How many people take Global Warming totally on faith?

[jshore]

@brazil84

Not really, but let me ask you this:

Which of Hansen’s scenarios – A, B, or C – reflects the emissions that took place between 1988 and the present?

I’m just asking for a letter here: A, B, or C.

As was noted in the original piece that I linked to, the emission scenario that played out was very close to that assumed in B (which Hansen had apparently also noted at the time seem to be the most likely emissions scenario).

[jshore]

@brazil84

Maybe so. But this all supports my position that AGW is essentially untested.

No…The conclusion is that climate science isn’t simple and so AGW has to be tested in lots of different ways which test different pieces of the hypothesis (or look at similar “natural experiments” that occurred in the past). Nobody says that climate science is easy…but then science at the forefront of our knowledge is never particularly easy, something that often confuses those who are not part of the scientific exercise and expect it to be as simple as the simple examples, usually far from the forefront of knowledge that are presented in the science classroom. This is why the state of a field of science is best judged by scientists themselves rather than those who are not qualified to judge.

[GIGObuster]

BTW just to be clear, that experiment was to show that there is a proven physical property of CO2 being a greenhouse gas; however, as tagos mentions, that and the experiment brazil84 proposes would have little or no relation to the world at large.

And one big reason is because a terrarium would omit other environments and absorption bands from the picture:

http://www.aip.org/history/exhibits/climate/co2.htm

There was also the old objection, which most scientists continued to find decisive, that the overlapping absorption bands of CO2 and water vapor already blocked all the radiation that those molecules were capable of blocking. Callendar tried to explain that the laboratory spectral measurements were woefully incomplete.(20) Some other scientists too kept an open mind on the question. But it remained the standard view that, as an official U.S. Weather Bureau publication put it, the masking of CO2 absorption by water vapor was a “fatal blow” to the CO2 theory. Therefore, said this authority, “no probable increase in atmospheric CO2 could materially affect” the balance of radiation.(21)
Most damaging of all, Callendar’s calculations of the greenhouse effect temperature rise ignored much of the real world’s physics. In particular, any rise in temperature would allow the air to hold more moisture, which could mean more clouds. Callendar admitted that the actual climate change would depend on interactions involving changes of cloud cover and other processes that no scientist of the time could reliably calculate. Few thought it worthwhile to speculate about such dubious questions, where data were rudimentary and theory was no more than hand-waving. Better to rest with the widespread conviction that the atmosphere was a stable, automatically self-regulated system. The notion that humanity could permanently change global climate was implausible on the face of it, hardly worth a scientist’s attention.(22)
The scientists who brushed aside Callendar’s claims were reasoning well enough. (Subsequent work has shown that the temperature rise up to 1940 was, as his critics thought, mainly caused by some kind of natural cyclical effect, not by the still relatively low CO2 emissions. And the physics of radiation and climate was indeed too poorly known at that time to show whether adding more gas could make much difference.) Yet if Callendar was mistaken when he insisted he could prove global warming had arrived, it was a fortunate mistake.
Research by definition is done at the frontier of ignorance. Like nearly everyone described in these essays, Callendar had to use intuition as well as logic to draw any conclusions at all from the murky data and theories at his disposal. Like nearly everyone, he argued for conclusions that mingled the true with the false, leaving it to later workers to peel away the bad parts. While he could not prove that global warming was underway, he had given reasons to reconsider the question. We owe much to Callendar’s courage. His claims rescued the idea of global warming from obscurity and thrust it into the marketplace of scientific ideas. Not everyone dismissed his claims. Their very uncertainty attracted scientific curiosity.

The Speculations Vindicated (1950-1960) TOP OF PAGE
The complacent view that CO2 from human activity could never become a problem was overturned during the 1950s by a series of costly observations. This was a consequence of the Second World War and the Cold War, which brought a new urgency to many fields of research. American scientists enjoyed massively increased government funding, notably from military agencies. The officials were not aiming to answer academic questions about future climates, but to provide for pressing military needs. Almost anything that happened in the atmosphere and oceans could be important for national security. Among the first products were new data for the absorption of infrared radiation, a topic of more interest to weapons engineers than meteorologists.(23)

The early studies sending radiation through gases in a tube had an unsuspected logical flaw — they were measuring bands of the spectrum at sea-level pressure and temperature. Fundamental physics theory, and a few measurements made at low pressure in the 1930s, showed that in the frigid and rarified upper atmosphere, the nature of the absorption would change. The bands seen at sea level were actually made up of overlapping spectral lines, all smeared together. Improved physics theory, developed by Walter Elsasser during the Second World War, and laboratory studies during the war and after confirmed the point. At low pressure each band resolved into a cluster of sharply defined lines, like a picket fence, with gaps between the lines where radiation would get through.(24)

These measurements inspired the theoretical physicist Lewis D. Kaplan to grind through some extensive numerical computations. In 1952, he showed that in the upper atmosphere the saturation of CO2 lines should be weak. Thus adding more of the gas would make a difference in the high layers, changing the overall balance of the atmosphere. Meanwhile, precise laboratory measurements found that the most important CO2 absorption lines did not lie exactly on top of water vapor lines. Instead of two overlapping bands, there were two sets of narrow lines with spaces for radiation to slip through.(25)

Nobody could say anything more specific without far more extensive computations. By 1956, these could be carried out thanks to the increasingly powerful new digital computers. The physicist Gilbert N. Plass took up the challenge of calculating the transmission of radiation through the atmosphere, nailing down the likelihood that adding more CO2 would increase the interference with infrared radiation.(26) Going beyond this qualitative result, Plass announced that human activity would raise the average global temperature “at the rate of 1.1 degree C per century.” The computation, like Callendar’s, paid no attention to possible changes in water vapor and clouds, and overall was too crude to convince scientists. “It is almost certain,” one authority scolded, “that these figures will be subject to many strong revisions.”(27) Yet Plass had proved one central point: it was a mistake to dismiss the greenhouse effect with spectroscopic arguments. He warned that climate change could be “a serious problem to future generations” — although not for several centuries. Following the usual pattern, Plass was mainly interested in the way variations in CO2 might solve the mystery of the ice ages. “If at the end of this century the average temperature has continued to rise,” he wrote, then it would be “firmly established” that CO2 could cause climate change.(28)

[Voyager]

@tagos

You can knock yourself out. I’ve clearly forgotten more about science than you know. And I’ll leave it to others with more patience than I to explain why a small micro-environment sealed in a glass dome isn’t even a vague approximate to the Earth for any basis let alone climate modelling.

Not that it should need explaining to anyone.

This whole thing started when I made a joke about greenhouses validating the greenhouse effect. Obviously some people didn’t get it. I’m not a climatologist, but I know enough to know that a good model is going to tell you a lot more than a terrarium.

It seems that brazil84 is confusing available data with data used to define a model. Data not used for setting the model is perfectly appropriate to use for testing.

[matt]

@tagos

deniers, (who IMHO should be treated with the same scorn and derision creationists and Holocaust Deniers are met with)

I’m suprised at you. That is out of line. Have you read intention’s posts? Do you think he is ill informed, arguing from authority, or debating in bad faith?

@tagos

It is up to deniers [snip] to explain why carbon dioxide, methane etc are not functioning as their chemistry dictates.

Quite so. But first it is up to EVERYBODY to educate themselves about what carbon dioxide actually does in the atmosphere. The “greenhouse effect” is an analogy, and a poor one.

Carbon dioxide actually absorbs infra-red in the 10-22 micron wavelength region, with a few peaks elsewhere, while the infrared spectrum runs roughly from 1-70 microns. Doubling the amount of CO2 would increase the energy it absorbs by only a percent or so. It takes work to explain why the climate is sensitive to CO2, not the other way around. That work has been done and is described in the cite I just gave, but it is flat out incorrect to lump sceptics together with creationists.

And on preview, I see jshore and GIGObuster have covered the issue of CO2 sensitivity and, why for a long time the climate was quite justifiably thought to be CO2 insensitive.

[kanicbird]

@InvisibleWombat

Your personal belief that “X” is a false god does not in any way imply that belief in “X” is a religion.

I would say it’s the priority and faith one places on that false god that does or does not make it a religion.

You’re talking about sweet corn (people food) as opposed to feed corn (cattle food), which can be used to produce biofuel. Once conversion facilities are available so that shipping isn’t so much of an issue, then biofuel can be produced locally in areas like here (Montana) on land that is currently not being used for crops. How, exactly, does that hurt anyone? And do you have any stats on feed corn to back up what you’re saying?

You are the one speculating here that there is enough vacant land, water, resources to produce excess grains (corn) in enought quantity that it would not effect the food prices, even directly (as food grade corn), or as animal feed, in which we would consume those animals. What you are stating seems to go against the basic laws of economics.

@Askance

You have a hard time sticking to your own arguments, don’t you? First it was Evil Scientists, now they are poor deluded fools being duped by some Evil Politician - I’ll speculate you are referring to Al Gore here but I’m willing to be corrected.

I was not the one who said deluded, you did, I’d expect a poor scientist to fully know what it means by changing the data, basically ‘deceiving the whole world’, which would make the poor scientist to a evil scientist IMHO.

As for Al Gore, I don’t know what his motivation, I do suspect, if pressed, that he does accept AGW totally on faith, and thus is a great candidate for the high priest of AWG job, he likes being the prophet of AWG and letting us know about the upcoming AGW ‘Apocalypse’ . Yes I know he is quite intelligent and can understand some of the work done, but he should also know that it’s too big for any one person to understand it all. Perhaps I’m wrong and he is intentionally deceiving the world however.

3. “lower class people corrupted by the rich is not unheard of in human history” - oh really? Name, say, 6 occurrences. Note that if you can, you are acknowledging that these occurrences become public knowledge - if so why has this not occurred in this case?

Note many of these can be subdivided into many more:
Modern day sweat shops
Drug mules
Modern day criminal justice system
Conscription
Pre-union mass production
Slavery
Indentured servitude
Feudal system

We’re not sure this hasn’t been the case for AGW yet.

@Autumn Almanac

If pro-AGW sentiment is “religious,” could anti-AGW be considered equally “religious” for largely the same reasons (laypeople take the word of perceived authority, certain powerful people stand to gain wealth if their view prevails, etc.)? Why shouldn’t it apply both ways?

I’d say yes if one took that on faith as well.

[GIGObuster]

@matt

I’m suprised at you. That is out of line. Have you read intention’s posts? Do you think he is ill informed, arguing from authority, or debating in bad faith?

As Faith is the subject of this thread I have to say he is, one of the points was to call the examples or cites of others circular reasoning.

I agree with what Voyager mentions here:

“everyone who creates models knows this… It is trivial to draw a best fit line through any set of points, but that is useless. So, if the models got made with all the data, and not tested, I’d agree - but then all scientists doing models would be witlings. This I doubt.”

So calling that research “circular reasoning” was IMO bad faith.

Also when he called other cites an “appeal to authority” fallacies. In the recent thread someone even posted the fact that it was not an appeal to authority fallacy when the authority quoted is an expert in the field, **intention ** totally ignored that and continued. Bad faith IMHO, and since that other debate was at that time virtually a hijack of the main theme I decided to not bother with someone that ignores even logic 101.

[brazil84]

@LilShieste

We’re not talking about fluctuations of 0.2 degrees in the span of 10 years;those have happened before.

That’s a little different from what you said before, but . . . let me ask you: Which 10 year spans between 1500 AD and 1700 AD had 0.2 degree fluctuations? And do you have a cite for it?

[Lightnin]

@kanicbird

As for Al Gore, I don’t know what his motivation, I do suspect, if pressed, that he does accept AGW totally on faith, and thus is a great candidate for the high priest of AWG job, he likes being the prophet of AWG and letting us know about the upcoming AGW ‘Apocalypse’ . Yes I know he is quite intelligent and can understand some of the work done, but he should also know that it’s too big for any one person to understand it all. Perhaps I’m wrong and he is intentionally deceiving the world however.

“You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

Are you seriously suggesting that if one does not completely understand every nuance of a phenomenon, then they have no right to speak on that subject since they’re taking it on “faith”? Global warming is a huge, huge subject- NOBODY understands every nuance of it. However, there are a lot of people who know more about it than most, and I’m inclined to trust their opinions.

Here’s another possible motivation for Gore, by the way- perhaps everything he’s read on AGW has him frightened enough to think that somebody’s got to do something, and fast… and that, as a wealthy politician, he’s in a better position than most to do something about it.

[kanicbird]

@Lightnin'

Are you seriously suggesting that if one does not completely understand every nuance of a phenomenon, then they have no right to speak on that subject since they’re taking it on “faith”? Global warming is a huge, huge subject- NOBODY understands every nuance of it. However, there are a lot of people who know more about it than most, and I’m inclined to trust their opinions.

I am seriously suggesting in todays political climate anyone intelligent enough to really look into AGW should also be intelligent enough to know there is too much potential for abuse and gain that the whole research project is thrown into question as likely corrupt.

Here’s another possible motivation for Gore, by the way- perhaps everything he’s read on AGW has him frightened enough to think that somebody’s got to do something, and fast… and that, as a wealthy politician, he’s in a better position than most to do something about it.

As I stated above, if he can do the research he should be able to realize the potential for corruption of it for political gain and be highly suspect of any of the data, theories and conclusions. Because of this potential, which I see as highly probable, anyone who accepts AGW does so only on faith, ignoring the fact that due to the corruptibility of man this can not be known.

Is it possible he accepts all that data (that supports his point, and throws out anything that goes against it), at face value, truly thinking that man is good hearted and would never corrupt scientific work intentionally (that supports his point of view), and is just doing what he sees as what is good for mankind? Yes, but ignoring the parts I’ve put in ( ) puts this in the same category as many people place religion.

[brazil84]

@jshore

As was noted in the original piece that I linked to, the emission scenario that played out was very close to that assumed in B (which Hansen had apparently also noted at the time seem to be the most likely emissions scenario).

Actually it appears that Scenario B was the WORST fit in terms of emissions.

Cite:

http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/prometheus/archives/climate_change/000836evaluating_jim_hanse.html

Comparison with Scenarios

Most Accurate CH4 Assumption = Scenario A
Most Accurate N2O Assumption = each
Most Accurate CO2 Assumption = Scenario C

In none of the three emissions assumptions did Scenario B contain the most accurate emissions assumptions. From this initial evaluation, it seems that to the extent that Jim Hansen’s Scenario B has accurately anticipated global temperature increases since 1988, it has done so based on inaccurate assumptions about emissions paths. Perhaps the errors cancel out, but an accurate prediction based on inaccurate assumptions should give some pause to using those same assumptions into the future.

[brazil84]

@LilShieste

How did you conclude that from jshore’s post? I actually had the opposite conclusion (i.e., it’s tested as well as it possibly can be).

LilShieste

“tested as well as it possibly can be” is not necessarily inconsistent with “essentially untested.”

[brazil84]

@jshore

No…The conclusion is that climate science isn’t simple and so AGW has to be tested in lots of different ways which test different pieces of the hypothesis (or look at similar “natural experiments” that occurred in the past). Nobody says that climate science is easy…but then science at the forefront of our knowledge is never particularly easy, something that often confuses those who are not part of the scientific exercise and expect it to be as simple as the simple examples, usually far from the forefront of knowledge that are presented in the science classroom. This is why the state of a field of science is best judged by scientists themselves rather than those who are not qualified to judge.

What are your credentials please?

[brazil84]

@Voyager

This whole thing started when I made a joke about greenhouses validating the greenhouse effect. Obviously some people didn’t get it. I’m not a climatologist, but I know enough to know that a good model is going to tell you a lot more than a terrarium.

It seems that brazil84 is confusing available data with data used to define a model. Data not used for setting the model is perfectly appropriate to use for testing.

So how much would you pay for a stock market model that has been “tested” in this way?

[Autumn_Almanac]

@kanicbird

As I stated above, if he can do the research he should be able to realize the potential for corruption of it for political gain and be highly suspect of any of the data, theories and conclusions. Because of this potential, which I see as highly probable, anyone who accepts AGW does so only on faith, ignoring the fact that due to the corruptibility of man this can not be known.

kanicbird, would it be fair to characterize your view as follows:

The default, common-sense position is that human activity does not affect Earth’s climate in any meaningful way, so the burden of proof rests with those who argue that it does, only they can never meet this burden because the problem is too complicated and/or corruption-prone.

If so, are there hypothetical circumstances in which the scientific community could legitimately come to a conclusion one way or the other, or is the debate inherently tainted and intractable, forever?

[LilShieste]

@brazil84

That’s a little different from what you said before, but . . . let me ask you: Which 10 year spans between 1500 AD and 1700 AD had 0.2 degree fluctuations? And do you have a cite for it?

Since I do not have a cite for that claim (that it had happened before), I have no problem with retracting it.

So, let me back up. Do you know of any other 125-year periods that have seen a steady increase or decrease in global temperature fluctuation of 0.8 degrees C? The length of time, and the magnitude of the change - taken together - is what I’m talking about.

If so, I would interested in learning about them.

If not, then don’t you think that’s kind of… well… abnormal?

On preview…

@brazil84

“tested as well as it possibly can be” is not necessarily inconsistent with “essentially untested.”

Well, since you’re now saying “essentially untested” instead of simply “untested”, it looks like we’re moving in the right direction.

LilShieste

[GIGObuster]

@kanicbird

I am seriously suggesting in todays political climate anyone intelligent enough to really look into AGW should also be intelligent enough to know there is too much potential for abuse and gain that the whole research project is thrown into question as likely corrupt.

That is valid only by ignoring the history of AGW research.

@kanicbird

As I stated above, if he can do the research he should be able to realize the potential for corruption of it for political gain and be highly suspect of any of the data, theories and conclusions. Because of this potential, which I see as highly probable, anyone who accepts AGW does so only on faith, ignoring the fact that due to the corruptibility of man this can not be known.

:rolleyes:

Unlikely in the sense that by this time more than one whistle blower would have come up showing where the experimenters and modelers are twisting the data. It seems to me that such a researcher willing to spill the beans would get showered with money considering the stakes for the other side.

Corruptions cuts both ways and so it is the evidence that has to be mostly looked at, not the pretended or supposed corruption.

@kanicbird

Is it possible he accepts all that data (that supports his point, and throws out anything that goes against it), at face value, truly thinking that man is good hearted and would never corrupt scientific work intentionally (that supports his point of view), and is just doing what he sees as what is good for mankind? Yes, but ignoring the parts I’ve put in ( ) puts this in the same category as many people place religion.

As I see the history of why AGW came to be, it shows that it was science not having the big picture or better tools that was missing the problem then. Evidence then convinced many scientists that there is an issue with AGW. I have seen more examples of corruption that **delayed ** the current level of acceptance AGW has among climate researchers today.

[LilShieste]

@brazil84

“tested as well as it possibly can be” is not necessarily inconsistent with “essentially untested.”

I was thinking more about this statement, while grabbing some lunch.

Doesn’t “tested as well as it possibly can be” equate more with “essentially tested”, than “essentially untested”?
LilShieste

[brazil84]

@LilShieste

Since I do not have a cite for that claim (that it had happened before), I have no problem with retracting it.

Ok so you admit that the temperature drops I cited are unprecedented?

If not, then don’t you think that’s kind of… well… abnormal?

It depends what temperature data are available. See my previous question.

[brazil84]

@LilShieste

I was thinking more about this statement, while grabbing some lunch.

Doesn’t “tested as well as it possibly can be” equate more with “essentially tested”, than “essentially untested”?

It depends how well the hypothesis can be tested.