Well, there you go, then: since I use the term “climate change”, I must be among the skeptics that do look at the science.
Why? I do call it “climate change” now. I don’t also call it climate change; I only call it climate change. It would be inaccurate of me to say “also”.
See, this is what we call a teachable moment. I’ve repeatedly requested something easy from you (a “good enough” falsification criterion to follow up your “not good enough” pronouncements), and you’ve refused to reply; you’re now – well, you’re not actually requesting a cite, but I’m so danged obliging that I’ll supply the cite you’re almost asking for.
Spells out that global temperature in '99 was cooler than '98 – and so was '00, and so was '01, and so was '02, and so was '03, and so was '04, and so was '06, and so was '07, and so was '08, and so was '09 – and that '05 and '10 indicated no statistically significant difference between global temperatures from '98, instead falling within the margin of uncertainty. Unsurprisingly, I call that “climate change”.
I didn’t post a link because one hadn’t been requested. I’ve now posted it though you still haven’t actually requested one. You’ve still refused to post a reply to my request despite being asked, point-blank and repeatedly; I have to say it’s good evidence that you’re plenty aware of why you refuse to post a falsification criterion: you know it won’t fly.
Glad to see you admit it. Scientists use both therms, it has been a meme among denialists that there was a change when none has taken place.
If you had paid attention, the link was not needed, the content was mentioned in the last link I made.
Nowhere does it say global cooling, and we already know that “significant” does not mean much when only a few years are considered, instead the conclusion is :
There was no cooling all over, you got caught by the spin from denier blogs, as mentioned before, your premise is flawed, when the big picture is taken into account all the organizations that even Bob Carter used to make his sorry point still report the long term warming trend.
No it’s certainly not. Argument already addressed in a previous post.
Argument already also addressed in previous post. There is an emergency and it has nothing to do with Al Gore or New York being submerged. You can leave the personal attacks on Al Gore aside as well. His arguments make a heck of a lot more sense than some of the denialist rubbish being thrown around in this thread, but you will notice I am not using him.
False, although you are far from alone in holding this common misconception. In fact, things are the other way around.
Renewable energy industries will be in the trillion-dollar scale in the near future. In a world full of uncertainty and turmoil, they are one of the few growth spots, in fact they are just about *guaranteed *economic growth spots, since they grow regardless of economic turmoil. Indeed, potentially *because *of economic turmoil, given the idiotic pricing of oil.
In California, which is one of the greener states, green jobs (meaning clean electricity or pollution reduction) have grown three times faster than other types of jobs. In 2007-2008, with the economy shrinking pitifully and a recession, California green jobs grew by 5%. Very interesting report here. The global trend is similarly encouraging.
See how government spending, regulation and policies - far from depressing the economy or causing difficulties - actually helped the green industry come out of the 2009 economic crisis substantially better off than almost any other sector (Clean Edge report, page 1-4).
Funny thing about China: it is already the world leader in carbon alternative investment. Number 1 in green technology, and adding 100,000 green jobs a year. Germany - one of the cloudiest countries in the world - is number 2 and a leader in solar power. The US risks being overtaken by Japan and Spain while the asinine arguments of climate change deniers and pollution sceptics continue to get infinitely more exposure than they deserve.
China, which in toto pollutes quite a lot (but nowhere near as much per capita as the US) obviously understands the problem and has a firm grasp of the solution and of the economic opportunity. In the US, on the other hand, there is a unique and perverted political climate that seems to preclude any applications of the common sense you alluded to earlier. No, in the US a truly concerning number of people dress up in fancy costume, spout demonstrably false silliness, call proponents of green technology insulting names, launch smear campaigns against their president, and make it their religion to deny science (not necessarily all at once, lest you think I am picking only on the misinformed Tea Partiers).
So much for common sense. If you want to see common sense look to China, and note that countries provide incentives for the industries they want to develop. It doesn’t matter whether you like it or agree with it, that is simply the way things are. In the US there is a serious scarcity of such policies at the national level and that is part of the problem, because it is left up to individual states to set their targets and foster green economic development. Some states do so, others can only be described as lamentable and drag the whole country backwards.
What this means is that the United States has *already *lost its competitive edge in this industry and is lagging behind leaders, like China. Not to dwell on the Chinese but consider this: in 2003 China had next to nothing in terms of solar power, but the government took a long look around and came up with a brilliant idea. China decided to make solar power modules a national policy priority. In a few years they went from zero to more than 50% of global market share, creating significant wealth and jobs. From something that was invented in the US!
Now, if you’re thinking, “why the hell didn’t the US do that?” then you’re starting to see the other side of the argument. All those jobs - hundreds of thousands of manufacturing jobs sorely needed to support the middle class - could have been created in the US if only there had been a common-sensible national policy (and willingness to set aside denialist bullshit) to invest in new technologies. Even technologies which you insist are not yet ready for the prime time.
India is also taking renewable energy seriously. “Although a relative newcomer to the wind industry compared with Denmark or the US, domestic policy support for wind power has led India to become the country with the fifth largest installed wind power capacity in the world.” (source). You can also consider that India, with its staggering poverty, chaos, backwardness and corruption, still somehow manages to have 10.63% of its energy needs met by renewable energy sources. The share for the US is a bit higher at 11.14%.
So let’s not use this feeble developing nations finger-pointing argument please. Virtually all countries need to make serious improvements in renewable energy use and pollution reduction; the question here is who is going to lead, who is going to follow, and who is going to lag behind. You seem to think that developing countries will be the ones lagging behind. That is not a safe assumption.
Remember that the leaders of the green pack - far from being pioneers sacrificing themselves in the name of environmental friendliness - are also going to be the ones reaping the highest share of the economic benefits of a new developing industry (as China has already done with solar panels). The laggards, who think they are playing it safe and slow and conservative, will find that the leaders have snatched up all the cake and there are only crumbs left on which to subside. In the long term, the safe conservative approach is a very poor strategy - with the lowest yield.
You again miss the foundation of the problem. Let me restate it in the briefest possible way. Major breakthroughs in technology by themselves are nearly useless if they do not serve an adequate market. What you need is all the below:
early adopter support then the development of economies of scale
technology development throughout
some kind of history or experience in the industry to achieve lower costs and higher quality
government policy to push new tech
These are also all the reasons I already applied to your example of the Volt. New products are always a huge gamble. For every iPhone (the telecom version of Athena) there are countless failures, because you do not just need great technology, you need consumers to buy into the technology. Failure is usually not due to the technology itself but to other factors like lack of market readiness, which is why markets and consumers have to be trailblazed - prospected, as it were (and that is why the iPhone was a phenomenal success in spite of its Athena-like origin: because Steve Jobs has the uncanny ability to know what consumers want). I hope that’s all clearer.
It may well be that scientists use both; I’m not a scientist, and so merely use “climate change”. It may well be that denialists say there was a change; I’m neither a denialist nor a scientist, and so don’t insist there was a change by scientists.
Your preconceptions are getting in the way of your reading comprehension. In that linked cite, the UN’s World Meteorological Organization was using “significant” to consider the difference in global temperature between any two years, even on the shortest of timetables: the issue was whether any warming or cooling was within the margin of uncertainty, as measured in thousandths of a degree. Their finding was that (a) since '98, no years have been warmer by that “significant” margin, and that (b) a variety of years – '99 and '00 and '01 and '02 and '03 and '04 and '06 and '07 and '08 and '09 – have been cooler by a “significant” margin.
I didn’t get it from denier blogs; I got those facts on global temperature for each aforementioned year, and on the aforementioned thousandths-of-a-degree margin of uncertainty to boot, straight from the UN’s authoritative voice on weather: the WMO itself.
As mentioned before, that’s precisely why I’m requesting a falsification criterion that does take the big picture into account for scientists. As mentioned before, you’re apparently incapable of giving one.
The point I made remains: saying that results thus far aren’t good enough to falsify it is worthless without spelling out what hypothetical results would be unexpected enough to get the job done. Why do you keep doing your level best to supply half an argument?
The point was that your sources are deniers, and you just absorbed their spin, as you like to say it is teachable moment. as I said before, demand better from your sources.
The context (and the reason why a direct quote was avoided) was that they are comparing then to 1998 saying basically that it is silly to say it is cooling, when 2 years on the hottest decade recorded were as hot as 1998. Point being that we should had seen less of those years if it was cooling. The reading compression point is silly as the report and the secretary continue to say unequivocally that it is still a warming trend.
The voice that tells you that we are in a warming trend and those who don’t believe that greenhouse gases are changing the world’s climate should quiet down?
I’m convinced.
Already quoted and cited, Barry Brickmore from BYU explained how one can not ignore that the cooling should be more dramatic if Human CO2 was not a driver on the current warming.
This remains a baseless accusation, Besides quoting Brickmore I did before told you what I could think would be the scenario where this AGW warming could be discredited, you have even acknowledged it. It just so happens that I have learned more and it is clear that **Matt **is correct, it is not that simple, and so it is silly to demand that the theory of AGW would be affected much by this line of JAQs. Continuing like you are doing here shows that my point that you are “just asking questions” is valid one, and it shows you are not debating in good faith.
Have I cited any source other than the UN’s World Meteorological Organization?
I didn’t cite that source for its conclusions; I cited it for its facts.
Look, swap in SDMB-friendly terms if it helps remove your preconceptions. Imagine a white supremacist claims a minority ethnic group isn’t as intelligent as his own. Imagine I ask what would falsify that claim, and the white supremacist (a) first names a test the minority passes, and then (b) says passing his named test wouldn’t satisfy scientists; he refuses to spell out what would satisfy scientists. Further imagine I find something like unto an official white supremacist website which notes 13 studies on the ethnic groups in question; 3 tests put both groups within the same margin of error, and the other 10 had the minority group scoring significantly higher. To complete the analogy, imagine the following conclusion: a statistical tie on 3, and a higher score on 10, means the minority is – not as intelligent.
I’d cite that site for its facts, not its conclusions. And I’d expect the white supremacist to ignore the facts and repeat the conclusions, all while of course still refusing to spell out the requested falsification criterion.
You meet expectations.
I acknowledged it as surely as you acknowledged that (a) what you’re now calling a “humor him” bet had already come to pass, and (b) wasn’t a good enough falsification criterion for scientists – which is why I’ve since been asking what would be good enough.
You do half of the work by saying you’ve now learned more and it’s not that simple – and then drop the second half by refusing to say what less-simple solution will suffice. You explain that it’s silly to demand the theory be affected by X, and then refuse to spell out a Y.
So give the complex answer.
When you say X ain’t enough and refuse to explain what Y would suffice, you’re not debating at all.
Studying the sort of signal, with various cyclic, trending, and noisy contributants, that one sees in the temperature record is an interesting exercise. I’ve done work in the fields of signal analysis and pattern recognition, yet I confess I have no better way to comprehend this data than to stare at a graph, using simple common sense and intuition.
In round figures, one sees a 1°C rise over the past 40 years. Is that significant? Sure seems like it, but then again the starting-point is handpicked: if one replaced “past 40 years” with “past 70 years” the aggregate rise would be less.
One good approach is to average over long periods. One needn’t even submit temperature records to a statistics package: the Earth itself has processes (e.g. glacier and ice-pack melting) that do a “low-pass filtering” of temperature. A reasonable conclusion is that CO[sub]2[/sub] and other greenhouse gases have increased, that this implies temperature rise, and that the expected rise is occurring. Do you dispute that, Waldo?
Now 1998 was an unusually warm year. As such, its record may not be surpassed for some time, even if we’re in a long-term warming trend. Surely that’s not hard to understand – even without experience in studying noisy signals, one can understand this by looking at a graph with intuition and an open mind. Given this fact, the phrasing "global temperature in '99 was cooler than '98 – and so was '00, and so was '01, and so was '02, and so was '03, and so was '04, and so was '06, and so was '07, and so was '08, and so was '09 " seems peculiarly pedantic and anti-intellectual.
Almost twenty months ago, shortly after joining SDMB, I tried to help you, Waldo, in this post. Your response to that post told me what I needed to know about you. You ignored the educational part of the post, found a phrase that you could use to support a Know-Nothing posture and went on.
Maybe I’ll revisit this matter with you after another 20 months.
I don’t, but I don’t want to rest on it either. I want to know what “rise” is “expected”, so that we can then revise our conclusions if the unexpected occurs instead.
I agree, but, again, I want to know what specific expectation a general “for some time” is standing in for.
Again, I’m not happy with it either – but I use it only until I’m given a falsifiable prediction that’s less pedantic and anti-intellectual to look at.
That linked post notably contained no falsifiable predictions, despite the nested quote it copy-and-pasted asking about falsification; we can now come back to it twenty months later, we could come back to it twenty years later, and we’d still have no way of knowing whether the warming you anticipate had shown up as expected or had unexpectedly failed to materialize. We could come back to it twenty years after that, and twenty years after that, and no amount of cooling – or anything else – would disprove it.
Your response told me everything I needed to know about you as well, I’m afraid.
It sounds like you think some one has an answer of the form “15 years without the 1998 record being broken would not falsify AGW, but 16 years would.” If you do find a “scientist” with a claim like that, I’d suggest you run as fast as you can in the opposite direction.
You’ve latched on to the one concept that “science is about falsifiability” and lost contact with other forms of common sense.
No, that’s not quite it. I mean, sure, if that’s the only prediction I’m given then I’ll go with it, I guess – but I want to hear the falsifiable prediction, no matter how complex and If-X-But-Not-Y-Unless-Z it gets. What, precisely, is the falsifiable claim? I’m perfectly willing to hear one that goes way beyond “16 years would”.
I make it a starting point when evaluating scientific claims: how can it hypothetically be falsified? That doesn’t mean I also make it the end-point; I merely think it’s the first question we should ask whenever any such proposition is advanced.
Or, to use the diction you find clearer, global temperature in '77 was warmer than '76 – and so was '78, and so was '79, and so was '80, and so was '81, and so was '82, and so was '83, and so was '84,and so was '85,and so was '86,and so was '87, and so was '88, and so was '89, and so was '90, and so was '91, and so was '92, and so was '93, and so was '94, and so was '95, and so was '96, and so was '97, and so was '98, and so was '99, and so was '00,and so was '01, and so was '02, and so was '03, and so was '04, and so was '05, and so was '06, and so was '07, and so was '08, and so was '09, and so was '10.
How many more years of this will it take to falsify your hypothesis?
Please note that I do not endorse this argument. But I do wonder how you will answer it, given that it seems to mimic your argument.
Global climate change is an interesting topic about which intelligent people can ask intelligent questions. Some debate, however, strikes me as substandard.
But that’s just it: if, say, another poster were advancing a global cooling proposition, I’d be asking the same questions that I’m asking here, and for the same reasons. And if he refused to supply a falsification criteria he believed would satisfy scientists – why, then, yes, at that point, I probably would lay out the argument you’re now putting in my mouth, following the signature diction with: we’ve seen all these years when it hasn’t been getting cooler; you don’t think that’s enough; what, then, would be enough?
I believe that should be the starting point for evaluating claims about cooling, because I believe it should be the starting point for evaluating claims about warming – but I’m not the one making either prediction about the future; I’m hypothesizing neither cooling nor warming; I’m merely asking those who make predictions to name their terms.
It was cited poorly, nowhere do they said it was cooling, they compared 1998, 2005 and 2010 to make the point that the temperature for the decade remains the highest on record. The position of the UN is that the warming trend is still here with us.
And that you relied on was not an official report, this one was:
You said “my support was the UN’s report by the World Meteorological Organization: global average temperature indicates cooling after '98 followed by precisely no statistically significant warming past that '98 mark during all the fluctuations that followed”?
It remains a cherry picked date, made to confuse people and you do continue doing your damnest to tell others to ignore the past, because you know that every single organization of renown, and even the UN said later that:
"The latest decade is the warmest on record. So year after year this trend is confirmed, actually it’s being strengthened year after year.
Mr Jarraud says these new statistics should silence those who don’t believe that greenhouse gases are changing the world’s climate. "
Unless you can produce a cite that has a member of the UN team declaring that it is cooling since 1998, your point has no basis or support from the recognized UN, CRU or NASA experts.
[sniping the insulting - I met the expectations of looking at information like a racist would do - point from Waldo]
Sorry, this is your opinion, the facts are that they compared 1998, 2005 and 2010 to make the point that they were the warmest on record. Making the decade the warmest on record, making the trend a warming one since the time the sun and other forcings became overwhelmed by the CO2 man-made one.
(a) is once again baseless, (b) as the early canard of “it has not significantly warmed since 1995” was a failure, the trend that many critics of the deniers see is that the years will be moved with the only goal to continue to confuse people. And you are demonstrating that.
What everyone can see is that you ignored post #179, what is more damming, is that you then proceded to claim on the next post that I was not giving any… by removing this from the quote you made of me on your post 191:
Indeed, even a few years ago independent statisticians looked at the data and declared that there is no truth to the claim that there was been cooling.
Let me get this straight: you read the part where those three years were ranked together as warmest by dint of all being within the statistically insignificant margin of uncertainty, and you’re genuinely incapable of realizing that by definition every other year in question is cooler, by a margin that by definition is statistically significant?
That’s just – strange.
If you can’t read it right, I can’t help you.
How is (a) baseless? Here’s the quote: “As I said many times before what it counts is what scientists said. What I said was just a ‘humor him’ ‘bet’”.
You’re perfectly demonstrating a one-man trend by refusing to name a falsification criterion that would be good enough for scientists. I keep referring to '98 for the simple reason that no statistically significant warming has taken place as a matter of global temperature since that date, but would immediately supply a different argument if you were capable of supplying a replacement falsification criterion.
It’s cherry-picked because global temperature hasn’t increased since that date. Ask me how long I’ve been married and I’ll refer you back to the date I got married: not three years before, not two years after, but right when I stopped being single. Ask me how long we’ve had a woman on the Supreme Court and I’ll do likewise. And, again, give me a better criterion and I’ll use it instead.
I didn’t claim you offered no such explanation. I claimed then, and claim now, that you’re not supplying a falsification criterion that suffices. The link and the quote don’t offer such a falsification criterion, and I have no idea why you’re acting like I cut 'em so as to claim you didn’t offer an explanation; I cut 'em because they didn’t offer that criterion. You just now copy-and-pasted me requesting that falsification criterion in four different ways only to act like I’d requested something else altogether.
Again: if you can’t read it right, I can’t help you.
For, with any luck, the last time: what falsification criterion would be good enough?
Cite for them being cooler by a statistically significant margin? Of course you just put yourself against the wall since you are ignoring the years before 1998. So it is strange to say what you say here. I don’t think you have any good site to support what you just said here.
Yeah, we know you can not find any, yet I can find many of the makers of the report saying unequivocally that it is warming and nowhere saying that it is cooling, unless it is to put down the deniers, and even statisticians are telling you that it is a very misleading point to make.
BTW I did miss the link to the cite on my previous post to the statisticians telling you that:
And I stand by that, there is a lot that I have learned, but if you want to still use that bet be my guest. (Making once again your (a) point baseless, hey I’m easy!). After all it is clear that I have said that my opinions do not amount to much as I defer to the information coming from the scientists and experts.
Your point was based on misleading information from denier sites, this is because not even the word cooling appears in the UN report. The only way you got that was from the misinformation made by Carter and others.
The point was the graph, when one removes the human influences, the natural forcings then should be making an overall temperature that is about .6 C less than the current temperatures. It is not only time what is needed to dismiss the theory, the cooling that should had been observed needed to be more dramatic than your imagined cooling.
Good heavens, man: the cite spelled out that '98 and '05 and '10 were warmer than the rest of 'em, right? Which means the rest of 'em were cooler? And that '98 and '05 and '10 were ranked together by dint of falling within the same statistically insignificant margin, which means the others aren’t within that statistically insignificant margin?
Is this really too difficult for you?
Just keep telling yourself that. Do you at least realize the cite specifies which three are warmer than the rest, even if you can’t thereby deduce that the rest are cooler than those three? Do you at least realize that three were lumped together because they’re statistically indistinguishable, even if you can’t thereby deduce why the rest weren’t likewise lumped in with 'em?
That’s absurd. Even leaving aside whether I got “cooling” by merely noting what the opposite of “warming” is, the cite you just posted in #216 is a fine middleman that cuts out the need for a “denier site” to learn the word: The case that the Earth might be cooling partly stems from recent weather. Last year was cooler than previous years. It’s been a while since the super-hot years of 1998 and 2005.
I don’t merely want you to defer to the information coming from the scientists and experts. I want you to defer to the falsification criteria coming from the scientists and experts. If you’ve learned a lot since placing the “bet” such that you think a different falsification criterion would be appropriate, then name it; if you don’t, I’ll then – and only then – want to still use your prior “bet” as my sole guidepost.
I’m asking you what hypothetical evidence could falsify it, and you’re replying that it hasn’t yet been falsified by the evidence. Those are opposite sides of different coins. Don’t explain why current data isn’t good enough to falsify it; tell me what future data would be good enough to falsify it.
As the statisticians said, that does not fly, so yeah, you need a cite that does say that it was sadistically significant.
Otherwise you indeed have no support whatsoever.
Cites for your opinion here having any support whatsoever.
And of course you need to cut the quote there because it continues saying that:
So now we now why the word “might” was there, it was to make the setup that it might not, and they made clear that it was not. (You really need to look at the definition of rhetorical)
Suit yourself, as a new resident of nowhere land I don’t need to worry.
Moot point as you still do not have any support whatsoever for your complaint.
