asking Al Gore to run in 2008!
Scientific update: No Sun link' to climate change
Posted April 3rd, 2008 by Medullan Marauder
Here is some more grist for the mill of all you deep thinking man made climate change deniers. I know, "It's just a cycle" as pronounced by that great Republican scientist Rush someone or other. One thing for sure, what a great thing it is that the climate change deniers are not sheeple and refuse to be stampeded into using scientific evidence to regulate their thinking on this matter. Who knows where that could lead?
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'No Sun link' to climate change
By Richard Black
Environment correspondent, BBC News website
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7327393.stm
Scientists have produced further compelling evidence showing that modern-day climate change is not caused by changes in the Sun's activity.
The research contradicts a favoured theory of climate "sceptics", that changes in cosmic rays coming to Earth determine cloudiness and temperature.
The idea is that variations in solar activity affect cosmic ray intensity.
But Lancaster University scientists found there has been no significant link between them in the last 20 years.
Presenting their findings in the Institute of Physics journal, Environmental Research Letters, the UK team explain that they used three different ways to search for a correlation, and found virtually none.
The IPCC has got it right, so we had better carry on trying to cut carbon emissions
Terry Sloan
This is the latest piece of evidence which at the very least puts the cosmic ray theory, developed by Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark at the Danish National Space Center (DNSC), under very heavy pressure.
Dr Svensmark's idea formed a centrepiece of the controversial documentary The Great Global Warming Swindle.
Wrong path
"We started on this game because of Svensmark's work," said Terry Sloan from Lancaster University.
"If he is right, then we are going down the wrong path of taking all these expensive measures to cut carbon emissions; if he is right, we could carry on with carbon emissions as normal."
Cosmic rays are deflected away from Earth by our planet's magnetic field, and by the solar wind - streams of electrically charged particles coming from the Sun.
The Svensmark hypothesis is that when the solar wind is weak, more cosmic rays penetrate to Earth.
FEELING THE HEAT
Three theories on how the Sun could be causing climate change.
That creates more charged particles in the atmosphere, which in turn induces more clouds to form, cooling the climate.
The planet warms up when the Sun's output is strong.
Professor Sloan's team investigated the link by looking for periods in time and for places on the Earth which had documented weak or strong cosmic ray arrivals, and seeing if that affected the cloudiness observed in those locations or at those times.
"For example; sometimes the Sun 'burps' - it throws out a huge burst of charged particles," he explained to BBC News.
"So we looked to see whether cloud cover increased after one of these bursts of rays from the Sun; we saw nothing."
Over the course of one of the Sun's natural 11-year cycles, there was a weak correlation between cosmic ray intensity and cloud cover - but cosmic ray variability could at the very most explain only a quarter of the changes in cloudiness.
And for the following cycle, no correlation was found.
Limited effect
"This work is important as it provides an upper limit on the cosmic ray-cloud effect in global satellite cloud data," commented Dr Giles Harrison from Reading University, a leading researcher in the physics of clouds.
His own research, looking at the UK only, has also suggested that cosmic rays make only a very weak contribution to cloud formation.
The Svensmark hypothesis has also been attacked in recent months by Mike Lockwood from the UK's Rutherford-Appleton Laboratory.
He showed that over the last 20 years, solar activity has been slowly declining, which should have led to a drop in global temperatures if the theory was correct.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), in its vast assessment of climate science last year, concluded that since temperatures began rising rapidly in the 1970s, the contribution of humankind's greenhouse gas emissions has outweighed that of solar variability by a factor of about 13 to one.
According to Terry Sloan, the message coming from his research is simple.
"We tried to corroborate Svensmark's hypothesis, but we could not; as far as we can see, he has no reason to challenge the IPCC - the IPCC has got it right.
"So we had better carry on trying to cut carbon emissions."
Richard.Black-INTERNET@bbc.co.uk
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You referenced the wrong study
"Here is the link to the actual article that Mr Black took his story from not the BS you posted above.
http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf"
No, that is incorrect.
I just realised, you're getting studies confused.
The study your post was based upon and on which Black wrote his article is this one http://environmentalresearchweb.org/cws/article/research/33641 by Terry Sloan.
Now Black did produce a piece with the exact same title, ie "No Sun link' to climate change", on 10 July 2007 after the Lockwood and Froelich paper was indeed published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, and that is the one that you've linked to above.
However, the Black piece you used for this post by you was the one written on 3 April 2008 about the article in Envoronmental Reserach Letters.
You haven't read the actual article have you?
Black, typically for an environmental journalist, has not been full, frank or honest in his treatment of Sloan's work in the little known and little read journal Environmental Research Letters.
Interestingly, he neither gave the actual title of the article nor a link to it. Why? Because he had very selectively reported it, misrepresented the bits he did report, and completely ignored the contrary research mentioned in it!
His spin that Sloan found no link between solar activity and global temperature is completely untrue. Sloan had to admit that "even with their limited analysis of 20 some years, the Svensmark process on its own contributed perhaps 25% of the warming. That's not insignificant. That's not "no link", that's "some link"..."
But here's some of the stuff from the same article that you'd never know existed if you only read Black's piece:
"The team constructed a model of the Earth's climate in which the only significant inputs were variations in the Sun's power output and changes to the galactic cosmic ray flux (arxiv.org/abs/0803.2765). They found that the model's predicted evolution of the Earth's surface temperature over the last 700,000 years agrees well with proxy temperature data taken from Antarctic ice cores (arxiv.org/abs/0803.2766)."
"Rusov agrees that Svensmark's cosmic ray ionization mechanism cannot fully account for the observed correlation between cosmic ray flux and cloud cover, as Sloan and Wolfendale have demonstrated. But he believes that a small but direct link between cosmic rays and clouds could itself trigger a mechanism which causes further, and greater, changes in cloud cover."
Much more here http://antigreen.blogspot.com/2008/04/no-sun-link-to-climate-change-by.h...
I'm sorry, who is not letting scientific evidence regulate their thinking? Clearly it is the climate hysterics.
Chew on this Miss. Raptor
Here is the link to the actual article that Mr Black took his story from not the BS you posted above.
http://www.pubs.royalsoc.ac.uk/media/proceedings_a/rspa20071880.pdf
The article is from the Proceedings of the Royal Society A
The title of the article is:
Recent oppositely directed trends in solar climate forcings and the global mean surface air temperature
I invite you to read it, if you can. But here is the summary in the conclusion at the end of the article.
There are many interesting palaeoclimate studies that suggest that solar variability had an influence on pre-industrial climate. There are also some detection-attribution studies using global climate models that suggest there was a detectable influence of solar variability in the first half of the 20th century and that the solar radiative forcing variations were amplified by some mechanism that is, as yet, unknown. However, these findings are not relevant to any debates about modern climate change. Our results show that the observed rapid rise in global mean temperatures seen after 1985 cannot be ascribed to solar variability, whichever of the mechanisms is invoked and no matter how much the solar variation is amplified.
Furthermore, here is the statement issued by the Stanford University Solar Center on global warming:
http://solar-center.stanford.edu/sun-on-earth/glob-warm.html
Solar Variability & Global Warming
Some uncertainty remains about the role of natural variations in causing climate change. Solar variability certainly plays a minor role, but it looks like only a quarter of the recent variations can be attributed to the Sun. At most. During the initial discovery period of global warming, the magnitude of the influence of increased activity on the Sun was not well determined.
EIT Solar irradiance changes have been measured reliably by satellites for only 30 years. These precise observations show changes of a few tenths of a percent that depend on the level of activity in the 11-year solar cycle. Changes over longer periods must be inferred from other sources. Estimates of earlier variations are important for calibrating the climate models. While a component of recent global warming may have been caused by the increased solar activity of the last solar cycle, that component was very small compared to the effects of additional greenhouse gases. According to a NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) press release, "...the solar increases do not have the ability to cause large global temperature increases...greenhouse gases are indeed playing the dominant role..." The Sun is once again less bright as we approach solar minimum, yet global warming continues.
So I guess that all that remains for me to say to you is
You haven't read the actual article have you?
If you have read it, you are obviously incapable of comprehending it.
Why am I not surprised?
My, you're a bit touchy aren't you ;)
Typical snide response you'd expect from a climate hysteric who doesn't know what he's talking about.
But I am glad you brought the much trumpeted Lockwood & Froehlich paper, recently published in the proceedings of the Royal Society, which also purported to discount Svensmark's hypothesis.
They conceded that up until the last 20 years or so that the evidence clearly showed that the sun was the main driver of climate on Earth, but then through statistical jiggery-pokery that somehow it stopped being so only recently.
You can see responses to Lockwood & Froehlich here:
http://antigreen.blogspot.com/2007/07/global-warming-and-debunkers-of-du...
http://scienceandpublicpolicy.org/sppi_reprint_series/a_critique_on_the_...
http://www.spacecenter.dk/publications/scientific-report-series/Scient_N...
http://wattsupwiththat.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/evidence-of-a-significan...
These will give you an opportunity to do some research and some thinking for a change.
Take this example of how the BBC misrepresented things when reporting Lockwood & Froehlich (which I'd remind you came to a startlingly different conclusion about the sun's effect on climate to that of Sloan).
"The BBC article is misleading because the graph titled "Cosmic ray count" is not of cosmic rays (neutrons) count at all. It is the result of a mathematical manipulation to eliminate the 11 year cosmic ray cycle. The curve is taken from the Lockwood paper."
Ah, the old mathematical manipulation. The life blood of climate "science".
"The Lockwood paper manipulates the cosmic ray count data to eliminate the 11 year cycle by extrapolating between the nodes of the cycles. The nodes are points where the top part of the cycle has the same mean as the lower part, approximately the midpoint of each cycle. The result is the "Cosmic ray count" graph shown in the BBC article and reproduced above. Note that this reveals a 22 year cycle. But totally eliminating the 11 year cycle implies that the damping effect of the oceans is near infinite, which would also eliminate a 22 year cycle, or any other cycle length. If the oceans really had a near infinite heat capacity, it would absorb all effects of the Sun and CO2 changes and global temperatures would not change! Lockwood essentially applies a 100% damping to the 11 year cycle but 0% damping to the 22 year cycle, which is complete nonsense."
"The Lockwood paper only analysis the last 30 years of data which is too short of a time interval. A system that has 11 year cycles require at least 110 years (10 cycles) of data to obtain meaningful statistical results."
So your smokescreen to avoid answering any of the points raised in my previous comment has failed completely.
Now, do you want to have a go at making a reasoned and rational attempt at doing so, now that you've got your childish petulance out of your system?
Did or did not Sloan have to concede that even in his rubbishy piece of "research", only covering the pointlessly short time span of only 20 years or so, he identified a significant role for solar activity? Yes or no?
As you know the answer is yes, then why did Richard Black so dishonestly misrepresent the study's actual findings?
You just repeating parrot like previous flawed studies does not constitute an argument on your part.
Dr. Gore?
So you refute that earth temperatures may vary due to a natural climate cycle because Limbaugh has said that. You impy that Limbaugh is not scientist which is true. Based on that premise then should not all comments made by non-scientist should be dismissed as bunk.
But is Gore a scientist? What are his college degrees in? What formal training in climate science has he completed? Answer: none.
So if you are going to dismiss Limbaughs statements about his view on climate change simply because he's not a scientist then shouldn't you also dismiss the views, opinions and statements of non-scientist Gore as well? If not, then doesn't that make you a hypocrite?
Phd., No, Inventor of the Internet, No.
Gore has never claimed either of these titles. Does that matter to the rabid reich-wing believer? No.
If your asking whether the reich-wing talking point, corporate whore "scientists" bought and paid for by carbon based industries science which is so reminiscent of the tobacco lobby denier's whore science is equivalent to the thousands of freethinking independent scientist's consensus represented in Al Gore's movie and book on the subject of climate change and it's causes? The clear answer is no.
But that is probably not what you really want to know.
Ice age
Can you answer these questions for me? Back in the '70s the scientific community was projecting that the earth was on the verge of entering its next ice age. Over 30 years later this same community is now projecting that we are entering a period of global warming. That communuty of free-thinking scientist got it wrong back in the '70s so what are the chances that they are right about their newest projection? As proof of the thinking of those deep thinking scientist I offer the following article (which I doubt you will read):
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The 'Old' Consensus?
INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY
Posted 9/21/2007
Climate Change: Did NASA scientist James Hansen, the global warming alarmist in chief, once believe we were headed for . . . an ice age? An old Washington Post story indicates he did.
On July 9, 1971, the Post published a story headlined "U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming." It told of a prediction by NASA and Columbia University scientist S.I. Rasool. The culprit: man's use of fossil fuels.
The Post reported that Rasool, writing in Science, argued that in "the next 50 years" fine dust that humans discharge into the atmosphere by burning fossil fuel will screen out so much of the sun's rays that the Earth's average temperature could fall by six degrees.
Sustained emissions over five to 10 years, Rasool claimed, "could be sufficient to trigger an ice age."
Aiding Rasool's research, the Post reported, was a "computer program developed by Dr. James Hansen," who was, according to his resume, a Columbia University research associate at the time.
So what about those greenhouse gases that man pumps into the skies? Weren't they worried about them causing a greenhouse effect that would heat the planet, as Hansen, Al Gore and a host of others so fervently believe today?
"They found no need to worry about the carbon dioxide fuel-burning puts in the atmosphere," the Post said in the story, which was spotted last week by Washington resident John Lockwood, who was doing research at the Library of Congress and alerted the Washington Times to his finding.
Hansen has some explaining to do. The public deserves to know how he was converted from an apparent believer in a coming ice age who had no worries about greenhouse gas emissions to a global warming fear monger.
This is a man, as Lockwood noted in his message to the Times' John McCaslin, who has called those skeptical of his global warming theory "court jesters." We wonder: What choice words did he have for those who were skeptical of the ice age theory in 1971?
People can change their positions based on new information or by taking a closer or more open-minded look at what is already known. There's nothing wrong with a reversal or modification of views as long as it is arrived at honestly.
But what about political hypocrisy? It's clear that Hansen is as much a political animal as he is a scientist. Did he switch from one approaching cataclysm to another because he thought it would be easier to sell to the public? Was it a career advancement move or an honest change of heart on science, based on empirical evidence?
If Hansen wants to change positions again, the time is now. With NASA having recently revised historical temperature data that Hansen himself compiled, the door has been opened for him to embrace the ice age projections of the early 1970s.
Could be he's feeling a little chill in the air again.
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What cracks me up is that current science can't even predict what the weather will be 2 weeks from now yet the scientist of the global warming movement want us to believe that they have the capability to project what the climate will be decades from now. Give me a break. As proven by the above article the premier scientist of the global warming machine came to conclusions in the '70's that are completley opposite of their views of today. Can you say lack of creditabilty? Thats why so many people don't believe that globabl warming is a by product of human activity. Its simply because so many of the activist of the cause lack creditabilty
Tell me oh wise one...what caused the latest ice age to end? It sure wasn't because of man's influence. Why do I bring this up...because thats proof in and of itself that the earth is capable of changing its climate all on its own. So why can't you and all the others in the global warming movement just consider that maybe thats what's occurring now? I doubt that you'll will but I thought I would throw it their anyway.
No, I'm not a scientist and as I'm sure you can tell I'm not as versed as you are, but all I'm doing is applying a little common sense as to why the climate may be changing. Try it out sometime since scientific "facts" can be and have been misinterpreted and misrepresneted before as Hansen and Rasool have proven by their conclusions of the 1970's.
Quite the little name caller aren't you?
Why doesn't your response surprise me? Show me a debater who starts to name call and get personal and I'll show you a debater who knows he's losing the debate. Reich-wing? Real classy dude. And I know you don't want to hear this but their isn't a concensus in the scientific community about global warming or man's contributuion if any. Oh, but those scientist are whore scientist according to you. Why, simply because they don't agree with you. Thats a very open mind that you have.
Did you read about the report published by the NOAA that states that much of the global ice that Gore says has disappeared has returned? Is the NOAA a group of whore scientist bought and paid for by the carbon industry? But the report doesn't support your cause so you I'm sure you will smear them some how. Thats just the classy style of your movement.
Your reply is waiting Miss Pissy-pants
Quite the little name caller aren't you?
On April 3rd, 2008 GoreGroupiesareSheep said:
Why doesn't your response surprise me? Show me a debater who starts to name call and get personal and I'll show you a debater who knows he's losing the debate.
Listen up Miss Pissy-pants. I guess it never occurred to you that you, yes you, started the name calling BS with your handle "GoreGroupiesareSheep". By my count you are A: calling me a groupie and B: calling me a sheep. Just like all of your cowardly ilk you can dish it out but can't take it. So I guess that puts you in the category of loser with a capital "L" squarely on your Neanderthal forehead. Losing the debate just like always when dealing with honesty the reich-wingers attack with lies, damn lies and statistics.
Reich-wing? Real classy dude.
If the shoe fits ...
And I know you don't want to hear this but their isn't a concensus in the scientific community about global warming or man's contribution if any. Oh, but those scientist are whore scientist according to you. Why, simply because they don't agree with you. Thats a very open mind that you have.
Yes, and there are still people out there who believe that the Earth is 6000 years old and the Bible was not written by men with and agenda but by ???. I have learned through the years dealing with your side that "keeping and open mind" just allows the sicko's to try to fill it with propaganda designed to obfuscate and stall and gives your side more creedance than it deserves in the eyes of the unwashed masses.
Did you read about the report published by the NOAA that states that much of the global ice that Gore says has disappeared has returned? Is the NOAA a group of whore scientist bought and paid for by the carbon industry? But the report doesn't support your cause so you I'm sure you will smear them some how. Thats just the classy style of your movement.
Everything that I have read about climate change from NOAA is in line with Al Gore's climate change thesis. Instead of going out there and trying to cherry pick the few "scientists", and I use that term loosely, try reading up on the facts based on a diverse range of sources and you try to keep an open mind as to the facts.
If Al Gore and I am wrong about this, the consequences to humanity will be hardly worth discussion. If you are wrong we could be headed down the road to rapid irreversible extinction.
But I imagine the possibility that you could be mistaken is so remote that you feel justified commiting humanity to the path that you have deemed responsible and by the way more profitable. I suppose that it is that potential lost profit that causes you more angst than human considerations?
I will try to answer your other post later as I am occupied now.
Later Miss Pissy-pants.
Computer Model Fiction
In an attempt to push all sarcasm and name calling aside for the time being I will try to share with you one of my concerns with the conclusions of the global warming movement. Perhaps you can enlighten me on your take of my concern.
What concerns me is that the movement portrays a doomsday ending for the world if immediate action is not taken to change certain aspects of the American lifestyle. I’m not sure if that is just a strategy implemented to draw attention to the cause but when I hear someone proclaim that the sky is falling, well it just raises my suspicions of the message. And to further add to my suspicions I have to point to how those conclusions are being derived. In the case of the global warming movement, conclusions derived from computer models are heavily relied upon.
I’ve said it before, but maybe the following quote taken from a speech from a well known author will better make my point:
______________________________________________________________________
“To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model." But now large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world-increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data about the year 2100. There are only model runs.”
“This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands.”
“Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?”
“Stepping back, I have to say the arrogance of the model makers is breathtaking. There have been, in every century, scientists who say they know it all. Since climate may be a chaotic system-no one is sure-these predictions are inherently doubtful, to be polite. But more to the point, even if the models get the science spot-on, they can never get the sociology. To predict anything about the world a hundred years from now is simply absurd.”
_____________________________________________________________________
Computer models are only crystal balls and conclusions derived via models are not facts, they are simply speculation - guesses about what MIGHT happen. In another quote from the same author of the above he states that “Our models just carry the present into the future. They're bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment's thought knows it.”
Think about this, lets say that I had a stock that I wanted to sell you and as part of my sales pitch I would say that according to a computer model that I use to predict stock prices the past performance of this stock indicates that it’s price should double in 5 years. Would you buy that stock from me? I doubt it.
Yet that same approach is being used by climate scientist when they try to predict what the earth’s climate will be decades from now. The climate is a dynamic being, it is constantly changing and to have activist say that based upon past performance of the earth’s climate they predict that earth’s temperature will rise in the future is just too farfetched for me to accept. Just look back to Hansen and Rasool's conclusions derived from computer models when they predicted an ice age in the near future. Garbage in, garbage out.
What scares me is that the speculative conclusions derived from computer models are being presented as facts and forced upon us as facts. And to make matters even worse, we are then being asked to base public policy upon those speculative conclusions. Poor data only leads to poor policy – garbage in, garbage out. That’s what concerns me and thats one of the main reasons that I have to doubt the conclusions of the warming movement.
PS...I realize this reply may not have caused your blood pressure to rise...if you're looking for that then check out my writing of what Gore's real motivation for being a spokesman for the warming movement titled "Did you know that Albert and P.T. Barnum Bailey are distant cousins"
Computer Model Reality
Computer Model Fiction
On April 4th, 2008 GoreGroupiesareSheep said:
In an attempt to push all sarcasm and name calling aside for the time being I will try to share with you one of my concerns with the conclusions of the global warming movement. Perhaps you can enlighten me on your take of my concern.
What concerns me is that the movement portrays a doomsday ending for the world if immediate action is not taken
Not the ending of the world. The world will go on just fine without the Human infestation which is spiraling out of control approaching 7 billion homo sapiens currently. We will just take out ourselves and several thousand or million other species with us.
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to change certain aspects of the American lifestyle.
Not just the American lifestyle but also the future lifestyle of the other human inhabitants of the planet. Americans just seem to be the worst offenders when it comes to consuming resources and emitting massive amounts of waste and the most arrogant when it comes to accepting responsibility for the results of our actions.
We could and should set a positive example of implementing the changes needed instead of the greedy self-absorbed short-sighted example we set.
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I’m not sure if that is just a strategy implemented to draw attention to the cause but when I hear someone proclaim that the sky is falling, well it just raises my suspicions of the message.
The sky is not falling. We are just fowling our nest to the point of making it unlivable. It is good to be skeptical of any message but this is countered by getting good information and applying clear logical thinking to the problem not fear and pretending the thing is not happening until we get the final proof that it has already happened. There is no other nest for humanity to live in at this time so we need to take care of our home so that our home can take care of us.
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And to further add to my suspicions I have to point to how those conclusions are being derived. In the case of the global warming movement, conclusions derived from computer models are heavily relied upon.
Do you realize that using computer models is how we humans design everything these days. Before computer models we used physical models or mathematical models worked out the long way, by hand.
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I’ve said it before, but maybe the following quote taken from a speech from a well known author will better make my point:
Do you have a good reason to hide the identity of this author or just paranoia?
______________________________________________________________________
“To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model." But now large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world-increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data about the year 2100. There are only model runs.”
“This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands.”
“Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?”
“Stepping back, I have to say the arrogance of the model makers is breathtaking. There have been, in every century, scientists who say they know it all. Since climate may be a chaotic system-no one is sure-these predictions are inherently doubtful, to be polite. But more to the point, even if the models get the science spot-on, they can never get the sociology. To predict anything about the world a hundred years from now is simply absurd."
_____________________________________________________________________
Computer models are only crystal balls and conclusions derived via models are not facts, they are simply speculation - guesses about what MIGHT happen. In another quote from the same author of the above he states that “Our models just carry the present into the future. They're bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment's thought knows it.”
I have some very interesting news for you in this particular regard. Are you sitting down? Here it is. The entire enterprise of science from beginning to end is about predicting the future. There you have it in a nutshell. Chemistry for example is about predicting what will happen when you combine different substances together under different conditions. Physics - what will happen when you collide one atom into another, etc. etc.
It is precisely science's ability to predict what WILL happen that makes it so very valuable to Humanity. Before science, people used various mystical methods to forecast the future. You can't be proposing that we go back to Tarot cards and Horoscopes.
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Think about this, lets say that I had a stock that I wanted to sell you and as part of my sales pitch I would say that according to a computer model that I use to predict stock prices the past performance of this stock indicates that it’s price should double in 5 years. Would you buy that stock from me? I doubt it.
Wow, you are in luck Miss Pissy-pants. I have some more very interesting news for you. I used to work in the stock market so I know what I am talking about here. Yes there are large numbers of investors that use models. usually called charts, you have probably seen those stock charts in the paper or elsewhere. And yes they use these models to determine the future course of the stocks movement. The reason they use these models is because they have found them to be extremely helpful in the process of making money.
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Yet that same approach is being used by climate scientist when they try to predict what the earth’s climate will be decades from now. The climate is a dynamic being, it is constantly changing and to have activist say that based upon past performance of the earth’s climate they predict that earth’s temperature will rise in the future is just too far fetched for me to accept. Just look back to Hansen and Rasool's conclusions derived from computer models when they predicted an ice age in the near future. Garbage in, garbage out.
Just like the climate is dynamic, the enterprise of science is dynamic.
In one of your other posts you ask about the apparent flip-flop by James Hanson at NASA regarding the future of the climate. Well, I'll tell you a little story to make it easier for you, way back in the sixties and early seventies, climate science was very much an immature enterprise. It was only with the aid of computers and the study of other planets like Mars and Venus that allowed the scientist to deal with the huge number of variables involved with climate prediction and have some perspective on what can happen to a planet when certain gases accumulate.
Science, unlike the Bible or Republican economic philosophy, changes over time as new evidence is brought to bare on the subject matter. In fact, for science to work at all it must continually re-evaluate the working hypothesis based on the most recent data. So Hansen was just doing what scientists always are supposed to do and changed the hypothesis to fit the data.
I suggest that you do some reading on "The Scientific Method" as this is really the heart and soul of what science is about and how it works.
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What scares me is that the speculative conclusions derived from computer models are being presented as facts and forced upon us as facts. And to make matters even worse, we are then being asked to base public policy upon those speculative conclusions. Poor data only leads to poor policy – garbage in, garbage out. That’s what concerns me and thats one of the main reasons that I have to doubt the conclusions of the warming movement.
What scares me is that people who are overly invested in the status quo and resist needed change out of fear and ignorance will use the powerful mechanisms of propaganda to confuse, obfuscate, stall the process of adaption to the new realities as revealed by science until it is too late. To turn their backs on the best tools we have to understand and yes to predict the outcome of our behavior as the dominate life form on this planet.
Ok, let me ask you a question. Do you fashion yourself as a conservative? I'm going to presume that you do. Can you tell me just what is conservative about ignoring all the data and simply barging ahead with business as usual. In a sense, gambling with a roll of the dice that all these so called experts have it wrong and placing your faith in Capitalism or Religion or Rush Slimeball to keep things going. Talk about garbage in garbage out.
From my perspective the conservative thing to do would be to be cautious and proceed as if the worse case scenario is happening then if it turns out to be wrong, no great harm done. Once it is too late, it is too late. The root word for conservatism is conserve. It seems to me that modern conservatism has wandered far from this basic notion.
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P.S...I realize this reply may not have caused your blood pressure to rise...if you're looking for that then check out my writing of what Gore's real motivation for being a spokesman for the warming movement titled "Did you know that Albert and P.T. Barnum Bailey are distant cousins"
Did you know that Barack Obama and Dick Cheney are distant cousins?
Did you know that all life forms on Earth are cousins?
Ooops, my bad....
Ok, let me ask you a question. Do you fashion yourself as a conservative? I'm going to presume that you do. Can you tell me just what is conservative about ignoring all the data and simply barging ahead with business as usual. In a sense, gambling with a roll of the dice that all these so called experts have it wrong and placing your faith in Capitalism or Religion or Rush Slimeball to keep things going. Talk about garbage in garbage out.
From my perspective the conservative thing to do would be to be cautious and proceed as if the worse case scenario is happening then if it turns out to be wrong, no great harm done. Once it is too late, it is too late. The root word for conservatism is conserve. It seems to me that modern conservatism has wandered far from this basic notion
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In answering your question I will say that I tend to lean to the right on some issues and the left on others. For instance, I’m against abortion but also against the death penalty. Unlike liberals who believe on one hand that’s there’s nothing morally wrong with aborting innocent babies but on the other hand will defend a child molesting murderer from execution. But that’s a whole different debate.
I have voted for both Republicans and Democrats so don’t just lump me in with any one group. You ask what is conservative about ignoring the data and going on with business as usual. Where have I ever said that? I don’t dispute that there is data that supports warming. What I dispute is the claim that it is caused by mans activity as well as those ridiculous, unreliable conclusions of climate models.
You suggest that the cautious thing to do is act as if the worst case scenario will eventually occur and proceed from there and if we’re wrong, well we’re just wrong. That’s the problem with the any liberal movement. You’ll are great at identifying problems, but you’ll suck at trying to solve them. In example…lets look at one of the greatest liberal programs ever developed - LBJ’s Great Society. Trillions of dollars of wealth redistribution has occurred in the form of welfare but the problem is still not solved. Great liberal solution.
As with any liberal, the answer is always more taxes, more government regulation and more government programs. For instance, one liberal solution to lowering carbon emissions is to add taxes to the cost of fuel. Have the ramifications of that solution been fully explored? How would it affect the economy? How will that tax affect the farmers who need fuel to power their equipment so they can grow our food? What effect will that tax have on the price of food? What effect would this tax have on the poor and middle class? But let’s just go ahead and proceed with your global warming solutions…if we’re wrong, well we’re just wrong. Ooops, my bad.
Sorry citizen Joe, we really didn't realize that our green laws would have the effect of increasing the cost of milk to $10 a gallon and a loaf of bread to $5. And we're real sorry that the factory that you used to work had to close down because the added burden of all the green laws made it economically infeasible to continue operations. But good news, now you qualify for welfare so come on down and sign up.
I’m not against going slow and making educated decisions. I’m for a clean environment. I like to see clean rivers, blue skies and green trees. But I’m against passing regulations, taxes and laws based on flawed conclusions.
What about the Models?
In an attempt to push all sarcasm and name calling aside for the time being I will try to share with you one of my concerns with the conclusions of the global warming movement. Perhaps you can enlighten me on your take of my concern.
What concerns me is that the movement portrays a doomsday ending for the world if immediate action is not taken
Not the ending of the world. The world will go on just fine without the Human infestation which is spiraling out of control approaching 7 billion homo sapiens currently. We will just take out ourselves and several thousand or million other species with us.
*********Agreed
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to change certain aspects of the American lifestyle.
Not just the American lifestyle but also the future lifestyle of the other human inhabitants of the planet. Americans just seem to be the worst offenders when it comes to consuming resources and emitting massive amounts of waste and the most arrogant when it comes to accepting responsibility for the results of our actions.
We could and should set a positive example of implementing the changes needed instead of the greedy self-absorbed short-sighted example we set.
********Very noble statement
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I’m not sure if that is just a strategy implemented to draw attention to the cause but when I hear someone proclaim that the sky is falling, well it just raises my suspicions of the message.
The sky is not falling. We are just fowling our nest to the point of making it unlivable. It is good to be skeptical of any message but this is countered by getting good information and applying clear logical thinking to the problem not fear and pretending the thing is not happening until we get the final proof that it has already happened. There is no other nest for humanity to live in at this time so we need to take care of our home so that our home can take care of us.
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And to further add to my suspicions I have to point to how those conclusions are being derived. In the case of the global warming movement, conclusions derived from computer models are heavily relied upon.
Do you realize that using computer models is how we humans design everything these days. Before computer models we used physical models or mathematical models worked out the long way, by hand.
*********That may be true but there’s a big difference between using a model to develop specs for a bridge versus using a model to project climate changes. The number of variables that have to be fed into a model for building a physical structure pales in comparison to the number of variable that have to be fed into a climate predicting model. . I’m no statistician but common sense says that the larger the number of variables that a model uses to form a conclusion the larger the risk of error. **
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I’ve said it before, but maybe the following quote taken from a speech from a well known author will better make my point:
Do you have a good reason to hide the identity of this author or just paranoia?
**********Yes I did purposely omit the authors name because I wanted you to read the excerpt without having a bias (as if that’s possible). This quote is taken from a speech that Michael Crichton delivered to an audience at the California Institute of Technology titled “Aliens Cause Global Warming”. He also wrote a book that I doubt you have read titled “State of Fear” that is loosely based on global warming**.
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“To an outsider, the most significant innovation in the global warming controversy is the overt reliance that is being placed on models. Back in the days of nuclear winter, computer models were invoked to add weight to a conclusion: "These results are derived with the help of a computer model." But now large-scale computer models are seen as generating data in themselves. No longer are models judged by how well they reproduce data from the real world-increasingly, models provide the data. As if they were themselves a reality. And indeed they are, when we are projecting forward. There can be no observational data about the year 2100. There are only model runs.”
“This fascination with computer models is something I understand very well. Richard Feynmann called it a disease. I fear he is right. Because only if you spend a lot of time looking at a computer screen can you arrive at the complex point where the global warming debate now stands.”
“Nobody believes a weather prediction twelve hours ahead. Now we're asked to believe a prediction that goes out 100 years into the future? And make financial investments based on that prediction? Has everybody lost their minds?”
“Stepping back, I have to say the arrogance of the model makers is breathtaking. There have been, in every century, scientists who say they know it all. Since climate may be a chaotic system-no one is sure-these predictions are inherently doubtful, to be polite. But more to the point, even if the models get the science spot-on, they can never get the sociology. To predict anything about the world a hundred years from now is simply absurd."
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Computer models are only crystal balls and conclusions derived via models are not facts, they are simply speculation - guesses about what MIGHT happen. In another quote from the same author of the above he states that “Our models just carry the present into the future. They're bound to be wrong. Everybody who gives a moment's thought knows it.”
I have some very interesting news for you in this particular regard. Are you sitting down? Here it is. The entire enterprise of science from beginning to end is about predicting the future. There you have it in a nutshell. Chemistry for example is about predicting what will happen when you combine different substances together under different conditions. Physics - what will happen when you collide one atom into another, etc. etc.
It is precisely science's ability to predict what WILL happen that makes it so very valuable to Humanity. Before science, people used various mystical methods to forecast the future. You can't be proposing that we go back to Tarot cards and Horoscopes.
***********True, but you’re dodging the principle of my point…I don’t deny that “what if” is the theme of scientific research. That wasn’t my point…my point is the accuracy of climate predicting models?**
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Think about this, lets say that I had a stock that I wanted to sell you and as part of my sales pitch I would say that according to a computer model that I use to predict stock prices the past performance of this stock indicates that it’s price should double in 5 years. Would you buy that stock from me? I doubt it.
Wow, you are in luck Miss Pissy-pants. I have some more very interesting news for you. I used to work in the stock market so I know what I am talking about here. Yes there are large numbers of investors that use models. usually called charts, you have probably seen those stock charts in the paper or elsewhere. And yes they use these models to determine the future course of the stocks movement. The reason they use these models is because they have found them to be extremely helpful in the process of making money.
**************** I hope you don’t consider a price chart a model. If you do then we’re really in trouble. Models are used to predict the future…a price chart simply gives a visual summary of an equities price movements over a given period of time. The chart itself has no predictive value.
And again, you miss the principle of my point. Yes, I know that price models are used within the equities market. But I also know that the projections derived from these models decline in accuracy the further out they try to predict. That’s the basis of my argument about models, so quit dancing around the issue of climate model accuracy.
If all the money that is available on Wall Street cannot develop a computer model that can accurately predict stock prices 6 months out much less 5 years into the future, then do you really expect me to believe that a climate model has the capability to accurately predict the earth’s climate 10, 20, 50 or 100 years into the future? And the complexity of earth’s climate is much more complex than the dynamics that drive stock prices. This is the weak point of the movement's conclusions...just admit it...nobody can take past performance and accuratley predict the future...it just isn't humanly possible.
I sure hope you don’t buy stocks from somebody with that type of sales pitch. If you would then that must be the reason why you “used” to work in the stock market**.
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Yet that same approach is being used by climate scientist when they try to predict what the earth’s climate will be decades from now. The climate is a dynamic being, it is constantly changing and to have activist say that based upon past performance of the earth’s climate they predict that earth’s temperature will rise in the future is just too far fetched for me to accept. Just look back to Hansen and Rasool's conclusions derived from computer models when they predicted an ice age in the near future. Garbage in, garbage out.
Just like the climate is dynamic, the enterprise of science is dynamic.
In one of your other posts you ask about the apparent flip-flop by James Hanson at NASA regarding the future of the climate. Well, back in the sixties and early seventies, climate science was very much a immature enterprise. It was only with the aid of computers and the study of other planets like Mars and Venus that allowed the scientist to deal with the huge number of variables involved with climate prediction and have some perspective on what can happen to a planet when certain gases accumulate.
Science, unlike the Bible or Republican economic philosophy, changes over time as new evidence is brought to bare on the subject matter. In fact, for science to work at all it must continually re-evaluate the working hypothesis based on the most recent data. So Hansen was just doing what scientists always are supposed to do and changed the hypothesis to fit the data.
I suggest that you do some reading on "The Scientific Method" as this is really the heart and soul of what science is about and how it works.
****************That’s a very convenient explanation of Hansen’s flip flop. You’re basically saying that he didn’t have a good enough computer when he cried wolf about the upcoming ice age. I can respect that a scientist can change his or her opinion or views if scientific data is collected that conflicts with it. But when it comes to Hansen, unfortunately his view change will always be questionable because of his politics and the agenda that he supports.
I’m going to let you in on something that I’m not sure you or any others in the warming movement have ever considered. I speak for myself when I say this, but if you ever pressed any of the warming skeptics I bet they would agree with me more often than not.
The warming movement has an image problem. When I hear the words Global Warming or Climate Change it causes me to think of radical left wing activist groups such as PETA, ALF and Greenpeace. These are groups that force their agendas on others without any regard or respect for manners, private property rights, the law or the freedom of an individual to form opinions that differ from theirs.
I can recall a situation when I was in college that cemented my opinion of these radicals. The university that I attended has a medical teaching and research arm. One of the medical scientists was conducting research to determine the cause of Sudden Infant Syndrome. Within his research he used cats that he bought from the local pound. One night members of PETA broke into his laboratory to liberate these cats. But they didn’t stop with the liberation, they also destroyed data that he had complied from years and years of research, research that could eventually lead to preventing future SIDs deaths.
It was at that point that I realized that left wing activist groups are just plain wacky with distorted views of reality and of what is really important. The people that broke into that laboratory believed that it was more important to liberate a few cats that were going to be put down anyway than to try to find a cure for SIDs. They put more value on the life of a pound cat then they did of future infants that would die of SIDs. That’s just plain crazy and wrong.
The list of stupid, wacky, crazy and criminal things that these groups commit goes on and on. And believe it or not, much of the general public includes the global warming community within the same community as those crazy radical movements.
The warming movement will continue to come against resistance of their views from the general public not because naysayers are in bed with big oil, big coal or any of the fossil fuel industry, but rather because they think you’ll are a bunch of crazy wack jobs just like your brothers and sisters of those radical liberal groups. Like it or not the warming movement is considered a liberal movement, maybe not raidcal but nonetheless liberal. PETA, ALF and Greenpeace are definately radical but also liberal movements. You could probably careless if the warming movement is lumped in with those groups but in public court of opinion it does matter.
The movement will never get any respect from the general public until you’ll somehow clearly separate from those radical groups. I doubt that can be done though. And if you think that the many new regualtions and laws that the warming movement seek can be pushed through congress without a concensus of approval from the general public then you'll better rethink the strategy. According to a recent poll released by Texas A&M, the majority of those polled don't really consider global warming as a concern and are apethetic in regards to the movement. The general public is not yet convinced of the claims espoused by the warming movement. I’ll reply to your questions later.***
Whats the real agenda of the Global Warming crowd?
Sounds like you may have to think a bit to come up with a plausible reply for Hansen's flip flop. Be careful, I don't want you to hurt yourself. I look forward to your reply. Take it easy.
Love,
Miss Pissy-Pants