Thread: Global Warming oops itself again

Originally Posted by stahta01

Till the Climate Change (CC) supporters overwhelmingly support the building of more nuclear power plants, I will believe they are idiots or lying on purpose.

Tim S.

This reminded me of something I heard years ago about Greenpeace, where they were fighting global warming and nuclear power too. Their URL is really slow loading (didn't read the whole articles), but the snippets posted on Google are pretty funny when read consecutively:

"Greenpeace engages to fight global warming climate change by reducing carbon emissions, and promoting alternative energy sources."

"Greenpeace has been shouting about nuclear dangers for nearly forty years,
beginning on September 15, 1971, when the Greenpeace founders protested U.S.
nuclear testing. Since then we have campaigned against both nuclear weapons and
nuclear power by bearing witness in test zones, supplying scientific research
and by conducting direct non-violent actions to call attention to the problem."

-Global Warming and Climate Change | Greenpeace

-Nuclear Power and Nuclear Energy Dangers | Greenpeace

They also seem to completely conflate nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors. Weird.

Edit:

my immediate thought is not "I told you so", because we also lack any proper evidence that Global Warming is a fantasy

Actually, there is only ever a burden of proof on one side when a claim is made. Lack of evidence against a claim someone else is making is not really a factor in the truth of the claim.

I tend to think Global Warming is real, or is at least the best explanation for overall trends. I also agree that congress tends to use it as a boogeyman to get support for things though.

Originally Posted by Alpo

This reminded me of something I heard years ago about Greenpeace, where they were fighting global warming and nuclear power too. Their URL is really slow loading (didn't read the whole articles), but the snippets posted on Google are pretty funny when read consecutively:

"Greenpeace engages to fight global warming climate change by reducing carbon emissions, and promoting alternative energy sources."

"Greenpeace has been shouting about nuclear dangers for nearly forty years,
beginning on September 15, 1971, when the Greenpeace founders protested U.S.
nuclear testing. Since then we have campaigned against both nuclear weapons and
nuclear power by bearing witness in test zones, supplying scientific research
and by conducting direct non-violent actions to call attention to the problem."

-Global Warming and Climate Change | Greenpeace

-Nuclear Power and Nuclear Energy Dangers | Greenpeace

They also seem to completely conflate nuclear bombs and nuclear reactors. Weird.

Edit:



Actually, there is only ever a burden of proof on one side when a claim is made. Lack of evidence against a claim someone else is making is not really a factor in the truth of the claim.

I tend to think Global Warming is real, or is at least the best explanation for overall trends. I also agree that congress tends to use it as a boogeyman to get support for things though.

The trend of not global warming for over a decade supports Global Warming?

Who know that the lack of evidence supports a theory.

Tim S.

Originally Posted by stahta01

The trend of not global warming for over a decade supports Global Warming?

Who know that the lack of evidence supports a theory.

Tim S.

No I was saying lack of evidence against a claim doesn't support the claim.

As for the trends being against global warming, that is just not what I've seen. The science seems to keep coming back that long term trends are for increasing CO2:

"The global annual mean concentration of CO

2

in the atmosphere has increased markedly since the Industrial Revolution, from 280 ppm to 395 ppm as of 2013,^[2]"

-Carbon dioxide in Earth's atmosphere - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(The quote is pretty early on the page, go check out the references if you're inclined).

Also, the term "Over a decade" doesn't mean much in the context of the claim of global warming. I mean you could say evolution is a hoax on the same grounds.

Originally Posted by Elkvis

The other main problem I have with the climate change alarmists and their claim of "scientific consensus" is the word "consensus." When something is proven as scientific fact, consensus is irrelevant. The green color of plants is caused by chlorophyll. There is no room for consensus here. It's proven fact, with verifiable proof that can be discovered experimentally, and that can be repeated indefinitely with the same result. There could be a "scientific consensus" that the color is the result of a flying spaghetti monster painting the plants with his green saliva, using his tongue, but that wouldn't make it correct. The "consensus" that people talk about when discussing climate change is more-or-less a belief. Yes, there is some evidence, but there is no incontrovertible proof with repeatable experimental results.

I liked this explanation a lot, but my understanding of science is slightly different. My understanding is that there are facts that can be confirmed though measurement (experimentation), and there are also explanations of those facts.

It's not the facts that scientists try to get consensus on, but the explanations (hypothesis or theory). The facts can be seen as strictly true and false, but the explanations can never be proven with 100% certainty. So new experiments are thought up that can falsify the explanation, and after enough time unfalsified it comes to be accepted.

The fact that science doesn't give 100% certainty is less important than that the method can produce predictable models. Those models have real world utility even if they could possibly fail under certain conditions.

Originally Posted by megafiddle

When someone can explaian to me in simple language,
exactly how the temprature of the earth is measured,
and how they know what the temperature of the earth
was 100 years ago, then I will be open to the idea that
the earth is warming.

They measure the temperature of the earth by combining data from official weather stations all over the world, and take the average for the year. A hundred years ago, they were using mercury thermometers, and not every part of the world could have its temperature measured regularly or reliably enough for statistical significance. Now they use electronic devices, as well as infrared satellite imagery, and ocean buoy telemetry to determine the average temperature of a much larger portion of the earth. Unfortunately, reliable records only began to be kept in 1880, so my opinion is that we don't have enough info, over a long enough period of time to know for sure what the earth's climate state is, relative to earth normal. We probably don't even know what "normal" is.

Originally Posted by megafiddle

Untill then, I ain't buying it, as I have found myself increasingly
freezing my ass off in the winters here in VA.

Weather is fueled by heat. Global warming could cause virtually any variety of weather changes.

I would consider 1000 years too short to know what normal Earth climate is.
You would likely need over a million years to know what is normal Earth climate.

AGW computer models has the issue of GIGO in nearly all cases.

Tim S.

Originally Posted by Daved

I'm surprised there is still this much skepticism on global warming in a tech-based community.

I'm not. In fact, I'm surprised there is not less.

People with a technical bent are well aware that simple theories don't always properly describe real behaviours or phenomena.

There is little question that injecting energy into an otherwise closed system potentially causes it to warm up. But the earth is not a closed system, and a basic premise of a lot of the global warming debate is that human activities are the dominant cause of climate change. They then go on from there, and insist that reducing energy usage or energy emission or creation of gases will slow or even arrest changes of climate.

And the evidence for that claim is simply not there. The earth is a complex system, and nobody can honestly claim they understand all of the causes, mechanisms, or effects within that system.

In geological history, there is plenty of evidence (fossils, trapped materials, etc) that the earth has undergone climate change throughout its history. The evidence also suggests that, in geological terms, we are currently in a relatively cool period, compared with the average over geological time. Geological evidence of glaciers (or, more accurately, their distribution) provide evidence that average temperatures (one aspect of climate) have been cooler. Distributions of other effects (plant sizes, large reptiles, dinosaurs, etc) also provide evidence that average temperatures have been higher.

If one takes the time to examine the various models of climate change, it is not hard to work out that there is a mix of science (rigorous approach, gathering evidence and counter-evidence, etc) and pseudo-science (speculative theories that underpin predictions, with little supporting evidence). And a lot of the models - no matter how rigorously formulated, validated, etc - are simply very very sensitive to disturbance or uncertainty. There are lots of opportunities for modeled butterflies farting (or whatever it is that modeled butterflies do in models of climate) on one side of the world to cause major effects to climate or to weather in other parts of the world.

But lack of evidence does not stop people stridently insisting that we have to set arbitrary emissions targets, or reduce energy output to arbitrary levels, or whatever.

Does the fact I question, or express doubts about it, mean that I am in the dark ages, or that I advocate irresponsible actions that effect the environment? No - but a lot of climate change zealots will assert exactly that.

Originally Posted by Daved

First, referencing zealots is counter-productive when discussing whether the theory of AGW is valid. Who cares what a lot of climate change zealots assert? A lot of zealots assert a lot of dumb things, that doesn't make them relevant to a more serious discussion.

I think a lot of people, including myself, don't want to be seen in support of certain political policies when discussing the truth of a claim. So in that sense it is relevant, although it's not relevant to the truth of global warming itself.

Originally Posted by Daved;

Suffice it to say that the existence of questions and skepticism here doesn't mean they haven't been answered pretty definitely elsewhere, and all signs I see point to that being the case.

This is probably true. However you have people who are claiming authority on both sides (Christopher Monckton for instance on the anti-warming side). There's also a difference between disbelief in something and an actual counter claim. Most people here have just talked about their skepticism, which isn't a claim on knowledge, it's a claim on belief.

Edit: Yeah, Christopher Monckton is pretty full of it I know, I was just giving him as an example of a person giving counter claims (mostly using very narrow data sets).

When the side that supports AGW loses the raw data and refuses to show the methods used to turn the raw data into the inputs used in the data models, why should anyone believe them to be real scientists that can be trusted?

Tim S.