Merged Global Warming Discussion II: Heated Conversation

[DC]

True. I did okay in high school Physics and two years of college Physics, but otherwise I have to depend on authority. I accept the authority of Freeman Dyson, Ivar Giaever, Lubos Motl, Richard Lindzen, and Harold Lewis. Since my scientific understanding is so limited, I must judge the arguments more on the manner in which participants to the discussion comport themselves. Withholding data, manipulating the peer review process, cherry-picking, and calumniating the opposition discredits the pro-AGW side, in my eyes. Right.Not according to Freeman Dyson. Plants eat it.Clouds reflect sunlight. Nothing exotic about that--has been understood for over a millennium.

when you have a flawed understanding and depend on experts. why go to the minority of wich some are not even experts on this topic.? why not stick with the vast majority of experts?

is it confirmation bias? because they say what you already believe?

 

[DC]

Did we? Then speak carefully. Doesn't "for a living" then imply a financial stake in emphasizing (perhaps exaggerating) the relevance of the topic? And what "stuff"? Computer models? Pollen in lake sediments? Tree rings? Oxygen isotopes in ice cores? Calcium isotopes in fossil mollusks? Orbital mechanics? Atmospheric/geological chemical interaction?

oh dear that childish and selective "financial stake" nonsense.....

do you doubt there is a thing called cancer? you know all those researchers dedicating their career in researching cancer and cures for it all have "financial stake" in that cancer really exists and is a problem.

everyone that is working has "financial stake"
this "argument" is totally useless.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

when you have a flawed understanding and depend on experts. why go to the minority of wich some are not even experts on this topic.? why not stick with the vast majority of experts?

is it confirmation bias? because they say what you already believe?

Nobody's "expert" on the topic. It's a very large and complicated theory (hence computer models). Experts have to trust other experts for parts that lie beyond their expertise.

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

oh dear that childish and selective "financial stake" nonsense.....

do you doubt there is a thing called cancer? you know all those researchers dedicating their career in researching cancer and cures for it all have "financial stake" in that cancer really exists and is a problem.

everyone that is working has "financial stake"
this "argument" is totally useless.

Okay. I agree. Why do AGW proponents routinely trot it out against skeptics?

 

[DC]

Nobody's "expert" on the topic. It's a very large and complicated theory (hence computer models). Experts have to trust other experts for parts that lie beyond their expertise.

so why do you stick to a small minority and not to the majority of experts from around the world?

 

[DC]

Okay. I agree. Why do AGW proponents routinely trot it out against skeptics?

why did you just use it?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

why did you just use it?

It's an argument with which the AGW faithful are familiar (usually aimed in the other direction).

 

[macdoc]

Okay. I agree. Why do AGW proponents routinely trot it out against skeptics?

Because in general the fossil fuel interests have funded a denial campaign in the hundreds of millions of dollars and most AGW deniers come from that right wing Faux news, libertarian of on some other planet bunch and that reality can be easily backed up.....unlike your continuous innuendo without a shred of support.

"Dark Money" Funds Climate Change Denial Effort: Scientific American
www.scientificamerican.com › Energy & Sustainability › News‎
Dec 23, 2013 - "The climate change countermovement has had a real political and .... top of this show me a government funded program that is against climate

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dark-money-funds-climate-change-denial-effort

An honest informed skeptic would be well past any doubts about the reality of AGW and into the fraught area of what to do about it.

Lots of room for informed skepticism on that front.

That haven't got there yet lumps you in with the Moncktons and anti-evo crowd he likes to hang with.

Climate change cranks in other words and not one thing you have posted here or elsewhere dissuades me of that view.

You are asked produce papers from journals that I clearly am unaware of and yet you produce......nothing....nada just more dodges and obfuscations. All too typical denier pattern when cornered in a science forum.

Interesting description of you

Mark Kleiman says
May 6, 2011 at 11:56 am

Malcolm Kirkpatrick’s right-wing post-modernism is left on this site on a “Know your enemy” basis.

http://www.samefacts.com/2011/05/he...th-and-medicine/ed-koch-does-the-right-thing/

At least our

"it's the sun" advocate tries with the science.

 

[Belz...]

Did we?

Sorry, by "we" I didn't mean to include you.

 

[Belz...]

Nobody's "expert" on the topic. It's a very large and complicated theory (hence computer models). Experts have to trust other experts for parts that lie beyond their expertise.

That's a convenient thing for you to say.

Now of could you will demonstrate that such fraud is NOT just the work of a very few of them ?

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Because in general the fossil fuel interests have funded a denial campaign in the hundreds of millions of dollars and most AGW deniers come from that right wing Faux news, libertarian of on some other planet bunch and that reality can be easily backed up.....unlike your continuous innuendo without a shred of support. ...http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=dark-money-funds-climate-change-denial-effort

If the source of funding determines the weight one assigns to scientific arguments, then why exempt the special interest group we call "government" from suspicion? They supply vastly more funds to the pro-AGW side than all other sources supply to the skeptic side.

An honest informed skeptic would be well past any doubts about the reality of AGW and into the fraught area of what to do about it.

That presumes the conclusion. Someone asked why I trust Freeman Dyson. I've been a fan since the publication of Disturbing the Universe. Are you saying Dyson is uninformed or dishonest?

Utterly irrelevant ad hominem deleted.

 

[DC]

If the source of funding determines the weight one assigns to scientific arguments, then why exempt the special interest group we call "government" from suspicion? They supply vastly more funds to the pro-AGW side than all other sources supply to the skeptic side. That presumes the conclusion. Someone asked why I trust Freeman Dyson. I've been a fan since the publication of Disturbing the Universe. Are you saying Dyson is uninformed or dishonest?

Utterly irrelevant ad hominem deleted.

well climate scientists that are actually researching the climate system have to pay for satellites, huge computer farms with climate models. field research all over the globe, and maintaining all this.

the deniers on the other hand don't do much research. they are spending far more time in the public instead of doing research.

 

[Corsair 115]

Maybe r-j, Malcolm, et. al. will answer the questions below this time.

Why have so many scientists and climatologists from around the world gotten and continue to get the research wrong when it comes to AGW? Are they all simply mistaken, in which case how can this be the case? Or is it part of some worldwide conspiracy to present a false scenario, in which case organized by who, funded by who, and to what purpose?

 

[macdoc]

Dyson???

try...old

Freeman John Dyson FRS (born December 15, 1923) is an English American
theoretical physicist and mathematician, famous for his work in quantum ...

if that's what you are hanging your knowledge of climate science on....you really do need to move to a bit more modern and informed point of view.
Try the signature....it's get people willing to learn started..
..course there is inflexibility n'all.....willful ignorance perhaps?

In Dyson's case....pure ornery...

Friends and colleagues describe Dyson as shy and self-effacing, with a contrarian streak that his friends find refreshing but his intellectual opponents find exasperating. "I have the sense that when consensus is forming like ice hardening on a lake, Dyson will do his best to chip at the ice", Steven Weinberg said of him. His friend, the neurologist and author Oliver Sacks, said: "A favorite word of Freeman's about doing science and being creative is the word 'subversive'. He feels it's rather important not only to be not orthodox, but to be subversive, and he's done that all his life.

Hero emulation perhaps....

 

[Belz...]

Maybe r-j, Malcolm, et. al. will answer the questions below this time.

And make a testable, possibly libelous statement ? Why, how bold !

 

[Malcolm Kirkpatrick]

Maybe r-j, Malcolm, et. al. will answer the questions below this time.

Why have so many scientists and climatologists from around the world gotten and continue to get the research wrong when it comes to AGW? Are they all simply mistaken, in which case how can this be the case? Or is it part of some worldwide conspiracy to present a false scenario, in which case organized by who, funded by who, and to what purpose?

This isn't really "climate science" but more "sociology of science". I'd have to speculate. First, undergraduate education in established fields (plant physiology, physics, statistics) mostly trains people in reliance on experts. It doesn't help the GPA to question authority. They'll praise originality, but expect the right answer on the final. Lots of people don't shake it. In __Three Scientists and Their Gods__ the author quotes a physicist on Edward Fredkin to the effect that "most physicists are just Democrats and Republicans" (that is, party-line people). Add direct financial incentives and peer pressure and you're at least half way to an explanation. But I really don't know.

 

[r-j]

. Are you saying Dyson is uninformed or dishonest?

Of course that's the essence of the objection. It drives the alarmists crazy when a top scientists, or any climate scientists expresses honest skepticism against the religion of warming. In this matter the skeptic is the enemy, and the behavior of the believers is often heinous, unscientific in the extreme. Granted there are no doubt vested interest trying to muddy the aters, create dissent, manufacture doubt or just delay anything that would in any way effect their bottom line. I have said before I agree with that, even with no hard proof. I still believe it.

But that isn't why really smart scientists, much smarter than anyone posting here, express their views and are skeptical of the AGW fanatics. Which is why it drives the faithful nuts when you bring it up. The alarmists resort to strawmen, or leading questions, anything to avoid the real issues. (and of course a constant string of invective, petty and immature)

Why have so many scientists and climatologists from around the world gotten and continue to get the research wrong when it comes to AGW?

Who said that? You did. And worse, you try to present your fallacy as if you are being reasonable, you can't even see your mistake.

I've posted the same link to a peer reviewed scientific paper for almost a year now, and the dishonest and immature response don't make the science look bad, they make the detractors look bad. The constant attempts at misdirection, the cries of "Liar!", it makes a mockery of your attempts to claim the high road.

Speak to the science or just shut up. Posting a link to temperature anomalies that show increasing temperatures will never be evidence that CO2 caused it. It makes you look bad. Just stop. You can post a graphic of the climate warming for the last 140 years a hundred times and it doesn't mean anything except that the climate warmed.

 

[macdoc]

But I really don't know.

You got that part correct.

Now about the science papers in the mysterious journals....??? Or more psycho babble.

 

[uke2se]

"Some scientists", not "the scientists". Other scientists have proposed variations in solar activity as a driver of climate cycles.

Over 95% of the scientists. That's a lot more than "some".

Vehemence is neither evidence nor logic,

You did not reply to the part you quoted at all. I'll repeat it. The vast, vast majority of scientists that have looked at this problem has concluded that the sun cannot be the driver for the current climate change on Earth. If one was to propose that these scientists are wrong, one would need a mechanism and damn good evidence, as paradigm shifting science always does. You have neither.

Seems to me, theory A need only beat alternative B.

But it doesn't, for the reasons I've specified. You have no mechanism and you have no evidence.

It's my understanding that the basic physics does not predict an open-ended greenhouse effect and that the proposed CO₂ theory needs to assume positive feedbacks to generate the warming observed in the industrial era.

Your understanding is, not surprisingly, flawed.

If Freeman Dyson, Lubos Motl, Richard Lindzen, and Ivar Giaever aren't worried, I won't worry either.

I see you've already dodged this question a number of times, but I'll ask it again as your dodges demonstrate the dishonesty of your position so well: Why do you hang your hat on these four guys, when over 95% of scientists in relevant fields say that these four guys, most of whom aren't even climate scientists, are wrong?

Right. My point is, you don't need a "mechanism" (which ultimately means another correlation) to have confidence in predictions (or criminal convictions).

You do if you want to overturn accepted science. You are trying to do just that. Accepted science has a mechanism. It has predictive power. You don't.

I'd like to see a physicist say that to Freeman Dyson, Ivar Giaever, or Lubos Motl.

I'm sure plenty of physicists already have. After all, over 95% of scientists that have looked at this say that your four gurus are wrong.

Are you a PhD physicist?

Like you, I am not. However, unlike you I am a skeptic.

btw, why doesn't JREF require people to post under their real names? That would cut considerable abuse.

Why do you want to know my real name? What would you do if you knew it?

That is simply ad hominem and an attempt to enlist JREF moderators to participate in bullying.

Nope. It's an accurate description of your anti-science ramblings.

 

[lomiller]

Are you saying Dyson is uninformed or dishonest?

Uninformed comes closest. He's never researched the subject of global climate, never published a paper on the subject of global climate. On this subject he's a layman. Other then the fact he is saying things you want to hear, there is absolutely no conceivable reason you would be treating him as an authority on this subject.

The other names you said you believed were authorities on the subject similarly don't stand the test for an appeal to legitimate authority. They either have little expertise in the filed or hold positions widely rejected by by others in this field.

That you come out with these specific names, however can't be coincidence. These are go to names in certain political circles. it seems you have fallen victim to people who wish to control you by directing you to "authorities" who will tell you what they want you to believe. This however isn't really a science topic so I won't go farther into it in this thread.