upwards to confirm their warming bias. They hardly do anything so thorough to capture the warming effects of human land use and other human activities. (It all has to be carbon dioxide.) Elaborate on these adjustments of recent temperatures.
USHCN methodology:
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.html
This is the most visible. Quite a bit of the methodology is hidden in many of the other temperature records. Namely the "homogenization" process.
The USHCN methodology introduces a +.5 F base on adjustment alone. They'll brag about how they were very thorough in adjusting the temperature because the modern equipment detects lower temperatures.
Of course you can review the siting issues at http://www.surfacestations.org/ (open source science). The scientific paper is supposedly forthcoming. The best guess that USHCN will give poor siting issues is that it introduces some huge error bars into their numbers - which they assume will cancel out based on their large sample size.
The last step is based on the paper "Urbanization: Its Detection and Effect in the United States Climate Record" by Karl. T.R., et al., 1988, Journal of Climate 1:1099-1123. Which says that urbanization adjustment is on average .06 C for urbanization for populations as small as 10000 (80 % less than 25000) based on a 1980 census.
This later paper http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/38601.pdf states that the average difference is .69 C and .89 C for two periods. There isn't much mention of industrial heat sources, and the second paper adds the qualifier that even the rural stations may suffer from creeping urbanization. Even at 1/5 of the .69C, that's .14C or double the 1988 estimate based on periods only 4 years later.
A new thermometer network is supposedly much better, but it'll be some time before it produces enough data to really analyze.
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Sanya12364 Posts
On February 25 2010 12:14 Element)LoGiC wrote:
The argument might be that any correlation before it diverged was coincidental. However, I think his argument is that due to the fact that there's such a huge divergence now, the integrity of any data or conclusions based on such data is compromised. And he's right. Those trees weren't cut down, the bristlecone pine trees used in the PC formulas which were given huge weight were known to be problem sets.
Often what happens is a paradigm shift. For example a buffering or negative feedback process dominates to keep changes in contributing factors minimal but stops working after the buffer has been exhausted. If there is a paradigm shift around the 1950s, then there is nothing to rule out paradigm shifts in earlier periods.
Any valid theory must account for the paradigm shifts such that they are no longer paradigm shifts but rather variable that are well understood in the context of the theory. The large divergence only goes to show the magnitude of possible shifts in paradigm with respect to tree rings.
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On February 25 2010 12:14 Element)LoGiC wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2010 12:00 EmeraldSparks wrote:On February 25 2010 11:50 TanGeng wrote:One by one? On February 25 2010 11:15 EmeraldSparks wrote:On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote:
The paleo-climatologists especially those dentro types have this notion that their trees are great indicators of temperature despite rainfall, moisture, soil fertility, and accident to individual trees having great effect on growth as well. Indeed, the correlation prior to sixty years ago correlates well with the existing temperature record, and prior to that, it correlates well with other proxies of temperatures as well. Curiously enough, rainfall and moisture are also related to climate. This one is easy. NO. You are looking for a single principle component in the multivariate analysis not the combination of two or three or four or five. If we are looking at a combination of rainfall, moisture, sun, carbon dioxide and temperature then there is no basis for saying that the past was any cooler than the present. It's a combination of all those factors right? If the present decline was some change in climate (i.e. all the other factors) what rules out that previous increases and declines weren't some kind of arrangement where climate and temperature offset each other? Tree rings correlate well with the temperature record prior to sixty years ago as well as other temperature proxies such as ice cores, boreholes, and underwater sediments. On February 25 2010 11:50 TanGeng wrote:
And based on the modern data set, both a direct and inverse relationship exists between temperature and tree ring width? So if tree ring width increases, temperature could be either higher or lower? Scientists believe that something changed about sixty years ago in one particular tree ring set because the correlation which had been holding for a long time ceased to hold in that particular tree ring set. On February 25 2010 11:50 TanGeng wrote:
BTW, this is how science works. One false prediction and divergence invalidates the entire theory. It has to be consistent all the time.
The theory is, "tree rings are a good temperature proxy before 1960." It is similar to a theory like, "the tree outside my house grows with time," both of which are true up until the point something fucks them up like us cutting down said tree. False predictions result in a revision of the theory, which in this case is the caveat. The argument might be that any correlation before it diverged was coincidental. However, I think his argument is that due to the fact that there's such a huge divergence now, the integrity of any data or conclusions based on such data is compromised. And he's right. Those trees weren't cut down, the bristlecone pine trees used in the PC formulas which were given huge weight were known to be problem sets. You're going to have a hard time arguing against logic in this debate. Your last argument was extremely poor.
My argument was that the divergence of a certain set of tree rings after 1960 does not invalidate the use of tree rings as a temperature proxy because tree rings correlate well with temperature in the known temperature record and with other temperature proxies and therefore can be used as a temperature proxy over certain periods of time.
On February 25 2010 12:34 TanGeng wrote:
Any valid theory must account for the paradigm shifts such that they are no longer paradigm shifts but rather variable that are well understood in the context of the theory. The large divergence only goes to show the magnitude of possible shifts in paradigm with respect to tree rings.
Not really. Some things are just out of the scope of some theories. The theory of gravitation held up even when people knew that it wasn't correctly predicting the precession of Mercury. Maxwell's equations held up pretty well until people noticed that they fucked up when you applied them to really small things and these things were definitely not well understood in the context of the theory. This didn't stop either of them from being broadly true.
On February 25 2010 12:21 TanGeng wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2010 11:15 EmeraldSparks wrote:On February 24 2010 03:35 TanGeng wrote:
The thermometer chronology folks for example do all sorts of adjustments to revise the more recent temperatures upwards to confirm their warming bias. They hardly do anything so thorough to capture the warming effects of human land use and other human activities. (It all has to be carbon dioxide.) Elaborate on these adjustments of recent temperatures. USHCN methodology: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/ushcn/ushcn.htmlThis is the most visible. Quite a bit of the methodology is hidden in many of the other temperature records. Namely the "homogenization" process. The USHCN methodology introduces a +.5 F base on adjustment alone. They'll brag about how they were very thorough in adjusting the temperature because the modern equipment detects lower temperatures.
The intention of the homogenization process is to adjust for processes which would cause the temperatures read to differ from the temperatures of the sites. The application of the homogeneity adjustment should not insert a bias that does not exist. Are you arguing that the homogenization process itself (step four) is an inaccurate way to treat the data, or are you simply claiming that the adjustment in step 6 is incorrect?
On February 25 2010 12:21 TanGeng wrote:Of course you can review the siting issues at http://www.surfacestations.org/ (open source science). The scientific paper is supposedly forthcoming. The best guess that USHCN will give poor siting issues is that it introduces some huge error bars into their numbers - which they assume will cancel out based on their large sample size.
Do they have an estimate of the average effect on temperature due to the quality of siting?
On February 25 2010 12:21 TanGeng wrote:
The last step is based on the paper "Urbanization: Its Detection and Effect in the United States Climate Record" by Karl. T.R., et al., 1988, Journal of Climate 1:1099-1123. Which says that urbanization adjustment is on average .06 C for urbanization for populations as small as 10000 (80 % less than 25000) based on a 1980 census.
The abstract states: "stations with populations near 10 000 are shown to average 0.1°C warmer for the mean annual temperature than nearby stations located in rural areas with populations less than 2000," and the 0.06 C figure seems to be for a population of 2000. For a city with a population of a hundred thousand, million, and ten million the expected difference from Karl's paper is 0.32 C, 0.91 C, and 2.57 C respectively.
On February 25 2010 12:21 TanGeng wrote:This later paper http://ams.confex.com/ams/pdfpapers/38601.pdf states that the average difference is .69 C and .89 C for two periods. There isn't much mention of industrial heat sources, and the second paper adds the qualifier that even the rural stations may suffer from creeping urbanization. Even at 1/5 of the .69C, that's .14C or double the 1988 estimate based on periods only 4 years later.
The particular natures of the sources aren't addressed in either paper, as they are based off of statistical comparisons. What the particular sources of the heat may be are irrelevant to this identification. Furthermore, the method used to determine whether a station is urban in the latter paper depends on the normalized difference vegetation index and is elaborated on a different paper published in 1999, and I do not currently know (and you have not asserted) what populations of city tend to be classified as urban. Therefore there has not been demonstrated to be a contradiction between these two papers.
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Manns tree ring data (used on the 'Gore hockey stick graph') has already been proven to be cherry picked , considering this it is not out of the question other tree data has been handpicked to achieve a specific outcome.
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On February 25 2010 13:18 PobTheCad wrote:
Manns tree ring data (used on the 'Gore hockey stick graph') has already been proven to be cherry picked , considering this it is not out of the question other tree data has been handpicked to achieve a specific outcome.
McIntyre demonstrated that the data was "cherry-picked" by picking a huge group of trees that were all in the same place and then finding the tree ring record for all those trees in the same place (KHAD) and noticing that his results were different form the ones that others had gotten. The tree ring data utilized by Mann used trees from all four regions. It turned out that this one region did not return the same result as for all four regions.
http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/sensit.htm#
Keith Briffa wrote:
Figure D: This Figure is equivalent to Figure C except that at each site the RCS curve, and resulting site indices, are calculated including the Yamal_SF data as well as the measurement data from living trees. The dominance of the common sub-fossil measurements produces a very similar RCS curve in each case (upper panel). The indices produced exhibit a similar picture of recent growth trends varying between sites, as that seen in Figure C, with mean tree-ring index trends higher for the POR and YAD sites, lowest (even negative after 1970 with respect to the long-term mean) at KHAD, and at an intermediate level at JAH. The black line in the lower panel represents the chronology (from 1750) produced using all of the data, Yamal_All, standardised with a Yamal_All RCS curve.
This does not demonstrate that the tree ring data was cherry-picked to show warming.
Furthermore, the hockey stick remains even if you discard all tree ring data.
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Sanya12364 Posts
Well I am questioning the basis of paleo-climatology through tree rings. It's above and beyond Mann's questionable statistical inventions and Briffa's unexplained sampling procedure.
Apparently the shift in paradigm between correlation and divergence can just be ignored because well the paradigm will never ever change again. 1960's change in paradigm was just a fluke - an inexplicable fluke!! Everyone knows about it, but can't explain why. God must have done it. Seriously, trust us that it never happened in the past! At least with gravity and Maxwell's, later scientists explained the divergence from prediction and basically created new theories on top of the existing ones.
USHCN is most open about methodology. The other temperature records are black boxes that spit out temperature anomalies.
Margins of error according to NOAA is +/- 2 C, but usually they are warming biases like air conditioning or next to cars. The noise is larger than the signal. It's still possible to coax out the signal if you apply the correct error correction methodology. That's not done, of course.
I don't care about convincing any firm believers. I also don't care about disproving global warming or climate change. The primary issue is the magnitude of the warming and the unprecedented level of warmth and that hinges on feedback and accuracy of proxies. I read some of the papers on feedback and there isn't much confidence in a conclusion on way or another. The proxies are not very good to be polite.
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Sanya12364 Posts
On February 25 2010 13:36 EmeraldSparks wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2010 13:18 PobTheCad wrote:
Manns tree ring data (used on the 'Gore hockey stick graph') has already been proven to be cherry picked , considering this it is not out of the question other tree data has been handpicked to achieve a specific outcome. McIntyre demonstrated that the data was "cherry-picked" by picking a huge group of trees that were all in the same place and then finding the tree ring record for all those trees in the same place (KHAD) and noticing that his results were different form the ones that others had gotten. The tree ring data utilized by Mann used trees from all four regions. It turned out that this one region did not return the same result as for all four regions. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/sensit.htm#Show nested quote +Keith Briffa wrote:
Figure D: This Figure is equivalent to Figure C except that at each site the RCS curve, and resulting site indices, are calculated including the Yamal_SF data as well as the measurement data from living trees. The dominance of the common sub-fossil measurements produces a very similar RCS curve in each case (upper panel). The indices produced exhibit a similar picture of recent growth trends varying between sites, as that seen in Figure C, with mean tree-ring index trends higher for the POR and YAD sites, lowest (even negative after 1970 with respect to the long-term mean) at KHAD, and at an intermediate level at JAH. The black line in the lower panel represents the chronology (from 1750) produced using all of the data, Yamal_All, standardised with a Yamal_All RCS curve. This does not demonstrate that the tree ring data was cherry-picked to show warming. Furthermore, the hockey stick remains even if you discard all tree ring data.
Actually if you read the methodology carefully, you'd notice that they cherry picked trees that match the temperature record. It's hidden behind some statistical jargon, but it's still cherry picking.
The good correlation is no fluke! It's because they cherry picked.
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On February 25 2010 13:48 TanGeng wrote:
Well I am questioning the basis of paleo-climatology through tree rings. It's above and beyond Mann's questionable statistical inventions and Briffa's unexplained sampling procedure.
Apparently the shift in paradigm between correlation and divergence can just be ignored because well the paradigm will never ever change again. 1960's change in paradigm was just a fluke - an inexplicable fluke!! Everyone knows about it, but can't explain why. God must have done it. Seriously, trust us that it never happened in the past! At least with gravity and Maxwell's, later scientists explained the divergence from prediction and basically created new theories on top of the existing ones.
So maybe one day we'll know and right now we don't. The divergence was discovered in 1859 and the explanation was discovered in 1915. Did people just say Newton is bunk because "it's God wot done it"? An unexplained anomaly does not mean that a theory cannot be broadly correct.
On February 25 2010 13:48 TanGeng wrote:
USHCN is most open about methodology. The other temperature records are black boxes that spit out temperature anomalies.
Most science is "black box" in that tons of people don't publish all their MATLAB code. The procedures done (homogenization, etc) are usually indicated by the various entities what are compiling their temperature records. The satellite record avoids this problem entirely.
On February 25 2010 13:48 TanGeng wrote:
Margins of error according to NOAA is +/- 2 C, but usually they are warming biases like air conditioning or next to cars. The noise is larger than the signal. It's still possible to coax out the signal if you apply the correct error correction methodology. That's not done, of course.
If there is no systematic bias (and simply random bias) then averaging over a shitton of stations will reduce the standard deviation of the error. Noise is reduced by averaging.
On February 25 2010 13:48 TanGeng wrote:
I don't care about convincing any firm believers. I also don't care about disproving global warming or climate change. The primary issue is the magnitude of the warming and the unprecedented level of warmth and that hinges on feedback and accuracy of proxies. I read some of the papers on feedback and there isn't much confidence in a conclusion on way or another. The proxies are not very good to be polite.
People are still determining the feedbacks and estimating the resulting climate sensitivity (which people are constraining with models and paleoclimate reconstructions) and the proxies don't have very good resolution, but nobody has done anything to suggest that, say, any of the proxies are off by a full degree Celsius or that the speed and magnitude current warming are not unprecedented in the short-term (tens of thousands of years).
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On February 25 2010 13:50 TanGeng wrote:Show nested quote +On February 25 2010 13:36 EmeraldSparks wrote:On February 25 2010 13:18 PobTheCad wrote:
Manns tree ring data (used on the 'Gore hockey stick graph') has already been proven to be cherry picked , considering this it is not out of the question other tree data has been handpicked to achieve a specific outcome. McIntyre demonstrated that the data was "cherry-picked" by picking a huge group of trees that were all in the same place and then finding the tree ring record for all those trees in the same place (KHAD) and noticing that his results were different form the ones that others had gotten. The tree ring data utilized by Mann used trees from all four regions. It turned out that this one region did not return the same result as for all four regions. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/sensit.htm#Keith Briffa wrote:
Figure D: This Figure is equivalent to Figure C except that at each site the RCS curve, and resulting site indices, are calculated including the Yamal_SF data as well as the measurement data from living trees. The dominance of the common sub-fossil measurements produces a very similar RCS curve in each case (upper panel). The indices produced exhibit a similar picture of recent growth trends varying between sites, as that seen in Figure C, with mean tree-ring index trends higher for the POR and YAD sites, lowest (even negative after 1970 with respect to the long-term mean) at KHAD, and at an intermediate level at JAH. The black line in the lower panel represents the chronology (from 1750) produced using all of the data, Yamal_All, standardised with a Yamal_All RCS curve. This does not demonstrate that the tree ring data was cherry-picked to show warming. Furthermore, the hockey stick remains even if you discard all tree ring data. Actually if you read the methodology carefully, you'd notice that they cherry picked trees that match the temperature record. It's hidden behind some statistical jargon, but it's still cherry picking. The good correlation is no fluke! It's because they cherry picked.
Can you highlight for me the parts of the methodology that amount to cherry picking to match the temperature record?
"Cherry picking" data is not the same as selecting data for analysis. For example, throwing out significant outliers is selecting data for analysis but it is not cherry picking as the term indicates deliberate ignorance of data that would suggest the contrary. Attempting to reduce noise by throwing out outliers is not cherry picking (it's not exactly what was done in this case, but it's an example.)
Also I'm not sure why you would link to a refutation of your own point.
[[EDIT]] The "merged" case seems to be one where a whole ton of trees from the KHAD were thrown into the analysis, a region which Briffa showed was not very representative of the larger region in the analysis to which I linked.
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I can't speak to the accuracy of tree ring data. But I do know the following:
- There has been no warming since 1995
- Climate data has been withheld, destroyed, or lost
- There is a track record of "errors" in the climate report submitted to the UN....such as saying glaciers are melting when they aren't, and the sea level is rising when it isn't
- There are huge implications with climate legislation such as government controlling industry and rich nations controlling poor nations
It just seems like BS. Especially the first two. Why has there been no warming in the last 15 years, and why don't they release their raw data. Either one of those two alone is enough for me to personally not believe global warming is an urgent issue.
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On February 25 2010 14:11 fight_or_flight wrote:
I can't speak to the accuracy of tree ring data. But I do know the following:
- There has been no warming since 1995
Presumably this is being sourced from the BBC interview with Phil Jones. A linear regression taken from 1995 to now demonstrates a a trend of 0.12 C per decade increase. He merely mentioned that this increase was not statistically significant at the 95% confidence level, which is different from saying that there has been no warming. Yearly temperature is noisy and long periods of observation are necessary to determine statistical significance at the 95% confidence level (for example I don't think any 3-year warming period in history is significant at that level); I believe this positive trend is significant at the 90% level but that's apparently not what Dr. Jones uses in his lab.
On February 25 2010 14:11 fight_or_flight wrote:
- Climate data has been withheld, destroyed, or lost
The primary allegation of the withholding of data pertains to information which the CRU cannot legally release because of agreements it has entered into with national meteorological agencies. The information that is not so constrained is publicly available. There was an amount of data which was lost because data storage from the 70s and 80s (magnetic tape, fuck yeah) was expensive for the researchers to hang on to.
On February 25 2010 14:11 fight_or_flight wrote:
- There is a track record of "errors" in the climate report submitted to the UN....such as saying glaciers are melting when they aren't, and the sea level is rising when it isn't
Yeah, sometimes reports have errors in them. It happens.
On February 25 2010 14:11 fight_or_flight wrote:
- There are huge implications with climate legislation such as government controlling industry and rich nations controlling poor nations.
All governments already regulate industrial emissions in some capacity or another. China probably has enough clout to prevent developing nations from being curbstomped as it has significant interests in that area. The idea of "rich nations controlling poor nations" isn't really accurate; just look at the Copenhagen meeting. There was a threatened boycott. Nothing was done. It was ridiculous.
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Sanya12364 Posts
The picture is Briffa's Yamal study not Mann's.
On February 25 2010 14:06 EmeraldSparks wrote:
"Cherry picking" data is not the same as selecting data for analysis. For example, throwing out significant outliers is selecting data for analysis but it is not cherry picking as the term indicates deliberate ignorance of data that would suggest the contrary. Attempting to reduce noise by throwing out outliers is not cherry picking (it's not exactly what was done in this case, but it's an example.)
Also I'm not sure why you would link to a refutation of your own point.
[[EDIT]] The "merged" case seems to be one where a whole ton of trees from the KHAD were thrown into the analysis, a region which Briffa showed was not very representative of the larger region in the analysis to which I linked.
The specific statistical method that selects for trees that are better matches against the thermometer record is mentioned by Briffa as a primary source. If you look at his paper though, it doesn't mention any methodology for selection and rejection.
Also outliers have to be rejected for good reason and not just because they don't agree with the rest e.g. some extenuating circumstances that caused the outlier. If outliers are rejected only for the reason that they don't agree, then the paper should include a sensitivity analysis to show the effect of including or not including the outliers. In that situation the more inclusive result is more valid because it encompasses more of the data. The "selected" data is rather an alternative narrative.
Throwing out KHAD trees is bullshit. What's the basis for saying KHAD wasn't representative and not the other way around. Looking at the map, KHAD drastically increased the geographical diversity of the trees. It's possible this is just a case of Briffa's confirmation bias at work. This is why in medical studies, most experiments are conducted as double-blinds.
Poor methodology by papers supporting AGW is the primary reason why I don't believe the entire cataclysmic global warming narrative. Climate science fails hardest on proper methodology and independent reproduction of results.
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Sanya12364 Posts
I also just love how the two chronologies reporting the lowest tree ring widths just end in the 1990's while the two top highest ones continue on.
No cherry picking there.
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Here's the story...
There's been a confusion because of an inconsistency in the correlation between tree ring data and climate. They don't know the cause. They experimented in order to find out.
Fox News and other crazy people took it out of context.
Unintelligent people took the opportunity to propagate the quote mined stuff and refuse to investigate because they would have to admit that they're wrong: denial is easier.
Cheers.
Edit: I've been reading some the last few posts a little more in depth and it's just hilarious. So many of you just take one source with no credentials, figure it's true because it fits the side you're arguing for... Bad news websites, pretend scientists and quote mines aren't really trustworthy.
Really that's no different from saying evolution is a lie, which is no different from saying gravity and germ theory are a lie. It's true that you have to think critically of those things and not believe everything... Some people are just not very reasonable about it. We're all biased for a certain side to a certain extent but you really have to turn that off as much as possible and look at the data.
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Sanya12364 Posts
On February 26 2010 02:45 Djzapz wrote:
Here's the story...
There's been a confusion because of an inconsistency in the correlation between tree ring data and climate. They don't know the cause. They experimented in order to find out.
Fox News and other crazy people took it out of context.
Unintelligent people took the opportunity to propagate the quote mined stuff and refuse to investigate because they would have to admit that they're wrong: denial is easier.
Cheers.
Edit: I've been reading some the last few posts a little more in depth and it's just hilarious. So many of you just take one source with no credentials, figure it's true because it fits the side you're arguing for... Bad news websites, pretend scientists and quote mines aren't really trustworthy.
Really that's no different from saying evolution is a lie, which is no different from saying gravity and germ theory are a lie. It's true that you have to think critically of those things and not believe everything... Some people are just not very reasonable about it. We're all biased for a certain side to a certain extent but you really have to turn that off as much as possible and look at the data.
This is not just theory, observation, and falsification. This is an act of forecasting. This is the only basis for establishing the value of a previously unknown variable - the temperature of the past. Analogies to germ theory and gravity doesn't capture the activity of forecasting an otherwise unknowable value. (Evolution is still unobserved but eminently plausible and there hasn't been any demonstrated departure from its predictions unlike tree rings and temperature.)
They (the paleo-climatologists using tree rings) are trying to project their understanding of temperature into the past. Without a proper explanation of the present lack of correlation, there is no confidence of accuracy of the proxy's ability to reflect the past. The paradigm that gave good correlation of tree rings to temperatures might break down at any moment in the past like it did in 1960's.
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This is not just theory, observation, and falsification. This is an act of forecasting. This is the only basis for establishing the value of a previously unknown variable - the temperature of the past. Analogies to germ theory and gravity doesn't capture the activity of forecasting an otherwise unknowable value. (Evolution is still unobserved but eminently plausible and there hasn't been any demonstrated departure from its predictions unlike tree rings and temperature.)
In science, a theory aims (amongst other things) to predict certain outcomes. For instance, we use what we know about gravity and other variables to launch stuff in space. We don't 'know' that gravity will be the same in 2 minutes but to think it may not be seems absurd because of an observed trend.
In other fields, this trend may have correlations - those correlations may not all be causation - this is a source of ambiguities and those uncertainties makes science all the more important.
The reason why I made the comparison between scientific theories and this 'work in progress' by science is that, while it is imperfect, science is the most reputable source of knowledge we have so far. That's not to say we should jump to the conclusion that science is always right... It's wrong a lot of the time... However, when the scientific community leans heavily towards one side with all the statistics, and the opposition continuously uses forged data, quote mines and other types of false information, it becomes clear that they don't really have a strong case to present.
This is merely a vague comparison but weather can't be explained with mathematical equations, much like evolution. Few people would argue that Newton was wrong about the mathematical formulas he found out. Yet, two very good scientists may argue about the evolution of human emotions and how it affected natural selection and whatnot. Those ambiguous parts of a certain field of science makes it easier for the uneducated to cry wolf. Likewise, meteorologists will get railed on because they can't get it right 100% of the time because the end result depends on too many variables.
I'm not saying that nobody should ever question the veracity of this issue. What's ridiculous is to see people pick their 'side' so quickly with very little knowledge of the issue at hand.
The trend we are observing now isn't clear enough to be worthy of the name 'theory', and frankly, I'm not too sure where I stand on the specifics. There are many types of people, I'll list a few.
-Global warming is a conspiracy theory
-Global warming doesn't happen and I KNOW
-Global warming probably doesn't happen
-I don't know (Agnostic) (Life is too short to be a simpleton. Use your brain and get an opinion unless you're doing something more important than pondering on this boring topic - in which case, I'm jealous of you!)
-Global warming probably happens
-Global warming (probably) happens and it (may be) man made
-Global warming happens and it IS man made and it's going to kill us all in like omg 35 minutes!
First, I want to say that I think both extremes are ridiculously dumb.
Also, people who go completely against science don't have any science backing them up or point out at parts of the data which aren't fully understood and such.
I just think it's weird to be so skeptical of what science says but so gullible when some guy (sometimes with a bible) says he has a better explanation based on (something) (someone) said (at some point).
For instance, someone posted earlier that global warming had stopped in 1995. Now that idea has been debunked over and over again. Why would someone so skeptical fall for something so easy to falsify? Hypothetically, even if global warming turns out to be a complete fiasco, it doesn't change the fact that the 1995 thing is complete BS.
TLDR out.
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Sanya12364 Posts
On February 26 2010 06:26 Djzapz wrote:
The reason why I made the comparison between scientific theories and this 'work in progress' by science is that, while it is imperfect, science is the most reputable source of knowledge we have so far. That's not to say we should jump to the conclusion that science is always right... It's wrong a lot of the time... However, when the scientific community leans heavily towards one side with all the statistics, and the opposition continuously uses forged data, quote mines and other types of false information, it becomes clear that they don't really have a strong case to present.
Which side of the debate are you taking about? That statement about forging data and quote mines applies to both alarmists and skeptics - especially the IPCC.
Overall it's incumbent upon the scientific community to present a solid case for AGW if they want immediate action. Examining the methods of the climate science community shows sloppy quality control, poor methodology, no visibility into procedures, or plain bad practice in making forecasts.
An improved understanding of the reliability of forecasts would be really beneficial to understanding the "quality" of climate science. A healthy skepticism of the open-ended and unscientific speculation of doomsday scenarios injected into climate science by academics trying to exaggerate the social relevance of their research would also help.
On February 26 2010 06:26 Djzapz wrote:
For instance, someone posted earlier that global warming had stopped in 1995. Now that idea has been debunked over and over again. Why would someone so skeptical fall for something so easy to falsify? Hypothetically, even if global warming turns out to be a complete fiasco, it doesn't change the fact that the 1995 thing is complete BS.
1995 thing was Phil Jones of the HADCRU, basically one of the biggest AGW proponents.
All I take away from that is natural warming and cooling phenomenon are huge and unexplained.
Personally I think that AGW exists. Humans can cause it. But the carbon dioxide contribution is not the significant portion. Other aspects like pollution, land use, and deforestation are more important. Abatement can be done on both a local level and in ways that do not cripple the lifestyle of the general population.
The other inclination is to not dump nearly an unlimited amount of material and effort for something that may or may not be real.
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Well, I think you're mostly right. =)
That's as much as you'll get from me, I'm tired now =D
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/people/briffa/yamal2009/fig/figD.gif)
![[image loading]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2009/09/rcs_merged_rev2.gif)
