How do you tell a scientist from a non-scientist? Where does science end, and propaganda, politics, and opinion begin? You only need to know one thing:
…
…
Straight away, this sorts the wheat from the weeds. We don’t learn about the natural world by calling people names or hiding data. We don’t learn by chucking out measurements in favor of opinions. We don’t learn by suppressing discussions, or setting up fake rules about which bits of paper count or which people have a licence to speak.
A transparent, competitive system where all views are welcome is the fastest way to advance humanity. The Royal Society is the oldest scientific association in the world. Its motto is essentially, Take No One’s Word For It. In other words, assume nothing; look at the data. When results come in that don’t fit the theory, a scientist chucks out his theory. A non-scientist has “faith”, he “believes” or assumes his theory is right, and tries to make the measurements fit. When measurements disagree, he ignores the awkward news, and “corrects”, or statistically alters, the data–always in the direction that keeps his theory alive.
Page 13
TURN THE PAGES (Links in red will become active as pages are published). You are on the page in the Red Square.
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 + 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 |
This is page 15 of The Skeptics Handbook II. A 20 page PDF
NOTES: This page was created as part of the booklet Global Bullies Want Your Money (The Skeptics Handbook, vol. II). It was inspired by requests from people who were obviously frustrated. They wanted a formula, a checklist, or a table: a way to know which side was right. The people who normally like to trust authority are the ones most likely to run into a brick wall in this debate. They trust the scientific method, but also trust the institutions, the processes, and the politics that have risen up to supposedly carry this method from it’s pure form into it’s practical output. And the two sides are at loggerheads.
I trust the scientific method, but not the human institutions (they are subject to ambition, personality, money, and conflicts of interest).
In the end, the only real way to decide is to look at the evidence. But, if you have to figure out who to trust, if that’s your chosen short-cut, then at least this is a more systematic approach than trying to weigh up the resumes on each side.
Schools need to start teaching critical thinking. It’s not just science that’s filled with sheep.
20
Michael not Mann @1
It’s interesting that you should say that. Critical thinking is taught in the schools but it’s a mixed bag.
For example, I am teaching a math course from a textbook that has an entire chapter devoted to logic and reason. It covers logical fallacies and how to recognize them. And yet, in the very same textbook, the authors present (over and over again) examples of applied math that appear to promote the warmist views on global warming.
I have to say that my students thoroughly enjoy it when I take those very same examples and apply the lessons from the chapter on logic to them. Invariably, they will apply the same lessons to other political matters on their own.
I am not sure whether the authors are true warmists or whether they deliberately presented the global warming examples fully expecting the students to apply the rules of logic to them. In any case, my students are thrilled to see the methods applied to real world issues and they leave the course with a fuller appreciation of critical thinking.
There is hope!
50
Do you have one about journalists?
Real Journos:
Are sceptical of authority,
Check their sources,
Tie up the loose ends,
Ask the tough Questions,
Report the facts,
Investigate contradictions,
Don’t become stooges.
The “New” journos
Don’t question authority,
Just re-write the press release,
Leave the puzzles unsolved,
What’s a question?
Report opinion,
Investigate soy lattes.
Are suckers for a cause.
20
I like how you take an unsupported pot shot at a political organization (the IPCC) but make no mention of the actual science. Nice way to hide your propaganda.
[OK. So now on every single post I need to repeat the peer reviewed evidence I’ve already discussed elsewhere? Funny, I don’t hear you asking the believers for “actual science” ….JN]
10
Isn’t this what they call “Post Normalism”.
The appliance of science
Forgive me if I’m way behind on this , but this whole climate change thing is proving something of a revelation.
10
Matt S:
March 9th, 2010 at 6:32 am
I like how you take an unsupported pot shot at a political organization (the IPCC) but make no mention of the actual science. Nice way to hide your propaganda.
Show me in the article where the IPCC is mentioned? If you are inferring that the IPCC is a political organization created to foist the debunked anthropogenic global warming scam then I am in agreement with you.
I like how you take an unsupported pot shot at Jo (JOANNE NOVA) but make no mention of the science. Typical AGW propaganda you [snip]!
BTW, does the “S.” stand for sap, sucker, simpleton or something else?
10
Keep’em coming Jo!!! Yes, taken off “The Skeptical Handbook” Vol II, is a very good resource of material…Thanks Jo! Have a copy next to me!
For those who are interested, there’s another “Gate” happening! Check it out on my updated article “The Gate’s: Shall I Open? Further?” Well, I guess one could state that the question has been answered…But, Uh…no surprise there…Right MattB??? 🙂
http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?2089.last
10
Oh, I forgot to state it’s No. 11 on the list! Sorry!
10
1Michael not Mann: @#1
wrote:-
critical thinking at a London school
climate change lecture tour at Southwark’s Globe Academy
10
In his TV series CIVILISATION Kenneth Clark brought out the point that we owe the world we live in today to people of past centuries who took a stand against the ruling dogma. I’m not a scientist but I began to suspect a few years ago that global warming was a crock from the high-handed tone the believers adopted toward the skeptics: they were either not fully informed, or they were wilfully ignoring the crucial evidence. Now of course it comes out that much of that ‘evidence’ was fenced off to prevent a critical evaluation…
Long live the skeptics, in every field of human thought and endeavour. They may not always be right, but they can keep us from going too far wrong.
20
I note with great sadness Robyn Williams piece on The Drum…
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2010/03/08/2839760.htm?site=thedrum
I say sadness, because not so long ago I had a lot of respect for him. How can he not question the science?
10
Climate is Science
Climate Change is Propaganda
Climate Scientists study the weather and climate.
Climate Change Scientists create hearsay & propaganda.
(Climate Change Scientists all possess the illusory superiority complex and varying degrees of a messiah complex. They tend to be inadequate and because of their insecurities they tend to group together to kill of the lone independent Climate Scientist. They are easy to identify upon encounter, they tend to be failures, crave celebrity and while they scream that something has to be done they hide behind their group configuration when asked to debate an issue. Fear of being found out is their biggest personality trait and they will spit like a rat when they are cornered.
One other trait they all have in common, had they worked in any other branch of science they would have been noticed for their inadeqaucies very quickly and replaced. As opposed to climate science, climate change science is a hangout for all failed scientists to group together under a single imaginary cause. Having an imaginary cause is utopia for these guys as it allows everybody’s imaginary hypotheses to be right.)
20
I took a look at your website Eddy. But its only one page. Is there more fullsome information about your outfit elsewhere? I think I read you saying that you retrieve oil from older mostly used up oilwells is that right?
Do you use superheated steam or something? Like I read Chevron had some sort of process. Where their operators worked remote, deciding when to inject some steam, loosen up the heavier gluggier oil, and build up the pressure to allow them to suck more of it out or something of that general description.
One of the things that used to get me angry at the neoclassical carbon tax quislings, is that before the recent rash of natural gas success, I would try and impress upon people that the carbon-attax was pushing us in the wrong direction. Because you would expect the heavier, more carbon-rich oils down the bottom of these wells. And because more generally that as far as our hydro-carbon resources were concerned we had what you might call a hydrogen-dearth. Wherein we had all these heavy carbon solids, and thicker oil, but not the natural gas to provide the hydrogen molecules, or the superheated steam on-location (in the wilds that only natural gas can provide).
So my argument was that the carbon-affront, pushed us entirely the wrong direction as far as adaptation to tighter oil markets was concerned. Since we would face this hydrogen-poverty right up until we had saturation nuclear or we were pulling all these Methyl-Clathrates up from the sea bottom.
I was wanting them to take the excise off diesel, synthetic or otherwise, as the minimum they could do. As well take the any tax on retained earnings away from alternative diesel and oil sourcing. Like the deep sea stuff or like what I think you are getting up to. Convince everyone to invest in diesel cars.
With the recent mega-success of all this gas exploitation I’m not sure if this hydrogen-dearth argument holds. Well actually I’m pretty sure it does but I’d like a second opinion, from someone in the hydro-carbon industry.
I think it still holds for a number of reasons. Synthetic diesel and oil is so much cheaper to transport than anything else. In those big 500 metre long tankers. Its an inherently economic proposition which such cheap transport costs. But this gas transportation. Its got to be pretty expensive unless you’ve got the piping in place. And the more tar sands and oil shales, or turning deep coal into syngas …. well the more of that gear you want to exploit, well you probably are going to want to use the gas locally. In production of other fuels and for water heating. When you want fast on-off heat application.
For me the gas is the ideal local producer good. Beautiful. Turn it off and the heat is gone. Use it indoors. Too good to be used to turn a steam-electric turbine unless its coming out of the ground and through a pipe to where you are producing the electricity.
I get even more annoyed with carbon tax quislings then with the full-blown goose-steppers. I brought up the hydrogen dearth argument and it never seemed to impress anyone at all. No neoclassical quislings were turned around on that point that I know of. I know I was right at the time, but now I’m not sure if all this gas they have gotten hold of changes matters.
I don’t think it ought to alter my take on matters simply because gas appears to be more convenient to use more locally where possible. And still its diesel, synthetic or otherwise, that ought to be the international energy currency along with oil. Oil or synthetic diesel transported in huge tankers.
20
One thing that the AGW revolutionaries overlook when they attempt to indoctrinate the young,is that they are now the establishment.
The desire to challenge accepted beliefs/values seemed to be hardwired into teenage humans every generation does the same thing. One of the consequences of this is that prevailing beliefs and values are reassessed every generation,some stand the test others don’t. On the whole this attitude has stood humanity in good stead.
AGW gained most of its original popularity 20 years ago because it challenged the establishment. The situation now is its original supporters have grown older and are questioning its validity with the wisdom of experience. The younger generation will question it simply because it is being pushed by the establishment.
20
“Schools need to start teaching critical thinking. It’s not just science that’s filled with sheep.”
I agree with your sentiment, but I don’t think that will ever happen. A population schooled in critical thinking is much less manipulable than otherwise. No politician or lawmaker would ever vote in favor of such a thing.
Then there are the teachers and educators themselves, who are so fond of indoctrinating a gullible student body with their pet theories and notions, just because they can. They do not want students who question and scrutinize the material they are presented with.
Then there are the churches and religious institutions. Why, if the population were schooled in critical thinking, church attendance would drop off a cliff and they know it.
Then there are the people who are already critical thinkers. They already have a leg up on the majority. That presents opportunities of all types. Why would they want to see that change?
No, I agree that critical thinking is a good thing, but I recognize that it will never become widespread in the population. There would simply be too much opposition to that, since leadership would then become too difficult for too many.
10
#11 re loosing respect for broadcaster Robyn Williams.
I think he has been doing that job for too long and lost touch with reality.
He is another one who treats science as a religion and not a process which can be tainted. He needs to get his head out of journals and see the real world.
10
No one knows what the climate will be doing next year, next decade or next century. This is the argument so many alarmists try to use in a particular way to counter the skeptics. “If it ain’t warming, it must be cooling – right?”
It’s not the warming or the cooling that is in question. It is the amount of influence mankind has in the matter. Anyone who believe mankind can influence the climate of the planet short of nuclear Armageddon is a sandwich short of a picnic and has an ego the size of the moon. Opps! That owlboring isn’t it?
20
I know this is OT but this looks like the latest AGW scaremongering.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/mcclatchy/20100307/sc_mcclatchy/3444187
“WASHINGTON — Lower levels of oxygen in the Earth’s oceans, particularly off the United States’ Pacific Northwest coast, could be another sign of fundamental changes linked to global climate change, scientists say.”
10
Actually, the question is: how do you tell good science from pseudo-science. The scientific method is neutral in regards to what the personality of the individual is. What matter is that a hypothesis can be tested and verified through subsequent tests. The scientist can be rude, mean, and not like kittens as the facts can be tested.
Your article reduces the scientific debate to a popularity test.
10
Steve B:
points out
Sure, plenty of ‘consistent with’s and ‘could be’s .
Conjecture in the right direction is great for selling newspapers.
10
SUBJECT: Russians Debunk Permafrost Scam
Russia’s leading scientists have debunked false claims by environmental activist groups and left-leaning media groups that global climate change is causing significant warming of the Siberian permafrost and resulting in a large-scale release of potent methane gas.
MORE:-
http://www.heartland.org/publications/environment%20climate/article/17978/Russians_Debunk_Permafrost_Scam.html
10
Binny I sure hope you are right. I take a bit of a jaundiced view of the kids unless they are showing up at a Ron Paul rally or something. I suspect that a lot of the kids will express their rebelliousness by smoking cigarettes in the toilets and will be hardwired warming-hustle dogmatists as they walk to school in the snow.
10
Mike (19)
Isaac Newton wasn’t an altogether lovely person by all accounts but he was a good scientist – eventually. However most of the good scientists I know of personally are also nice people – they realise that they haven’t “invented” anything, only found a treasure. Ego is an enemy of good science, especially when it causes the scientist to cling to false theories.
There seems to be a correlation between bad science and bad form in the warmist camp – if my prejudiced opinion (based on the Climategate emails) is any guide.
The words of Goethe come to mind: “Man is neither good nor bad. He is both.”
Cheers,
Speedy
20
For me the best living scientist right now is the economist George Reisman. I always thought that Newton was the best of all time. As well I thought that my piano-teachers, husbands-uncle was the best in the last century. I speak of Rutherford of course but I lie.
Because It was not that many years ago that I accepted that Einstein and Neils Bohr and those guys were just magnificent.
Everybody loves Raymond, and everybody loves Alfred too. Me no less than anyone. If you are pretty absentminded and kind of “out there” its very easy to be pulled into the cult of personality, that the physicists have on the fly.
I had been disturbed by what I was seeing in science. Because I thought this bad craziness was just in economics. And, ignorant that I was, I had imagined erroneously, that it was just the fault of the Keynesians.
Anyway by about four or five years back, I had re-ranked it that Newton was still the best, but that Mr Elliots uncle was the best anytime in the last hundred years.
But now I don’t think so. I think I have the similar methodology to Mrs Nova. But I wonder if she really knows what rabbit-holes that will take you down if you follow it consistently. A lot of the time you will follow that rabbit-hole and when you get there breathless, you will find some smooth yet benighted bastard having a cup of tea and wondering why it took you so long. Sometimes it will be Louis Hissink doing that sort of wondering.
So maybe Newton was good. But maybe he wasn’t all that good. Certainly, even if we believed special relativity, we ought not promote the way that Albert went about things as good science. Yes creativity is useful in scientific research. But science ought not simply be an extension of creative genius. What a terrible lesson for the kiddies to learn.
There is so much circular reasoning on the fly here. I contend that if Mrs Nova were to follow her methodology with extreme prejudice she would fall right off the mainstream. If she wants to go that far she may as well call herself “Alice” right now.
10
Graeme Bird: I contend that if Mrs Nova were to follow her methodology with extreme prejudice she would fall right off the mainstream.
What is so good about today’s mainstream? It looks to me like an out of control bus heading full speed toward an abyss. Its way past time to get off that bus and get out of the way.
10
I’ll keep that in mind next time a family member has a serious illness. Now, who do you trust: the “arrogant” oncologist, neurologist or the sweet smiling naturopath? Which one is more likely to help you?
I hear exactly the same arguments about scientists from creationists and the proponents of alt-medicine. Scientists are “arrogant” they “fix their data” to hide “the truth”, which has been “discovered” by non-technical experts working outsdie the field. The claims of denialists are identicial to these other anti-science movements.
I’d recommend people read “Counterknowledge: how we surrendered to conspiracy theories, quack medicine and fake history” by Damin Thomson, a brilliant analysis of the many and various species of fake knowledge out there. Read the check list, look at the tactics of these movements and really ask who you trust:
“There are good reasons to trust scientists whenever a huge majority of them endorse an empirical claim. The test applied to empirical statements are, for the most part, impressively rigorous, and they applied by a scientific community that…. is made up of individuals from diverse ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds… So when scrupulous researchers overwhelmingly agree that a particular claim is a statement of fact, the probability that they are right is extremely high.”
Ms Nova’s advice to trust who seems nice flies in the face of how science works. For your conspiracy to work, scientists, the UN, politicians, activists from around the world with a divese set of personal believes would have to work in perfect unision with a single mission in mind without any dissent or disagreement. This rivals the claim the that moon landing was a hoax. A conspiracy, if it was to exist would involve hundreds of thousands of individuals manufacturing data, hiding evidence etc.
10
Mike you are talking about a situation where price-inflation has taken all but the hyper-subsidised out of the picture.
I have a brother who cuts into people and gets paid to do it. He’s a surgeon. Think of the immense investment his country has laid into him to be able to put you to sleep, cut into you, and for you to trust this process?
So in that situation, obviously there is no competitors. Yet there is still the same obstruction of progress.
For in a world of no funding for education and science we can imagine the twelve year old working on the farm and the contract is that the education agency brings his skills up and places him in jobs to that effect.
So already at twelve the poor boy is a herd-tester. Working three twelve hour shifts every nine days for nine months of the year. Then he is medicine man to sick individuals in the herd. Then to sick family pets. Then he is taught to be surgeon to some hard cases in the herd. Then he starts working for a vet and learns to be surgeon for pets.
You can see how a much larger body of kids could wind up being able to competently cut you open and demand compensation rather than the other way around.
10
Mike (26)
In my experience, not all honest people are nice, but most nice people are honest…
You could be right about that conspiracy theory. Maybe the IPCC have been desperately unlucky in the “mistakes” that we’re seeing lately? (For the latest one, follow Denny’s link at #7.)
But by a strange twist of fate, all of the IPCC mistakes seem to fall to the same side of the argument – the side that justifies the existence of the IPCC.
And I seem to recall that Al Gore had a similar problem.
Cheers,
Speedy
10
“What is so good about today’s mainstream? It looks to me like an out of control bus heading full speed toward an abyss. Its way past time to get off that bus and get out of the way.”
Well yes I agree Lionel. But Mrs Nova has never called me “denialist’ or otherwise treated me poorly. She may think I”m a jerk but these are sins of the heart and not actual grievances. Actually I didn’t really register her presence until her sensational appearance on Jim Puplava’s radio show.
So while I agree with you Lionel, all I can say, is that I’m just trying to warn her. Plus I couldn’t get my questions answered over on the ABC. So I had this idea I could cross-examine “Enki” over on this blog. Being as I suspect “Enki” to be Mr Nova. So I’m just saying if she follows correct methodology it takes you in non-correct directions. It takes you through the looking-glass.
Lionel.
Send my regards to Professor Reisman if you should communicate with him.
He’s the best there is.
Tough guy and never let his mates down even when they weren’t being too kind to him. I’d want to make him an honorary digger.
See my avatar?
Reisman never backed off from the support of the Senator living or dead. He’s as tough as nails and in my book he’s our greatest living scientist.
10
Mike @19
The scientific method is indeed neutral but this fact falls when post-modernists, etc get involved in science, for then they impose their relativism onto the science, and thus the situation climate science is in today, and hence pseudoscience.
We are dealing with a sincerely held belief system whose practioners think they understand the scientific method – they don’t, but will, via rhetoric, bamboozle you into thinking that they do with apparently technically sophisticated, peer-reviewed papers supporting their POV.
Personally I don’t think they have been committing fraud per se, but because of the inbuilt moral relativism of their beliefs, believe that one set of data are no differnet to another.
How science is to extricate itself from this will be challenging.
20
Louis – there is a reason everyone is a postmodernist (even the current modernists), and that is because the modernists stuffed up and the population lost belief in science.
10
What really happened is that the left stuffed up with scientific socialism, and then it is THEY that lost faith in science. But after demonstrating their hatred for science it became apparent to them that this wasn’t a winning strategy. So the next strategy was to project their anti-science JIVE onto their adversaries.
I believe this is the true history but its open to correction.
10
Louis an extreme version of that is on Professor Quiggins website. And in this thread it reaches this awesome crescendo, when Nick Gruen, breaker of budgets, shows up and says the single word “sad”.
More sad for us then for Nick.
I’m sworn off swearing at Professor Quiggin. But he makes out like its a fatal flaw of the Austrians that they spend so much effort on methodology and epistemology.
I could never fly blind like these people.
10
Graeme:
Rationally, there are NO competitors. But there are plenty of alt-med people who claim they are competitors, and we shouldn’t trust “Western medicine” because it’s beholden to “big pharma”.
Again I say to them: prove to me it works. Show me the studies. “Ah yes…” they reply “the scientists/big pharma/government and other vested interests are covering up the truth!”
Always the scientists. Always the conspiracy. Always the same “the truth is being suppressed!”
I know someone who had cancer, at the time a they where a practicing homeopath. The chose to ignore “conventional” medicine and take massive doses of Vitamin C, a standard homeopathic cure for cancer. They spent years training in alt-med. Ran their own practice. The sad, sad thing is they passed away from the cancer. It was detected early enough to be “cured”. They ignored the advice of experts and did the whole natural medicine thing… and too late, they realised their mistake and went back to the evil doctors with their radiation and knives. Too late. All too late.
Was I happy I was “right” in the end? Did it make me feel good that my world view was vindiated? No. The tragedey is that evidence based medicine: too many people choose to put their faith in alt-med.
Climate scientists have diagnosed the problem – climate change – and we have to time to prevent it. Like a cancer researcher they have caught the problem early. We can believe message, as hard as that truth may be, or slip into denial.
Is it certain climate change is happening? With 100% certainty? No-one can say that. But the probability it will happen is very *high*. A high probabilty should give anyone pause.
Every single denier argument I see mirrored in the arguments I heard from the person who passed away from cancer: conspiracies, the broken peer review system, the reliance on information on the Internet published by people bypassing the peer review process.
Accepting the truth that something is wrong is hard. Hoping nothing is wrong is easier. I chose to keep my eyes open, to trust the science is right and do something. I’m a pragmatic realist.
We all need to be though. We all need to accept the evidence, “man up” and deal with it. Hiding under a smokescreen of denial literature may make you feel safe for a while, but as they say reality does not choose sides. It decides for us.
Both the left and right of politics are beset by conspiracy theories and pseudo-science. Time to cut through it all.
10
You hold the proof-bar with inconsistency. If you continue to rely on the medical profession you will see hem bundled up with the insurance people. That combination under enough budget stress gets you to an early grave. Perhaps even with foreign regimes expressing local preferences and everyone laughing about it at cocktails.
You don’t have the ability to cut through it all. Don’t be typing cheques that your brain cannot cash.
10
Mike @ 26
You really should not put words in our mouths mate… it is just going to put people offside and ignore your comments. Take a step back and look at the motivations (i.e. money flows) behind these various groups that you mention. It quickly becomes apparent that you do not need an insidious conspiracy to guide them, when they are all aligned in the same general direction to start with.
Scientists find what they are paid to find. If they start publishing works skeptical of AGW their funding and the publications that will host their writings rapidly dry up. A classic example is the excellent work that was done by Svensmark, and boy did he suffer (for years) trying to find a publisher. It is much, much easier to go with the flow and pick up that easy tenure-track by singing with the choir mate.
There is no conspiracy … that is simply a strawman you are trying to affix to us.
10
And I guess biologists all make up evolution because it will give them grants (Creationist claim). I guess vaccines cause autism right? (alt-med claim). I guess scientists are paid the earth goes round the sun? The earth is >4bn years old because geologists get research grant’s to say that?
Question: is there ANY conclusion reached by scientific consensus you accept, or is it simply climate change?
And by the way: Svensmark’s thesis is not accepted.
What I find incredible is this is simply post-modernism: the claim that our views on reality are conditioned by powerful, vested interests.
And noet. Graeme. You dont’ address my points: you insult me. Play the ball, not the man.
10
Ahhh I see you have posted again Mike – beware of the nerf bat as “denier” is a no-no here. We don’t need your vague, Nazi-holocaust associations thanks.
You sure talk a lot, but it is all vague analogies and faith in the scientific expertise of the IPCC. Let me point one thing out to you from the start… the I in IPCC stands for Intergovernmental… not Interscientific. That, right there, should be a tip to you in terms of how the documents are word-smithed to meet government agendas.
Secondly, by far and away the most important missing link in the whole “climate science” is that of feedbacks. We all know how much warming CO2 causes by itself. Here is an excellent synopsis by fellow Perthite David Archibald:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/03/08/the-logarithmic-effect-of-carbon-dioxide/
The massive missing link I refer to is how the heck the IPCC gets from the minor warming caused by increases in CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere to the massive 4-6C increases in temperature predicted in their models.
Answer? The models make massive assumptions about the CO2 causing feedbacks through water vapour. So there we have it…. massive assumptions ===> ridiculous forecasts in temperature, and we are supposed to slwallow that tripe like it is good for us. Sorry mate… the science is missing.
10
You quote Wikipedia – epic fail.
10
“Play the ball, not the man” – says the one using the denier tag. You make me laugh … in a sad way. Your hyprocrasy shines through brightly.
10
Mike @26 says:
The point you missed was that key players in the game are arrogant (see the Climategate letters), they did fix their data to hide the decline and many of the questions came from highly respected, professional and top notch scientists.
Jo clearly stated that the ultimate arbiter of scientific issues is the evidence or lack thereof. What could be clearer than that? The evidence is the issue and it is quite seriously lacking. As a scientist, I find it to be seriously flawed and not compelling.
Serious fundamental questions are raised by serious scientists and casually dismissed. For example, there is only a very weak correlation between the atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature in the historic record dating back millions of years. In fact, temperature changes typically preceded changes in the concentration of carbon dioxide. There is no evidence that anything happening with regard to the climate today differs from what has happened previously.
Yet the warmists cannot be bothered to explain that. The reply is invariably that things are different today because man has entered picture so we get to ignore millions of years of evidence to the contrary. Where’s the science in that?
You may hear some of the same words used by GW skeptics that you hear from creationists but there’s a world of difference. The people questioning the science of global warming understand and respect data and evidence. The creationists haven’t a clue of what data and evidence are in the scientific sense. I am surprised that you cannot see the difference. Just listen to a creationist discuss the laws of thermodynamics sometime.
Also, for the record, “denialists” do not make claims. They question the theory which is proper and expected in the conduct of science. In effect, they are performing the central task of questioning the science and methodology that the scientists conducting the research ought to be doing themselves but who are conveniently derelict in their duties.
You should certainly understand that the burden of proof is on those proposing a scientific theory. Their failure to provide proof, i.e. convincing evidence, cannot be construed as a shortcoming on the part of people who question it. Comparing those who question “the science” to creationists is intellectual dishonesty at its worst.
And with regard to your choice between an oncologist and a naturopath, did it ever occur to you that some oncologists may be quacks?
10
BTW Mike … for shots and giggles I looked at the Svensmark page history at Wikipedia… William Connolley is all over it like a bad rash. ’nuff said…
10
WUWT blogs posts are not scientific research. They have no more veracity or authority than you standard creatinionst tract published on Ansers in Genesis or like those of thousands of other denier sights. I’ve seen hundreds of examples and they fail to convince. Why? They fail the evidence test. Blog posts are opinion pieces not research.
They are perfect examples of counterknowledge: non-facts dressed up as facts. Watts recycles the same disproven facts again and again. The stuff is not peer reviewed.
Wait, here it comes… the peer review system must be compromised and biased against you right?. All those scientists, busy keeping out the creationsits, alt-med proponents and glioabl warming sceptics. The entire scientific established is involved in a conspiracy to keep em out right?
No, it’s called quality control.
Do you know why Nature won’t publish a paper arguing the world is 6000 years old? Because it does not meet the standards of researhc. Do you know why they won’t publish denier material like Watts? Because it doesn’t meet rigourous intellectual standards.
Watt’s blog posts fail the quality control test. Actually, he really, really should submit his papers to peer review.
I know he’s a bit if hero in the denier community, and most likely a very nice guy. But’s he’s wrong. And not qualified in the area.
Honestly, you guys have given me nothing new.
Blog links to denier sites – check
Follow the money arguments – check
Ad hominum attacks against me – check
Conspiracy thinking – check
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Mike, if you are going to insult us “denier” you need to show you can back it up. Go ahead, post some evidence that we deny that shows carbon leads to catastrophic warming. (You’ll need to understand this point too…)
If you can’t back up your name-calling, you can still comment, but only after you apologize. Everyone makes mistakes after all. We welcome comments from honest contributors.
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Bulldust why are Wikipedia references an epic fail, yet you post WUWT blog entries as though they are somehow epic truth?
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Check this out – on Moonbats newest article in the guardian he is asking why people don’t believe the AGW camp anymore.
But check out at the very bottom of the page – there in the middle is a gallery on the amazingly shrinking Himalayan glaciers.
Truly ironic.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cif-green/2010/mar/08/belief-in-climate-change-science
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MattB
You clearly have not ben following the Wikipedia-Connolley issue very closely. The difference between WUWT and Wiki on climate science is that the former tolerates and welcomes reasoned views from either side of the debate, while the latter jealously protects the AGW-bias through gatekeepers like Connolley and his followers. Look at his edit history… it is plain as day.
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PS> I don’t swallow everything at WUWT mindlessly… if it looks suss and I care about the topic, I do further research. I will be happy to see arguments posted against the very basic science that Archibald presented BTW. The same type of info on CO2-warming has been posted here before, e.g.:
http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/4-carbon-dioxide-is-already-absorbing-almost-all-it-can/
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Bulldust there is no secret to the logarithmic effect of CO2. I disagree with the L&C 0.15 climate sensitivity, but the graph would look just the same.
You don;t have to go as far as a link to this site, you could even link to Wiki or the IPCC reports to find out there is a log relationship.
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“If you can’t back up your name-calling, you can still comment, but only after you apologize. Everyone makes mistakes after all. We welcome comments from honest contributors.”
Damn thats righteous.
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Mike #26
Not necessarily. It all comes back to the data. In the case of AGW, the authoritative data are not the raw measurements, but the “corrected”, or “adjusted”, or as Phil Jones called it, the “value added” data.
With the exception of the satellite measurements, climate science is reliant on data that was collected for the purposes of forecasting local weather conditions, and not for the purposes of calculating global average temperature.
A very small group of scientists (three, I think) went through a process of “adding value” to the existing measurements.
This included ignoring a significant number of measuring sites, and giving a weighting to the importance of some others.
I am prepared to accept that they had a valid rationale, at the time, for every “adjustment” that was made. But since the actual adjustments, and the rationale for each, has not been published, and do not actually appear to exist any longer, we will never know why they did what they did.
Other climate scientists then used this “consistent” data as input to their work; the results of which they will stand behind, of course.
But garbage in is garbage out, no matter how sophisticated the model, and how “value added” the data might be.
So there need not be a conspiracy, other than the professional assumption that a reputable scientist will never lie to a colleague.
Mike #34
And the evidence seems to be that the data – the real data – is unsuitable for the purpose it is being put to.
So I would say that the hypothesis of anthropogenic global warming is not supported by the currently available data. It can not be. The data is simply not up to the task.
The world may well be warming, but I have seen no empirical evidence that there are anthropogenic factors involved.
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The traitors at the ABC(All Bullshit & Censorship) are at it again!
Robyn “100 metres” Williams demands more truth
http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/robyn_100_metres_williams_demands_more_truth/
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Well, I’m happy to play the rules and stop throwing the “denier” term at you if it gets me banned. So if I offended, I apologise.
[Thank you for your apology, three posts released. Mod]
Re the evidence, I shall certainly post links to relevant, peer reviewed studies from the last 30+ years (representing thousands of individual papers showing the linkage between C02 levels and warming and that there is evidence to support it is induced by our activities. I’ll not post all of it, it’s not humanly possible. But let’s begin shall we…
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Graeme I’m telling you – on track record you’re not going to last long here;)
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Let’s also play by the rules of evidence/science and civil debate:
– Blog posts and op-ed pieces are not research, but statements of opinion
– Ad hominum attacks are out
– Warmist is an offending term, so if I stop using denier I’ll not have AGW refered to as “my religion” or me as a warmist/alarmist etc.
[no guarantee Mike the connection “Denier” has to the holocaust is the problem. “Warmist” and “religion” do not carry the same connotation. Mod.]
Cheers
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Not good enough Matt. Its a reasonable point of view and I’m not contesting it. But one does not just refer to Wiki, the IPCC, as if they are good reference points and possibly superior to this site and thats the end of the matter.
If you cannot derive the proof, you don’t know its true. Certainly this is the case of it in an environment of mistrust and hired bullshit.
The logarithmic idea is fine. Is it true? We want to know what the evidence is either way.
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Graeme it seems no one is arguing it is not logarithmic? I’m not going to run around looking for evidence to prove a point that anyone involved in the debate agrees with.
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Mike @26
With regard to AGW this presents a problem in a number of areas but for the sake of brevity I will only choose one.
Research overwhelming supports the premise that MWP and LIA were global events. If this is correct then the conditions that we are experiencing fall within the bounds of natural variability. I have asked supporters of AGW on numerous occasions to provide a range of proxy evidence to support these events as being regional. The evidence provided falls far short of the evidence supporting the global nature of these events. If you have compelling evidence otherwise please provide it.
There is of course another problem. We are asked to accept the forward “forecasts” of GCM’s on the basis that they replicate past events yet not one model has been able to account for either condition when, particularly in the case of the MWP, we know that Co2 concentrations were far below today’s levels. That we cannot explain major climate shifts for just the last thousand years says little for the accuracy of GCM’s.
I would not choose any medical practitioner, or support any hypothesis, with a history of failure to do so is to elevate faith above reason.
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Well maybe you won’t do that. Maybe I won’t either. But you as yet don’t know its true and referring to a UN scandal and a tool of propaganda does not make it so.
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@MattB
In regards to your post # 45. To say that WUWT is posting something untrue or false without substantiating why Anthony Watts is wrong is illogical. I am going to try and explain the fallacy of an appeal to authority in a way that I hope makes sense to you. If you say that something is true because somebody in a position of authority says it is true the claim, argument or premise may or may not be true. As I’ve said before, if a licensed doctor gives you a diagnosis and you rely on his diagnosis because he is properly licensed to practice medicine then that would be a legitimate appeal to authority. However, if you go in to see the doctor because you have a hangnail and he wants to amputate your hand you may want to get a second opinion. Just because a licensed doctor renders a diagnosis it does not mean that he is infallible and cannot be wrong. If you go to an unlicensed quack and he renders a diagnosis that would not be a legitimate appeal to authority. Even then, just because he is a quack does not mean he is wrong, either. The truth is determined by logically weighing, testing and validating the claim, argument or premise in a logical manner
Another form or manifestation of an appeal to authority occurs when someone says you are wrong simply because you are not a recognized authority over the subject of debate or disagreement. In the case of Anthony Watts, he may not be a climate scientist but that is irrelevant. Only the evidence matters. If what he says is true then it is true. If is claim or statement can be shown to be false then the statement is not true.
Also, simply because a fallacy was employed by the proponent of a premise does not mean that the premise itself is is wrong, only the argument is illogical because it is fallacious and therefore the argument is unacceptable. To say that a premise is wrong is fallacious and is called a fallacious fallacy.
The reason I have gone to such lengths to explain this to you, Matt, is because I have seen you ask why is something an appeal to authority, usually the appeal to authority you questioned is the latter where someone writes or implies that a statement is wrong simply because the person making the statement is not a recognized authority on the matter being discussed or debated.
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Eddy. I didn’t say that “WUWT is posting something untrue or false” and your continuaton “without substantiating why Anthony Watts is wrong is illogical.” is no different to your dislike of wikipedia.
As the opening line of your post is based on something that did not happen, I’ll not be reading the rest of it so I hope you didn;t put too much effort in to it.
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Matt, A clarification,
I wrote, To say that a premise is wrong is fallacious and is called a fallacious fallacy.
I should have written, To say that a premise is wrong simply because a fallacy was employed in arguing for the premise does not necessarily mean that the premise itself was wrong. To argue so would be to employ a fallacy known as a fallacious fallacy.
BTW, Matt, if I would have “cut and pasted”, I wouldn’t have had to post this clarification! 😉
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Allen @ 58
The difference between the oncologist and naturopath is that the personality, political point of view, quirks or bad manners of the oncologist are irrelevant to the science. Evidence based medicine
You can have poor doctors – who can get sued for malpractice – but their individual performance has nothing to do the science. Their failure is that if putting it into practice.
The naturopaths work is based on pseudo-science, so despite all their best efforts and good will the remedies and cures they offer will not work.
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MattB:
March 9th, 2010 at 3:25 pm
Bulldust why are Wikipedia references an epic fail, yet you post WUWT blog entries as though they are somehow epic truth?
You asked a question, Matt. It was your , “somehow epic truth”? claim that caused me to try and help you. I’ve been told that no good deed goes unpunished.
I guess I should just make you happy by “booing” our antagonist wrestler! 😉
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Matt,
My opinion of Wikipedia is based upon the fact that they are biased. I am sure you are aware of that because, as you say, you now read the links I provide you!
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For the record … I have no problem referring to Wiki on things that are purely scientific fact, like the decay series for U-235, for example. I do have a problem with Wiki as a reference for any topic that is socially or politically charged in nature, because that is where the edit lobby groups push their points of view (despite Wiki’s weak-arsed policy against POV posting). It is a well-known issue with Wiki and also the main reason it has fallen from grace so rapidly as a reference source.
BTW the IPCC had no problem using an un-verified Wikipedia link as a source for a graph in one of their publications. It was hastily removed after it received exposure on sites like WUWT. I refer of course to the infamous “Hanno 2009” graph. Hanno wasn’t the guy’s last name, and he wasn’t even the source of the data in the graph. This is our billions of tax dollars hard at work…
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BTW I never said WUWT was epic truth… far from it. There is occasionally misleading and simply wrong information posted there (mostly in blogger comments). Usually you will see quite active debates when someone does post “dubious science.” Dr Svalgard was one of the more vociferous defenders of science when it came to his field of expertise, for example. While sometimes caustic in his replies, he was usually spot on with the science. Just one of the many valued contributors at the site. Science thrives on debate… not blind consensus.
Contrast this with Real Climate, on the other hand, where I have had polite comments moderated frequently, simply because they did not fall in line with the AGW-agenda peddled there. Try posting an honest question about the number of samples in Briffa’s Yamal tree-ring study, for instance, and see how far you get.
BTW MattB, I would recommend a book I just started reading (Chill) by Peter Taylor (who I see posted on the WUWT thread I linked before). The chap is an environmentalist, activist and politically-savvy operator, who has spent some decades researching environmental issues and circulation models. After looking into the IPCC and it’s methods in some depth he has some choice things to say about their methods and conclusions.
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thanks Mike for politely responding. But you don’t quite get my point. It’s not that you’ve offended me – it’s that the term “denier” is a baseless insult. You need to acknowledge that you can’t provide any evidence we deny – you merely assert that you can.
We are not deniers of any evidence.
Can you understand how there is no real point in having a conversation while you are convinced that we deny something, yet you won’t point to anything specific?
I understand your protest over the term “alarmist” – but you are trying to alarm us, to raise the alarm, to draw attention to things that are alarming? There is some truth in it. That said, labels are only so useful, and if you were raising good points with high quality scientific content I would ask people to treat you with respect.
You are not going to listen to us are you if you think that we are “deniers” – who would? We need to correct that misconception right at the start. You don’t have to post overwhelming evidence. One paper that fits my earlier criteria is enough.
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I think it is a strength of this site that the term denier is banned because it accuses of bad science, rather than because of the highly dubious complaint that it compares to holocaust denial.
I recommend Prof. Brook’s term “Non AGW Theorists”. Simple, non offensive, crystal clear. Skeptic is no good as it does not tell what the AGW stance is.
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Graeme Bird:
March 9th, 2010 at 8:39 am
I took a look at your website Eddy. But its only one page.
Yes, it is only one page that is available to the general public. I am conducting a securities offering to accredited investors pursuant to California Corporations Code 25102(n) and I am limited to what I can allow the general public to view. Otherwise, the California Department of Corporations and the SEC would be all over me like a cheap suit! The rest of the sire is password protected and may only be viewed by California accredited investors.
I found your post at # 13 to be well written and I am glad to see that you have a good grasp of what is going on in the energy industry.
As to you inquiry about natural gas, it is indeed an abundant source of energy for the foreseeable future. Historically, oil and gas reserves have been underestimated. A perfect example would be the prophecies of the neo-malthusian Paul Ehrlich who wrote that the world was on the verge of running out of many of the commodities necessary to sustain global industrialization. It didn’t happen.
The reason for the recent increase in natural gas reserves in the United States is due to the employment of the slick water hydrological fracturing technique. This technique was developed years ago to fracture “tight” (i.e. poor permeability and porosity) natural gas shale formations. The previously used gel “frac” technique was only partially successful in completing commercially productive wells. The slick water frac technique was similar to the gel frac technique in that tremendous pressure was used to penetrate the formation and expand the natural cracks and fissures to enable the gas to migrate to the well bore. Unfortunately, the gel was too viscous to hold the sand in suspense. Once the well was swabbed and the fluid removed the cracks and fissures would close. With the advent the slick water frac salt water was used instead of gel and was forced into the formation under even higher pressure than the gel frac to force the sand further out into the formation. The sand was then able to act as a proppant (i.e. wedge) to keep the the cracks and fissures open.
Mitchell Energy pioneered the Newark Field in the Ft. Worth Basin in Texas with their C.S. Slay discovery well. Not only did the slick water frac work in the Barnett Shale Formation but the wells could be ‘refraced” several times thus increasing the life and total production of the wells. Next came the application of the horzontal drilling technique. This enabled the well to be further extended into the formation which dramatically increased the total amount of gas produced in each well. In addition to the Barnett Shale, the slick ware frac is now being used in several tight shale formations such as the Haynesville and Marcellus Shale Formations. This is the primary reason for the dramatic increase in U.S natural gas reserves.
Although it is a matter of debate as to whether or not peak oil has arrived. I believe that if it has not we are getting close. We have certainly seen the arrival of geopolitical peak oil. Many of the Earths remaining reserves are located in difficult places to drill or in politically unstable countries.
Anthropogenic Global Warming is, in my humble opinion, a trojan horse. By vilifying hydrocarbons and attempting to force us to use unreliable and expensive alternative energy the greens will control our lives and force us to live in their green utopia. For the Greens it is better to reign in hell than to serve in heaven. Apologies to Milton.
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Why does one have to be categorised as having an “AGW stance” of one variety or another? I think you’ll find the vast majority here agree with the concept that increased CO2 in the atmosphere is likely to lead to some warming – does that make us pro-AGW or anti-AGW?
The crux of the debate as I see it is the dusbious assumptions about feedbacks and how they are incorporated in the IPCC models. That is where I become very “skeptical” of the results being sold to me by the IPCC.
The labelling as pro- or anti-AGW, just like boxing someone in the category male, female, black, white, gay, straight… is all equally meaningless IMO.
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Typos at # 67
Sire should be site and horzontal should be horizontal and ware should be water. Sorry,it has been along day. Also a few grammatical errors and a few omitted words but I hope everybody can comprehend what was written. So sorry;)
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Bulldust #68
It is the “A” for Anthropogenic that is the problem. I think we can all agree that the world is warming. Where we disagree is in how much of that warming is due to anthropogenic activity, and how much by natural cycles.
It appears to me that, if we are having an affect, it is only the noise on a much larger natural trend.
Hey, but who am I to have an opinion?
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Eddy,
I am a bit worried. MattB # 66 may have made a valid point 😉
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What is WUWT? However Mikes comment. The best non believers comments about the IPCC came from a Christian fundimentalist site.
It went something like this. Who would believe a liar like Patchauri. He’s a vegetarian and a Hindoo, a pagan with multiple gods. Everyone knows his data is wrong, how can you compare temperatures thousands of
years ago, when we all know God only made the world 6,000 years ago…’
I tried to put that on Robyn Williams site, but they closed it after
I did. Why spell his name with a ‘y’. I thought male was Robin
and Robyn was the female spelling. Ah well you learn something every day.
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MattB have you just woken up to the fact the real climate driver is
$$$$’s? Not CO2. The EU cap & trade system has brought them down, dropping the value of Carbon Credit permits, as too many were given out, and since the IPCC debacle and no treaty signed to devalue wealth and distribute to poor countries. Well they are now in serious trouble. And I think they will turn nasty. If they do, that will undermine the IPCC so forget their unprofessional report. All professionals compare data (true data) and should come up with 1 + 2
= 3. The money Goldman Sachs have laundered in to CCTs and clean energy. Climate change is just that – politics + money laundrying
= AGW
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Bunny I hope that is sarcasm.
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Sorry my post in 74 relates to Bunny’s post in 72, not 73.
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To be a “non-AGW theorist”, AGW has to be a theory in the first place. Alas it is not.
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MattB? No I read that on the web from a fundimentalist Christian Website, they were against the AGW theory, so they were non-believers
in AGW. They are entitled to their opinion. LOL
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ok then I hope that by “best” you meant “most outrageously absurd”.
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Baa Humbug: Well a true scientist would know the difference between a theory and hypothesis. It’s the basis of all scientific research. You try drugs out on mice or whatever, before you know it works, and then you give it to trial patients, and a few die, theory is not proven. (Seriously!)
Yet rogerthesurf on his website describes it as the Emperor’s New Clothes. Al Gore has never been critized because he is a non scientist yet ex-politician and investor of billions in clean energy. Patchauri isn’t a scientist but because of his position on the IPCC everyone believes him, although he is a chairman of heaps of organisations including TERI and oils around the world? TERI I suspect you know stands for The Environmental Research Institute…. without data showing CO2 is the demon in the peace, or AGW, why would they need to feather these organisations nest in $$$$.
If that treaty and world government controllers had come into force, and yours and my electricity bills, fuel bills, car bills went up 50% for what reason. To Cut Emissions???? When they are not driving the climate or causing sea level rises so some small atoll in the Pacific (historically known to be vulnerable to storms and erosion, and tend to sink through no human effort)can emigrate to NZ or Australia not as refugees but to be trained to hold down jobs in Australia? Yells, capitalism is causing the problems, ban it (from the PM of Venzuela and the cheers and claps from the audience).
Our Penny Wong booed when she tried to present Australia’s program. I feel sorry for her, she’s been made the escapegoat now and so has Garrett being demoted and taken away from environment portfolio. Didn’t the government know that his batts and insulation scheme there would be rip off merchants.
I’ll tell you I bought a small timber and iron roofed home. The local council were giving each ratepayer $200 for making their homes warmer in winter (drops to minus -15 C at night where I live). These two handymen hired by the government, came I got a door in one room, and asked them to block up one of the chimneys, never used now, in this Victorian home. The wind used to whistle down it and cool the other rooms. Well you no what they did. They put a piece of board over the chimney and placed a loose brick on it? This is 20 years ago. No follow up inspection to see the work etc.
Now it’s going to mean another $40 million just to check every home with insullation and also solar rebates, because of fire hazards and the death of 4 insullator’s workmen. Sorry about the typos.
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Night folks, TAFE tomorrow doing my diploma of Organic Agricultural Production. And it ain’t ‘alf hard!
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Tide: “Also, for the record, “denialists” do not make claims.”
Yes, they do. You just made one. Here’s another: “There is no evidence that anything happening with regard to the climate today differs from what has happened previously.”
If “denialists” don’t make claims, what do they do all day on their blogs? Chat about the weather?
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Interestingly Bush Bunny there is nothing to stop me wandering down to bunnings and buying pink batts and foil insulation, and installing them in my own roof. Surely if it were that dangerous I’d need to get some sort of professional to do it. This batts thing was a total coordinated beat-up/assasination on poor old Garrett (who didn’t lose environment did he? I thought just some bits of it).
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Garrett never really had the full environment portfolio, because the most important part (in the Government’s eyes) was Climate Change and dished up to Min Wong.
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Bush Bunny:
WUWT = Watts Up With That – a popular blog site discussing climate (and weather) issues. Several prominent scientists contribute there regularly.
The link: http://wattsupwiththat.com/
The host is Anthony Watts (hence the site name).
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Brendan @81 queries:
Well, you’re assuming I am a denialist! 😉
Just to set the record straight, questioning the science is NOT denialism. And, to clarify (as though it were necessary?), I am talking about scientific claims as in proposing a theory. Remember that AGW is a theory. I could have posed my “claim” in the form of a question such as “Where is the data demonstrating that there is anything happening regarding the climate today that differs from what has happened previously?”
In any case, the burden of “proof” remains on those proposing the theory and I shall continue to await the arrival of substantiating evidence.
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Jo,
An issue which grates, and which you unfortunately indulge. Using the term ‘theory’, as you do here, instead of the more correct ‘hypothesis’, gives people like Prince Charles, and others, ammunition in their nonsense claims that ‘x’ is only a theory. As in Charlies claim that “evolution is only a theory”.
The point is, AGW is not a theory, it has yet to achieve that exalted status. It is only a hypothesis, and a falsified one at that.
It renders too much honour to all involved to call AGW a theory and we should be making that point.
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MattB:
Your illogicality atounds – if everyone is a postmodernist then none are. People have not lost faith in the science underpinning modern electronics, electric power generators, etc, because this science works and predicts.
Loss of faith occurs in pseudoscience which, unlike science, is not underpinned by a physical observation. AGW was is and remains first and foremost an imaginative construct. It has never been observed in nature requiring a scientific explanation for it. Climate sensitivity was never physically verified in the first place, hence when one reads the scientific literature about it from some years back, that the numerical determination of that sensitivity waas “believed” to be so and so.
But science is not about belief, acceptance of objective facts by compulsion of experiment.
Except in climate science experiment of the scientific kind is difficult, if at times impossible. So how to proceed?
Make sure that the starting idea is soundly based by being described using “KNOWN AND TESTED” scientific facts.
Example: Astronomers observed that spiral galaxies, among many, rotated at speeds too high for the observed mass. As they assumed Newton’s laws sacrosanct, and hence inviolate, and therefore perfect, they then were left with little else but to explain it using the itellectual tools in their possession – mathematics – and by misapplying the mathematical concept of a singularity, (ie an object of infinite mass with zero volume and called a black hole), they then could introduce enough mass located at the centre of gravity of the spiral galaxy to explain the observed velocity. In doing this they made another error – the mathematical idea of a centre of gravity isn’t a physical thing – it is a mathematical contrivance to simplify the calculation of Newton’s laws. (The alternative is to do a finite element analysis of the gravitational forces of each atom comprising some volume of matter to arrive at the aggregate mass of that object – easier to assume it’s mass is centred at its C of G; and no not Church of Gaia).
This practice of science I term as the operation of the religious mind that is characterised by a reliance on the weight of authority interpreted from existing statutes of dogma – in this case the dogma of Newton’s Laws of gravitation.
(I need to digress and point out that thinking itself is a biochemical process of the brain, and like any physical process, when repeated often enough becomes habitual and ultimately an unconscious activity. It is the reason brainwashing is usually successful in societies and cultures that worship authority. It is for good reason that the Jesuits point that that given a child to educate during that child’s first decade of experience, they have them for life. It’s simply intellectual conditioning by repetition of some particular dogma).
The religious mind is also characterised by its positivist position – that so and so is, from reference to the litany, or from common assent. The religious mind is concerned with building evidence for its assumptions, and looks for support of its goals and beliefs.
The religious mind is best identified by it’s process of thought when confronted with a novel experience – that experience is referred to its memory of agreed ideas and when found to be in contradiction to those ideas, rejected as wrong, or often more strongly.
In contrast to this mode of thinking is the unreligious mind, one which when confronted with a novel experience, initially compares it to its learned knowledge base, finding no explanation, to then conclude ignorance about the observed novelty. The religious mind instead asserts that the observed novelty has to be wrong, when referenced to the litany that a religious mind depends.
This is the essential difference between scientists and others – the innate ability to accept ignorance in the face of observational novelty in contrast to the religious mind which might dismiss that observational novelty as an aberration, lie, or simply as wrong.
No Matt, science in general has been captured by the education unions and it is the imposition of those socialist ideals on to the state monopolisation of education that formed the intellectual environment which allowed the nonsense of AGW to flower.
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[…] Courtesy of Jo Nova. […]
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A “scientist” is their own best critic of what they produce and helps anybody else knock conjectures down with evidence. They’re the first to help see bad conjectures go right into the garbage – and tell anybody else exactly what it takes to show that some conjecture is wrong.
A “scientist” doesn’t care IF they are “right” only seeking to know WHETHER they are right. That’s the only thing anybody else care about too, and the external world couldn’t care less if somebody is “right” or “wrong.”
Only an “ego” cares if the owner is “right.” Only an “ego” feels insulted to be “questioned.”
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Countingcats, yes, fair point, though in the public’s lexicon when someone says, “it’s just a theory” it largely translates as an unproven idea, which is not that different from a “hypothesis”.
I’ll keep your point in mind, but I suspect that if I have to explain the difference between “theory” and “hypothesis” it will be useful occasionally, but mostly it will take up a few minutes that could be used to explain something else, like why giving out data is crucial… often you only get three minutes to cover the science, the money and the corruption. Does that make sense?
And Brendan H: You are running very close to throwing the Denier insult. Be aware you can’t do that here without backing it up or apologizing.
And Mattb #66. Yes to point 1. (Thanks). No to point 2. “Non AGW Theorists” means anyone who disagrees. I most definitely am a skeptic. Remember I used to think the theory made sense. Then I saw more evidence. I changed my mind. I’ll change it back if you can find those mystery papers…
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The argument that “If most scientists believe X, then X is highly likely to be true” has been proven to be a false argument many times thoroughout history, and yet the people that wish to convince us of the anthropogenic nature of global warming keep falling back on that same argument.
Science is not the result of opinion polls taken amongst scientists, and most people are smart enough to realize that. A “consensus” is nearly identical to a “comittee”. Both of those entities have many mouths and no brains.
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Well, if Brendan wants to call me a “denier” he’s more than welcome to do so. Although, some people might not care for the term, I personally couldn’t care less.
The term may be appropriate for me:
I CATEGORICALLY deny there is ANY evidence to support AGW.
I categorically assert that all geologic history and all appropriate analysis demonstrates that AGW is not only “not observed” it is physically impossible.
People are free to believe any fairy tale or myth they care to. When their mythological interests begin to interfere with others and how the world will conducts its business, then I care about myth breaking.
That is when “myth” encroaches on the realm of “fraud.”
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We can know for sure that the situation is not as advertised. Consider if the CO2 effect was logarithmic. That part seems reasonable, but consider if the existence of other molecules and air pressure was not important.
We see then that the daily temperature behaviour of Atherton and Cairns ought to have begun to converge. You go to these high altitude places, and though it can get real hot and particularly the tarsealed roads burn your feet, still it cools off quickly in the early evening. Has this sort of daily profile altered as CO2 has risen? I don’t thinkso. But if the theory was any good the two towns daily temperature profile would now be almost the same, due to the logarithmic effect. This if we are thinking of the number of CO2 molecules per cubic centimetre of air.
If the greenhouse gases are necessary to have this warming effect, then clearly they are insufficient. And air pressure is what makes greenhouse effective.
Also with burning your feet on the hot road. This is actually even more of an acute problem in Atherton then down in Cairns. But why ought that be so? After all Cairns has the greater backradiation? Clearly the model provides little to no guide to the real world.
I suppose another way of expressing matters is that the lapse rate ought to have diminished. Which his also akin to the idea of a relative hotspot opening up. But its good to think of it in terms that one can understand and experience directly.
With the extra CO2 has Chiang Mai become more like Bang Kok? Definitely not when I was last there. You could get up for a jog before sunrise and it was pleasantly cool. Though the early afternoon was incredibly hot still the evenings were cool. Rising CO2 and the logarithmic effect ought to have plugged up some of the temperature differential if they worked how the flat earth, stationary molecule, averaged and aggregated, model that the alarmists use, was even a halfway realistic depiction of how things work on this planet.
Thats really the end of the story right there. The model does not work as advertised. After all it was never an air temperature model. It was a black body surface temperature model. It doesn’t even seem to work in those terms either.
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We aren’t thinking enough about the way airborne water must be constantly changing phase on a microscopic level, and releasing this latent energy of condensation. This has got to be most of what we intuitively perceive to be the greenhouse effect. We have this effect of microscopic water dithering either side of its phase-change and we just say to ourselves “greenhouse effect.” This is not to say that there isn’t a greenhouse effect. I just suspect we get mixed up as to what it is, when we think we can relate to it.
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It was fun to watch Mike self-destruct.
Appeals to Authority (that most now recognize as corrupt), check
Appeals to Consensus (as if science were conducted by opinion poll), check
Claims that skeptic sites contain no real science because the contributers there are not “experts”, check
Complete failure to understand why his “reasoned arguments” are completely unconvincing, check
Resorting to being crude and insulting (thus revealing his true nature), check.
Oh, and by the way, here is the official definition of expert:
X is the unknown quantity, and spurt is a drip under pressure.
(I believe that is a perfect definition for most “climate scientists” these days).
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This is a bit Off Topic but for those that believe carbon controls won’t affect productivity, or costs read:
This is what the USA is in for unless the suits against the EPA are successful.
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Tide: “I am talking about scientific claims as in proposing a theory.”
Now you’re shifting the goalposts. Check your claim again: “There is no evidence that anything happening with regard to the climate today differs from what has happened previously.” You are suggesting this is not a scientific claim.
“I could have posed my “claim” in the form of a question…”
But you didn’t. And that’s the point. AGW sceptics do make claims. Plenty of them.
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Brian: “Well, if Brendan wants to call me a “denier”…”
So where did I call you a “denier”?
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Brendan H.
Of course skeptics make claims, as do people who believe that the science behind anthropogenic causes of global warming. What is your point? What skeptics desire is that ALL science follow the actual scientific method:
1. Make observation.
2. Form hypothesis based on observation.
3. Design experiment to test said hypothesis.
4. Collect data.
5. Analyze data.
6. Assess whether data potentially supports hypothesis or causes rejection of hypothesis.
7. If hypothesis must be rejected based upon data analysis and assessment, return to #2.
8. Share hypothesis, experimental design, raw data, analyzed data, and assessment parameters with other scientists.
9. Allow other scientists to attempt to reproduce your results based upon your proper following of #8.
10. If other scientists are able to reproduce your results, hypothesis is potentially confirmed.
11. If other scientists are unable to reproduce your results, return to step #3 or perhaps even step #2.
12. Even if your hypothesis is potentially confirmed by #10, realize and admit that your hypothesis is never the Gospel Truth, it is merely the best available hypothesis to describe the observed phenomenon, and some time in the future a better hypothesis will almost assuredly come along and supplant yours.
Everyone must remember, science is NEVER proveable. Science is only FALSIFIABLE. The only thing that good science ever proves is that hypothesis X is currently the best one we have available to describe pheonomenon Y. Hypothesis X can NEVER be proven to be the true way that the universe actually works. We certainly hope that it is a darn good approximation of the way the universe works, because the better the approximation of the way the universe actually works, the more enduring that particular hypothesis will be.
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To put my previous post more in brief:
A real scientists would never have the audacity to claim to be right about anything. A real scientist would merely say, “Further research by myself and other scientists has failed to disprove this hypothesis.”
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Mike at post # 43 wrote,
Well do you have any idea why JoNova,Watts Up With That? and similar blogs exist? Why does MY own forum exist?
I think they exist because science research has been gamed to meet a certain criteria and that automatically create skeptics.Too many junk or unverified papers are in the IPCC reports.It was recently discovered that less than 60% were even a peer review paper at all (and we know some of it was rubbish),that made it into the report.The other 42% of the papers were from groups/sources who have no demonstrable capability of producing quality papers,or that they have a strong bias for AGW hypothesis.
Good blogs does provide some peer review,that are absent in actual peer review panels.Who let a certain type of papers slide through because it supports the never verified AGW hypothesis.Skeptics discovered a lot of problems that were proven valid when the dam burst on the released e-mails.
The Hockey Stick is a sterling example of a paper that was not validated when it was published in the IPPC 2001 report,yet they treated it like it was fully robust and therefore used to advance a particular belief of a CAGW coming soon.Later to be shown to have serious errors and that some of it was obviously wrong from the start(by the way it covered only the Northern Hemisphere)
It is pitiful that you failed to realize that there are lot of “peer reviewed” papers that later found to be junk,some were even frauds.
In the climategate e-mails,it was revealed that some of the AGW scientists were trying to oppose publication of papers on the grounds that it contradicted their position.Thus the “peer review” process were damaged by scientists themselves.
Climate bogs and forums does indeed add to the “quality control” since the peer review boards and editors of science publications have too many times fallen down on the job.
Mike continued his misleading claims,
Skeptics does not have to originate science research,simply because we are busy taking apart published papers that have gaping holes in them,such as the “Hockey Stick” paper,The made up temperature data for Antarctica and other contrived tree ring papers based on cherrypicking the available data.
It was the skeptics who knew there were a number of things wrong with the AGW hypothesis and said so for YEARS in the blogs and forums.Now that the e-mails and subsequent revelations have to the front,we are VINDICATED! for being skeptical.
When will that ever reality sink into YOU Mike?
Mike finish with his own brand of ad hominems and that he is making a fool of himself in the process.
I never see you in MY skeptic forum,thus already you have no idea what I believe. CHECK
It YOU AGW believers who for years whined that we skeptics get a lot of oil money along with other shallow and stupid comments along those lines.I never got a penny while that criminal scam artist Al$$$Gore takes in the millions each years,with strong conflict of interest evident. CHECK
JoNova herself in this blog showed that it is the AGW believers and scientists who are getting most of the funding,in the excess of $80 BILLION dollars,and some skeptic groups got less than $20 million total over a decade. CHECK
You called us “deniers” several times already,know what hypocrisy is? Besides in my experience ad hominems are mostly leveled against skeptics from the AGW believers themselves. CHECK
There were indeed some conspiracy ongoing but NOT well organized. CHECK
It is plain that you are willing to concede the possibility that the AGW hypothesis remains unproven and probably was never provable anyway because of some inherent impossibilities built into it.
CO2 as a greenhouse gas is badly overrated.I wish you and others like you widen your science horizons and allow for other warming factors to be considered.
The single minded pursuit of blaming a trace gas with a limited IR absorption spectrum is patently IRRATIONAL!
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Louis Hissink: #90
Nicely put Louis …
I will undoubtedly end up quoting you – without attribution, of course 🙂
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Mike:
wrote @19:
Maybe so ‘but in the real world, like it or not, credibility goes a long way to serving as a proxy, so the character of the Scientist is still integral to the process.
This may be a little extreme but just to illustrate the point it may go something like:-
‘I don’t trust him so I’m determined to find something wrong with it, versus well I know he’s a good bloke with a good track record so I may not have to be quite so pedantique in the checking’.
Not strictly scientific perhaps, but peer review is still supposed to be the best we have.
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Peter B in Indianapolis #102
The most important thing in with the scientific method is the basis for step 1 in your list – making an observation and in the case of AGW of what? AGW is a future event based on a belief that oxidising hydrocarbons in the present will cause a catastrophic climate change in the future.
The AGW phenomena clearly hasn’t been observed, so applying the scientific method in this case is pseudoscience.
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Rereke #105
Thank you, and please use anything I write without attribution or with.
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Mike:
At #19 you pose the reasonable question:
Yes. But if one is to determine if an exposition is science or pseudoscience then it is necessary to understand the basic difference between them.
Science considers an idea by trying to disprove it.
Pseudoscience considers an idea by trying to prove it.
Science is a method to obtain improving understanding of the mechanisms of the physical world.
It accepts that an idea can never be proved and, therefore, all scientific considerations are attempts to disprove. Anything that cannot be disproved (e.g. the existence of God) is not amenable to scientific investigation. And a scientific idea remains plausible so long as nothing is found which is inconsistent with it. But useful information is obtained when evidence is observed that contradicts a scientific idea: the evidence points to a better understanding than the existing idea.
So, science is demonstrated by its supporters attempting to find fault in their idea.
Pseudoscience is a search for something that will convince others of the truth of an idea.
Anything (even the existence of God) is open to pseudoscientific investigation because anything consistent with the asserted idea can be said to be evidence for the idea.
So, pseudoscience is demonstrated by its supporters attempting to show their idea is right despite evidence to the contrary.
The AGW hypothesis is clearly pseudoscience.
AGW cannot be disproved because everyting is said to be consistent with it: e.g.
cooling in some regions is said to be consistent with global warming,
lack of increase to global temperature is said to be consistent with global warming,
extreme hot spells, extreme cold spells, more storms, less storms, stronger storms and weaker storms, floods and droughts are all claimed to be evidence of AGW.
AGW has advocates who attempt to dismiss the great bulk of evidence that contradicts it.
So, AGW is pure pseudoscience with less respectability than astology and palmistry.
Richard
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Jo in #93 – true but I’m a skeptic in the true sense of the word, as are most of the scientists you disagree with, as are you and others on your side. Plenty on both sides would not change their position regardless of any evidence. The term skeptic in actual fact imparts no information about one’s position on AGW
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Peter B: “What is your point?”
My immediate point is that the claim that AGW sceptics do not make claims is false, so the point is worth making in the interests of accuracy.
More broadly, I was pointing to a myth that AGW scepticism is simply about asking questions and making requests to “show me the evidence”. In fact, AGW sceptics make many claims of their own about the science and other aspects – political and social – of climate change.
And since the burden of proof is on the claimant, AGW sceptics who make claims are not justified in evading that burden by claiming that they are just “asking questions”.
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Brendan don’t talk around the subject. You are in the middle of a drug-deal conducted over a mobile phone. Don’t beat around the bush. Just make your hypothesis, then give us the evidence, and the reasoning relating one to the other.
You might want to tell us the psychic benefits of holding onto these irrational beliefs that you cannot find evidence for. I always wonder what goes on inside the climate hustlers little minds. These are people I cannot relate to at all.
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Louis in #107: “The most important thing in with the scientific method is the basis for step 1 in your list – making an observation and in the case of AGW of what? AGW is a future event based on a belief that oxidising hydrocarbons in the present will cause a catastrophic climate change in the future.
The AGW phenomena clearly hasn’t been observed, so applying the scientific method in this case is pseudoscience.”
So say we have a climate, and evidence that CO2 is a “greenhouse gas” that in lab conditions is shown to act as such, and the knowledge that we are putting a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere to an extent that CO2 concentrations are changing significantly, and an unexplained temperature rise. In very basic terms I think you’d say that is where the science is at, and everything else is models and projections and “well it must be Co2 as there is nothing else”… but no actual empirical measurements that demonstrate an actual link between CO2 and temperature rises.
Then what would you do to move from pseudo-science to science. Science is about explaining what happens out there in the world. Surely AGW is at minimum a distinct possibility… so what empirical evidence should be looked at? How can you show that it is carbon doing the warming in a direct way? How can you show that the feedbacks will happen, and that glaciers/ice caps will/will-not melt.
I don’t even think you should accept Jo’s Hotspot… after its presence is only modelled… a prediction… so I’m not sure that a clear as day hotspot would count as empirical evidence would it? All it would do is show a hotspot that agreed with a model (and wouldn’t that be convenient I bet CRU made it up!).
So as a scientist, what would you do to move the science from pseudo science to science. After all learning about the atmosphere is certainly a science, not a pseudo science.
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Graeme Bird: “Just make your hypothesis, then give us the evidence, and the reasoning relating one to the other.”
Sure.
1. AGW sceptics make claims
2. “There is no evidence that anything happening with regard to the climate today differs from what has happened previously.”
3. (2) is a claim.
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Matt B:
At #113 you say:
and
All forms of pseudoscience make such assertions of belief that something will cause a future (usually feared) change. Indeed, they are declarations of pseudoscience.
Astrology and palmistry have more credibility than AGW but they are less of a problem than AGW because they do not call for disruption of economic activity worldwide.
Richard
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Richard – there’s a lesson this. You are a scientist.
I refer you to the above. Skeptical scientists answer questions, is helpful, is polite.
You instead in #115 have not debated or answered questions, bullied and name called and to me used circular reasoning.
Thinking, as a starting point, that CO2 demonstrates the properties of a greenhouse gas which when increased in concentration will on its own with no feedbacks (+ or -) will cause a certain temperature rise is not pseudoscience, astrology or palmistry. To state as such is absurd.
Above I’ve presented a question to Louis as to how he thinks it would actually be possible to construct an experiment that would shed some light on the issue, rather than use models based on past reconstructions etc.
It is a perfectly honest, non deceptive, middle of the road question. Can it be done? or will it just be something we will just have to wait and see.
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MattB:
March 10th, 2010 at 11:07 pm
The problem here Matt is that the hole world is focused on CO2 and equivalent emissions. Why? Because it has already been determined that that’s where the problem lies.
If however, the focus was on learning about the climate as a whole, (and isn’t there so much we don’t know enough about?) we may be able to get somewhere. And that somewhere is to be able to predict, with an acceptable degree of accuracy, changes in climate that might be detrimental to humans and our environment that we live in and off.
So then, what if we started from the very top, the sun and it’s many cycles and fluctuations and worked our way down from there. To the oceans, the clouds etc. We may get to a stage where we can predict ENSO events, PDO events etc. to an acceptable degree of accuracy.
But alas, the whole study of climate has been hijacked for the last 20+ years by various interest groups. We seem to be stuck in never ending arguments about thermometres and tenths of a degree anomalies, radiative forcings, cloud albedos etc.
the whole debate can only drift through time. Until such time as a prolonged period of warming or cooling.
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The problem is Baa Humbug that you’ve not answered the question. Is that circular reasoning? Argument from ignorance? Hard to tell;)
Regardless of your comment, you;d still look at carbon as a part of all that, wouldn’t you? Hmm that Pinker paper, that’s not about carbon is it? DO you really think all of climate science is about carbon? maybe a lot of the adaptive stuff.
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Richard: Hi, how’s the weather in Cornwall?
One scientist on ‘Global Warming the Great Swindle’ said, when you read the 1000 page report from IPCC – their data does not support their summary’s. I haven’t read it or just parts of it. If there
are any academics here, they will agree, an academic will boost their career if they get published. Some do honest work. But of course their hypothesis will be under scrutiny by their peer groups.
A lot of jealousy in the international academic world. And as more info comes in or an alternative data is examined, a hypothesis that once was OK, will be disputed.
Or you will get some who have corrupted their data to suit their
hypothesis (the data must support this). EG. What causes a child
to get juvenile onset diabetes? We know it is an auto immune response to something in the environment, but so many variables
present, one can’t say for sure.
I suppose I see one driving factor, and that is the push to trade
in carbon credits and clean energy. Now if CO2 is not the trigger
driving climate, why invest in what will turn out to be disasterous
to industrialised countries regarding cost factors etc.
The problem I see with the UN IPCC is scientists who do not approve
of Al Gore and AGW, have been completely ignored for years.
If these AGW climatologists have been paid to support the global warming myth, they are not going to say having been given millions to research it. Sorry guys/ladies, I can’t find anything to prove
AGW is making the world warmer. In fact it is cooling again for now at least.
The UN is supposed to be investigating this. The House of Commons
have also put Phil Jones in the limelight. But now clean energy is the word in the USA and it seems they are giving the EPA authority
to take actions. This will be one hell of a bun fight, folks.
Especially as the EU have found they have printed too many Carbon credit permits and UK is having a bad three years export/import
record. Carbon credits are I have heard almost worthless now?
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And to add to that Matt – they knew they were skating on thin ice, they would have known the scientist’s were already criticising their
report… so they made some things up to frighten everyone into submission, particularly the developing nations, who saw capitalism as the real source of danger to their lives. It then became politically motivated – I mean Pachauri was saying, you have to give up eating meat to Save the Planet. They put in paid ads on SBS!
‘Even if CO2 emissions, stopped completely, methane from farm animals is enough to drive global warming .. Eat Veg, not meat – and change the planet.” The Pachauri is a crook, India is number two in the world for corruption.
They nearly got away with it too.
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Mattb says,
Observe, that it is your BELIEF that causes your circular thinking: Even without empirical evidence, man COULD be causing GW.
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Mark D. No – AGW is nonsense. A distinct possibility is not science
it is conjecture. And when something is based on a lie, or corrupted
data manipulation, it will never be believed. And people like Matt
the Greens, WWF, Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace will be marked for life… Pachauri et al, should never have involved them. But when
$$’s are in balance for Mr P and Mr A Gore they wanted friends to help them out. 31,000 scientists were against AGW. That’s a lot of
people. And there dissent goes back years and years before all the
bullshit started.
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Bush Bunny, AGW is nonsense. You and I are in full agreement.
My comment in 121 is about Matts BELIEF ie faith not science.
10
No Mark D and Bush Bunny. CO2’s basic warming properties are well established. Therefore it is not at all non-scientific to investigate whether that translates to the complex atmosphere. It is a hypothesis well worth investigating. As a basic possibility it is an equal to any of the alternatives – cosmic rays take your pick. Lets investigate them all, but my question to Richard is about CO2 specifically. Mark D I don;t think you are reading what I write but are acting on assumption (or ignorance).
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Mattb, I don’t (can’t) read (to satisfy your assumptions). Further I am ignorant.
Now that we have that out of the way, I would like to ask why you come here at all? Clearly, after much discussion you have not had any revelation or change in you opinion. I watch you argue, rationalize and grandstand in the presence of people (here) that do understand the science, demonstrate the lack of empirical evidence (of AGW), give reasonable explanations for what IS OBSERVED, demonstrate the politics and corruption behind the “settled science”, and still you are here. WHY? what do you hope to accomplish?
That demonstrates to me that you are driven by FAITH and little more. This one little quote from you says it all: Surely AGW is at minimum a distinct possibility….
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MattB: CO2 is a small part of Greenhouse gas. A very small part.
Greenhouse gases do keep the planet warm, but they are subject to time of year, where the sun is, and they also keep the planet cool
when there is cloud cover. Depending on the time of year.
When deserts are boiling hot during the day, and plummet at night
without any cloud cover. Why doesn’t frost form when there is cloud cover, but on a clear night it does?
You have heard someone say CO2 warms the planet,(As a part of the Greenhouse gas it does but 95% of Greenhouse gas is clouds or water vapor, take your pick. Sure, but it doesn’t contribute to climate change. Just do your research MattB. This is first year Uni stuff at best.
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I am off to bed, I can’t stand these people that argue for the sake of arguing. Matt will never be able to see logic or true science.
Probably invested in CCTs. No wonder he is worried that their value
is plummeting as we speak.
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MattB: #118
March 10th, 2010 at 11:42 pm
yes ofcourse Matt, eventually. But I would first try to understand the external forces, then work my way down like I stated.
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Matt said
Well in a way yes it is. WG1 says CO2 is the problem. The rest of them then assume a warming of certain magnitude(s) and research what that warming will do to whatever they are studying, be it koalas or insects or trees or hurricanes.
If WG1 said “no problem folks, nothing to see here” then what is the point of giving somebody a grant to study the effects of AGW on the frequency of a bear chitting in the woods?
Put it another way, if WG1 said “X” is the cause of accelerating warming instead of CO2, then subsequent research would be for the affects of warming (caused by “X”) on the frequency of a bear chitting in the woods. Then all research would be because of “X”
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Seems to me that because of natural human weaknesses, most of the funding, in particular IPCC, CRU and NASA Giss, has been directed at the wrong question. They are asking: how much will AGW damage the world and what can we do about it? They should be asking: how much is the world warming? How reliable are the records? Do we have a credible way of looking at paleoclimate? Only when they have answered these questions is anyone in a position to investigate whether manmade CO2 plays any significant part in global climate.
However this is not sexy enough for Governments or climate scientists who like to fantasise that they are saving the world, or scary enough to support massive taxes and carbon credit trading scams.
BTW I am fascinated by the posters here who try to argue by analogy with oncologists etc. As someone from the UK who had to retire hurt from insuring Australian doctors against malpractice claims, I can promise you that you need to do the same due diligence on doctors that you would do on anybody else; they are human, some are brilliant, some are mediocre, some are downright dangerous, most are competent and dedicated but it is not something you can take for granted. And the less scrutiny, the lower the standards. As we have seen from Climategate, the Team created a scrutiny-free zone until McIntyre came along, with inevitable results.
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“MattB” is obviously bereft of any spiritual or religous dimension in his empty life and has therefor seized on BELIEF in global warming to give his life some meaning.
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Jo – this comment was left on the ABC’s “The Drum” website under your name as part of a long and slightly irrelevant comment-chain about the atmosphere of Venus
Was that post really made by you or did someone assume your identity?
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Peter Pan@132,
Considering that in that comment chain, Lord Monckton couldn’t spell his name right and had suddenly become an AGW alarmist, it was getting difficult to track who was who as obviously there a member of “Team Scientology” trying to undermine our comments.
I’ll leave it for Jo to answer it definitively tho.
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I’m a bit surprised that more people don’t understand the difference here. It’s always seemed so natural to me. It doesn’t just apply to scientists either. Today I heard this quote from Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives (supposedly an adult and in her own recorded voice no less, no misquotes) speaking about the current push to pass the healthcare reform bill no one wants. “We’ve got to pass this bill so you all can tell what’s in it.” Excuse me! But what are you hiding until after it becomes law?
You can add your own string of unspeakable names that I called her. I was driving to work and had to keep my wits about me to avoid losing control of my car.
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Angry, bush, Mark D. Oh – so you’ve got nothing to add. shame. Fly my pretties fly!
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Mattb
Pardon?
10
“Sure.
1. AGW sceptics make claims
2. “There is no evidence that anything happening with regard to the climate today differs from what has happened previously.”
3. (2) is a claim.”
But there is no evidence there Brendon. You see? Nothing there to change the reality of the planet, or our perceptions thereof.
You show up to a gunfight, and you do not think to even so much as bring a knife.
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Matt B:
I write to object to your offensive, insulting and untrue assertions at #116.
I do “answer questions” (as anybody who observes my responses on this blog can see).
I do try to be “helpful” (as anybody who observes my responses on this blog can see).
And I am polite to those who are polite to me (as anybody who observes my responses on this blog can see).
My comments at #115 were directly pertinent to my post at #109 that explains the difference(s) between science and pseudoscience. Did you expect me to repeat my post at #109?
My post at #115 did not “bully”, would have answered questions put to me if there were any (but there were none), did not call you names, and used no circular reasoning. Anybody can read my post at #115 and see this is true. So, why do you assert these blatant lies?
I have made no “absurd” statements. It is an empirical fact that CO2 is a GHG but its IR absorbtion in the atmosphere is almost saturated so it is not possible for increased atmospheric CO2 concentration to overwhelm other effects occurring in the climate system. To claim that the empirical data should be ignored – as you do – is absurd.
You posted your question to Louis, not me. There is no obligation for me to answer every question put to others on this blog. However, since you complain that I did not answer it, I shall. Two such experiments have been conducted (viz. observation of the ‘hot spot’ and total system heat content) and they each disprove the AGW hypothesis.
Now, apologise. If you fail to apologise I may be forced to resort to “bullying” and “name calling” by, for example, suggesting that you borrow your family’s brain cell and try to use it.
Richard
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Graeme Bird: #137
March 11th, 2010 at 10:10 am
I was with you until the “knife” at a gunfight.
Might as well bring marshmellows to a gunfight. Just as effective as a knife. (unless it’s Crocodile Dundee, “That’s not a knife, THIS is a knife”) lol
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Bush Bunny:
Thankyou for your comment at #119. The weather here in Cornwall was sunny and warm yesterday but, of course, is cooler now (it is now 1.30 am here).
I agree all you say in your post. Simply, many people have based their careers, reputations and financial affairs on the AGW scare, so they will do all they can to continue the scare.
Richard
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Richard I indeed posted a question to Louis. I’m not sure why you chose to snipe a reply in #115. There certainly was no obligation for you to do so. I really am surprised that someone with a position at a serious scientific journal of excellent repute has to resort to clear untruths such as “it is not possible for increased atmospheric CO2 concentration to overwhelm other effects occurring in the climate system” – of course it is possible – we want to know if it will or will not.
Those two supposed experiments that “disprove” AGW are not at all convincing. Not at all. So if that is all you’ve got I’m particularly comfortable with my stance.
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Matt B:
At #141 you say:
I could not care less if you are “comfortable” in your deliberate denial of scientific evidence that answers the question you posed.
But I am outraged that you have not withdrawn your lies and insults.
Apologise you little [self snip].
Richard
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I have horses and have some knowledge of them.
Some horses, often the ones kept in stalls for lengthy periods of time, do what’s called cribbing.
When a horse cribs, it is believed that his body releases endorphins, which stimulate the pleasure center of it’s brain. This may explain why horses crib when under stress, as well as why it is such an addictive habit, and such a hard one to break.
A popular theory is that cribbing is due to boredom, and lack of exercise. Horses kept stalled are more likely to become Cribbers than horses that are allowed to roam in a pasture.
See a video of cribbing HERE
So why do I mention this? Why is it relevant?
It has come to my attention that a fellow blogger is “hooked” on being intellectually pummelled, over and over and over again.
The cribbing theory fits quite well.
Lack of “exercise” and “boredom”….as in there just isn’t any empirical evidence to support the AGW hypothesis. The only new things to come out over the past few months support the sceptics case. When one can’t further his/her case, lack of mental exercise/boredom sets in. Being intellectually pummelled over and over again releases endorphins, stimulating the brain. This becomes addictive, so one keeps coming back for more “stimulation” by way of further intellectual pummelling.
In total jest of course 🙂
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Baa now you are being rude to Richard too! 😉
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Is that outraged or fauxtraged Richard?
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All right I now KNOW that Mattb is PAID to be here.
There is no other reason.
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My mistake, there is another; it is possible that he has a psychotic issue.
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Graeme Bird: “But there is no evidence there Brendon. You see? Nothing there to change the reality of the planet, or our perceptions thereof.”
My argument is not intended to change anything, merely to identify the evidence.
“You show up to a gunfight, and you do not think to even so much as bring a knife.”
I am protected by the armour of righteousness and I smote my enemies with the sword of truth.
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Besides the UN IPCC fraudulently contrived report and all the people
paid millions (in fact possibly billions) to support the AGW hypothesis. The heavy investments in EU Cap & Trade, Carbon Credits Investments that are plummeting without the UN Summit coming to any agreement.
The average person, who isn’t too educated in this field has always believed ‘If you want the truth go to a professional working in the field’ they and I feel the majority (unfortunately) have gone along with the AGW fraud for years. They confuse it with: just a few examples…
1. Pollution and damming rivers, cutting down Amazon rain forests, etc.
2. Dependence on fossil fuels that can effect their bank balance running a car, etc. (Cars are the biggest polluters, but why?) And politics that the Muslims are holding us for ransom, with terrorism and 9/ll of course. Including the Iraqi war, that Mike Moore reckoned (and I somewhat agree)was based on the wish to control oil production in Iraq, etc.
3. Price of electricity, gas and oil.(Should ETS taxes be applied, that will do nothing to change the climate, and assist those already rich in CCT permits and investments)
4. Seeing extreme weather as the cause of CO2 emissions only. Thanks to Al Gore, threat of sea level rising from polar ice meltings, etc. All the fault of capitalism and industrialised developed countries and big CO 2 emitters. The Big Seven – USA, UK, Aust, NZ, China,Canada and India. Throw in Indonesia also. Eight? Thing is Australia, NZ, Canada are not the biggest emitters in comparison to the others. Top emitters, China, USA, India, Indonesia.
Because three of these (China, Indonesia & INdia) countries have uncontrolled volcanoes, and surface coal fires. (Google!) USA is big with a huge populations that depends on petrol using transport.
The fear of a new mini ice age to the Northern Hemisphere is greater than AGW!
See Dr Stephen (sugar, can’t remember his name) Steinberg? Who is on
U Tube back in the 1970s shouting “An Ice Age is cometh” (That in my opinion had more basis in truth than AGW). He was also supplying the IPCC with a AGW report too, a mate of James Hansen, whose computer system or program he used in the 1970s to prove his point on the arrival of a mini – ice age.
Governments have heard the people, the people all around the world
have been scared stiff about these alarmist predictions. I believe one Argentinian family killed themselves, but one daughter who lived
with a bullet in her before help arrived? They feared global warming etc.
But one would hope – that the Kyoto agreement (or disagreement) would start to make people think, we can’t go on exploiting soils
and polluting the planet. This IS TRUE POLITICALLY AND ENVIRONMENTALLY. The climate will change, rain will come and go, and our soils will become depleted eventually if we don’t use a more sensible form of agricultural methodology and use.
It was the financial global down turn that started to frighten governments, particularly the USA. Obama seemed to be seen as the global saviour internationally. UK is now facing like Europe bad economic times ahead… climate change is now finding it is a minor problem, and skeptical scientists and the likes of Lord Monckton are now being heard. Yet they have been saying what they are now stating as real science since mid 2000s!
Keep hammering folks…the word will get around. AGW is just an excuse to make some people richer at the expense of the majority.
Of course under developed countries will benefit from electricity.
As Dr Pachauri et al know (via TERI India, and TERI Europe just to name a few!) and have made millions, billions from the scare that will encourage the adoption of so called clean energy. I don’t wish them any physical harm, but I bet Al Gore has hired body guards? LOL
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“My argument is not intended to change anything, merely to identify the evidence.”
Well you manifestly failed. Try again Go!
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Grahame with respect what the hell are you referring to? I have noticed your emails, and I might be dumb, (that I am not in MY opinion) but what are you specifically referring to? You rattle on
quite articulate but seem to say nothing. I call it ‘verbal diahorrea’ to be polite. I think you might be American and this might explain the communications problem? (Forgive me other yanks on this blog! LOL)
It reminds me of a uni student I once knew who went on rattling about a particular subject, completely mystifing others, (and put them down to elevate themselves intellectually or educationally perhaps?) and the lecturer, in a lecture after hearing her (yes a woman) rattle on for 5 minutes, asked politely “What were you saying? Or trying to imply?’
“Didn’t you know?’ she replied. “No, it was confusing in its context actually?’ The lecturer replied, a world renown paleaoanthropologist.
“Well you shouldn’t be teaching this subject then!’ Surprisingly
she didn’t pass the unit/course. I think it is called hyperbole? I might me wrong of course? Sorry if I have offended you, I believe in freedom of speech of course, provided it is understood!
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The Canadian Meteorology Organisation have stated, that Canada, has
experienced a slightly warmer winter. Well I checked up with a Canadian email fried. Sure she said, we have had a milder winter than
the one before… (When her pond containing Koi Carp, she had had for
20 years, then 20 inches long in size, all died under 8 inches of ice.
The worst winter she had experienced in 20 years. Might have helped if she had broken the ice cover on the pond, and let CO2 out and Oxygen in?
Where I live on the Northern Tablelands of NSW, we also had a mild
winter last year. Good rain though all year, that we depend on.
I bet you this winter will be more severe, but if it isn’t we will
be grateful. ‘Shit happens?’ eh?
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Matt B:
I am genuinely outraged.
Apologise for your lies and unsolicited insults.
Any rational person would be.
Richard
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“Grahame with respect what the hell are you referring to?”
Thats two of us. I’m not sure what you were referring to either. As to rattling on, I thought that I was being a bit more disciplined this time around. So I’ll have to try harder I guess. If you ask me a specific question perhaps I can make things clearer to you.
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Sure Graeme Bird. I appreciate your response.
1. Do you believe the UN IPCC report was contrived to promote global governance not on secure scientific evidence that AGW was contributing to harmful and unnatural climate change?
EG Promoted to serve the social/political/economic ideology who (different types?) thought they would benefit from it. (This includes the CCT investors, and third world countries who thought they could capitalise on the fact the developed countries are the biggest emissions of CO2 (though large populations and urban development etc., that naturally contributes to polluted air space) Even though CO2 is not or has never been a driver of climate change?
3) Do you believe in the best of your present knowledge of course
like the rest of us … climate change is beyond humans to change.
4) Do you believe that certain sectors of this globe, including the types of Al Gore and Dr Pachauri who have conflicts of interest
should not be believed?
5) Do you think as an individual you can by adopting alternative
energy sources to your home, change the global climate? Stop the polar ice caps from melting, or the seas getting higher, etc.
Look if a ice age when it comes, the sea levels will decrease! America will one day find the bridge over the Bering Straights again. Southern England will be joined to Europe. Australia will be again joined to Papua New Guinea and Tasmania. This won’t happen over night mind you in another 1,000 years or so.
But should temps drop, agriculture will be effected especially in the Northern Hemisphere. Why do you think the Swedes are keeping a stock pile of seeds underground in case of a catastrophic emergency?
Well I don’t believe I can. I can adapt. I believe in sustainability. But when governments want to charge me more for electricity that I depend on 50% more just as an excuse it is because I am contributing as a consumer to devastating climate change in other countries, I rebel!
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MattB: @113
“So say we have a climate, and evidence that CO2 is a “greenhouse gas” that in lab conditions is shown to act as such,”
Evidence please, specifically experimental evidence that a gas can trap heat and not pass it onto contiguous matter.
As I’ve just come in from the field, (late Thursday night), I’ll deal with the rest of your questions once you provide published peer reviewed papers showing that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. I note Richard Courtney is unusually forthright in his comments to you, so obviously you seem to be stirring the possum.
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Bush Bunny silences Graeme Bird. One for the blogosphere hall of fame:)
Louis is your post in 156 suggesting there is no such thing as a greenhouse gas as greenhouse is not analogous to the atmosphere? If so I’m not interested in your semantics. If not then can you clarify for me?
I just pointed out he is a grumpy old scientist of the kind Jo says I shouldn’t trust, and he has taken offence. He’ll get over it.
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And actually Louis my questions assumes CO2 is a greenhouse gas, so just humour me and assume it is. Go on – indulge me a bit of a mainstream starting point.
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Richard is this you? http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_NLNB_Vqogjo/SVE0jR-otII/AAAAAAAAAYs/kLkyB16fZ-k/s320/TonyHarrisonsmall.png
if so I’m a big fan.
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Also Louis are you suggesting that the earth is not warmer because of the presence of water vapour and CO2 in the atmosphere?
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jeepers Matt, you need a crash course in tact and civil discourse. Even i cringe at some of the things you say. Grow up
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And what the ell is that #159? Like I said, grow up.
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Just for reference Humbug… which bit made you cringe? Surely not the Mighty Boosh picture. “It’s an outrage!”
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It is the character Tony Harrison from the TV series “The Mighty Boosh”. Great tv (although a bit post modern for some here) – It’s an outrage is Tony’s catchphrase.
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mmmmmmmmm
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Oh come on Matt B. Keep to the topics please. I’m off to bed again.
Night Louis, Richard, Baa Humbug, and MattB and Graeham and et al. This isn’t a blog just to exchange rude words or nonsensical expressions. We are all more intelligent than that, irrespective of our various political agendas or sentiments.
However, while I’m pursueing OT sentiments. I had a killing today.
I’ve just started on Bonsais. But need ceramic bowls and pots. I rang the local opportunity shops and asked them. The local landfill recyling shop said one. Went to the local landfill recycling depot. Well I got 20 ceramics including a three bonsai pots. The cost $20 AUD. For those not acquainted to the costs, a small bonsai pot usually costs new at least $15.00. But no gnomes. I like garden gnomes, and Les from the landfill shop had told me ‘No nomes today’ gave us both a laugh. I think people keep their garden gnomes because they get attached to them… LOL. I’m into
kitch, etc. Anyway, you all look after yourselves for now, and just remember (Tongue in cheek) “It may be raining today, but tomorrow the sun will shine again!’ So our spirits will rise, eh?
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Graeme: “Well you manifestly failed.”
On the contrary, my argument stands unchallenged and to date successful. To refresh your memory, here it is again.
“1. AGW sceptics make claims
2. ‘There is no evidence that anything happening with regard to the climate today differs from what has happened previously.’
3. (2) is a claim.”
On another matter, I hesitate to get personal with other posters, Graeme, but I cannot help but notice that you suffer from a certain male problem. As it stands, your monikor sports all the hallmarks of the seedy demagogue.
But help is at hand. The purveyors of male grooming aids have created some highly efficient implements for the control of this unsightly growth.
I offer this advice in the most caring way. Modern capitalism, aided by powerfully efficient financial instruments, has created a wonder world of devices designed to make our lives more pleasant and comfortable. I urge you to take advantage of this bounty. You know you’re worth it.
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Brendan H:
I hesitate to get involved in your dispute with Graham, but I interpose to point out a logical error in your comment at #167. You say:
Sorry, but (2) is an observation and is not a “claim”.
Indeed, your point (2) is a demand for justification of the claim that there is some effect which AGW is required to address. That claim is an assertion that the climate is behaving abnormally in response to AGW, and your point (2) is merely a statement of why that claim requires justification.
Richard
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1. Do you believe the UN IPCC report was contrived to promote global governance not on secure scientific evidence that AGW was contributing to harmful and unnatural climate change?
Yes I do think it was contrived to promote global governance. That would be my best guess yes. But I’m not going to become an historian of the IPCC. As a scientific matter, their history is something I don’t know backwards and upside-down.
My best speculative guess is that it was cooked up for exactly this reason, by bigshots like Maurice Strong and various wealthy elites, surfing off something Margaret Thatcher started. If you want to control people you don’t cook up something anew. You go the more oriental, Jiu Jitsu or Sun Tzu approach. You see a trend already out there, and you gently push it along.
But I don’t HAVE a strong view of the history. Is it driven primarily by IDIOCY. Or is it driven primarily by EVIL. These are incredibly productive arguments for climate empiricists, and patriots who believe in sovereignty, to have in unmixed company.
Suppose one climate empiricist were to yell at another than its a conspiracy. And another climate empiricist made a good case that the CO2-Bedwetters were fundamentally mentally deranged. Suppose a third produced a chart showing how it all resembled the same structure of conspirators, fellow travelers, and useful idiots, that the communist movement was structured around. A fourth climate empiricist shouts everyone down, and produces a model analogous to a cyclone, and claims that he has deduced scientifically that there is no use going after those at the quiescent and calm core. All progress, he says, will be had destroying the first inner layer.
Stupid or evil? Look I encourage these arguments. I don’t know one way or another. It may be a false dichotomy. I’m not a science worker by profession but I work under the self-image of being a scientist on a deeper level. So you ask me what I believe, and since I don’t know the answer, my belief is not relevant, even to me. Actually its not relevant ESPECIALLY to me. Scientists aren’t as interested in their own beliefs as you might think. They are interested in evidence. With science workers its another matter.
In the case of whether the CO2-bedwetters are evil conspirators, or merely stupid …….. while I encourage these arguments, and I do think they are healthy, IN THE END NONE OF THAT MATTERS.
What matters is they must be stopped. They must be stopped and if we can get the culprits removed from the public purse then thats a good precaution. Lovelock is a great bloke. But the rest of them we have to cut off from public money. In this country Barry Brook would just make the cutoff because of his early and highly effective promotion of nuclear, proving he was a good bloke if entirely handicapped in the epistemology department. He’s my cutoff. Anyone more offensive then him ought to be sent to the private sector.
3) Do you believe in the best of your present knowledge of course
like the rest of us … climate change is beyond humans to change.
No we can change the climate. My oath we can. We can very cheaply start a new glacial period right now. No problem at all. What is a great deal more expensive is to avoid a new little ice age. Cooling this planet is dead easy. And cheap. Warming this planet involves all sorts of problems. We might be able to warm the planet by putting a film over water thats not in the tropical zones. So that we restrict evaporation where evaporation produces a net refrigerant effect. But this would mean medium term air cooling and drought, potential sea life deaths. All sorts of bad gear.
So we can alter climate easily and cheaply towards cooling. Trying to warm the planet is a tough gig. Very expensive. I have some ideas about it. But those ideas have promise, only insofar as stopping us getting locked into a glacial period. Nothing I have up my sleeve promises the slightest success at stopping the slide into the next “little ice age.”
4) Do you believe that certain sectors of this globe, including the types of Al Gore and Dr Pachauri who have conflicts of interest
should not be believed?
Al Gore has turned vicious since it became clear to him he would never be President. So he’s become a scam-artist as if to say “I’ll show you.” Its a pity because he was one of the few leftists I had regard for when he was VP. I don’t know about Dr Pachauri. But my advice is to assume that any CO2-bedwetter is lying until proven otherwise. So I’m not putting him down specifically. I just think one saves oneself a lot of grief if one sticks to general principles.
5) Do you think as an individual you can by adopting alternative
energy sources to your home, change the global climate?
No of course not. No evidence exists for this whatsoever and its a daft idea. We all can do something to cool the planet down. We all can do something to stop a glacial period being locked in. But I cannot change the climate by failing to use the drier and trudging downstairs to hang the clothes up, even when it may rain later on.
“Look if a ice age when it comes, the sea levels will decrease! America will one day find the bridge over the Bering Straights again. Southern England will be joined to Europe. Australia will be again joined to Papua New Guinea and Tasmania. This won’t happen over night mind you in another 1,000 years or so.
But should temps drop, agriculture will be effected especially in the Northern Hemisphere. Why do you think the Swedes are keeping a stock pile of seeds underground in case of a catastrophic emergency?”
This is all fine stuff. But why is it directed at me?
“Well I don’t believe I can. I can adapt. I believe in sustainability.”
Sustainability means higher CO2 levels. Nuclear. Spacious earthquake resistant highrise. And in the very long-run ……. Canals and nature corridors. But most of all it means expanding capital goods creation, and making sure we never lose our high-tech status. Sustainability means more liberty, and a few little things around the edges of that greater liberty.
“But when governments want to charge me more for electricity that I depend on 50% more just as an excuse it is because I am contributing as a consumer to devastating climate change in other countries, I rebel!”
I don’t understand this last bit at all. Using standard electricity cannot melt the ice caps. With a bit of luck it can help feed the poor people. Thats debatable but at least its a reasonable thesis. So you’ve lost me on that last bit. Lots of industrial CO2 will not prevent the next little-ice-age. But one still holds out hope that it might reduce its temperature severity. That it may provide a bit of assistance SLOWING climate change. We don’t know that it can. But its a reasonable hope.
But its not a relevant hope because the CO2-release ought to be thought of as our insurance policy to stop CO2 levels from dropping precipitously and causing famine and collapse. It ought to be thought of as our way, of not stopping the cooling, but coping with the cooling, thanks to the benefits of higher CO2, then what we would have otherwise had.
Even if its just a small amount higher then we would otherwise have, every bit counts, being as we are our brothers keeper, but not our brothers involuntary keeper.
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You failed Brendan. Because you are in an argument cul de sac, and you don’t have any evidence that could possibly justify this global warming hustle.
Contrary to either Popper or more likely, grave misunderstandings of Popper, what an hypothesis needs more than anything is VERIFICATION. You are a failure if you rely on faux-Popperian attempts to faux-falisfy the other blokes.
So lets have your evidence.
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Bush Bunny you are a crack-up:
“Oh come on Matt B. Keep to the topics please….
THEN
I’ve just started on Bonsais. But need ceramic bowls and pots. I rang the local opportunity shops and asked them. The local landfill recyling shop said one. Went to the local landfill recycling depot. Well I got 20 ceramics including a three bonsai pots. The cost $20 AUD. For those not acquainted to the costs, a small bonsai pot usually costs new at least $15.00. But no gnomes. I like garden gnomes, and Les from the landfill shop had told me ‘No nomes today’ gave us both a laugh. I think people keep their garden gnomes because they get attached to them… LOL.”
funny.
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Richard S Courtney: “Sorry, but (2) is an observation and is not a “claim”.”
No. An observation is a statement of the perceptually evident and/or an item of common knowledge. Here is statement 2: “There is no evidence that anything happening with regard to the climate today differs from what has happened previously.”
In effect, this statement is arguing that the behavior of the current climate is no different from the climate of the past. At one time that could have qualified as an item of common knowledge, but that time is past.
Today, the statement takes an adversarial position within the climate debate and is therefore a claim, or more specifically, a counter-claim.
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Graeme: “So lets have your evidence.”
You’ve seen it. Your serve.
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Seems we have been invaded by the Intellectuals and their verbal virtuosity founded in what they think reality is, as opposed to what it is.
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No Brendon. You’ve got to specify an hypothesis, relevant to the justification of the global warming racket, which would justify reducing CO2-ouput, if proven. Then you’ve got to find evidence for that specific hypothesis. Then you’ve got to relate the one to the other via human reason.
Your movement needs its own positive actual evidence. It must not rely on cul de sac nitpicking of its opponents, if it is to graduate from transparent fraud status.
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Graeme: “You’ve got to specify an hypothesis, relevant to the justification of the global warming racket…”
No I don’t. Why not? Because I haven’t made any claim about global warming.
On the other hand, I have shown that a particular claim is false. So I’m ahead of the game.
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Louis Hissink:
March 12th, 2010 at 8:31 pm
Says the person who thinks that climate change is due to heat escaping from below the earth’s surface 🙂
No really? Have you burned your feet on the ground lately when the sun isn’t out?
It seems like it’s you who has a problem with reality.
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No no, the fact is you are a [snip]. So you must justify your antagonistic position to climate empiricism.
Which means you need evidence of your own. Since data isn’t evidence unless related to a specific hypothesis, we need a specific hypothesis relevant to the justification of the anti-CO2 hustle, just for starters. That’s only stage one, but one doesn’t want to complicate matters for those who do not know nor care for the scientific method.
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Brendan H:
At #172 you assert:
Say what?
Your assertion is typical warmer nonsense!
There is nothing – repeat, nothing – that has been observed to be unusual in the recent behaviour of the climate. Nobody has observed anything unusual or unprecedented. That is not a “claim”: it is a simple statement of observed fact.
Similarly, it is not a “claim” to say that a rotation of the Earth to cause a “day” takes approximately 12 hours. It is a simple statement of observed fact.
And it does not matter whether or not some people are ignorant of this observation so it has ceased to be “common knowledge”. It is an observed fact and not a “claim”.
If you know of anything unusual or unprecednted in recent climate behaviour then please state it because many – e.g. IPCC – would like to know of it. And if you cannot state it then admit your error.
Please note that this is not trivial.
Warmers repeatedly make assertions then try to put the onus on others to prove them wrong (as you are doing in this case). The responsibility of proof lies with people who make a claim. There is no responsibility on those those who point out that the claim does not fit the known facts except to demand that the claimants “Prove it!”.
Richard
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Thanks Grahaem for your answers to my questions.
The big naughty ‘climate changer’ in Australia, claiming one Green’s senator in the State Senate (NSW) claims 40% of Australia’s Carbon Emissions are from coal (brown) electricity plants. Although he doesn’t believe in ETS or Carbon Credits. He quite rightly states, that the big emitters, will be ‘credited’ for burning what they do. It won’t do anything to stop climate change, just make it more expensive for everyone who uses electricity. Because they will pass on the expense to everyone who uses electricity.
So irrespective of the fact CO2 drives climate (pollution – yes)
and it is a small fraction of the Greenhouse gases or clouds etc.
If CO2 is a necessary and natural gas for plants and us, how can it alter climates globally. Planting forests and bio fuels, will take up land that can be utilized for food and animal husbandry.
I mean – the big emitters are China, US of A, India, UK and Indonesia. Australia and NZ are not. However, as China strongly pointed out, Canada and Australia are fudging their CO2 emissions? As far as Australia was concerned we were NOT including bush fires and land use? Of course China and Indonesia were not including (may be they were) their surface uncontrollable coal fires. I read in one article, China loses 250Million tons per year to surface coal fires. That equalled all the emissions from cars and trucks in the US of A! In India, poor people risk their health going and picking up coal from these sites. India with their 2 billion, China with their 1.3 billion folks, the bigger the population more CO2 is emitted. And Indonesia (that’s all the islands) have a billion people too I believe. And they have the volcanoes of course too.
Peking was once relatively smog free. Just before the last OLYMPIC
games they stopped all industrial smoke… but when they all wore
black and rode around on cycles, no smog. So much for their advancement into the motor trade. Although China is the most advanced country in the manufacture of electric cars. But of course
they will need electricity plants to generate these cars, won’t they? Instead of petrol or LPG Gas?
The Chinese are innovative people – and they are no fools, either.
For Aussies, remember the Indonesian bush fires of the 80s? We had strange orange sunsets for years. They couldn’t put them out. They were started and fueled by not just tree felling, but surface coal fires (Just Google) They cost billions to put out (succeeded in the US of A) mainly started by poor mining procedures.
And there are natural occurring coal seam burns that never saw mining near them. We have one near Murrarundi in NSW, Smoking or smoky Mountain, been burning for 15,000 years.
To me the solutions (if there were any) eg. Cap & Trade, will only
benefit the investment bankers (ie.Goldman Sachs) and those who have
put trillions of Euros, dollars and pounds in Carbon Credit Schemes.
The planet changers, eh? Sure – the rich will become richer and
masses, somewhat poorer. The Clean Energy investors, will be making
more dollars too.
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MattB: Home from school, yet… yes you saw my point.
Bonsai plants emit less CO2, I’m saving the planet. Hurrah! LOL.
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Off on another blog, Tori Advarks. The UK Met Office having admitted
long term forecasts are no good for accuracy… Oh, well … nor are shorter term forecasts either. You take a country like Australia that
tends to be undulating in some States, flat as a pancake in others,
we have different climate zones (yawn – I can hear you say) but it true. Most of the major cities are ocean or at least heavily tied to estuaries or rivers, of course they get more rain than inland areas.
That’s natural precipitation patters. Where I live, we have 4 different micro-zones. In about 4 square miles. I live 2 kms from my friend down in the valley. She’ll state – poring with rain here. (Not were I live). No snow settling here, snow 1 inch thick where I live… Because I am higher up than where she lives.
So weather predictions can only be accurate at various places, and inaccurate in others.
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Peter Pan #177.
Did you read that Deltoid comment carefully.(Noted in 2004) In fact the Earth reflects heat and warms the atmosphere, the sun doesn’t warm our atmosphere directly (If it could we’d be toast?) You have I suspect taken it literally, when Louis was commenting on ancient beliefs and that the Earth has tilted to create climate changes in the past, and how this could have altered our climate zones.
The ancient Eqyptians had it right. They knew that the dog star rising, heralded the flooding of the Nile. It stayed in view for 70 days and their religion was built around this. They invented the 365 day calendar around this, although it used to change they didn’t take much notice.
Julius Caesar changed it to a 365 1/4 days, that’s why we have a leap year.
Although I did read somewhere, that the Earth as a planet did shift
its axis at one time. Some people that is when the continents broke up (over millions of years) and we got polar regions. I can’t remember the reason for this belief…Maybe Louis can enlighten us. There are some who believe catastrophy will strike
when the globes magnetic field changes (It’s always changes as pilots will tell you). And it has changed over the millenium too.
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Richard: “There is nothing – repeat, nothing – that has been observed to be unusual in the recent behaviour of the climate.”
I didn’t say there was. I was responding to your claim that this claim: “There is no evidence that anything happening with regard to the climate today differs from what has happened previously” is an observation.
In fact, most climate scientists take the view that what is “happening with regard to the climate today” does indeed differ from what has happened in the past. Given that reality, the statement in question cannot be regarded as an observation, rather a claim.
“The responsibility of proof lies with people who make a claim.”
Agreed.
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Now THAT is a claim. Care to support it with evidence? perhaps poll results from those “most climate scientists”?
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Brenfan H:
You are being silly. Admit your error or go away.
Richard
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Graeme Bird,
I’m with you about the IPCC. They always knew their global warming nonsense was just that, nonsense. Many in the IPCC are not scientist at all but activists of one ilk or another. For whatever reason they got started it was quickly co-opted by those in the UN who think they’re the government of the world. They’ve shown evidence of that for a long time.
Unfortunately neither of us can prove this point. But just look at what’s actually happening and you can draw some reasonable conclusions.
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Mark D: “Now THAT is a claim. Care to support it with evidence? perhaps poll results from those “most climate scientists”.
The quotes below are from a Wikipedia article which refers to various polls and surveys of climate science and climate scientists, with references to the original studies.
“Among all respondents [climate scientists], 90% agreed that temperatures have risen compared to pre-1800 levels, and 82% agreed that humans significantly influence the global temperature.”
“Question 21 “How convinced are you that most of recent or near future climate change is, or will be, a result of anthropogenic causes?” received 34.6% very much agree, 48.9% agreeing to a large extent…”
“The survey found 97% agreed that global temperatures have increased during the past 100 years; 84% say they personally believe human-induced warming is occurring, and 74% agree that “currently available scientific evidence” substantiates its occurrence.”
For more information on surveys of climate scientists, see “Survey of scientists and scientific literature”: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_opinion_on_climate_change
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Richard: “You are being silly. Admit your error or go away.”
You are clearly annoyed that your attempt to re-word the argument in your favour has failed.
You have also yet to demonstrate any error. Remember that we have agreed that the burden of proof is on the claimant.
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Brendan H: Post 188,
Wow, an “AGW Spokesperson” at heart…Brendan, you have to be “very” careful, unless your pro-AGW, on the content of that site and it’s been proven…
http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?63.post
and here:
http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?104.post
and here:
http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?1529.post
if you take your time on these three articles, you will see the “pattern” to which Wikipedia operates! Oh, by the way, here’s a very good article by James Delingpole about “William Connelley”…
http://www.globalwarminghoax.com/e107_plugins/forum/forum_viewtopic.php?1553.post
Can’t say much more than that!!! It’s been tallying up, Brendan! When are you going to realize it???
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Brendan H,
Wikipedia, that last bastion of truth and integrity says this, that and the other thing. Unfortunately it’s so easy for information on Wiki to be false or to be modified to suite someone’s particular agenda that no self respecting person would ever look there. I certainly would not.
Wikipedia is a disgrace to good faith and honesty; it’s founder’s protestations to the contrary notwithstanding,
This comes close to an outright insult to everyone who posts here and I suggest that you apologize. We do not accept Wiki as an authority on anything.
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Brendan H.
using your own shaky source I see: “replies from 3,146 of the 10,257 polled Earth scientists.” Roughly 30% Which is not what I would call a rousing return. If they were so concerned, you’d think it would have been a much higher number. The year before that a whopping 18% response. The way the power brokers of AGW have treated anyone that whispers a contradiction, I am not at all surprised at the low percentage.
Besides that, these are “Earth scientists” not “Climate Scientists” as you assert in 184 and 188. So you have taken a weak result, in a weak resource, fluffed it up and present it here as “conclusive”?
People don’t get away with that here. Wait till Eddy Aruda reads this…….
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Roy Hogue: Post 191,
Yes, well stated in the “AGW” arena goes! I don’t trust the Hypothesis’s nor the graphs! Some definitions are Ok but that’s it…Not a place to go in reference of this Subject! Unless you are “pro-AGW…right Brendan? Garbage in, garbage out!
As far as the other fields there Geography, Biography’s….I do not feel they are out of line!
Research, research and research…right Roy???
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Still waiting for Jo’s answer to my question (@132)
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Denny,
Amen!
But I wonder about even non controversial subjects on Wiki. You can never know the credentials of the poster unless you have some personal knowledge of him/her. Now if other sources confirm Wiki then good. And that’s a good rule in general anyway.
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Roy Hogue: Post 195,
Roy, well spoken words! I would state that it would depend on your knowledge of the subject…If you have interest in a subject and do over a period of time research and taught yourself about this subject, you would have a “base”, correct? Then you should also have “common sense” towards the subject, correct Roy? This is how I see this…And you can tell by the answers given in Wikipedia as to their “true” nature of context! Agree? You can tell also by people that post on subjects such as this site provides as to the “real” common sense answers one receives…Amazingly, a lot of people cannot “conceive” or “relate” to common sense! I know of one person that visits this site that would “totally” agree with me and that is Mr. Griffith.
Roy, I have used Wikipedia too “some” degree but I depend on the above to do so rationally…I don’t blame you on staying away…Better to be safe than sorry…It just depends on what I’ve stated above…Good posting Roy! Keep it up!
Mark D.: Post 192,
LOL! Forgive me…I don’t mean to laugh at you! You remind me of my “sibilings” at home that would state the same thing! “You are in trouble now. Wait until Dad gets home…LOL! Wow, sorry…Dajavue all over again…Hey, thats a while back also..
But Eddy needs a “nick” name. The way he trolled over at ABC The Drum and here at Joanne’s, he seems to be lurking around ready to “pull” the Trolls down into the Data Abyss..A nick name called “The Shark” would be appropiate…Don’t you think Mark?
http://www.apexpredators.com/store/showDetail.asp?categoryID=6&productID=489
Can’t you see this happening with that pic? I can with “I hate Trolls” on his chest! Eddy “The Shark”! Yes, that does it…Any takers that agree???
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BRENDAN! Check out also.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_scientists_opposing_the mainstream_scientific_assessment_of_global_warming
AND
troll: (t-r-o-l-l) A Scandanavian mythical creature, either a mischievous dwarf or a giant – bent on causing havoc – and stealing others goods and ideas – tends to live underground, in the dark, or in caves. Tends to lie a lot? LOL! LOL
(And can be easily outwitted by the average intelligent human).
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Denny,
Thanks.
I think the best situation is if you can get 2 or 3 sources as independent from each other as possible and they all agree well on the major aspects of a subject and can support themselves with verifiable facts and sound arguments. It was the complete failure of the AGW crowd to be willing and able to do this plus the skeptics’ ability to meet these criteria that quickly made me a skeptic when I started looking into global warming. I’m not trusting of politicians for the same reason.
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Brendan: I don’t think any scientist anywhere can provide an accurate temperature prediction to apply globally at any one time.
For starters we have five distinct climate zones, two polar including the Arctic circle, the Northern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere, and the Equator regions. Even within these zones, temperatures fluctuate, the hours of sunlight during summer and winter vary, seasonal norms, and population density and demography.
When the summer is effecting the Northern Hemisphere, it’s winter down under. However, El Nino and El Nina that effects South America
tends to also effect Australia too.
You are not telling me Norwegian’s life styles and Hebridians are not effected by having darkness some of the year, and Alaskans life styles and occupations cope with short days in winter. (Six hours)
Al Gore in his academy award film “The Inconvenient Lark’ did mention that AGW could create another ice age. Strangely his chief
scientific advisers where Dr Stephen Schneider and James Hansen.(He developed the program for which Stephen used for his calculations). Now in the mid 70s Stephen was on a series called ‘The next ice age commeth’ then it warmed up again LOL. Available on U tube, with Stephen with hippy hair (now he has lost it badly)
Warming always proceeds an ice age, and the sad fact is we are still in one, and have been for the last 4 million years. Just we are enjoying a interglacial period. May it last longer please G. Who knows how long it will go on. But digest this, it always warms before a mini ice age or longer full glacial period (that takes thousands of years to become fully glacial) and will certainly effect the most populated countries, USA, Northern America, Europe & Asia. Down beyond the great lakes, York, Spain etc., it won’t be so bad. Africa will be fine accept Northern Africa perhaps, the Levant might be influenced once the Mediterranean becomes a series
of swamps and lakes. Australia becomes attached to Papau New Guinea and Tasmania, and France becomes a walk way to Southern England. And the USA is Joined to Siberia via the Bering Straights. Oh dear, but no one will be living in North America north of the great lakes. Just a horror story, and we know this
was so, from archaeology. So as Richard said, nothing is different from times long past, one has to consider climate change over thousand of years and then compare them.
The hockey stick was a fraudulent lie, to prove a point that the
event of industrialisation and population growth was effecting the climate globally. Now go and do some homework, and forget Wikipedia. However – we have to be more considerate of Mother Earth. Prevent or repair environmental damage, and maintain a cheap and effective electricity supply. And honest governments! Are there any?
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Denny! that IS Eddy!!!
I LMAO Thank you
Eddy the Shark it is!
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Roy: That is the common law of academic research and study. One never uses just one source to write your thesis, or essay. Obviously
one is guided by the lecturers or tutors, but the rest is left to students to do their own research and investigation, and also to make sure you have up to date data, written by people renown in the academic peer group as being honest.
I was warned during my studies, of certain academics, who had corrupted their data to prove their hypothesis. Or they had based their hypothesis on incomplete data, like the AGW mob.
One professor told me, don’t always believe what you read in books?
Even academic ones.
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AGW alarmist: “It had above average temps in Tinbucktu last year, and so did Sydney Australia. However, we haven’t go a true picture
as it was winter in T and Summer in Sydney town. Yet – they share the same planet, so the temps must be getting higher, and expected (only expected) to get higher again.
2 + 2 = 16
(Gulp!) Does this sound right Al . “Sure it will do, they won’t dare go against the UN IPCC.
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Bunny, Thanks for the troll def. It was a funny moment!
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Mark D.: Post 200,
LMAO, Mark, can you imagine that tatooed across the Sharks chest in that pic! LOL! I love it! Isn’t it funny how “simple Minds” think alike! LOL! Where’s “The Shark” ! I can see MattB in the grips of those teeth! Then MattB stating “OK,OK, let me go!!!! I believe there’s no AGW!!! Please let me go!!!
One’s imagination can get outa hand at times…but you have to have a few laughs to extend your Life, right MattB? 😉
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AAAAAAHH GUFFAWWAWWWWWAH!
I now have a busted gut!!!!
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Mark D.: Post 205,
ILMAO, Mark! Easy Beagle! As they say here in the U.S.A.! LOL! Don’t want you to hurt yourself….I need you around when “The Shark” appears! 🙂
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Denny: #204
March 14th, 2010 at 1:58 pm
Mark D.: Post 200,
Eds nickname is “Dirty Eddy” after Clint Eastwoods Dirty Harry. He posted a funny one about it a month ago when bashing another troll. It went something like this…
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Denny: “…you have to be “very” careful, unless your pro-AGW, on the content of that site and it’s been proven…”
Roy: “We do not accept Wiki as an authority on anything…”
I thought AGW sceptics eschewed shooting the messenger. If you’re unhappy with Wikipedia, go straight to the sources listed on the linked page.
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Mark D: “Roughly 30% Which is not what I would call a rousing return.”
I’m not a statistician, so I can’t say whether a 30 per cent sampling is sufficient to establish a conclusion about the views of a whole population. However, I would be very surprised if statistical practice requires the sampling of a whole population.
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Baa I remember. OK how about Dirty Eddy (the shark)? note the lower case.
and I do feel lucky…
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Brendon, a so so attempt at recovery. 30% is not a quorum in any Roberts group. Further if you look at the dynamics there is no way that you could claim that there is “consensus”. (THINK 30% is how many?)
You are a sucker
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Brendan (spelling correct) Skeptics shoot messengers all the time. Who are you the messenger for?
10
Go to http://www.VoteGlobal.com
The Don’t believe in the bunk is leading by 43% and I’m not sure around now 20%. Mind you on the same blog 90% are in favor of legalising pot in CA. And on another opinion poll 90% don’t believe
Barack Obama is an American citizen.
So I think their site is quite funny. International.
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Brendan H: Post 209,
Brendan, Uhmm…yes you can check the sources but in AGW, you can’t trust them so what’s the difference??? It doesn’t take much mental capacity to figuire out what’s going on expecially since “ClimateGate”…Of course, it’s what “you” want to believe. But believing doesn’t make it true…If you looked at my posted articles here you should have read the one from James Delingpole who describes “William Connelley” very well and “caught” doing a very “naughty” thing….Politely put IMA!
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Baa Humbug: Post 207,
Oh yes, Baa, I remember that posting! Good comeback also…Well, like I stated, you have to have a few laughs to extend your Life…But what Mark’s response stated; I agree…”Dirty Eddy,The Shark”…Like it Mark! Good choice!!! With MattB screaming at the top of his lungs! “Let me out”! Let Me Go”! Or I’ll hit you with a can of CO2…LMAO!
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Brendan: Wikipedia can give opinions that differ. There is one that was put in regarding Neadertals. The author was desperate to have it
made into a film… and put it in Wikipedia. You know folks, Neadertals looked like Big Foot, and had yellow cat like eyes for nocturnal hunting, carried green spear tips, and eventually the modern humans in the Levant region were reduced to 50 people. Then the great white spirit in the sky revived their numbers? Great creationist stuff. So anyone can put in something at Wikipedia.
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On the http://www.VoteGlobal.com.
I never believed in this bunk is 50%
And I haven’t changed my mind is 25%
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Also if you go to The Heartland Site, just google ‘Russian scientists and a new ice age…’ there is up to date news on what’s on in the US Senate and Congress. Seems the Cap & trade might not be passed?
It is noted in one state, Electricity prices have gone up when the main grid is forced to support wind and solar? It seems the coal industry is sueing EPA the organization that wants to monitor CO2 emissions. For saying coal is responsible for global warming. One group of scientists have put in another theory or hypothesis. Actually human activity might be holding another ice age at bay. No guys, it can’t work that way as well. Although my lecturer at Uni did say, he didn’t think it would, but human’s enhance CO2 emissions and could hold off another ice age, but not for long!
Well isn’t that a surprise???
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A can of CO2, maybe a can of beer?
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Beer has Co2 OH that is wrong Very Wrong
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Yep, I have a pic, can’t forward here unfortunately, of a huge CO2
tank, and in front are two bushies clutching their cans, and my son
still in nappies sitting between them grasping a can of coke.
I got onto John Quiggles site, didn’t ‘arf give him a tongue lashing’
No reply yet. Told Australians to wake up! Science was not attacked
it was the scientists who made up big porkies posing as science.
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Peter Pan, anonymous soul that you are, yes I did say:
I’ve since found out that there may be some serious thermal source of energy on Venus, but that doesn’t change the synopsis that Venus would still be cooler without the suns energy (the half of Venus that faces the sun is rather warmer than the far side). Nor does it change my summary that greenhouse gases are an important part of the way a planet cools.
And if you haven’t come across the “cooling” aspect of greenhouse gases, then welcome to infra red emissions. It’s why our stratosphere has cooled in the last 40 years (scientists and spectroscopists on both sides of the fence generally agree on this – at least in theory, the lidar and upper trophospheric measurements are reasonably supportive. Although there has been next to no cooling measured from 1995-2005 –which are the most recent results, that may be a cyclical thing).
And naturally a vacuum stops conduction and convection, but not radiation. So how does our planet lose heat? Thanks to the vacuum in space the earth can’t lose energy through the first two mechanisms, and only does through radiation. The majority of earth’s radiative emission spectrum is in Infra red (standard black body spectrum and all). Hence, it’s hard to not see the importance of our GHG’s as a source of cooling.
GHG’s convert kinetic energy of collisions into Infra red, so they effectively steal the heat out of the other molecules in the atmosphere and fling half of it off the planet.
Sorry if you thought the mocking derogatory comments about my physics knowledge on the ABC board indicated you’d found a point I’d made a mistake on. Never underestimate how arrogant and uninformed supporters of AGW can be.
PS: Oh I see that you were one of the commenters who declared my knowledge of physics was poor.
From the drum site:
That “top layer” of atmosphere you refer too is our “ultra thin” stratosphere which is around 40 kilometers thick eh? The climate models all project cooling in the stratosphere, so you’re going against the consensus here. Rather than being “backwards”, it seems I’m a step ahead of you…
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John Quiggin refused to debate me.”Bush Bunny is Typical of the other side…no point at all in their argument” I thought he meant.
He told one poster he didn’t disapprove of exchanges of opinion etc., but Quadrant, IPA (who are they) and the Australian he classes as in the same ilk as creationists and moon landing conspirators. Hi creationists! Actually on one religious site
they did agree with us …”He’s lied, he’s a pagan and vegetarian
(about Patchauri) everyone knows their graphs are wrong, God only made the earth 6000 years ago?”
What a rude man, did a check up and he’s an academic. One of those
who uses academic gobblegook to make a point. On climate change
‘How can we price a product dearer today than it will be priced
in the future..(that’s true) but especially as in one household there are two generations????? Yeah that would change culture, instead of me saying to my grandchild (when I was young chocolate only cost 6 pennies a small bar…etc). But to take a book to prove it? typical boring academic… don’t dispute me, you are automatically wrong.
No disrespect to any academic on this site, but I’ve met some very
well read academics but bleeding dumb blokes on the side. Live in Ivory towers.
No you get get a diploma in climatology you know, and help with fees (noticed them advertising on the web?).
I think I will change my call name to ‘Angry bush bunny’
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Peter Pan: #177
“Says the person who thinks that climate change is due to heat escaping from below the earth’s surface
No really? Have you burned your feet on the ground lately when the sun isn’t out?
It seems like it’s you who has a problem with reality.”
1. linking to anything on Tim Lambert’s blog as a source of objective truth is a mistake,
2. You assert that I reckon climate change is due to heat escaping from below the earth’s surface?????
As you haven’t quoted me but merely linked to Lambert’s specious comments, then all one could is that you have set up a straw man argument; Which is ignored.
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Peter Pan: Yes the forever young? You haven’t read Louis’ article?
I think Louis it was way over his head?
And I just checked out sea temperatures around Bournemouth, Southern England, they are lower than when I swam there in 1960. They ranged from 60 degrees F to 62 F. That’s freezing. One quickly suffered hypothermia and blue if you stayed in too long. (I know this sounds indelicate, but the brief budgie smugglers often showed that grown men felt the cold too?) They are colder or about the same as they were this present day.
Sydney was lovely, in comparison, but Bermuda …. like taking a bath in a tropical aquarium including all the little tropical fish
that nipped ones legs.
Spoiled me for swimming in the sea here especially with what is now now named ‘The Eddy’s’ that favor the East Coast.
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Bunny,
It’s been my hope for a long time that all around the world we could honestly stick to what you said in the first two sentences. Instead we’re solving imaginary problems, sparing no expense in the process.
As for honest governments — just yesterday I sent email to some key members of the House of Representatives about how they should vote on the so-called Obama Care monstrosity and I accused the whole legislative and executive branches of the U.S. Government of the worst dishonesty I’ve seen in my whole lifetime. This isn’t the forum to go into details so I’ll leave it at that. But are there any honest governments? I wish!
Then we have the ones who rely on Wikipedia. Ouch!
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Well, maybe the ‘truth will out’ or ‘if a few good men(or women) do nothing – evil will win’ I’m off to bed Roy, I’m not knowledgeable about the Health Care plan proposed by Obama in the USA. You have a great population number to cope with. But with Medicare in Australia, tax payers pay 1% of their tax towards a National medical cover. Others can pay for private insurance that doesn’t cover them entirely. It didn’t cost me anything for a hip replacement. And I only waited 10 months for the elective surgery. Somewhat longer in larger city areas? However, we only have 22 million people? UK is suffering also with the NHS. It’s not coping well I believe with lack of services for needy people like older people. And the waiting time to see a specialist is woeful 12 months! However, I don’t like to think people with serious medical conditions aren’t treated? Or can be treated under a better health plan. I think your doctors in the US of A, and private health insurers are ripping off people (Mind you I get this off the TV films and Mike’s ‘Sicko – Sicko’ documentary).
Keep well and keep fighting for justice.
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Brendan @208,
I will stand solidly behind, “We do not accept Wiki as an authority on anything.”
Quite simply, Wiki is an unreliable messenger. If I send you email and somewhere along the line between me and you someone decides the message should be changed, how long do you think either of us would continue to rely on email? Worse, if someone sends you email pretending to be me, what would you do? This is exactly the position that Wikipedia is in. An unreliable messenger needs to be shot, a priori! Fail me once, shame on you. Fail me twice, shame one me.
Once proven unreliable you can never recover your reputation.
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Denny: “Brendan, Uhmm…yes you can check the sources but in AGW, you can’t trust them so what’s the difference???”
I guess we’re at an impasse then.
Roy: “I will stand solidly behind, “We do not accept Wiki as an authority on anything.”
You can check the reliability of the statements I quoted against the sources to gain an idea of the reliability of the messenger.
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Jo – you said (in bold no-less)
This is completely wrong!
Why?
Because collsions between gaseous molecules are almost completely “elastic”.
That is – these collisions conserve both momentum and kinetic energy. Whilst no collision is completely elastic they are so close that the inelastic component can be considered virtually negligeable.
Because momentum & kinetic energy is conserved, there is no left-over energy to be converted into other degrees of freedom – in the case of CO2 this would have to be into vibrational energy.
Anyway any energy would still have to fit the quantum states of vibrational degreess of freedom. which is why CO2 only absorbs bands in the IR spectrum.
This makes your statement:
completely ludicrous. GHG’s cannot emit IR unless they have first absorbed some.
So you see I have found a point yuo’ve made a mistake on – a glaringly obvious one no less.
As you are the one fabricating the laws of physics it is you who is both arrogant and uninformed.
How can I be sure of all this? I’m a physics graduate (University of Sydney – 1985) so I’ve actually studied this stuff for real. I wouldn’t dream of weighing into discussions on biology or geology so why don’t you stop posting complete rubbish when it comes to physics?
This goes to the heart of your credibility to comment on climate science as a whole.
Why are you putting youself up as an authority on the subject when you are so clearly out of your depth?
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Brendan H:
At #189 you say to me:
Say What!?
You really do have brass kneck! You asserted that AGW skeptics make “claims” and asserted as evidence that the sceptics point out there is nothing unusual or unprecedented in recent climate behaviour.
I pointed out that your so-called “evidence” is a logical error. What the skeptics are pointing out is empirical fact that the AGW claimants need to explain if their claim is to merit serious consideration.
That is not an “attempt to re-word the argument”. It is a statement of observed fact that refutes the claim made by AGW advocates.
Empirical evidence is not a “claim”. It is observed fact.
And your response to that? You say that evidence is a claim because:
The “view” of some people does not change reality. Perhaps “most climate scientists” do hold the view that you assert (although I doubt it). So what? Their “view” does not change reality.
The point is that there is there is nothing unusual or unprecedented that has been observed in recent climate behaviour. That is an empirical fact and not merely a “claim” or a “view”.
You assert that there are people who believe something unusual is happening to the climate. But their belief means absolutely nothing: more people believe in Father Christmas.
If you think something unusual or unprecedented in recent climate behaviour has been observed then state it.
Otherwise you should admit your error or go away.
And no amount of your bluster can hide your error.
Richard
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Peter Pan:
At #230 you assert:
That is complete bunkum!
GHGs can absorb energy by rising to higher vibrational and rotational states: Indeed, that is why they are GHGs!
So, they can gain and lose energy by molecular collisions. Indeed, in the lower atmosphere they transfer thousands of times as much vibrational and rotational energy by collisions than by emission/absorbtion of photons. If this were not so then they could not significantly warm the atmosphere because they are a trivial proportion of the atmosphere.
The effect of GHGs is to warm the lower atmosphere and to cool the upper atmosphere.
Please desist from pontificating on a subject when you know nothing about that subject. In this case your statements dsemonstrate your complete ignorance of radiative physics.
So
1.
apologise to Ms Nova for your crass behaviour and unfounded insult,
2.
stop spouting nonsense on a subject of which you clearly know nothing, and
3.
go and learn some radiative physics before again spouting on it.
Richard
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Peter Pan: #230
March 16th, 2010 at 6:43
Did you also take chemistry by any chance peter pan?
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Thats a great screed Humbug. Confirms all my prejudices. I was saying that most of what we call greenhouse must be actually microscopic liquid airborne water dithering around its phase-change region. So I figured most of what it was about is this movement backwards and forwards between the phase-change.
Where is the original of that quote from?
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If you put “microscopic airborne liquid water” in the google you can get my much less elegant explanation for pretty similar ideas that miltonconservative has on the fly.
Things may be similar on Titan. Titan may have this effect also, but with methane. With methane going between being liquid and gas in Titan’s atmosphere.
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By the way. I can see now that my explanation is a bit mixed-up. Still I don’t know whether I’ll get around to correcting it.
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Hi Birdy
You may have figured it out already, but the original article link is below
Heres the link
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Richard: “You asserted that AGW skeptics make “claims” and asserted as evidence that the sceptics point out there is nothing unusual or unprecedented in recent climate behaviour.”
No. I offered as evidence this claim: “There is no evidence that anything happening with regard to the climate today differs from what has happened previously.”
“That is not an “attempt to re-word the argument…”
Yes it is. “Differs from” is not the same claim as “unusual” or “unprecedented”.
“Empirical evidence is not a “claim”. It is observed fact.”
Yes, but the statement: “there is nothing unusual or unprecedented in recent climate behaviour” does not count as empirical evidence. Rather, it is a judgement about empirical evidence.
Take these two statements:
1. “Two mm of rain fell today.”
2. “It seldom rains around these parts.”
(1) is a statement of empirical evidence; (2) is a judgement based on the evidence.
Your statement is the same type as (2), ie a claim.
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Brendan H:
I give up because I have much better things to do than to repeatedly respond to your idiocy.
Admit your error or go away.
And if you continue your illogical twaddle I shall ignore it because it is not worthy of response. Indeed, it is too silly to be worthy of contempt: it only warrants ridicule.
Richard
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Haha – no it’s not. Where did you learn physics?
That is partially correct. The effect of any rotational states can be largely ignored in the atmosphere as the quantum states for rotation are in the microwave band.
Yes but they can only gain and lose translational kinetic enrgy from (non GHG) molecules like N2 or O2.
This is not significantly different from what happens when two N2 or O2 molecules collide with each other and is not a significant factor in IR emissions from CO2. There is negligeable crossover between translational and vibrational states at normal temperatures and pressures.
Why don’t you and Jo take this advice?
It is she who should apologize to the wider scientific community for spouting rubbish and presenting it as science.
This sentence is wrong and a good example of why you probably shouldn’t get your scientific information from a blog run by an accountant.
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Peter Pan:
I am always open to learning that previous information has been overturned by new knowledge. Indeed, this is how science advances. So, I am intrigued by your assertion at #240 that says:
Your assertion is dramatic and novel physics, so I wish to learn more of it.
So, please explain how GHGs can warm the atmosphere when – according to your novel physics – their photonic absorbtion can only be released as photons. Temperature is kinetic energy (not alteration of excitation states). So absorbtion of photons would not warm the GHGs. And the GHG molecules can only de-excite by photonic emission. Clearly, according to your novel ophysics it is a physical impossibility for GHGs to warm the atmosphere. Perhaps it would be helpful if you were to inform the UN IPCC, NASA GISS, and the UEA CRU of your important novel physics?
But, of course, GHG molecules would radiate photons downwards according to your novel physics. Their effect would be similar to a half-silvered mirror that reflects IR in the pertinent wave bands. This would tend to warm the surface. However, this warming would be very small because it would be compensated by increased evapouration. The resulting water vapour would condense as clouds high in the lower atmosphere, and this would warm the air at that temperature. But – according to your novel physics – the atmosphere cannot transfer this heat to GHG molecules. So, where do you think this heat goes, and how?
I look forward to your explanations of these points because those of us who have studied conventional radiative physics have some difficulty understanding your novel version.
Richard
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Yeah humbug thats an excellent article by Milton there. But after re-reading my own parallel version of this thesis, which has a couple of glaring mistakes in it, I think we can say that its very useful, but not the whole picture. Until we have a grand theory of everything its best to probably employ a lot of small models to explain anything pretty complex. This is the Charlie Munger way. And after watching some very out of character behaviour by Warren Buffet these last two years, I’m beginning to wonder if Charlie isn’t four fifths of the brains behind Berkshire Hathaway.
So you have the Watts Per Square Metre model, which I’m always running down, but nonetheless if its just one model amongst a few, its probably a useful model. And then you take Milton’s way of looking at it. And thats not an all-inclusive model either. But it has the virtue of bringing in the factor of microscopic airborne liquid water, and the latent heat of evaporation and condensation. Which, in terms of how you and me notice viscerally what we think to be the greenhouse effect, thats got to be almost the sum total of it.
You know if you are in Darwin in the Summer. And the heat stays on all through the night. And why wouldn’t it? With the water vapour in the air being able to deliver all this latent heat until the later hours of the early morning.
So Peter Pan makes one or two tiny glancing criticisms of Milton’s small model. But if we are looking at matters from the point of view of the virtue of having a number of small models to make the problem comprehensible ……… so what? Because I can lay about 50 objections on the watts per square metre/core alarmist model. And yet as I said, its probably still worthy enough to keep the core Arrenhius model around, so long as we don’t fall for it.
My more extremist version of what Milton was trying to get across ….. Peter could have laid one or two right on the chin. But the thing is, even though my more extremist perspective, like the watts per square metre model, is technically wrong in obvious ways, still I think it provides some sort of context. Part of what I was trying to get across was SEMANTIC. People were lulled into this idea of greenhouse gases. I was trying to say that its better to think in terms of net warming gases and net cooling gases. I think thats still a good perspective to adopt some of the time. But I was taking some tiny supposed cooling effect and exaggerating it to the max.
Anyhow I want to go through the proxy conversation that Milton, via yourself, is having with the forever childish Peter Pan. And see if I cannot make what both parties are saying understandable to the laity:
MILTON SEZ:
GHGs can absorb energy by rising to higher vibrational and rotational states: Indeed, that is why they are GHGs!
I SEZ:
What Milton is talking about here is an excellent predictive model of the atom, which I don’t for a minute accept as the reality. But which seems to serve well for all practical purposes.
Before people get uppity about me not accepting the physicality I’m about to describe, the quantum people don’t accept this model of the atom either. But the quantum types are not able to describe for you an alternative model. In fact they seem to talk about physical objects in abstract and mathematical terms. They deny outright the small worlds PHYSICALITY. Their purpose is to jealously maintain their status within the scientific community. When they go to explain matters to the laity they will use the model that Milton is using. But they want to be able to say that this is the right model when they feel like it. At the same time they want to say “ho ho. thats not the reality” when they feel like that too. As we shall see from Peter.
Now the model that Milton is talking about is the excellent predictive model of an atom, with a nucleus, and orbiting electrons. In this story the electrons orbit in shells. When Milton says:
“GHGs can absorb energy by rising to higher vibrational and rotational states: Indeed, that is why they are GHGs!”
by rotational states he means that the light hits the atom. And in the model its an alleged photon that hits the atom. And the photon is “at”, or represents a wavelength. Of course this is actually incoherent but that doesn’t matter. Its a great predictive model. Under this doctrine the atom absorbs the photon, and that sends an electron of this atom, into an higher rotational shell. And the photon has disappeared.
But now the atom is unhappy. The electron is homesick for its lower shell. So it jumps back down to its lower shell and releases a photon, representing the same wavelength as the one it absorbed. Photons are far from homesick. And where-ever they are born they want to run away from that place very fast, and for no known reason.
Crazy stuff, but the point of this predictive model is that the unmolested molecule will scatter light (in its wave-length-“absorption”-region). It will scatter all or most of the light energy in that region. In a random direction. BUT WITH A TINY TIME DELAY. And the outgoing light, will be of the exact same frequency as the incoming light, SO LONG AS THE MOLECULE REMAINS UNMOLESTED BY OTHER MOLECULES DURING THIS TIME DELAY.
Now lets look what Peter Pan sez. Peter Pan doesn’t have a better predictive model. But you see Peter Pan is not just Peter Pan. It just so happens that Peter Pan is QUANTUM BOY 101. And being QUANTUM BOY 101 is no measure of comprehensibility. It doesn’t mean that scientifically you hold the trump cards. Rather it means that sociologically YOU ARE ALLOWED TO TRUMP ANYTHING THATS COMPREHENSIBLE.
PETER PAN SEZ:
That is partially correct. The effect of any rotational states can be largely ignored in the atmosphere as the quantum states for rotation are in the microwave band.
I SEZ’
See that? Didn’t say a damn thing pertinent or relevant to what Milton is trying to get across, with the perfectly sound predictive model that Milton is using. Perhaps Peter is right. Perhaps rotational states can be ignored? I’ve ignored them so far in my explanation?????? And if I thought I wasn’t able to ignore them I wouldn’t have ignored them. In fact they play no part in the explanation, when the doctrine of the shell-jumping electron will do just fine??????
Perhaps our model is good enough in terms of the electron absorbing the photon, jumping up to a higher rotational shell, jumping back down. Re-issuing a new photon at the exact same wave-length. So scattering with a tiny delay. So long as the molecule is not molested DURING that tiny delay by another molecule.
Well what do you think? Is that an adequate predictive model without anything else? You see Peter was just trying to drop the QUANTUM-BOY-101 TRUMP CARD. He wasn’t doing anything else. He wasn’t adding or subtracting a damn thing from Miltons story.
MILTON SEZ:
So, they can gain and lose energy by molecular collisions
PETER PAN SEZ:
Yes but they can only gain and lose translational kinetic enrgy from (non GHG) molecules like N2 or O2.
I SEZ
Well Peter I’m unconvinced. Firstly your point is irrelevant even if correct. Since the very next molecule a CO2 molecule is going to bang into is not likely to be another CO2 molecule. But then again if it is, I’m unconvinced that you know for sure that this will not lead to some of the electromagnetic energy being converted into kinetic energy. And therefore to thermal energy, if we believe that thermal energy is kinetic energy at the molecular level.
And I’d be even more unconvinced if you were talking about the CO2 molecule interacting with an H20 molecule. It appears utterly foolish to suggest that the molecules segregate themselves due to us calling them “greenhouse gases” or otherwise. That would be a co-incidence if ever there was one.
But what is mostly unconvincing is not these assertions. But simply you Peter. You are unconvincing. Because even if you are right in your assertions so far you are being entirely irrelevant.
PETER PAN SEZ:
This is not significantly different from what happens when two N2 or O2 molecules collide with each other and is not a significant factor in IR emissions from CO2. There is negligeable crossover between translational and vibrational states at normal temperatures and pressures.
SO I SEZ:
Unfortunately for Peter Pan, if he could define clearly what he means, we may be able to confirm that he is correct. However this statement, like all other statement by Peter Pan, is utterly irrelevant. His statements do not detract from, or add to, the thrust of Milton’s argument in any way.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
AIR PRESSURE.
The virtue of the electron-shells model of light interacting with a molecule, is that it predicts DIRECTLY that it will be AIR PRESSURE that tells us how effective the alleged greenhouse gases will be in converting electro-magnetic energy into thermal energy. Because it is air pressure that will tell us how likely it is that the molecule that has just absorbed the light, will be molested by another molecule, in the tiny alleged time delay, that the molecule has, prior to otherwise …… effectively …… merely scattering the light that this molecule has absorbed.
This is the take-home story. The rest of this screed was just me mucking about. The standard undergraduate model predicts DIRECTLY that it is air pressure that makes greenhouse gases …… water vapour alone exempted, effective. The standard high-school, or first-year Chemistry version of the atom predicts the utterly crucial role of air pressure in this story.
That means that you and me must be a little bit open-minded about how effective CO2 could possibly be as a warming gas. We only know empirically that AT OUR AIR PRESSURE marginal increases in CO2 are utterly feeble, either as a net warmer or a net cooler. We have to be open-minded enough, that if the extra CO2 is part of a very fast wind hitting the mountains up high …. or if that the extra CO2 came in conjunction with higher air pressure for some reason, that it might turn from being a feeble warming/cooling gas, to being a more effective warming gas, at some higher air pressure, or combination of other factors.
And further to this. Do we really know for sure that Air Pressure doesn’t ALTER ENTIRELY the absorption characteristics of the molecules? Either taken together or as a group?
Do we have the data to see what happens to the absorption-scattering regions when more and more air pressure is applied? How about solid oxygen? So pressurized its solid? Will solid oxygen not convert ALL LIGHT not reflected into thermal energy?
And if not solid how about liquid? And if not liquid, how about pressurized to be near liquid?
See the leftist Gramscian lunatics have put out so much of a climate of fear, that we no longer have people in the business asking the right questions.
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You know Brendan you really are a jerk. Why don’t you change your name to “Mr Sophistry” so we know what sort of spammer you are?
Just a suggestion.
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Richard: “Indeed, it is too silly to be worthy of contempt: it only warrants ridicule.”
An interesting and perhaps revealing response. When the CRU emails were first released, there was a general view among climate sceptics that the AGW game was up, that the house of cards was about to tumble.
Sceptics were sure that some climate scientists would start ‘fessing up to criminal behaviour, coming clean about their corrupt scientific practices and dobbing in their mates for reduced charges. Of course none of this happened, since such a scenario depended on another mistaken sceptic standby: claims of fraud, hoax and swindle.
I think climate sceptics are now slowly coming to the realisation that there isn’t going to be any grand collapse and satisfying blood-letting. It seems to me that this realisation is causing a distinct note of irritation to enter sceptics’ blog comments. Perhaps it’s the start of a grief process.
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Brendan H, Peter Pan, and MattB, Long response keep up with me, if you can?
I am not a scientist per say, like some of the others on this blog.
Put I am a politically experienced person, social crusader and also
seen how politics and social opinion can sway people. Because the general public do (did?) believe people in authority with a Ph.D behind their name or Professor (that is only an academic awarded title for someone who has written a book actually or done something of merit in research). Awarded by the University they attend. All universities want their Ph.D’s to become Associate Professors or full titled Professors, it gives then universal accreditation! And quite a few do in my estimation don’t deserve their titles. I believe in people without academic titles who have
(they could have academic titles too) but haven’t been paid to prove the AGW hypothesis? They weren’t paid not to? Any scientific report should try to give a report that can disapprove also.
The AGW consensus is not only scientifically incorrect, but morally
wrong. And is fraudulently contrived. This is not new, alternative views on AGW have been suggested very vocally for years, but have gone unheard by the media and governments. Because governments have spent trillions of dollars in trying to prove AGW was a scientific fact? And it isn’t! Ergo, those paid to present a report, are obviously correct. NOT!
The solution as the UN IPCC, Copenhagen Summit based on wrong data, corrupted data and also one eyed scientific analysis, that is also wrong. And very strong political viewpoints, like capitalism was causing problems with and disadvantaging the advancement of undeveloped countries through these developed country’s CO2 emissions.
(OT – when I was young and quite pretty, a girl told me when I arrived at a dance – “Why do you come here!” “To dance?” I replied. “Well friggin go home you bitch! Because while you are here I’ll have less men to ask me for a dance!” My reply “I brought my own partner though?” All she did all night was to harass my partner. (Most gals were ladies, but this one was extreme, she almost started a cat-fight with me eventually).
The point of that metaphor is – when you challenge someone even
without intention, they will pick up what they hate about you and your presentation. All I’ve seen on this blog and others, is that those who disagree with the AGW hypothesis, have be challenged that they are deniers, without any substance, and are wrong. So obviously the warmists are threatened, and all they can do is castigate those without cause, to substantiate their ego.
The solutions offered by the UN chairman, were stop eating meat, (Pachauri’s idea and Vegans etc, check out the Google) and PETA of course! Burning fossil fuels, as against so called clean energy. And those awful smelling petrol burning cars, into electrics, wind and solar, geothermal and wave electricity plants. And nuclear. The only one that could be any good is in the long term solar thermal, geothermal, and wave. And of course nuclear if countries could afford them at 5 billion a reactor. (And the chairman of TERI Europe, and India, into clean energy investments – is Dr Pachauri,and Al Gore, who has a conflict of interests like Al Gore who has also invested in clean energy)
But if CO2 emissions from coal fired electricity plants are not causing climate change, why WHY at this stage the rush to transfer our electricity suppliers to those that are unproven, unsuccessful and might increase costs to consumers? When CO2 emissions are not driving climate change.
Look big urban cities, and populations do create pollutions. I lived through the 1950’s London smogs when we were offered SMOG masks and 6,000 people died!
It started with Greenhouse gases, then went onto global warming, then climate change caused by increased CO2 emissions from developed countries mainly because of their industrial emissions.
And higher populations, and economic superiority.
That is that primary point of argument… Skeptics say AGW is wrong, CO2 emissions do not create or drive climate change. PERIOD! And have proven it with science, that the AGW alarmists have been pushing down peoples throats for years. It is a lie, fraud or manipulative political source of info to suit the Church of Climatology.
So why change our way of life with ETS or Cap & Trade taxation?
Other than make those like Al Gore et al, richer by investing in clean energy and Carbon Credit Trading?
I am an environmentalist. I like most on this blog believe we should start to remember that Mother Earth can go so long being exploited in many ways, be it farming methodology, huge urban areas, open cut mining, water supplies and waste. Just to name a few. Including the supplies of oil, gas and electricity. Each country or region has to analysise this depending on topography and also demography.
These undeveloped countries, have no dependable electricity supplies. The developed countries are concerned as it seems with
cutting Greenhouse gases, not just to cut down pollution, to Save The Planet. But to halt unnatural Climate Change by cutting CO2 emissions. That it won’t do, when you have trillions invested in CCT’s. All that will do is make electricity supplies more expensive as the supplies supplement their Carbon emissions with permits to keep supplying what they did before! Get my gist.
However, in my opinion, those areas that are exploited soon start to show degradation. Air pollution, reserves of water are depleting, as the population needs demand more than can naturally be supplied.
Until a few months ago, with the rain Australia has received, the
South Queensland Cobbar water region was backcrupt now with this
rain, the Chinese are after that area. Why! To get land that can be used for food and cotton production. Australia will be partly
owned by a foreign country… all because some dick head said,
Climate change … That’s is what Tony Windsor, Independent MP, of the New England region (where I live) is trying to stop. Foreign
takeover of our vast lands. Because Australia in the not to far
distant future, will be one of the large land masses that will not be so effected by an ice age. Or mini ice age, like the Northern Hemisphere.
AGW is the biggest crime against humanity. People, scientists who have been paid millions to prove a ‘theory’ at the public’s expense.
When that hidden draft treaty, suggested a world governance to control developed countries CO2 emissions they would control and fine if necessary should they exceed their quoted emissions. The moneys collected would be distributed to undeveloped countries (who are they?) I really smelt a rat.
And if Peter Pan, Matt B and Brendan H, can’t see that, what are you trying to prove? I doubt your sincerity, and think that the
Greens, Vegans and the CCT investors are the ones you support.
Hence trying to muddle the science to prove as the UN IPCC did to prove your unproven hypothesis! Just to add to finances of Investors in CCT’s and Clean energy!
In my opinion, you are frauds just like Pachauri, Jones, Mann, Schneider (who once said an ice age was coming) Hansen, and the prime one Al Gore. And are not helping humanity but trying to bring down to a level that will not help countries especially developed countries.
Cheers and one who believes in the Freedom of Speech.
Bush Bunny from Oz
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Brendan H:
At #244 you say:
No “perhaps”, my statement is very “revealing”. It reveals my annoyance and contempt for your obfuscation, your complete failure to address any issue put to you, your refusal to admit when you are shown to be wrong, and your repeated attempts to change the subject.
Many (including me) have real lives and, therefore, have much better things to do than waste time by pandering to your ego.
Richard
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“An interesting and perhaps revealing response. When the CRU emails were first released, there was a general view among climate sceptics that the AGW game was up, that the house of cards was about to tumble.”
What a ridiculous lie. For starters this racket didn’t have any evidence in its favour from the getgo. As well most of us knew they were rigging the data before the emails were published. So almost none of us took the point of view that you claim we took. If being caught redhanded was going to stop this racket, then this business would have been defeated a long time ago.
We simply won’t stop this matter until we get serious about sacking people. Anyone releases a report on the taxpayer dime saying “climate change is real” then we’ve got to go and start sacking people. For the idiocy of the statement and for the attempt to inject Orwellian language into the situation.
“Climate change is real”
The answer to that is, “Clear your desk. You are fired.”
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Richard: “…your complete failure to address any issue put to you…”
Let’s consult the record.
At #238 I offered an argument:
“Yes, but the statement: “there is nothing unusual or unprecedented in recent climate behaviour” does not count as empirical evidence. Rather, it is a judgement about empirical evidence.
Take these two statements:
1. “Two mm of rain fell today.”
2. “It seldom rains around these parts.”
(1) is a statement of empirical evidence; (2) is a judgement based on the evidence.
Your statement is the same type as (2), ie a claim.”
At #239 you said: “I give up because I have much better things to do than to repeatedly respond to your idiocy.”
The evidence shows that you ducked the argument and then resorted to abuse.
“…and your repeated attempts to change the subject.”
My argument has always been about the status of this statement: “There is no evidence that anything happening with regard to the climate today differs from what has happened previously.”
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Liar:
You assert:
Bollocks!
To prove the statement wrong you would only need to cite one example of “anything happening with regard to the climate today that differs from what has happened previously”.
You have not cited any such example.
And, of course, your failure to cite such an example is because the statement is true.
In this thread and others you have lied, libeled, obfuscated, failed to admit when you are shown to be wrong (I have yet to notice any statement you have made which is right), and changed the subject whenever you are shown to be wrong.
Go away because you are a waste of space.
Richard
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Richard: “To prove the statement wrong…”
You’re trying to change the subject. My argument has focused on the issue of whether or not a particular statement functions as a claim. Here is my original post:
Tide: “Also, for the record, “denialists” do not make claims.”
Yes, they do. You just made one. Here’s another: “There is no evidence that anything happening with regard to the climate today differs from what has happened previously.”
The primary issue is: do climate sceptics make claims? Your handwaving and personal attackes do not change that fact.
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There is one thing that is certain in regards to scientific consensus. That is that it is often proved to be false doctrine. It was once scientific consensus that the earth was the centre of the universe. Galilao was investigated by the Inquisition for saying that the Earth revolved around the sun. It was once scientific consensus that the earth was flat. Until Columbus turned this theory on its head. It is a fact that the great steps forward made by mankind have been made by those who were not shackled by scientific consensus. It would be interesting to know what the neighbours thought of our distant forbear as he started to make the first wheel.
If we are going to be governed by this latest so called scientific consensus we are destined to be returned to the Dark Ages.
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Brendan H @229,
Sorry, I didn’t notice that you addressed me again until today. But one hardly needs to answer. The stuff you called out from Wiki was thoroughly demolished. I think that takes care of the reliability of what’s found there. Do you begin to get the picture?
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I think Brenda H with respect. One of the arguments by skeptical scientists is that you cannot judge any climate change over a 50 year period? You have to go back thousands and then millions.
The Medieval Warm Period that was warmer than now, then followed by the mini ice age that really hasn’t ended it seems, and of course Mann’s Hockey stick thing was not correct. So we are it seems still in an ice age, but a warm period, that will go up and down for a while for the next what 100 years perhaps, then …
gradually the temps will plunged by a mere 5 c. However, the summers won’t warm too well in North America, and in the extremes
the snow will not melt and then become ice. Take another 1000 years. But the truth is, our agricultural growing season will shorten… and that will effect agricultural production.
Don’t worry, get a visa now and come to Australia or the Southern Hemisphere, because we won’t be that badly effected for at least
50,000 years by which time, few humans will be left arrive. Get real we were a interglacial species. Some might survive in highly
structured colonies, or we may have during those 50k years changed the atmosphere on Mars that according to Carl Sagan could be possible. Nice iron rich soil eh, could be good for growing fruits
and pastures.
Hope you haven’t thrown away your Ugg boots, yet?
luv
Bush bunny from Oz.
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Women are ignored on this blog. I’m off to bed, been at an town
local autumn festival today, it was lovely. See yer soon.
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Let us look at the climate change alarmists from the perspective of history. 3000 years ago the Phonecians traded with Britain for what was in those days the equivalent of uranium or explosives, the components that are essential in the production of the most modern weapons.. To them Britain was known as the Tin Islands or Cassiterides. Tin was essential in the production of bronze and bronze was the best weapons material of the age. They were the arms dealers of their day. We can only imagine how lucrative the tin trade was, but it warrented sailing from the east coast of the Mediteranian to the ends of the known world. A very hazardous venture to say the least, especially when they reached the Atlantic.
Once they established their trade routes they would no doubt want to protect them from other potential traders. So what could they do? They would have certainly lost many ships on these voyages, there in laid the answer to their problem. They lied, they lied about ships falling off the end of the world and they lied about sea monsters that sank ships. Every sailor would have new frightening tales to tell on his return home. This strategy worked better than they could have dreamed of. Their lies were believed for over 2000 years! If we look at the consequence of this, it could be said that they held back world exploration over this 2000 year period.
We now come to the present and we find nothing has changed. Those who will profit from the trading in carbon credits and other climate change industries have lied. They will continue to lie because there are billions of dollars to be made out of this scam. They will continue to lie because as Hitler said make the lie big, keep on telling it and it will become the truth. Just as the lies of the Phonecians became the truth for 2000 years.
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Bush Bunny: “Women are ignored on this blog.”
I’m not intentionally ignoring you, Bush Bunny, but what you have to say is OT to my argument.
I also notice that you assume I live in the northern hemisphere.
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Couldn’t care a stuff Brendan H. You are always OT to me anyway, I’m only trying to put you back on the right track. I’m a conciliator and teacher by profession.
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Brendan H. No I have never assumed you live in the Northern Hemisphere, those posters are usually more intelligent and perceptive to the cons being perpetrated by AGW alarmists and their peers and the prime suspects in this crime against humanity. The Al Gores, Hansen, Jones, Schneiders, Manns to JUST name a few. And the Goldman Sachs Investment bankers whose once Australian director was Malcolm Turnbull who has promised to cross the floor to side with an ETS bill. And alleged to have invested millions in Carbon Credits.
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Jo? There is a post missing, a poster said they were making their own solar panels. That’s good. Australia has run out of them, and importing them from the USA.
[Bush Bunny, the post you refer to was spam, the link connected to a site marketing all kinds of stuff. It was deleted. The JoNova site has been popular and that means spammers are interested. ED]
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