I’m not a geologist an I can point out that plate tectonics is falsifiable.
I have no idea where this odd notion came from that observational sciences don’t operate on falsifiability. I’ve worked in an observational science for many years and I’ve never operated on anything but falsifiability. just because I can’t see what plants an animals lived in an area before human disturbance that doesn’t mean I can’t falsify any hypotheses. I can make a prediction of what the pollen record of nearby sediments should show, or look at isotopes in the soil, or make a prediction about what I should find at undisturbed sites elsewhere. If any of those observations fail to match my predictions the hypothesis is falsified.
And for the life of me I can’t see why palaeontology couldn’t make very similar predictions. The idea that palaeontology can’t produce falsifiable predictions seems incredible.
Or we could continue to increase emissions and see if it fails to rise, as you said earlier.
I’m afraid I don’t understand this. Are you saying that the only warming the Earth ever experiences is anthropogenic?
No, it certainly wouldn’t. There are a great many things that science can’t explain. We don’t incorporate a God of gaps.
It has nothing to do with what I like. it has to do with whether it is science. If you want to invoke a religious explanation or any other explanation that’s fine with me. It still doesn’t make it science.
This is a total non sequitur.
Science is something that is falsifiable. If AGW isn’t falsifiable then why is it any more science than gods?
Cite. Seriously, where is that in the Popperian definition of science?
Any falsifiable explanation is science. If the explanation isn’t falsifiable it is ruled out as being science. Where does it say that you can accept unfalsifiable explanations as science so long as you have no replacement theory?
Yes, just like the eminently reasonable assumption that the Earth is flat and that the sun orbits it. Or the eminently reasonable assumption that black people are less technologically advanced because they are closer to apes.
In the entire history of the world has any eminently reasonable assumption actually been correct? I can’t think of any, but even if there have been a few the fact that so many have been proven false shows why science relies on falsifiablity, not eminent reaosnablenesss.
When Popper speaks of ideas becoming testable, it suggests that the same hypothesis may move from “non-scientific” to “scientific” as our ability to falsify it develops. For example, Democritus proposed that all matter was created of indivisible particles, which he called atoms. My question is, was this a scientific theory? Or did it only become one thousands of years later, when we gained the ability to observe matter on the atomic scale?
If AGW could only be falsifed by conducting some impossibly elaborate experiment or simulation which it was utterly beyond our current technical ability to actually do, would that make it non-scientific? There’s surely a difference between being non-falsifiable (i.e. not falsifiable under any circumstances) and unfalsifiable (i.e. not able to be falsified by any means at our disposal right now.)
Also, Popper’s quote above would suggest that, should we conclude AGW was non-scientific, it could still very well be important, significant, meaningful and sensible. In which case, the right response may very well be to continue researching the climate with a view to a)refining the AGW hypothesis and/or b)improving our ability to falsify it.
Remind me of your scientific credentials. Liking or not liking an explanation doesn’t come into it. There’s plenty of stuff for which we have no explanation. Sure we can invent hypotheses to explain them, but we don’t accept even the most plausible until they’re proven. In the interim, we accept that there is currently no explanation.
The thing about AGW is that being a reasonable assumption does not make it correct. Newton’s Laws of Motion were reasonable - and were a tremendous achievement - and passed everyday tests; Einstein had to correct them.
It was unscientific. A completely different theory with the same prediction was scientific at a later date. I can’t see how the fact that the two theories have the same prediction means they both have to be scientific.
Genesis and evolution both predicted that humans would appear in the fossil record after all other species. Does that make genesis scientific?
What if we replace AGW in that sentence with “Astrology” or “Freudian Psychology” or “Christianity” or any other psuedosciene? Because the statement is no less true and no less nonsensical for such a change.
If there is such a difference then we will have to concede Astrology or Freudian Psychology and Christianity are also unfalsifiable. And if we accept that, then precisely what utility do you see in distinguishing between unfalsifiable and non-falsifiable?
True enough. However what it doesn’t suggest is that we must or even should do so. Most unfalsifiable theories are invalid and useless. Some, as Popper notes, are not. So while we shouldn’t discount all theories because they are unscientific that doesn’t mean that we have to accept them all either. They laughed at Newton and they laughed at Columbus but they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.
I’d query, given that Genesis flatly contradicts the possibiliity of a fossil record, whether it predicts any such thing. But we’ve been given the criterion for “scientific-ness” - making falsifiable predictions. If you assure me that Genesis does make such a prediction, then I will agree that it is scientific. I wouldn’t want to be accused of picking and choosing what is science based on my own irrational prejudices.
Again, I’d query the idea that Astrology doesn’t make predictions - I’d have said that it made pretty obvious predictions which were easily disproven. But that’s beside the point - Christianity, to pick another example, doesn’t make any predictions that could theoretically be proven with suitably advanced techonology - it’s metaphysical in essence. Similarly, I’m unaware of any claims that Freudian Psychology could be proven if only we had sufficiently advanced brain scanning equipment.
By contrast, it seems to me - and I’m open to correction - that AGW could in theory be falsified: that with hugely powerful computers, a rigorous understanding of all the factors that influence climate and super-sensitive measuring equipment, it could be shown that the release of GHGs by humans had the effect of warming the planet over and above what it would be under “natural” conditions, or not. Does the fact that we cannot do this now mean that AGW is in the same class as Christianity as a theory?
In fact, here’s a thought experiment. Say that, in the year 2154, mankind will have developed the technology and understanding to falsify the current AGW theory by means of experiment. In what year does AGW become science?
I disagree entirely. As above, I would say that Christianity is non-falsifiable in essence - there is no even theoretical experiment that would prove or disprove Christ’s claim to be the Way, the Truth and the Life. Whereas, for example, if I went back in time to, say, 1689 and presented Huygens with the theoretical basis for GR, that would merely be unfalsifiable - Huygens would be unable to make sufficiently accurate measurements to test the theory, owing solely to the paucity of his equipment. Does that make the difference clearer?
Hmm. Saying, “Other unfalsifiable theories were useless, therefore this one is useless” strikes me as a somewhat fallacious decision-making process.
The fact is that the water vapor feedback was pointed as important for the Greenhouse gas theory to work, deniers on the Straight Dope even told us that the water vapor feedback was not demonstrated as it was mostly coming from the physical computer models.
Had the new tests and satellite data (yes, a satellite was launched also to get data to confirm the results of the mostly theoretical experiments until then) had demonstrated that the water vapor feedback with CO2 was hooey then a huge component of the prediction models and the theory behind AGW would have gone up in smoke.
It is still bad science.
Starting his graph from 2001 or 2002 does not make much a difference in the fact that he is being misleading.
Nope, did you miss the part of my post where I pointed out you were an ecologist and so was therefore puzzled as to the way you set up your definitions?
Yup, could you point me to it? I did a google search for “Karl Popper” “gravitational lensing” and I’m not coming up with anything interesting. I’d be interested to read this but I have a rough ideal of what it would say.
I’d like you to expand about this. There are different kinds of observational sciences and Popper’s definition works to some extent for some of them.
Some observational sciences generate so much data that scientists can afford to just patiently wait until the universe provides an experiment which they would have run anyway. In which case, Popperian criterion works much as they would for an experimental science.
Some observational sciences generate a steady stream of data but there are systematic biases that can never be accounted for. AGW is one of these because we only have one earth to experiment, in which case, Popper is useful for the aspects of the theory that don’t depend on unique features of the earth.
Some observational sciences work from a fixed set of data that can never be expanded upon in which case Popper’s criterion is wholly useless.
Yes, I’ve admitted that AGW falls into the set of non-falsifiable theories that includes astrology, astronomy, paleontology, cryptozoology, geography, exobiology & religion. Now the question is, how is this a useful set? The reason I dispute your premise is because I think you’ve set it up to generate an ultimately uninteresting answer.
Just how likely do you think that the random amount of warming we have introduced happens to exactly counterbalance the random amount of cooling that occurs naturally by an as yet unknown process for which there exists zero evidence? And how scientific do you think this hypothesis is?
Yes, both possible avenues for falsification. However, it’s not just dispassionate science we’re doing here, unfortunately, if worst comes to worst, there may be human lives at stake.
Actually, I said that if there’s no warming at all, there can surely be no anthropogenic warming. Sorry if that wasn’t clear.
Great! I wasn’t arguing for a god of the gaps (and I hate the argument with a passion). However, if all natural explanations have been excluded (however epistemologically difficult or impossible that may be), then supernatural ones are all that remain.
Then why that need to equate AGW with religion in such a straw man way? If you were truly arguing from a scientific viewpoint an in the interest of such a viewpoint, you could assess the hypothesis on its merits and reach a conclusion without much fuss; heck, you could even conclude that climate studies are not an area worthy of your scientific attention and do whatever the heck else you want.
You’re mixing two things up here: first, I do consider AGW to be falsifiable, and you seemed to agree with the falsification scenarios I drew up. Second, as I said in this post, the question is ultimately a purely academic one anyway – what matters is whether it’s real or not, and whether you (or I or whoever else) choose to call it science or not does not impinge on that question in the slightest. Indeed, I’d be happy to renounce the scientific nature of AGW once and for all and have everybody shot who so much as dares to use the two words in one sentence if that meant we could just sit down and work out whether or not there’s a danger, how big it is, and what the best course of action is going to be; the moniker is wholly irrelevant to me.
It’s not in Popper’s essay because that was not what he concerned himself with in it; he merely establishes falsification as a necessary criterion for calling a theory scientific, however, I doubt he would have claimed that in doing so he had exhaustively circumscribed the whole area of scientific inquiry. However, I’m curious as to what it is you would have me cite – that in order to do science, one needs to consider the hypotheses formulated to explain the empirical data before dismissing them? Honestly?
Well, I don’t hold AGW to be unfalsifiable, since it does make clear predictions about the future – indeed, it is nothing but a prediction about the future! (And can an explanation even be truly an explanation if it’s not falsifiable? Seems to me that ‘god did it’-like statements never actually explain anything so much as accept the unknowable nature of the true explanation; but that’s largely beside the point.)
All of which was eventually supplanted by better models, none of which was ‘something unknown is doing we don’t know what’. I am happy to follow a climate model in better accord with the data up to this point, or in some other way preferable. Discarding the by a wide margin only reasonable model we have in favour of ignorance because of some philosophical quibble regarding the proper definition of the word ‘science’ runs counter to any sensible understanding of it.
:rolleyes: Please. Weighing our respective degrees against each other isn’t going to settle the argument one way or the other. (And if that were the case, AGW would nowadays be considered an established fact.)
Funny how you call my credentials into question and then go on to talk about proving things in science. What has ever been proven in science? There are always only candidate explanations with varying levels of evidence speaking for them; as things are, our candidate explanations regarding the development of the climate are 1) AGW and 2) I dunno, them things just happen.
I’m a total layman, so I can’t possibly contribute productively to these debates. I do have a question, though. Blake, what evidence would falsify the hypothesis that global warming is not caused by humans?
An asteroid is headed to intersect Earth’s orbit. Due to some quirk in its orbit, or maybe the insufficient nature of our means (picture tech some 50 years ago), it is impossible to predict with absolute certainty whether we’ll get it, or it’ll be a near miss; some say it’ll hit, some say it won’t. With a concerted global effort, we could probably avert a possible collision, or perhaps not. This is analogous to the situation with AGW: maybe it’s coming, maybe it ain’t; maybe we can do something about it, maybe we can’t, and in both cases, it’s impossible to know for sure until ‘after the fact’.
Would you now judge the hypothesis that the asteroid might hit us ‘unscientific’? And would your recommended course (whichever it might be) of action depend in any way on this judgement?
Although I have little doubt that humans are having an effect on the climate, the Medieval Warm Period occurred with no significant human input.
GIGObuster: there is absolutely no doubt that Christopher Walter Monckton, is indeed 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley. NONE. He is not a member of the current House of Lords, true but that doesn’t mean he is not a Viscount and thus Lord Monckton.
Monckton clearly is trying to pass himself as a member of the house of lords, when his lordship is only because of **who **his relatives were that does diminish any authority that he claims.
But more importantly his latest claims were made by making underhanded moves to convince others that he was being respected in academia, he is not.
Lord in the family sense, and nothing else, regardless of what he pretends to be. I would not have a beef if it wasn’t for the fact that he is making an effort to pass himself as a member of the house.
My claim is not that all observational science is unfalsifiable but that there exists claims in observational science which are unfalsifiable.
Consider Jared Diamond’s reporting of Barry Rolett’s claim in page 115-118 of Collapse. Rolett looked at the degree of deforestation on 81 polynesian islands and came up with a model for deforestation that involved 9 different variables.
Is his hypothesis true? Who knows? Is it scientific? I would argue that it is. Is it falsifiable? Hell no.
How would you falsify a claim like that? It’s not like you can generate an 82nd island to test the model. The entire sum of the dataset for all eternity is going to be 81 islands. Given that there’s an infinite number of models that would explain such data, how can we be sure Rolett’s 9 factor one is the correct one?
The key question that would have to be shown to be falsifiable, IMHO, is what is cause and what is effect. We can easily demonstrate whether or not increases in greenhouse gases change the radiative properties of air to retain more radiative energy. We can demonstrate whether emissions of those gases are anthropogenic. We can demonstrate the effects of water vapor or clouds.
What the key issue is, then, is whether the increases in greenhouse gases cause warming or whether warming causes increases in greenhouse gases. It may be my ignorance of the science of natural processes, but the latter cause-effect relationship seems to me to be the more difficult one to demonstrate. For the former, we can (and have) estimated the amount of GHGs generated through (primarily) combustion of fossil fuels, and from other anthropogenic sources, and we have a pretty good handle on how those gases influence the radiative properties of air. This was done well over 100 years ago by Arrhenius, who was the first to suggest that the climate could be altered by fossil fuel use.
The ease of demonstrating a hypothesis (at least theoretically) does not lead to a conclusive answer, given the real-world complexities. Nor does the difficulty of demonstrating a competing hypothesis disprove that theory. But for me, the first step in falsifying AGW is to demonstrate that the increased anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases does not result in changes to the atmosphere’s radiative balance.
Most of what I’ve seen about this from the skeptics leans on complex natural processes to counteract any warming effect - to my mind, they seem to agree that increased GHG concentrations would result in a warming tendency, since I have not seen anything that contradicts that basic relationship (such a contradiction may be out there, I just haven’t seen it).
But much more often, the arguments tend to be about which is cause and which is effect. I tend to side with those that say we will have to wait to find out conclusively. There may be ways to demonstrate which it is, but in the meantime, the first steps we would take to reduce emissions have other major benefits, such as more efficient use of energy and reducing our reliance on unstable energy sources (oil).
By the time we’re ready to really implement any major carbon reduction approaches, like capturing and storing CO2, our understanding of the atmospheric dynamics will have improved, perhaps to the point where it’s exceedingly clear what the causes and effects are. It would be nice to be able to say that we would have “undeniable” evidence, but there will always be those who will deny anything that leads to a conclusion they don’t like.