Simple climate change refutation challenge

[TrueSceptic]

This conclusion appears to be rejected by TrueSceptic who maintains that it is warmer in all regions today than in the past x number of years. Alric appears to concur. They also appear to feel that Global Mean Temperature is the best way to understand warming and cooling trends on Earth.

I don't think I've said that. I said that all parts of the earth have been warmer at some point in the past!

I also haven't said that GMTs are the best way to to understand warming and cooling. I just think it's a single metric that indicates warming or cooling, whereas some argue that there is no such thing as a GMT.

All the same, thanks for trying to summarise this thread.

 

[neltana]

My apologizes for getting it wrong.

Sometimes, I wish this thread would have a scoreboard or something.

 

[TrueSceptic]

My apologizes for getting it wrong.

Sometimes, I wish this thread would have a scoreboard or something.

No problem. It can be difficult to remember who said what.

 

[David Rodale]

This is funny because I think I've hardly mentioned the Hockey Stick.

BTW I would take you more seriously if you stopped referencing McIntyre all the time. Why this obsession?

Huh? McIntyre is at the center of the HS controversy. It is he who first questioned its validity. You seem to have agreed with everything Alric has said thus far, is that wrong?

The "obsession" is quite obviously from Alric. If he is going to use the hockey stick to claim 20th century warming is unprecedented, he can expect to be challenged.

My contention is the reported temperatures in the current record is unreliable and warm biased. Do you agree?

 

[Alric]

There have been a lot of other issues raised, but it seems that these are the major points of contention right now.

The problem is that science is not a democracy and the data presented by both sides is not equal.

On the side of the scientific consensus is data, publications in highly respected journals and statements from highly respected scientific organizations.

On the side of the contrarians we've seen papers misinterpreted or of dubious caliber, complaints about fraud that go nowhere instead of reporting different data, and lots and lots of individual blog references.

The scientific consensus is that climate change is real. People like Diamond and David Rodale are harming the effort to effect change.

 

[David Rodale]

The problem is that science is not a democracy and the data presented by both sides is not equal.

On the side of the scientific consensus is data, publications in highly respected journals and statements from highly respected scientific organizations.

On the side of the contrarians we've seen papers misinterpreted or of dubious caliber, complaints about fraud that go nowhere instead of reporting different data, and lots and lots of individual blog references.

The scientific consensus is that climate change is real. People like Diamond and David Rodale are harming the effort to effect change.

Argument from Authority noted.

Consensus is not science Alric.

You ignored my post. Please respond. Thanks.

Do water droplets freeze from the inside out or the outside in? What was the consensus for 60 years?

 

[a_unique_person]

Argument from authority is not a fallacy if that authority is a valid one. Otherwise we would never be able to build on the work of others, and everyone would always have to prove things themselves from first principles. (And I mean first, we would have to go back and re-invent basic mathematics and physics to do anything).

After 100 years, CO2 is still a GHG. That's a pretty robust finding.

 

[TrueSceptic]

Argument from Authority noted.

Consensus is not science Alric.

If consensus is irrelevant then why did Benny Peiser and Klaus-Martin Schulte try to prove there isn't one?

 

[Alric]

Argument from Authority noted.

Consensus is not science Alric.

Argument from the authority of the data.

Consensus is what you use to act upon.

 

[biostudent]

I really don't want to get into this topic, but I just want to say that some years ago, I attended some lectures given by a researcher who helped design the (probably older) models that are/were used to predict CO2 concentration, and he said this:
When we tested our models, we found that they were off by 50%. But we believed in them so strongly that we decided to look for where the CO2 was going. We believed it had to be the oceans. Yep, the oceans.

I've never been able to trust those people since. I can't trust a scientist who gets up on stage and states that he sticks with his models because he believes in them while at the same time admits that they're off by 50% (and no I didn't make that number up). I wish I had recorded the lecture because it seems that people generally don't know how inaccurate the original models that started all of this stuff were.

 

[David Wong]

Okay, I'm a layman here.

Am I understanding the anti AGW position correctly? Because as I understand it, they're saying:

1. Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas.

2. Yes, there has been an increase in CO2 in the last couple of centuries due to the burning of fossil fuels.

3. Yes, there is data indicating that as CO2 has risen, temperatures have also risen, which would in fact be consistent with the idea that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and that an increase of it would increase the greenhouse effect;

BUT

4. Either researchers are reading the temperature data wrong for some reason,

OR

5. There is probably some other factor causing the increase, which by sheer coincidence also kicked in right around the same time CO2 was increasing (such as the sun getting hotter, etc) and so this other factor has fooled the vast majority of the scientific community, causing them to blame CO2 for the increase, when in reality it was this other factor.

Am I understanding your position correctly?

Forgive me, I'm relatively new to this debate.

Actually, some GWS (Global Warming Sceptics) don't accept 1, 2, or 3.

I attempted to satirise GWS here but I've already seen in the few days I've been here that I did not go far enough!

Oh, and welcome!

Well, but not in this thread at least, not unless I'm reading it wrong. Nobody here seems to dispute 1 (that CO2 creates a greenhouse effect) or 2 (that there is more of it in the atmosphere now) and they at least acknowlege 3 (that there is data that shows an increase in temperature, whether the data was collected and interpreted correctly or not).

So their premise is that some other phemonema has, by coincidence, kicked in to cause the temperature increase, essentially "framing" CO2 for the crime, because most scientists have drawn a false conclusion.

Is this accurate? Can any of the AGW skeptics chime in on this? I see lots and lots of individual complaints about sources and agendas, but I can't get a sense of what they actually say is happening.

 

[Pipirr]

Can any of the AGW skeptics chime in on this? I see lots and lots of individual complaints about sources and agendas, but I can't get a sense of what they actually say is happening.

Likewise. I see lots of nitpicking of AGW, but no coherent hypothesis in its place.

If any of the skeptics would like to summarise their position, there are at least a few of us here who would like to hear it.

 

[jsfisher]

I've never been able to trust those people since. I can't trust a scientist who gets up on stage and states that he sticks with his models because he believes in them while at the same time admits that they're off by 50% (and no I didn't make that number up).

I interpret him differently then you. I took him to mean that he felt the fundamental principles in his hypothesis (= model) were sound, but at least one of the simplifying assumptions was suspect. He then worked out how to correct one of those assumptions to get the entire model back on track.

That is good science, actually.

Now, whether the model is still sound would require further testing against new data. This is where that validation concept comes in to play.

 

[a_unique_person]

I really don't want to get into this topic, but I just want to say that some years ago, I attended some lectures given by a researcher who helped design the (probably older) models that are/were used to predict CO2 concentration, and he said this:
When we tested our models, we found that they were off by 50%. But we believed in them so strongly that we decided to look for where the CO2 was going. We believed it had to be the oceans. Yep, the oceans.

I've never been able to trust those people since. I can't trust a scientist who gets up on stage and states that he sticks with his models because he believes in them while at the same time admits that they're off by 50% (and no I didn't make that number up). I wish I had recorded the lecture because it seems that people generally don't know how inaccurate the original models that started all of this stuff were.

The models are basically correct in that it is getting warmer, as predicted. In trying to predict the future climate of the planet, they are all we have got, and they are much more sophisticated now than they were twenty years ago. The absorption of CO2 by the oceans apparently is reducing now, to be less than was expected. The absorption is only delaying the inevitable.

 

[mhaze]

Quote:
See the "In Press" in 2006? That means NOT accepted for publication likely because it did not meet the peer review process. The telltale sign should be that none of those guys are climatologists. BTW, why are all these references PDFs from a link disembodied from any discussion?
​

Nope, you do not understand what it means. And by the way, this concept doesn't require a peer reviewed paper to grasp. Does the atmosphere heat the ocean, or the ocean heat the atmosphere? If you had heated a closed chamber on a stove, and that chamber was half full of water and half of air, how would you measure the "global average temperature" in that chamber? For discussion assume the liquid has 500x as many atoms as the gas.

http://www.atypon-link.com/WDG/toc/j.../1?cookieSet=1

Can you show that the paper by the non-climatologists was published in a peer review journal?

You were shown you were ignorant about "In Press"; now you duck and dodge and ignore my response. You have been given the pdf; you have been given reference to the Peer reviewed journal.

Author(s): Christopher Essex 1, | Ross McKitrick 2 | Bjarne Andresen 3 doi: 10.1515/JNETDY.2007.001

Abstract text
Physical, mathematical, and observational grounds are employed to show that there is no physically meaningful global temperature for the Earth in the context of the issue of global warming. While it is always possible to construct statistics for any given set of local temperature data, an infinite range of such statistics is mathematically permissible if physical principles provide no explicit basis for choosing among them. Distinct and equally valid statistical rules can and do show opposite trends when applied to the results of computations from physical models and real data in the atmosphere. A given temperature field can be interpreted as both “warming” and “cooling” simultaneously, making the concept of warming in the context of the issue of global warming physically ill-posed.

Author(s): Christopher Essex 1, | Ross McKitrick 2 | Bjarne Andresen 3

Heeeelllllloooooooo???

 

[TrueSceptic]

I interpret him differently then you. I took him to mean that he felt the fundamental principles in his hypothesis (= model) were sound, but at least one of the simplifying assumptions was suspect. He then worked out how to correct one of those assumptions to get the entire model back on track.

That is good science, actually.

I agree. It would be a miracle if a model of such a complex system was accurate from the beginning, and there is nothing odd about that scientist describing the failings in his early models.

Now, whether the model is still sound would require further testing against new data. This is where that validation concept comes in to play.

Yes, but how do we do that? We don't have a control Earth, do we?

 

[jsfisher]

Yes, but how do we do that? We don't have a control Earth, do we?

The lack of a control makes it take longer; it doesn't make it impossible.

 

[biostudent]

I interpret him differently then you. I took him to mean that he felt the fundamental principles in his hypothesis (= model) were sound, but at least one of the simplifying assumptions was suspect. He then worked out how to correct one of those assumptions to get the entire model back on track.

That is good science, actually.

Now, whether the model is still sound would require further testing against new data. This is where that validation concept comes in to play.

I think it's dangerous to pressure policy makers into making laws and signing international agreements when you're not sure of your models. The Kyoto Protocol was in full swing when this guy was saying that he "believed" the oceans were sucking up the CO2. That has never stopped bothering me.

 

[Alric]

Heeeelllllloooooooo???

I was able to find it after all.

http://www.atypon-link.com/WDG/doi/abs/10.1515/JNETDY.2007.001

Now that I re-read it what I wrote is incorrect. In press does mean accepted for publication of course. But one theoretical paper or any one isolated result obviously does not prove that an entire field is wrong.

Obviously other points of view have prevailed since a mass retraction of all papers describing global temperature did not happen. But they are from blog posts that I don't consider worth discussing within the goals of this thread.

 

[Alric]

I think it's dangerous to pressure policy makers into making laws and signing international agreements when you're not sure of your models.

Agree. You only do it based on data. Modeling has little bearing on the question of whether climate change is happening or not. Natural phenomena like glacier melting and temperature does that. Modeling is important for future projections.