As usual FXMastermind misses the big picture:
Schmidt BTW is Gavin Schmidt, that was called by FXMastermind a “nobody”. It is interesting to notice what that “nobody” is doing now:
This quote shows that you ignore that science can be done without that limitation, indeed there was no control group when Einstein proposed relativity, evidence had to be gained by natural observation like when they used the moon to see if during an eclipse one could see the lights of stars bending.
As Peter Gleick Said:
The options are limited all right, but we can look at Mars to check if climate computer models can deal with other worlds, it is then very important evidence in their favor when they can be used to also predict and recreate the climate of Mars.
That is patently false reasoning that assumes that some sort of “control group” is the only way science can function. It isn’t. Sciences like archeology, paleontology, astronomy, and cosmology are all empirical sciences that build their conclusions from cumulative observational evidence. In the case of climate science, a great deal of research over many decades has gone into assessing the possible scope of the influence on climate of the kinds of factors you mention. Indeed climate science has made at least as many contributions to determining what does not cause significant climate change as what does, within particular timeframes.
The overwhelming scientific consensus – based on many lines of evidence including historical climate behavior, the incontrovertible effects of greenhouse gases, and different corroborating assessments of the amounts of CO2 and other GHGs released by human activity – is that GHGs released by human activity are the dominant driver of post-industrial planetary warming and the many aspects of climate change we’re currently seeing, including accelerated polar warming and ice melt and atmosphere-ocean circulation changes. No one involved in climate research seriously doubts this except a few obvious quacks with a discreditable history of bad science and deceptive practices, and the only reason such a viewpoint has any traction at all is because of a concerted disinformation campaign that’s been waged for at least two decades by the fossil fuel industry and its allies. Which – no coincidence – is just about how long it’s been since the question you ask – “are humans making the earth hotter?” – has been definitively answered.
Consensus is a philosophical position, science isn’t a thing voted on. For a thousand years, the Earth was thought to be the center of the universe. As late as the dawn of the 20th century saw gravity as an innate property of matter.
We do have data that acts as a control, the ice core data goes back well before the Homo genus evolved. From this we clearly see a doubling of CO[sub]2[/sub] concentrations in the atmosphere than the last temperature maximum. What we’re not seeing is a big jump in temperatures … yet.
If within 20,000 years we see temperatures start falling again, then we’d have our falsification.
You are missing the fact that the ones that demand a vote (or a recount I should say) are the deniers out there. We have not only a consensus of scientists but a consensus of the facts.
The jump has been observed, the implication is that it will get worse.
Nope, as I noted in a previous discussion Gavin Schmidt noted that we only need to see the temperatures drop at the levels seen in previous decades and remain there while the CO2 increases for a few decades.
That is not happening, the so called “pause” is not letting go and it does not exist once we take the oceans into account, the temperatures have remained hotter than the previous decades. As many serious researchers noted, once the natural cycles that are masking the increase in surface temperatures come back the accumulated CO2 will still be there still contributing to and increasing the overall temperature.
Is this statement falsifiable?
I think it is, there’s nothing here that GIGO posted that can’t be tested. Are the natural cycles masking temperature increases? We can certainly research these phenomena, and in 20,000 years we’ll have our answer.
Global warming wouldn’t be science if it wasn’t falsifiable.
Yes it can, just “reverse the polarity”. Really, your simple request can be answered by simply noticing that you only need to show that the previous decades were not colder that the “pause” we are going to, and one has to find a mechanism that fits the record that does not involve human released greenhouse gases.
As the oceans (that are 70% of the planet show) this is very likely. Incidentally one item your side never explains is why the low temperatures years of the cycles observed (the la nina years) are warmer than the ones before.
Sorry, but FXMastermind is not the head at GISS, it is **Gavin Schmidt.
**
And it is, the problem has been that the deniers and lukewarmers out there are failing to do the basic stuff that can falsify this, or when they try to do it and fail, the ones that are real sceptics become convinced of who was correct when the evidence they checked confirmed what most scientists were telling us.
I’m not sure I understand what you’re saying here. Please define what a “denier” is in the context of researching the climate. Would you include CERN’s CLOUD experiments?
The broader question here is whether we should conduct experiments that could possibly falsify our current understanding of climate change. Or do you think that since the consensus is that the oceans are absorbing the energy, we don’t have to take temperatures there?
Remember, we agree the Earth is warming, and we agree that man-kind contributes to this. Where we’ve disagreed in the past is I think this is a good thing, and you think it’s a evil thing. Good and evil are not things science addresses very well.
A denier uses that experiment to declare that CO2 and other human global warming gases are not important at causing the warming observed. The problem is always that the sources out there never go back to correct a misconception.
The context here is that the denial is a double one.
First there is the denial that what the scientists are telling us.
And then there is the denial that this was, even if it was not the focus of it, a way that the idea that human emitted greenhouse gases are the reason for the current warming could had been falsified.
There is indeed a second denial going on here and it is because in the end we will continue to see declarations from the denier sources that no falsification is possible when this case told us that indeed other possible mechanisms do fall short of the falsification that was attempted by the armchair scientists.
Case in point:
On the contrary, this only shows that all along you are only listening to the ones seeding FUD, the constant temperature readings being made and confirmed (by people like Muller from Berkeley Earth) is a constant testing that is being done. What is silly is to claim that all that does not include experiments to check if this was happening.
It is, and many lines of evidence and research had to be done to confirm that this issue is there.
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm
Remember, that is not the issue, the issue here is if the theory that was set in modern terms by Gilbert Plass can be falsified, it can be. And attempts at falsification were made (What Berkeley Earth did was indeed one big effort at that), It is also thanks to those falsification efforts that the scientists do reach the consensus that they have nowadays.
Having said that, on this it is also clear that it is very possible that crop failures are increasing thanks to the warming observed and that is then a factor on what is happening in the middle east as the Arab Spring was caused in part as result of crops failures thanks to intense droughts.
Unless you can tell me that dictators and xenophobes will change soon the conclusion to me and groups like the US military is that this issue will not lead to good things. Particularly when there are groups that claim that nothing bad will take place. Well, it is likely that it is already affecting us and it is very likely to get worse when the lack of preparedness, thanks to constant denials in places like our congress, is taken into account.
Do you have a citation on CERN stating this? I’m absolutely crystal clear on your position that climate change due to man’s activities has not been falsified, but that’s not the question …
Is it wrong to experiment and try to falsify AGW theory?
Nature published the paper that is cited in the article I linked to.
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v476/n7361/full/nature10343.html
Yep, there are the scientists at CERN indeed.
I already said that it is not wrong, once again it is the denier side the one that also refuses to acknowledge that experiments are constantly being made (Really, the simple reason why is that is that they can not contemplate that the ongoing falsification efforts actually confirm what the consensus is reporting now). It is the results that they do not like and hence the double denial that the experiments are being done or the denial here that I already mentioned that it is not wrong to experiment.
The point stands, the continuing experiments and history show that it is the contrarians who are wrong, and as Asimov noticed, they are even wrong on the levels of how wrong they think the scientists are.
I am only able to access the abstract through that link you gave, is it the inference from the statement “We find that ion-induced binary nucleation of H2SO4–H2O can occur in the mid-troposphere but is negligible in the boundary layer.” that makes these 25 signatories contrarians?
Seems to me they’ve honestly published their results, and in doing so doesn’t make them wrong. The physics of boundary layers is … tricky … to say the least.
Don’t confuse us with facts.
Yeah, I’m getting a headache.
They’re probably not contrarians, but honest scientists doing honest work.
That their conclusions point the direction some people say is what is – as you note – tricky. Note that this is very indirect evidence, as opposed to actual temperature measurements. They might be incorrect in their ideas of what this chemical nucleation actually means to climate.
Science often comes up with dissenting views; the overall process tends toward consensus, and minority views are challenged.
Crackpottery and denialism become pathological and non-scientific, not when they disagree with the consensus, but when they become politicized, pronouncing conclusions on the basis of ideology and not evidence.
Dissent is good. Velikovskyism isn’t.
No, just misrepresented.
The point is clear, their issue barely registers for the current warming that is happening thanks to human released warming gases.
Again, just misrepresented, as many that look at the issue can see, it is the deniers the ones that grabbed this and made a mountain out of a molehill, the point here is that the scientists are not demanding that their paper be used to poopoo the global warming issue. It is the deniers who did.
I agree … what CERN has done is found what it is we need to look for in the atmosphere. Now we need to set up an experiment there and try to find this process in nature. If we don’t, well it won’t be the first dead-end line of research. If we do, then we can measure how much it’s happening thus how much it effects our climate. This is going to take some time, and properly so. We want good science on this matter, I think we should give the scientists all the time they need to do the job proper like.
Crackpottery and alarmist become pathological and non-scientific as well, pronouncing conclusions on the basis of ideology and not evidence. We have to let honest scientists conduct their honest experiments without lamb-blasting them with the “denialist” label.
Attempts to falsify even widely accept theory is a good and necessary thing, if done with integrity.
How is this misrepresented?
The fact remains, your great points have not generated any support where it was needed, the ones you declared “nobodies” are becoming the director of GISS or in the economic front on the issue, another source I look for, became president of the American Economic Association.
You did not read the article then.
And that is the basic problem, what Dr. Kirkby et al did was good science, that was (and clearly continues) to be misrepresented, they concluded that this is indeed not a refutation of man-caused global warming. But for the deniers this item has never been corrected or they only show their continuous capacity of not learning from any mistakes like grabbing an idea and making it a bigger deal than what it is.
So anyone that still thinks that people like me are calling them deniers are indeed just supporting what I pointed before: they are wrong even on how they imagine the scientists are discussing this or the levels of wrong the scientists have (according once again to the imagination of the deniers).