Simple climate change refutation challenge

[jsfisher]

Allowing for short-term noise, how do you know that it is false, rather than just unproven?

The statement wasn't presented in a context like that. It was an absolute relationship being alleged. And, worse, false conclusions were being drawn based on that false premise.

How about this: What would be a suitable, properly qualified replacement for the bogus statement? How would the prior arguments then fair in this new context?

 

[TrueSceptic]

Except that in high resolution, the temperatures rise first and then eight centuries later the carbon dioxide rises. Never the other way around. Carbon dioxide rise has never ever caused a measureable temperature rise in the real atmosphere. It is a feedback, not a forcing.

So explain how cause follows effect by centuries without invoking time travel.

The correlation is the other way around from your beliefs. Are you going to change your beliefs in the light of new evidence? Or are you going to steadfastly maintain your beliefs by alleging that the data is faulty or I am biased or something else equally irrational.

I know which way I'm betting.

You really have problems being reasonable, don't you? I asked if there appeared to be a correlation. I never asserted any causality in either direction, did I?

 

[TrueSceptic]

The statement wasn't presented in a context like that. It was an absolute relationship being alleged. And, worse, false conclusions were being drawn based on that false premise.

How about this: What would be a suitable, properly qualified replacement for the bogus statement? How would the prior arguments then fair in this new context?

Which specific statement do you mean: we've had quite a few? We need to establish whether this is just a matter of semantics.

 

[Alric]

It's not temperature, you moron.

Ehrr it is. Anything after the middle of the 1800 is from metereological station data. The hockey stick part is from the middle of the 1900s. Previous data uses other proxies but most studies agree temperature was never higher than the present. Actually only Loehel's paper is the only that argues that its possible that it may be just short of being a little higher at one point in the past.

We have better things to do with our lives than try to de-convince someone of an irrational belief.

Disagreeing with the scientific consensus has always seem irrational to me.

 

[Alric]

Alric, it is very easy to juggle the axis on graphs and make things look "visually better".

Are you saying you can make a graph that makes it appear that two sets of data are correlated, but in reality a third set that may not appear correlated is and statistics can show it?

That is impossible. Its actually much easier to lie with the statistics than with raw data.

But according to you there are sets of parameters other than C02 that correlate better with global temperature. I am still waiting for a link for something like that.

 

[Alric]

No, I want you to back up something you claimed. Until you do so, I have no option but to assume it is fictional.

I have already asked Alric to provide more support for the OP.

I think that's quite reasonable.

What more support than the data itself. That is more than other have shown..

 

[Alric]

Which specific statement do you mean: we've had quite a few? We need to establish whether this is just a matter of semantics.

He is still going on about me saying that "If CO2 goes up so does temperature"

Pixel42 said it best:

Oh come on. "If CO2 concentration increases, temperature increases" is not a bogus statement. Just because many other factors also affect atmospheric temperature, and the cumulative effect of all those other factors can sometimes cancel out - or even more than cancel out - the effect of an increase in CO2 concentration doesn't make the statement bogus. It shouldn't be necessary to qualify all such statements by adding "all other things being equal" to stop people wilfully misunderstanding them.

 

[Alric]

The NASA site hosting the graphs I originally posted has been down. Here are similar graphs"

 

[TrueSceptic]

What more support than the data itself. That is more than other have shown..

I know that, but they are playing a game*. Either beat them at their own game or show that their own game doesn't actually exist.

*They might not know this.

 

[TrueSceptic]

Ehrr it is. Anything after the middle of the 1800 is from metereological station data. The hockey stick part is from the middle of the 1900s. Previous data uses other proxies but most studies agree temperature was never higher than the present. Actually only Loehel's paper is the only that argues that its possible that it may be just short of being a little higher at one point in the past.

[qimg]http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A.gif[/qimg]



Disagreeing with the scientific consensus has always seem irrational to me.

You are far too nice and reasonable. He didn't deserve it.

 

[Pixel42]

Of course it is a bogus statement. It was presented as an absolute truth, and from that absolute truth conclusions were being drawn. Sure, other factors exist, but that is the point, isn't it? You cannot make absolute statements about CO₂ concentrations because there are other factors. Do you contest that point?

It's perfectly possible to make absolute statements about the effect of each individual factor. Climatologists do it all the time, without finding it necessary to preface each one with the qualification "all other factors being equal". Only someone who was wilfully misunderstanding Alric's intention would have interpreted his statement in the way you did.

 

[Diamond]

Are you really the Skeptic Wiki Founder, or is that a joke I'm not getting?

Yes I am. You are clearly credulous to a fault if it comes out of a computer.

 

[Diamond]

The NASA site hosting the graphs I originally posted has been down. Here are similar graphs"

[qimg]http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/b/bb/1000_Year_Temperature_Comparison.png[/qimg]

As I wrote: all of the multiproxy studies which make up that graph overweight one proxy. Some of them use the Mann Hockey Stick as a proxy in itself (or at least the PC1).

All of them fail statistical tests for significance. All of them show spurious correlation to something called "global mean temperature"

They are all worthless.

 

[Diamond]

You really have problems being reasonable, don't you? I asked if there appeared to be a correlation. I never asserted any causality in either direction, did I?

No, but if you're about to assert that carbon dioxide rise causes warming then the witness of the ice core record is definitely against you.

But what's mere evidence when it comes up against an irrational belief?

 

[Diamond]

And we haven't been doubling the CO2 concentration ever in the past. It can be a feedback and a forcing. The basic physics dictate that it is a greenhouse gas.

Ever in the past? Really?

Here's the CO2 content of the atmosphere over the last 500 million years. If today's concentration is scaled to 1, then you can see that for most of that time, the atmosphere has had much more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than it does today.

The source of this graph is ‘Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels for the last 500 million years’ by Daniel H. Rothman (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99 (7), April 2, 2002, pp. 4167-4171. so no carping about "peer-reviewed science" will be entertained.

So your premise is simply false. Carbon dioxide in the current atmosphere is abnormally low compared to most of the Earth's history since probably the Cambrian explosion. Certainly since the Ordovian (whose latter stages were a deep ice age for millions of years by the way)

And it still has nothing to do with climate change except as a delayed response.

 

[Diamond]

Disagreeing with the scientific consensus has always seem irrational to me.

Go tell Galileo, Darwin, Einstein and Wegener. Tell them that they're being "irrational"

Its much more likely that's its you who are irrational because you fundamentally misunderstand science and what constitutes proof.

 

[a_unique_person]

Ever in the past? Really?

Here's the CO2 content of the atmosphere over the last 500 million years. If today's concentration is scaled to 1, then you can see that for most of that time, the atmosphere has had much more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere than it does today.

http://www.internationalskeptics.com/forums/imagehosting/114947b6b11f87495.jpg

The source of this graph is ‘Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels for the last 500 million years’ by Daniel H. Rothman (Massachusetts Institute of Technology), published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 99 (7), April 2, 2002, pp. 4167-4171. so no carping about "peer-reviewed science" will be entertained.

So your premise is simply false. Carbon dioxide in the current atmosphere is abnormally low compared to most of the Earth's history since probably the Cambrian explosion. Certainly since the Ordovian (whose latter stages were a deep ice age for millions of years by the way)

And it still has nothing to do with climate change except as a delayed response.

I made no claims as to how the current CO2 compares to past levels. Obviously, with all the Carbon we are digging up, there was a lot more in the past. Sea levels were much higher, the climate was vastly different.

No one has ever said otherwise. I have no idea how your point relates to the current debate.

 

[Diamond]

I made no claims as to how the current CO2 compares to past levels. Obviously, with all the Carbon we are digging up, there was a lot more in the past. Sea levels were much higher, the climate was vastly different.

No one has ever said otherwise. I have no idea how your point relates to the current debate.

Are you saying that the laws of physics as regards to carbon dioxide and "the greenhouse effect" suddenly changed in the last 100 years? Or is this yet another attempt to weasel out of a clear statement that you made that is easily refuted?

Your claim about carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere made a claim about the past. That claim was falsified by empirical evidence.

You make statement after statement that are simply scientifically false. Then when you get caught by evidence that counters the false statements, you then claim that you weren't making the statement that people thought you were making and can't understand the misconception.

The statement that "It [CO2] can be a feedback and a forcing. The basic physics dictate that it is a greenhouse gas." is a meaningless statement unless you quantify what you mean by it. If its a forcing, then we should have a record of carbon dioxide rise preceding temperature rise - but we don't. Why don't the laws of physics as you understand them lead to empirical evidence? Could it possibly be that your understanding is at fault?

Just for once in your life, admit that you are wrong about something. Go on. You can do it!

 

[Pixel42]

If its a forcing, then we should have a record of carbon dioxide rise preceding temperature rise

AFAIK none of the warmings during the period covered by your graph are believed to have been initiated by a sudden spontaneous increase in CO2. The immediate causes of these warmings were variations in the earth's orbit, a continent drifting away from a pole etc etc. As the earth warmed CO2 was slowly released from the oceans and permafrost (hence the lag). This CO2 then amplified the warming which was already occurring. That's my understanding, anyway.

ETA: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2004/12/co2-in-ice-cores/

It comes as no surprise that other factors besides CO2 affect climate. Changes in the amount of summer sunshine, due to changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun that happen every 21,000 years, have long been known to affect the comings and goings of ice ages. Atlantic ocean circulation slowdowns are thought to warm Antarctica, also.

From studying all the available data (not just ice cores), the probable sequence of events at a termination goes something like this. Some (currently unknown) process causes Antarctica and the surrounding ocean to warm. This process also causes CO2 to start rising, about 800 years later. Then CO2 further warms the whole planet, because of its heat-trapping properties. This leads to even further CO2 release. So CO2 during ice ages should be thought of as a "feedback", much like the feedback that results from putting a microphone too near to a loudspeaker.

In other words, CO2 does not initiate the warmings, but acts as an amplifier once they are underway. From model estimates, CO2 (along with other greenhouse gases CH4 and N2O) causes about half of the full glacial-to-interglacial warming.

 

[a_unique_person]

Are you saying that the laws of physics as regards to carbon dioxide and "the greenhouse effect" suddenly changed in the last 100 years? Or is this yet another attempt to weasel out of a clear statement that you made that is easily refuted?

Your claim about carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere made a claim about the past. That claim was falsified by empirical evidence.

You make statement after statement that are simply scientifically false. Then when you get caught by evidence that counters the false statements, you then claim that you weren't making the statement that people thought you were making and can't understand the misconception.

The statement that "It [CO2] can be a feedback and a forcing. The basic physics dictate that it is a greenhouse gas." is a meaningless statement unless you quantify what you mean by it. If its a forcing, then we should have a record of carbon dioxide rise preceding temperature rise - but we don't. Why don't the laws of physics as you understand them lead to empirical evidence? Could it possibly be that your understanding is at fault?

Just for once in your life, admit that you are wrong about something. Go on. You can do it!

Pixel has got the idea right.

You keep on about the temperature record, but you forget, we weren't around back then, burning millions of years of fossil fuels worth of carbon in a century or two. We are the joker in the pack.

IIRC, there have been some times when it has been suggested that CO2 was a forcing, when upwellings of CO2 from the ocean have occured.