See again, you are ignoring the criticism of MIT and others, your side is the one doing the conspiracy theories (Data was not released!).
I do not consider the source **until **the evidence shows that guys like Carlin are missing lots of data, resort to plagiarism and are just plain wrong.
Cites from the video and responses to his allegations.
This is why I didn’t think you’d read my post. If there already was a 30-year cooling trend, why are you still waiting for your 20-year trend to complete? Why not just declare victory?
On the matter of hypothesis refutability, it’s the slipperiness of Denialism that makes it irrefutable: … well maybe these are special sunspots … well maybe the algal-growth negative feedback hasn’t had time to kick in yet … well maybe we should be grateful for warm winters, better than an Ice Age, no? …
I just thought I’d throw in some information about the surface temperature stations reads being fault for various reasons. I’ve been reading this guy’s blog since mid-2007. He’s tracked down various surface stations and shown, with photographic evidence) how the data should be thrown out because the stations have been ill maintained or compromised. I believe his blog led to setting up this this website that has tracked down 80% of the surface stations in the continental US.
If I say I’m satisfied at the eleven-year mark, and you say it would take more time to convince you, then it does me no good to just declare victory at the one-decade mark; you can simply declare victory right back, and the whole thing goes nowhere. But if you say a second decade would suffice to falsify the theory, then I can meaningfully declare victory if a 20-year trend plays out; never mind whether I was convinced at the 15-year mark or the 17-year mark or whatever, what’s relevant is that you’re convinced at the 20-year mark.
So what do I care that there already was a 30-year cooling trend back when? So long as you (a) grant that, and also (b) stipulate that a 20-year trend would falsify the warming theory, then the latter is relevant to ‘declaring victory’ and the former is trivia.
You may as well tell me that (a) you own a bicycle and (b) a 20-year trend would falsify the warming theory. Or that (a) men have landed on the moon and (b) a 20-year trend would falsify the warming theory. Or even that (a) Superman himself flew in to save your life yesterday and (b) a 20-year trend would falsify the warming theory. Make any such paired claim you like; if you happen to believe the former and the latter, I’ll note both while applying one.
Which, coming back around to GIGObuster:
. . . the key is that I’m neither ignoring the evidence he produces nor saying “sorry, I’ll pass.” I’m noting the sources and science he produces, precisely so I can then cite 'em back to him instead of passing. It would do me no good to produce more cites that say the exact same thing; he’s already established the point I wanted to debate.
Of course, it could’ve gone down differently; if he’d only cited sources that claimed there was no cooling, then I would’ve produced other sources that claimed the opposite – whereupon he’d be free to reject my sources for some reason or another, and I’d be free to reject his likewise, and we could bog down in one of those impasses I was just talking about. Possibly neither of us would agree that the other guy’s evidence is acceptable, and then both of us could declare victory while accomplishing nothing.
But we got lucky; the stuff he produced establishes what I would’ve gone hunting for, and so the argument can end right there. We don’t need to guess at whether he’d reject the sources and evidence I find compelling; that potential impasse gets sidestepped if I simply accept what he already put his imprimatur on.
Were I debating someone who claimed no Scotsman had ever won an Olympic medal, possibly I’d need to go searching for sources and cites to the contrary – which could well descend into No True Scotsman bickering with the other side about whether so-and-so counts, with a hearty helping of possibly rejecting my sources as unreliable, and we might thereby reach an impasse. But so long as he grants in one post or another that a particular Scotsman won an Olympic gold medal in boxing, and later adds that another Scotsman won an Olympic gold medal in weightlifting, and then cites a handpicked source as evidence that a Scotsman won an Olympic gold medal in cycling before declaring that a Scotsman won an Olympic gold medal in the hundred-meter dash – well, look, it’s of course bad form to say My Post Is My Cite, but it’s excellent form to say That Guy’s Post Is My Cite, and I sure Don’t Think It’ll Be Missed By Others that he’s an outstanding cite.
I guess I missed it, but one of your debating opponents conceded a 20-year cooling would refute warming? I hope you don’t think it was me. (I missed the part where we agreed we even are in a cooling trend, but that’s irrelevant here.)
The reasoning seems based on the idea that something either is or is not conclusive. I’ve heard it suggested that Aristotle’s Law of the Excluded Middle was a great setback for Western thinking!
I wouldn’t – and didn’t – say “refute”, but one of my opponents has in fact pegged his reasoning to a 20-year cooling; it was GIGObuster, who helpfully agreed to a whole constellation of phrasings: “for the purpose of falsifying the theory I would not expect to see increases … The point is that if in the next 10 years the temperatures remain constant or cooling that then the theory will suffer a huge blow … A temperature decrease in the next decade should indeed count against the current theories regarding AGW IMHO.”
What’s more, he referenced and reiterated that in the other thread, the one you and I have been posting in:
Ignore his editorializing; I of course don’t claim that the “apparent falsification in 10 years would be unacceptable”. The crucial point, though, is that he also doesn’t find it unacceptable; if the first decade since '98 is followed by another one just like it, then he’s granted that it should indeed count against the current warming theories, such that the theory will suffer a huge blow, given that – for the express purpose of falsifying the theory – it’s explicitly not what he’d expect.
So, yeah, someone pretty well conceded that.
What you’ve said, on the other hand, was:
. . . and that’s entirely accurate; as you put it, I had been asking for a specific number – but the only answer you were willing to give was that twenty years of cooling might give much more doubt than ten years, and so that’s all I’ve got to run with when discussing it with you. If you’d gone on to say that ‘twenty years of cooling might give much more doubt than ten years, and thirty would refute it’, then I’d talk about thirty years. Or whatever.
And I said as much at the time: my first reply to your post, complete with quote, indicated that I’m fine with your reasoning “so long as you’re including that stipulation about how twenty years of cooling might give much more doubt than ten years” – adding that I’d still like specifics on falsifiability, but would settle if you’re not inclined to spell out anything else.
I then added that “I want to know what will falsify the hypothesis.”
You then replied that “I think your question can only be answered with pure guesswork”.
I next replied by saying that “your explanations satisfied my interest. You’d replied as follows: ‘Twenty years of cooling might give much more doubt than ten years, but you seemed to be asking for a specific number.’ I had been asking for a specific number, and you pretty well gave me one just then: if twenty years of cooling will give you much more doubt than ten years, then it’s mere trivia that I’m more than halfway there; the point is, I’ve got nothing else to do but wait another nine.”
I then continued that post by indicating that I was still open to whatever timeframe you’d care to name: “If you want to stipulate 30 years instead of 20, I don’t yet have a response either way; I’ll have a particular comment if it keeps continuing in '11 and '12 and '13 and so on, and I’ll have a different comment if it goes the other way in '11 and '12 and '13 and so on. As they happen, I’ll slot them in on your proposed timespan.”
So, yeah, I asked you for a specific number – a request you noted while mentioning 20 years in terms of giving much more doubt, right there in the same sentence. And I then copy-and-pasted that back to you while asking repeatedly for specifics on falsifiability, and got no reply; I then built a hypothetical around whether 20 years of cooling will give you much more doubt, and got no reply; I then asked whether you’d like to stipulate 30 years instead of 20, and got no reply; if you want to claim that 20 is insufficient, I’m open to whatever timespan you propose; if you want to stick with 20 giving you much more doubt, that’s fine too.
That last option up there is, thus far, all you’ve given me.
If it can’t be falsified on any timespan, it’s not science. If 20 years won’t do it for you, name another timespan – but if the best I’ll ever get from you is that 20 will give you much more doubt, then (a) I’ll do my best to run with that, and (b) I’ll expect you to be equally deferential with regard to global cooling: that, even if we get a wacky 20 years of warming, we can only say it might give us much more doubt about the cooling hypothesis.
Obviously I think that’s silly – but I’ll play by whatever rules you say apply to a 20-year span.
That said, I’d come all the way back around to recommend you take another look at the post you’re quoting: “But if you say a second decade would suffice to falsify the theory, then I can meaningfully declare victory if a 20-year trend plays out; never mind whether I was convinced at the 15-year mark or the 17-year mark or whatever, what’s relevant is that you’re convinced at the 20-year mark.” Note that I wasn’t saying you’d conceded it; I was riding the “if” for a reason.
GIGObuster presents a reality in which there is consensus view that AGW certainly exists and that the all of the dissenting science consists of canards. In point of fact the scientific consensus is that AGW is an unsupported hypothesis. While the climate is far more complex than AGW models capture, proving that the AGW hypothesis is unsupported (or worse) is not at all complex.
Let’s remember that the burden of proof rests entirely upon the AGW proponents. If I for instance were to propose a similar theory like “elephants orbiting the moon will destroy us in 2012”, I would have to substantiate that. If I were a proponent of the Elephant theory then I would go about “proving” it exactly as the AGW proponents have tried to do, and fortunately I would probably be discovered and discredited in a manner similar to that which befallen the AGW hoaxists. Still I would have to do what they do. Create a religious end-times hysteria and promote the notion of an irreligious heretic which I would call “denier” and label as dangerous and uncouth. I would co-opt funding and suborn journals, refuse to release my source code, cherry pick my thermometer data and destroy most of the original data before it could be scrutinized independently. Most importantly I would conceal the fact that only 60 PhD’s formed the core cadre of my bogus elephant conspiracy. I would take my game plan right out of their book because it almost worked!
It’s so easy to see that AGW is a fantasy if you stick to the real consensus science.
CO2 is not a primary driver of climate. As almost everyone knows now, CO2 lags temperature by about 800 years even in the best AGW-cooked proxy data. Past CO2 levels which we understand have been up to 10 times greater than the present have had little impact on the planet and certainly did not cook it. Fortunately this too is now common knowledge. Our climate system has bounds and is extremely robustly self-regulatory in BOTH directions. Even the Early Faint Sun period of 2.5 billion years ago in which it appears that there may have been 20 or 30 percent less solar energy available, the Oceans certainly did not freeze over. If we were to increase CO2 by an entire order of magnitude nor would the world end for us.
The CO2 fallacy alone is an AGW deal-killer.
Mars is real as are its ice caps. They really have been retreating in an analogous manner to how ours were doing. AGW CO2 really doesn’t have a transport mechanism between here and Mars. Habibullo Abdussamatov, head of space research at St. Petersburg’s Pulkovo Astronomical Observatory in Russia is a real person who studied real data. William Feldman of the Los Alamos National Laboratory is real too. This pan-planetary warming really is not a canard. It has in no way been convincingly debunked or explained (idiots will spout Mars is primarily governed by ‘dust and albedo’…lol… forgetting something? Yep, sunlight! Just like our idiot modelers here on Terra leave that ‘minor factor’ out!). Solar output really does drive climate in various ways and it’s one of the only, if not the only, plausible mechanisms that could drive it in concurrent and similar ways over multiple planets.
The “SUVs are warming Mars too” anomaly alone is an AGW certainty-killer.
The fallacy that AGW is actionable even if it were true. “Even if the United States eliminated all automobiles and all fossil fuel based electricity generation, etc – global GHG would be reduced by only 12 %. This massive change would have close to zero effect even if the CO2-theory were true.” Not to mention the AGW timeline has us dead already before the CO2 lag has caught up.
The “AGW is actionable” fallacy alone is an AGW relevance-killer.
It is so important to remember that the AGW religion has to accomplish many things which it has utterly failed to do before it will be taken seriously by those without a vested financial interest in the fantasy. As much as they would like to claim otherwise, they are not the orthodoxy and us “deniers” are not the rogue, heretical faction upon which it is incumbent to prove anything. Our job is done merely by pointing out that there is nothing even remotely similar to a consensus in favor of AGW nor is there any proof of AGW.
End of task, end of story. Bad science. Obvious motives for said. Religious overtones. Scandal after scandal since. Game over.
Not only is the science bad, the data is turning out to be even worse. Yet another scandal: “Son of Climate Gate”
and as the dam gives way in earnest there will be dozens more scandals exposed. Nice try though, AGW thugs and religious zealots! Better luck on your next exploitative apocalypse fantasy.
Scientifically economically and politically, AGW is a sad joke. If the standards of AGW were the only bar, I could take the same resources they have (yes, I’d need massive Rockefeller backing too) and easily come as close as they did to convincing the world they needed to pay me more billions to avert the impending elephant attack. Interestingly, GIGObuster is not wrong in many of the points he makes. He’s just unbelievably, unbelievably selective in which he deems to be important. Perhaps this is how one has to be in order not to notice that that one is riding along on a giant attack elephant? I don’t know. I just try to go by the science and bypass the religion.
The part of the theory I will never accept is that man is involved in the process. We did not cause the last ice age, did we? Therefore we KNOW there are other temperature cycles going on in nature and the sun that are simply longer term cycles. We are still in the warm up cycle from the last ice age.
This is great news, bad news would be we are going into an ice age. Think about it, warmer means more water evap, more rain, less deserts, areas north now worthless will grow things up north, and that additional green feeds people and provides living space too. Best of all it helps stop the cycle as the additional green areas make more oxygen and use more CO2. That will make up for some areas lost to higher tides.
We already see this cycle has happened many times, look at the lush tropic foliage and dino fossils in yucky places like the Dakotas. It is a natural cycle, and so very slow no one will be in any trouble. Any rise in sea level will be tiny in any one person’s lifetime.
We will also never run out of energy because we have nuclear and solar power which will not end when fossil fuel does. As it is used up the price will slowly rise till those other power options will be used, there will be no panic about it.
I think part of it is just the phenomenon of “The Word Is Coming To An End - Again”.
I was alive and at least partially aware during the very first Earth Day. And I recall a good many scenarios that began “Unless we act now, in the year 2000…” such and such a dire calamity will happen. Now, in some cases, we did act, and the calamity didn’t happen. But in others, we did not. AFAICT, the world still did not come to an end, and in many ways we are better off environmentally now than forty years ago, particularly in the West.
I think you have hit on one of the problems.
Assuming that it is true that currently suggested solutions will not cause our economy to implode, that doesn’t help. Because the currently suggested solutions won’t “fix” the problem. We need (allegedly) to do more.
OK, will the “more” that we need to do implode the economy?
Now saying, “yes, but that is the price we have to pay” is a valid answer, but then we are going to need pretty solid and unambiguous evidence that the consequences of not imploding the economy will be worse than the consequences of imploding it. And that there is no better alternative.
And the $64 question is, what happens if we do what is necessary and take the (perhaps major) hit, but the other emerging economies like China and India don’t? Then we have the worst possible outcome - the West cuts its own throat and AGW still brings about the Bad Stuff we wanted to avoid. It’s the Prisoner’s Dilemma writ large.
It may seem selective because researchers **already **have replied to your concerns many times before, so much so that reporters with science experience can notice the levels of deceit reached by media deniers. The denier part comes also in denying that items were replied convincingly before, but more importantly,the evidence convinced and continues to convince scientists and academics.
This a Straw man.
What is “unfair” for the deniers is that the evidence they claim is so good does not say what they think it does.
I see what you mean, but I almost won at climate denier bingo with your post.
As it was clearly missed, the climate scandal you are referring early (the “father” of that son" was also a crock.
As for the “son of”, not peer reviewed, and I can already see that it is based on misrepresentations on accepted corrections. And early criticism is not kind to that report.
What makes you think then that actions where infective? Removal of phosphates in detergents and the removal of CFC’s are part of avoiding a bad environment. BTW I’m already on record of also shooting down alarmists that ignore that the science says that it will not be the end of the world.
And that part, even though I don’t agree much with, is valid criticism regarding the solutions proposed. It will always be a puzzle to me that many other skeptics of those solutions also resort to deny the science, that extra step is not needed and it is just discrediting to the opponents to the solutions proposed.
There is a lot of ignorance in this thread, but this right here is the mother lode. Can I ask, do you ever bother to learn about an issue before you talk about it on a message board?
You can’t really separate out questions about the science from questions about the proposed solutions, since the degree to which humans can or do affect global warming will pretty much determine how much, if anything, we can or should do.
Cost-benefit analysis ought not to be a dirty word, and yet it often is. And we can’t do it unless we have a pretty clear idea of what the costs are, of any plan or of doing nothing.
Honest answer is…the part of the ‘theory’ where we know what needs to be done to fix the problem, and that fix just happens to include the same line I’ve been hearing all my life…namely we need to halt our wasteful Westernized lifestyle and get back to nature (or something similar). That we need to sacrifice. That we need to dig DEEP (into our collective pockets) or…WE ARE DOOOOOOMMMMMMEEEEDDDD!
And all the cites from GIGObuster in the world aren’t going to convince me that there is a consensus that we KNOW (or even have a reasonable idea) what needs to be done to fix the problem…or that any of the proposed ‘solutions’ aren’t A) Agenda driven and B) Only best guesses as to what actual effect they will have on long term climate change and C) Proposed knowing that they are mere first steps, and that subsequent steps will cost more and more and require greater and greater sacrifices, and that ultimately, even with all that noble sacrificing, we don’t know if it will have any measurable effect, or exactly how much effect or how much ‘better’ our sacrifice will make things…or if such a sacrifice will be worth the cost to our collective economies.
Not all solutions are the same, the discussions are ranging from doing a lot regarding CO2 emissions or concentrating on adaptation. Less reasonable solutions involve doing nothing or no preparations.
The reality is that I do take into account the current uncertainty with the levels of the troubles that we will encounter if we get a raise of more than 3 degrees Celsius.
The latest information does worry me that secondary feedbacks could get the warming worse but we need better evidence for that, until then the reality is that AGW continues and we have to prepare at least for the most likely results.
But this again IMHO is not opposing the science, I see no problem with that.
If you had paid attention, you would notice that I do not yet agree with the solutions that are proposed. I don’t trust politicians to do the right thing (until it is almost too late) regarding solutions, but I trust the science.
I know you don’t, GIGO…and I HAVE paid attention. That’s why I put ‘theory’ in quotes…it’s NOT part of the theory, but it’s indelibly linked, especially in the publics mind. And, frankly, it’s linked that way because a lot of the pro-AGW people have deliberately attempted to link the (real) science with the (agenda laden) ‘fix’. I trust the science as well, especially long term.
That has not been my experience with a lot of the pro-AGW people I consult, at least in this board in the past, deniers that used to come here delighted on linking the science with alarmists. They even used terms like CAGW. (Adding catastrophe to human made) What politicians do with the information and the recommendations of the scientists is a different history IMO as I’m also dubious of solutions like Biodiesel from corn.
In any case, the IPCC recommendations are especially forceful in advocating for research and development into low-emission technologies across all sectors. Not so much on agenda laden fixes.
