This comment bugs me but I suppose I should take solace in the fact that a good “creation science” debater can defeat an evolutionary scientist in a debate in the minds of the general public, particularly those predisposed to believe the creationist. The fact is that non-scientists (or sometimes even scientists outside of their field) are not very good at judging the merits of the arguments, which is why we haven’t generally decided scientific matters in this way…but instead have had it play out through the peer-reviewed literature where scientists debate among themselves.
One thing intention does very well is say wrong things with total confidence. For example, if you don’t realize that the scientific arguments he posted up at William Briggs website (see post #108) are completely and utterly wrong, then you might find them to be believe quite believable, particularly given the confidence with which he says them (and, admittedly, also the nice style in which he explains things). As long as he steadfastly refuses to acknowledge they are wrong (and at the same time talks sanctimoniously about how he would never sacrifice honesty for effectiveness), a certain number of people will just assume that his arguments are probably…or at least possibly…right.
You’ve been led again and again to where (in the IPCC reports, for example) the evidence supporting AGW is. Like all theories, the evidence supporting it involves looking at the theory, which in this case means models that represent the atmospheric processes, and comparing these models to data in the real world. There is no getting away from that.
And, you have also had it explained to you again and again that the world “proof” doesn’t apply in science. You have even been given cites regarding this.
At some point, one just has to say, “Fine…You think there is no accumulation of evidence of AGW. Basically every major relevant scientific society thinks otherwise. You are entitled to your opinion and they are entitled to theirs. And, other people can decide whether to believe the scientific community or to believe a rather uninformed poster on a messageboard as to what constitutes scientific evidence in this case.”
When the critics jumble together the idea that humans are not responsible for climate change with a denial that there is ongoing climate change then there is no choice but dismiss the criticism.
That was a nonsensical jumble of propositions, NASA still shows the hockey stick in their site together with other graphs that support it, National Geographic and many other science groups just show then a perverse definition of what “discredited” means by accepting the evidence. Mann still teaches and he is still contributing to the science.
Saying that is “discredited” with no qualifiers shows me a tactic only Creationists would be proud of. This tactic of even denying that many other scientists took a look and they still accepted the evidence does not make your positions more attractive, one could make the now feeble point that they may be wrong, but the continuing acceptance of it in scientific circles tells me that the critics have a definition of “discredit” or “debunked” that comes from a different planet.
Our Sun is causing the global warming…other planets in our system are also warming up.
How many SUVS are over there on Mars anyways???
AGW is just a bunch of BS to get people to buy into the “green movement”. OH NOES THE PLANET IS DYING! The only way to save it is to buy “green cars”, “green diapers”, “green” this “green” that…all a bunch of BS.
>I’d say there has to come a point where even the third category is no longer valid - there has to be a point at which we can say “Enough! The evidence has spoken!” and can safely collapse the third category into the fourth.
Perhaps.
Some philosophy course on reasoning I took described the situation for somebody considering an argument this way: if the argument for a position is logically sound, and the assumptions in the argument are accepted as truth, then the person must accept the conclusion of the argument.
But surely there are alternatives.
The famous paradoxes, like Zeno’s, are little vignettes in which apparently truthful assumptions and logical arguments force a nonsensical conclusion.
Kelvin criticised the newly-emerging idea that the earth was many millions, hundreds of millions, of years old, or perhaps more. He pointed out that it would have cooled off a great deal more than it had, and could no longer have volcanos. In Kelvin’s day they did not know about the heat generated by fissioning isotopes deep in the earth, so Kelvin was solving the problem around the wrong issue.
And when I was first learning about astronomy as an interested child, there were dozens of canals on Mars that got more or less green as the seasons there passed. These things were hard to see, you had to look through a good telescope under good conditions, but many astronomers had.
So, we have lots of examples of inescapable conclusions still being wrong. I don’t think it’s reasonable to consider all the evidence and pay attention to the field and not think there is AGW, but I have to think it’s not necessarily just stupidity to disagree. I bet one of the things that has broad consensus after considerable scientific effort today will within our lifetimes turn out to be wrong, foolishly wrong, not “Newton described the familiar limiting case whereas Einstein got the broader truth right”, but bloodletting wrong. Maybe the third group is “unreasonable” to belong to. How strict to be about other people’s styles of thinking and satisfying themselves is an open question for me.
Actually, I see people who believe on both ends of the spectrum who believe with equal fervor and, to me, equal lack of willingness to take an objective view of the science. Hence the OP. It’s a bit of hyperbole to equate those who are climate skeptics as skeptical of science in general, or those who immediately believe in AGW as believing scientific results in general the way I did in the OP. But the ensuing discussion certainly is in line with my view that there are those who are never going to believe the science on climate and those who will always believe it. Between the two extremes are those who have done a fair amount of research on their own with an open mind and have come to their own conclusions. But by and large, it seems that there are quite a few people who start with the conclusion of their choice and then find the evidence necessary to support that conclusion. I’m sure everyone who holds a strong opinion on the topic will be able to point to others who disagree with them and agree that those “others” are not being objective.
My solution: let’s stop the arguing about the science and go ahead and declare the two extremes to be faith-based, burn the necessary heretics, distribute the appropriate scriptures, anoint the heaven-blessed leaders, and commence arguing about whether discussions of AGW belong in the workplace, at football games, and on government property.
Disagreeing with the conclusions is one thing, but the denialists go way beyond that to attempting to discredit the actual work done.
I’ll take that bet. I don’t think science has worked that way for the last few hundred years.
It’s not just about other people’s thinking, though - denialists are a positively evangelical movement with real influence far beyond their limited numbers. They influence public policy that affects us all. That’s why they have to be shown for the misinformed laypeople/mistaken scientists/malicious corporate shills (delete whichever is not applicable) they are. It’s the same as ID. If this was an argument like Expanding Earth vs Plate Tectonics in geology, or Out of Africa vs Multiple Origins in human evolution, I would participate, but it wouldn’t be the critical thing this is.
“Mann’s hockey stick” is one of several hockey sticks, and moreso when people refer to it, they’re talking about the first one he made.
In science, any one point of data or study is doubted to be accurate. Decisions aren’t made based on one study nor on one methodology. Saying that you have doubts about a single study or methodology is redundant in science, and so it’s rather a silly argument to use.
You could take any one study that the IPCC is based upon and entirely remove it, like Mann’s hockey stick or any of the various tree ring studies, and it wouldn’t have any effect. There are 600 different studies made by a few thousand different climatologists that were all combined to create the report. You can toss away all the ones that don’t live up to your personal standards and it will have no effect on the outcome.
Is it possible that every last study which supports CAGW is flawed? The answer is “yes,” because it’s possible for the same problems to infect the studies in a systematic way. For example, it seems that just about all the “evidence” in favor of CAGW rests on the slender reed of climate simulations. If we learn, in a convincing way, that modern climate simulations cannot adequately forecast future climate, then the conclusions of dozens, if not hundreds of studies will be called into question. In one fell swoop.
And? No one ever said that the scientists are correct. The scientists don’t say they’re correct.
What they do say is that based on the best of modern day technology with the best testing we can do to verify that the models simulate reality, that such and such result seems to be what it is. There’s every chance that that’s wrong, but unless you can create a better model than the best that’s ever been made to date and have it come to a different result, then all your complaining is just pissing into the wind. The only person getting any dirt on them is your pantleg.
And so far as I’m aware, as technology has become more advanced, the likelihood of AWG has increased not decreased. And they’ve started to become comfortable estimating what percentage is anthropogenic and what percentage is not.
Lol. As it turns out, it would appear that I can indeed come up with a better model. According to wevets, here are the Met Office’s year on year temperature forecasts and measurements:
One way to test this sort of forecast is to compare the prediction against the “naive” or “no-change” model. In other words, to use the measurement from each year as the forecast for the next.
Do the math and see if you agree with me. Looks to me like the Met Office, with it’s millions of dollars of software and supercomputers, could be beaten by a 15 year old with a Commodore Vic 20 and 10 lines of computer code.
A) Refer back to what I said in post #34. The existence of a single flawed engine in the world isn’t a proof. Particularly not one which wasn’t used in the IPCC report.
B) I’ll research that one and see if what wevet said is even true.
Please feel free to show me another climate model which has been used to make real, testable predictions. I would love to see how it performs.
Besides, it’s not as though I cherry-picked a sucky climate model. wevets chose that model and those predictions to support his claim that climate models are good at predicting stuff.
In any event, you can ask wevets which model produced the predictions he cited. I did do a quick google search and it does appear that Met Office models are in fact used in IPCC reports:
