Why Would Insurers Tell Untruths About Global Warming?

Great Debates
101

The relevant quotes are as follows:

“We are not dealing with predictions here, but facts” … “No need to reach for unlikely future falsifications”

So long as you refuse to predict whether there will be future ice loss, then either future ice loss or future ice gain can be explained as 100% consistent with your predictions. I’m not taking issue with “what it was predicted before”; I’m merely noting that you’re curiously unwilling to make an ice-loss prediction about the future.

You’ve boldly predicted a tenth-of-a-degree change in temperature from 2007 to 2017; if that fails to materialize, you’ll be proven wrong. But for some reason, you’re not making a similar prediction about ice loss; if we see further ice loss, or no further ice loss, or even a good deal of ice gain, you can still claim 100% accuracy regardless – until and unless you do for ice loss what you’ve done for temperature, by making a falsifiable claim about the future.

If you ever feel like ‘dealing with predictions’ by making a ‘reach for unlikely future falsifications’, you can turn brazil84’s claim into garbage; absent that, he’s simply correct.

102

Jump up and tap dance all you want, he was wrong, and there is no need to use your toy falsification tool.

103

Oh, had you offered a falsifiable prediction about future ice loss? I may have missed it; post a link to one and I’ll gladly grant your point.

104

Bullseye, the past does not exist for people like you, it is very inconvenient when all those times that this could be falsified was not.

105

If it had already been falsified, it would already have fallen by the wayside. The only remaining question is whether you’re declaring the matter settled, such that no further evidence could sway you – or whether you believe it could be falsified by hypothetical evidence in the future. Which is it?

106

It has, where do you see any climate scientist claiming that the few exceptions apply to the whole regarding the already observed ice loss? Cite please.

Once again a very unlikely future event, I rather accept that the failure for any serious researcher to claim that the past evidence and tests should be ignored to accommodate people like you is telling.

107

I don’t think you read that right. It’d make sense for you to say “it hasn’t,” since, y’know, it hasn’t already been falsified. (It’d also make sense for you to say “it hasn’t” in reply to the part about falling by the wayside, since it hasn’t done that either.)

If so, your question about what scientists are claiming is equally misplaced. If not, then your position is – that “it has” been falsified? That can’t be right.

Who said they should be ignored? Like you, I believe “the past evidence and tests” should be taken seriously; that’s why, like you, I believe something should be done now. But I also believe future evidence and tests should be taken seriously; you felt that way about the entirely falsifiable tenth-of-a-degree prediction, and so supplied it, bold as brass; why not do the same for ice loss?

108

I agree that your statement is 100% true if the classic GW/AGW is accepted.

This list is great, though.

109

I missed the links to papers published in refereed journals in there.

If you take what is said in the popular press about science as representative of the science itself, you can prove or disprove practically any damned theory under the sun. It’s like George Will’s many columns about how scientists had once predicted that the world was cooling, rather than warming. A few (but hardly a majority, and nowhere near a consensus) had, but despite that, during the 1970s, the theory got some pretty big play in the popular press.

So I’m calling bullshit on that page of links, thankyewverymuch.

110

This is crap: why in the world should I have said that in that post? It’s like complaining that my floor wax isn’t also a dessert topping.

111

Give it up, Waldo Pepper nailed it with this one. None of this science has been predicted or is testable in a falsifiable way. Take this news report from today:
Great Lakes ice coverage declined an average of 71 percent over the past 40 years.

This “researcher” made no predictions that could be falsified. And his “study” is complete bullshit if there is more ice next year. I mean it would be different if he had mad a prediction that could be tested in a controlled manner. It’s like nobody understands what science is these days.

In your face Gigo!

112

You’re better than this.

You’re perfectly capable of reading my posts and noticing that – over and over and over again – I’ve repeatedly pointed out that a falsifiable prediction has in fact been made. You create a straw man, talking about someone who says none of this is testable in a falsifiable way – in a thread where I keep mentioning a falsifiable prediction.

I keep asking for more of the same, and your reply is that – I claim I’ve never yet received any? That’s ludicrous. It’s unworthy of the SDMB.

Here, watch the following:

[QUOTE=RTFirefly]

This is crap: why in the world should I have said that in that post? It’s like complaining that my floor wax isn’t also a dessert topping.
[/QUOTE]

No, it’s like complaining you shilled a low-calorie dessert topping but didn’t specify what you mean by “low-calorie”. I want you to be more like GIGO: he doesn’t just give a vague comment, like “AGW says the overall temperature of the Earth will increase over time if we keep pumping CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere,” but goes on to say that we’ll see at least X increase over Y years.

So long as you limit yourself to the broad terms of “will increase over time,” your prediction isn’t falsifiable, or even particularly useful; it wouldn’t be proven wrong even if there’s no increase for a year, for five years, for fifteen years, for fifty years. By contrast, GIGO’s claim is entirely falsifiable: we’ll know, in a matter of years, whether the tenth-of-a-degree change showed up as predicted.

What does it mean to say “will increase over time” absent specifics? I know what GIGO’s prediction means, and I know what would prove him wrong; what does yours mean? What would prove you wrong? Why even say something so vague?

You may as well say your floor wax “won’t sell well.” It’s a statement in need of clarification. It is, to borrow a phrase, void for vagueness. What would it mean for you to be right? How will we know if you’re wrong? It’s a prediction that doesn’t really predict anything; I’d advise you to offer a prediction like GIGO’s. This isn’t SNL, where it’s a bizarre overreach to throw in an unrelated claim about floor wax; it’s the SDMB, where a general claim cries out for specifics.

113

No I’m not. I do not have the saint-like patience demonstrated by posters like GIGObuster or JShore. I just can’t seem to muster the effort because your arguments seem so ridiculous and pointless. I can only assume you are being purposely obtuse.

The climate world wide has changed over the last century and the rate of that change increased in the last 3 decades. That is a undeniable fact. It has been verified by many researchers using many different methods, both using direct measurements on land, in the lower atmosphere, and in the oceans. It is also evident looking at indirect evidence like ice coverage, growing seasons, species migration and overwintering behaviors, wildfire frequency, trends in extreme weather and droughts. These changes do not correlate with insolation, volcano emissions, or other known natural climate forcing functions, but they do correlate strongly with man made emissions of green house gasses. The evidence for causation is very strong on has been mounting for decades while the evidence for any alternative causes has not held up under scrutiny.

So now we get to your stance as I understand it. I have read your posts since you joined 3 years ago and it appears that these facts don’t mean anything to you. You don’t seem care one whit for past trends but are obsessed with the fact that scientists are making very few concrete testable predictions. It’s ridiculous. You come into all these threads about climate change and ask what predictions would prove that the climate is not changing. Over and over and over again like a broken record, and as far as I can tell it is just to muddy the waters because for the life of me I can’t tell what your point is except to play some kind of game of gotcha-ya.

Why not, instead of picking all these nits, you post some evidence that ACC is not occurring? Why not address the evidence and how the scientists have it wrong instead of playing all these stupid what-if games? I mean really, if you have a point you need to do a better job of presenting it because it seems to me that you are just playing semantic games to obfuscate the facts.

So let’s reverse it, it is obvious to all that the accumulated evidence of global warming has not convinced you that it is occurring; so what would convince you? Nine of the ten hottest years in recorded history have occurred in the last decade. If this statement remains true for majority of the next 20 years (like it has been true for the majority of the last 50 years), would that convince you? If GIGO’s prediction of 0.1 degree increase over the next decade holds true (like it has for the last 40 years), would that do it?

114

There, see? Was that so hard? You went from wrongly accusing me of saying none of the science is testable in a falsifiable way to granting that I’ve seen a number of falsifiable predictions; I knew you were better than your prior post indicated, and you’ve proven it. Good job. Stay honest. Stay accurate.

Why the heck would I do that? I believe climate change is occurring, and believe we should do something about it right now; if you’d in fact read my posts, you’d already know that. You’re backsliding again.

I merely note that we should keep checking falsifiable predictions as we go forward; I believe they’re exactly as important as the predictions we’ve already seen play out. Reach a point where no hypothetical evidence could convince us we’re wrong about temperature change – or ice loss, or anything else – and it’d be as bad as not being convinced by past evidence to begin with.

Again, you’re basing everything on a false premise; you’re asking the wrong questions. I can’t for the life of me figure out where you’re going with this.

If you’ve in fact read my posts from back when, then you know I asked for a prediction about temperature, got a falsifiable one from GIGO, and didn’t ask for another until GIGO moved the goalposts away from it. And after GIGO supplied a second falsifiable prediction about temperature, I was largely content until he moved the goalposts away from it – at which point I again started asking for an all-new all-different falsifiable prediction about it, and was content upon receiving one.

If not for the goalpost-moving, I’d have asked GIGO – what, one-third as many times about falsifiability, on the subject of temperature? Probably less? And if I’d gotten a falsifiable ice-loss prediction the first time I’d asked in this thread, there’d be a heck of a lot less broken-record stuff on that topic likewise.

Shucks, really look back over this thread and you’ll see I credited GIGO with making a falsifiable prediction about temperature – I’m as satisfied with his third goalpost as I was with the one before that, and the one before that – which is why I haven’t broken-record him with temperature-prediction requests since. And, when he started talking in general terms about ice loss, I asked for a falsifiable prediction about that one likewise. Why wasn’t I silenced with a brisk answer the first time I asked? Or the second? Or the third? Or the fourth?

RTFirefly introduced a vague statement about global warming: that “AGW says the overall temperature of the Earth will increase over time if we keep pumping CO2 and other greenhouse gases into the atmosphere”. In your view, I’m the bad guy for asking what he means by “over time”; in my view, he’s the bad guy for making a too-broad statement like that and refusing to clarify when asked. Maybe he agrees with GIGO’s specified term of years? Maybe he means something else entirely? So long as I don’t know, why wouldn’t I play the broken record?

115

Oh, come on. the list is fun even if only a distant relative of peer-review.
It’s completely lighthearted and doesn’t prove anything other than (like with food, or medicine) there are so many contradictory reports on the news and 95% of the people get there science fact from the news so confusion is probable.

I repeat, the list is short of a joke and also short of full-on science.

116

Multiple discussions can be taking place at the same time in the same thread.

If you want to take a comment from another of those discussions, and decry its insufficiency for your discussion, then that’s your problem, not mine.

If one person asks me, “are we having hamburgers for supper?” and I say, “no, we’re having fish,” I really don’t care if you were in a discussion about what kind of fish you found appetizing, and are pissed at me for not specifying what kind of fish I was eating over at my house. It doesn’t concern your discussion, and it wasn’t meant to concern it.

You are of course welcome to join the discussion that my comment was intended to be part of, because there are no closed discussions in open threads. But it wasn’t intended to be a part of your discussion, so of course it won’t satisfy the purposes of that discussion.

Kindly accept that fact.

117

If that’s how you’re reading it, that’s your problem, not mine. I find the discussion in that other thread perfectly sufficient, and have said so repeatedly in this one; I’m decrying the insufficiency of the discussion in this thread, by making occasional reference to how I wish it were like the other – sufficient – discussion.

You have things exactly backwards.

I suppose I have no problem with an analogous “no, we’re having fish,” because I know what it would mean for you to be wrong; if you then put a plate of lettuce in front of me – or a plate of whipped cream, or possibly some floor wax – then we can, in short order, declare that you were wrong.

I do have a problem with “will increase over time,” because, again, I have no idea what you mean by “over time”: the statement is so broad as to be meaningless. Can I even hypothetically know you’re wrong a year from now? A decade from now? A century from now? You can always reply “No, see, when I said ‘over time,’ I meant over a bigger span of time.”

What purpose do you think it satisfies? How can you figure something so vague can be at all useful? Like the man said, flip it around; imagine someone replied to you by saying “but that’s absurd; the temperature of the Earth will decrease over time.” Would that statement be at all useful? What purpose could it satisfy? Does it mean anything? We can’t declare it false next year. We can’t declare it false in a decade, or in a century. It’s hopelessly empty.

118

Waldo, I’m tired of this. Here’s your Pit thread.