The world has never seen such freezing heat

[politicalfootballfan]

Re: The world has never seen such freezing heat

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[yernamehear]

Re: The world has never seen such freezing heat

"Peer reviewed journals"- their agreement, is not a sufficient proof for a scientific "fact". Science is a method of inquiry, not a matter of consensus, even if that consensus is made by the most respected scientists.

As one poster said, there's probably not enough information to make a real decision about global warming. The attempts to stop the process of science, never ending inquiry, are suspicious. If one is secure in one's position, there is no reason for the hysteria that attempts to squelch such inquiry.

Healthy skepticism also would dictate that there is no significant change caused by man, and if there is such change, so far it is small.

Again, most likely, nobody knows.

And yes, I recall the ice age warnings, made by many of the same people as are giving the global warming warnings. Suspicious of that? You should be. :cool:

[we_are_toast]

Re: The world has never seen such freezing heat

"Peer reviewed journals"- their agreement, is not a sufficient proof for a scientific "fact". Science is a method of inquiry, not a matter of consensus, even if that consensus is made by the most respected scientists.

If massive agreement in Peer reviewed journals, thousands or articles, and mountains of supporting data doesn't influence your perception of reality, what does?

As one poster said, there's probably not enough information to make a real decision about global warming. The attempts to stop the process of science, never ending inquiry, are suspicious. If one is secure in one's position, there is no reason for the hysteria that attempts to squelch such inquiry.

Despite the overwhelming consensus that there is far more than enough information, we can always claim that we don't think there is enough. It's a bogus method used by denialists to stop science in it's tracks. Keep studying the same thing over and over so you can't build on what you've learned and find even more evidence.

Healthy skepticism also would dictate that there is no significant change caused by man, and if there is such change, so far it is small.

This is not healthy skepticism, it's the exact opposite. It's pure and simplistic factual denial. You can be skeptical about string theory, or supersymmetry, or what causes cancer, or if we're in inflation or deflation, or even how much we need to reduce the introduction of heat trapping gasses to prevent the catastrophe that awaits our children. But you can't be skeptical of the sun rising in the east, or the earth being round, or that thunder follows lightning, or there was a depression in the 1930s or evolution, or global warming, and still be considered to be a rational reasonable being.

This is also like saying nobody should have listened to EJ when he said to get out of stocks because we wouldn't know he was right until the market sank 40%!

Again, most likely, nobody knows.

Not true. 95% of the scientists who study the subject know. The vast majority of people who understand how science is done and who have looked at the arguments know. The only one's who don't know are those who have failed to inform themselves, or those who have an emotional or political need to deny the facts.

Your post suggests that you simply believe what you want to believe. You are not influenced by the consensus of those who study a subject or the quantity of data supporting an argument.

[politicalfootballfan]

Re: The world has never seen such freezing heat

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[politicalfootballfan]

Re: The world has never seen such freezing heat

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[c1ue]

Re: The world has never seen such freezing heat

Toast,

Look at the KUSI pdf - especially the last few pages.

It speaks in detail about the politics of the IPCC report.

The interesting note is that the consensus you speak of appears to be all of 60 editors, as opposed to the thousands who participated in the AGW conclusions.

Furthermore the other parts of the KUSI report - also spoken to by various other researchers - talk about alternate scenarios which are being ignored by the AGW proponents: such as the North Pole having been ice free in the past BEFORE combustion engines existed, as well as the climate models failing to predict various Ice Ages and what not.

The point again is not the AGW exists or does not.

The point is that an agenda leads to bias, and bias when setting up a complex computer model leads to error.

In most modeling - there is some type of both backward and forward verification done: i.e. can the model accurately predict behavior for a large set of past known situations, and can the model predict future situations as evidenced by ongoing data.

The models are being tweaked for the latter, but still seem to fail the former. Given this, the predictive value is suspect and so therefore is the doom and gloom pronouncement of 'Stop Carbon Emissions or we'll all die a horrible death"

[sunskyfan]

Re: The world has never seen such freezing heat

Is it possible that there is not climate change? Yes.

Is it possible that there is climate change? Yes

Is it possible that there is man made climate change? Yes

Is it possible that the solar constant varies by 10% over time? Yes

Is it probable that Extinction Level astroid or comet will hit the earth in the next 250 million years? Highly

Can the Earth support 20 Billion people for any sustainable amoutn of time? Not likely.

Could a flu or other epidemic kill a quater of the human population? Likely.

We can act on man made climate change. We can act on population. We can only deal, or try to deal, with natural climate change, epedimeics, astroids, or meteors etcetera.

Considering the market situation I think our track record on measuring and accounting for risk is not good. I also think that our ability at modeling complex systems is marginal. Modeling complex systems with intelligent agents is flat crap. Perhaps we need to focus on addressing these issues and move from beliefs and faith to knowledge and confidence. Then we can set priorities. Then we have a chance at a sustainable, good life.

[we_are_toast]

Re: The world has never seen such freezing heat

politicalfootballfan:
Scientific theories that can be independently proven via empirical data and causal relationships that can be isolated and confirmed.

Scientific theories?! independently proven?!
All of the science has shown you to be wrong, and you refuse to accept it. I've asked for 1 link to a peer reviewed article, you've given me nothing! You refuse to talk about science on a scientific playing ground, so I've asked on what grounds can we carry on a discussion, and you give me the above dribble.

I stand by, that to deny such overwhelming scientific factual information without producing any scientific contrary information puts your claims in the category of UFO and big foot sightings and are unreasonable and irrational.

iTulip is a forum not a scientific journal, I get to blast the misinformation and falsehoods posted here in the most entertaining way I can think of and still let readers know that there is a whole lot of crap on the Internet and we all need to check facts and look at reasonable arguments before we make misguided decisions that can be very costly.

Nothing to be gained from this conversation, it's over.


c1ue:
You need to look at the source of the information you are using. You talk about Scientific journals having agendas and yet you don't think some website called Icecap.com doesn't have an agenda. You are rejecting the conclusions reached by the scientific method in favor of something posted on some website.

Think about it this way. Man made global warming is one of the most accepted scientific concepts in the science community and one of the most important issues facing humanity. If anyone could produce any evidence that this concept was wrong, Every scientific journal would be fighting over the right to publish the findings. The Author would surely win a Nobel Prize and would go down in history as one of the greatest scientists ever! And yet, they've produced nothing!

[unlucky]

Re: The world has never seen such freezing heat

I guess one thing we can conclude from the posts in this thread is the following. If man-made global warming is real, it will be pretty difficult to convince people to do anything about it.

MMGW is real and doesn't get solved - looks like a pretty good bet to me.

[Guest]

Re: The world has never seen such freezing heat

You are doing yeoman's work We_are_toast. But as you can see attempting to shed some light on the canards is equivalent to shadow boxing. An exhausting exercise. The people with whom you are arguing this point will all of course still be around in 10-15 years, when the disruption of climate will be more advanced, and will be producing ever more severe weather and ecosystem distortions worldwide in a band of events likely at least a full standard deviations outside the past five century's norms. Even then they will be holdouts and the barrage of willfully non-comprehending arguments will still represent an exhausting exercise in shadow-boxing for anyone seeking to extract their concession that a series of events are beginning to describe a very real and statistically evident global trend. Humanity is a fractious family, and we'll have to share this increasingly stressed out ball of rock with family members who insist we are talking BS, all while we meander further and further into a dangerous bind in the ecosystem. They'll come around (exceedingly grudgingly) only when it utterly breaks down. Just so you don't feel utterly demoralized by your effort here, I'll say that I for one do appreciate the debunking you've attempted.

I read somewhere that a third of the Southern Canadian forest canopy is under severe attack from a temperate zone beetle which has moved northwards. The old growth forest evidences that this is an event without precedent in hundreds of years. Flying overhead reveals large swathes of dead trees scattered across a large portion of Southern Canada, which is geographically describing the advent of a once in centuries temperature event, insofar as this beetle's migration was unleashed solely by a multi-year change in mean temperature. Meanwhile the Northwest passage is opening up, and the sea fauna in some of the world's largest coral reefs is under severe stress with species succumbing in rising numbers to extinction. Deforestation globally is proceeding at an acellerating pace. Desertification is proceeding at an incremental pace. Water tables are stressing severely worldwide. Global hydrocarbon's production shows all signs of peaking, minable ore grades worldwide evidence ongoing erosion of economically extractable quantities. Siberian tundra is even showing signs of thawing, an event which all by itself can tip a vast ecosystem event across one fifth of the world. The list goes on, describing a massive, concerted, globally unfolding event in very broad brushstrokes to any concerned or discerning eye.

The deniers will be there in 15 years still, and it's highly likely that they will be adhering to their reactive viewpoints if anything even more vehemently while these massive ecosystem signs have become so overwhelming as to be inescapable. It's no use. You are trapped on this tour-bus with limits-to-growth and ecosystem-collapse deniers along for the ride. Given that the developing world, and it's heavy reliance on coal fuel cannot be significantly capped in the next 20 years, you (we) will go over the cliff in terms of this ecological crisis, with these people inside the bus, still yammering in our ear that it's all bunk. That's 21st century life for you - a crazy patchwork of anarchic noise.

Scientific theories?! independently proven?!
All of the science has shown you to be wrong, and you refuse to accept it. I've asked for 1 link to a peer reviewed article, you've given me nothing! You refuse to talk about science on a scientific playing ground, so I've asked on what grounds can we carry on a discussion, and you give me the above dribble.

I stand by, that to deny such overwhelming scientific factual information without producing any scientific contrary information puts your claims in the category of UFO and big foot sightings and are unreasonable and irrational.

iTulip is a forum not a scientific journal, I get to blast the misinformation and falsehoods posted here in the most entertaining way I can think of and still let readers know that there is a whole lot of crap on the Internet and we all need to check facts and look at reasonable arguments before we make misguided decisions that can be very costly.

Nothing to be gained from this conversation, it's over.


c1ue:
You need to look at the source of the information you are using. You talk about Scientific journals having agendas and yet you don't think some website called Icecap.com doesn't have an agenda. You are rejecting the conclusions reached by the scientific method in favor of something posted on some website.

Think about it this way. Man made global warming is one of the most accepted scientific concepts in the science community and one of the most important issues facing humanity. If anyone could produce any evidence that this concept was wrong, Every scientific journal would be fighting over the right to publish the findings. The Author would surely win a Nobel Prize and would go down in history as one of the greatest scientists ever! And yet, they've produced nothing!

[politicalfootballfan]

Re: The world has never seen such freezing heat

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[xtronics]

Re: The world has never seen such freezing heat

Man made global warming is one of the most accepted scientific concepts in the science community ...

Being the center of the universes was "most accepted" during Copernicus time, did that make it correct?

The claimed 2deg/century is based on tree rings, massaged with unpublished filters etc. Real science has to go farther than looking like science.

Then there is the problem with the lack of the claimed trend in the satellite data.

I think CO2 probably has an effect, but one that is less than the noise in the system. I could be wrong.

An idea being popular does not make it correct. The popular idea in 2006 was that the economy was just fine and finance stocks were highly valued. A small minority were pointing out the flaws in the popular meme. Sound familiar?

[Tim T]

Re: The world has never seen such freezing heat

I think most people motivated enough to discuss economic, geopolitical, and environmental issues in forums like this all have something in common. They wish to see the world a happier, healthier, and wealthier place. They all study the world and its institutions looking for what the problem is, who is to blame, and what needs to be changed.

For those who believe global warming is a serious threat, mild threat, or maybe you are just concerned - consider that this threat may be being used politically to advance an agenda whose outcomes intended or unintended may have worse impacts for world health, happiness, and wealth than the warming would have. I don't think it is a lot to ask to consider this. The warming threat can be dealt with in many ways and just because you believe the threat is real doesn't mean you have to embrace all methods of dealing with it. A lot of money has been spent on research to answer whether or not the co2 and warming was man-made. I would have liked to have seen a lot of that money spent on research to promote our adaptive ability to cope with climate change (be it natural or man made) cause the climate does change.

For those who think the science is false and global warming is fabricated to promote a social agenda consider that the threat may be real and was embraced by the promoters of this social agenda out of convienence and that burried under the hype and quasi science are some basic principals about climate science that do support co2 induced climate change.

I guess the really big question is what should we be the most afraid of? The threat of global warming or the agendas that are being advanced and hidden within the alleged solutions to global warming.

[politicalfootballfan]

Re: The world has never seen such freezing heat

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[c1ue]

Re: The world has never seen such freezing heat

Toast,

Your arguments to date are primarily in these categories:

1) Not peer reviewed - i.e. consensus. Yet consensus is not relevant to truth itself

2) Not 'neutral' sources: yet Hansen in the Goddard institute clearly has an agenda - besides being the advisor to Gore, there is a huge body of work with Hansen's fingerprints purporting to prove AGW. Is NASA therefore also to be considered a non-neutral source?

3) No opposite proof:

Man made global warming is one of the most accepted scientific concepts in the science community and one of the most important issues facing humanity. If anyone could produce any evidence that this concept was wrong, Every scientific journal would be fighting over the right to publish the findings. The Author would surely win a Nobel Prize and would go down in history as one of the greatest scientists ever! And yet, they've produced nothing!

The problem with this statement is you are making an assumptive close that a) global warming exists; b) it is due to man; c) it is due to carbon emissions.

None of those 3 items is proven.

a) is likely but the jury is still out

b) is based largely on the IPCC - which has been pointed out is the consensus of 60 editors, not the entire set of scientists who participated in the study.

c) Is something arising from the models to date - the same models which so far fail to model known past events such as Ice Ages and previous open water North pole eras.

As for the Nobel prize - you'll note the Nobel prize in question was the Peace prize. Last I heard this has nothing to do with science, and everything to do with politics. In fact there is no Nobel prize for climatology because that science is still in a very infantile state.

The point again is that when cogent arguments are brought forth, but are dismissed as 'not being scientific consensus' or 'not from credible source' - sounds like the Inquisition's arguments against Galileo.

Religion, not science.

As I've mentioned before - Eco-friendly and its barbed counterpart global warming share many of the same characteristics as the plenary indulgence and Hell in the Christian ethos.