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Climate Science: Is it currently designed to answer questions?

BenBurch said:
You have never dealt with floating point numbers and how they lose precision even in addition, have you?
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Thank you for making me remember the endless scribbling of 0's and 1's on paper (we only had access to actual computers part of the time in the first year, and quota'd time on the mainframe later on) to drive that home... :S
 
Funny I was just thinking about this "perfection syndrome" and my 1% saline saline solution for my allergies.....:boggled: The two concepts did not mesh very well.

I wonder how even such simple solutions and chemistry fit this weird "all or nothing" world....:garfield:

Analogue's a bitch....
 
Macdoc,

I am not a chemist, though I used to sleep with one...

Generally chemists always deal in an excess of one thing to fully react another. They know they can never measure perfectly, so they choose the reagent that is less problem to have a surplus of, often neutralizing it in some way after the product has been formed.

So they deal with imprecision by choosing which way to err.

-Ben
 
Last time I checked it was still science.....those nasty reagents....just sayin'.....:garfield:

some people get all caught up in a binary world....confusing it with messy reality...
 
mhaze said:
Do not hold the nail cupped in your palm(to be sure you don't drop it) and then drive it through your palm by hitting the flesh over the nailhead.
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I don't understand your analogy.

Reducing our CO2 output to levels that don't keep pushing up the temperature is going to be painful.

Given the alternatives are vastly more painful. e.g. rising sea levels displacing many millions of people. altered weather patterns causing crops to fail and making much presently arable land useless are going to be *much* moreso.

I still don't understand what is so bad about taking action now.

Climate is weather over 3 decades.
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The best evidence I can find for the temperature over the past 3 decades indicates it is rising.

We can see from the past historical record that the temperature is not due to be rising this much, that rules out obliquity, presession etc and points to a n other cause.

*Perhaps* the earth is warming naturally as it comes out of it's LIA period. If that is the case we are in for a very painful period of readjusting no matter what we do, so why not take action to ameliorate the worst effects of AGW??

Succinctly - if it's natural we are toast, if it's man made we are toast if we do nothing.

Unless there is very powerful evidence that suggests more CO2 is beneficial to our climate, why not take action?
 
Ambrosia said:
The best evidence I can find for the temperature over the past 3 decades indicates it is rising....
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And since climate is considered weather over three decades, you have three decades, one data point.

Are you then going to suggest "action" based on one point, and not even a line with a trend?

I feel you can see the problem here.
 
mhaze said:
And since climate is considered weather over three decades, you have three decades, one data point.

Are you then going to suggest "action" based on one point, and not even a line with a trend?

I feel you can see the problem here.
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You actually think that is a good argument?
 
Ok, I am starting to get confused here by reading all these posts.

Asides from PopTech, who does think Climate Science can answer questions and who does not?
 
fsol said:
You actually think that is a good argument?
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If as apparently the case Ambrosia bases his assertions on what climatically is one data point, I need no other. He may of course introduce alternative positions or simply state that he is comfortable within cult think.
 
mhaze said:
And since climate is considered weather over three decades, you have three decades, one data point.

Are you then going to suggest "action" based on one point, and not even a line with a trend?

I feel you can see the problem here.
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I can see you have a problem.

The graph I referenced earlier - runs over 4 decades, not 3. It's a line with a trend. Other lines with trends like the so called "hockey stick" graph show somewhat more alarming trends.

Also I am a layman and not a scientist, I have spent a little time reading up via some of the links in these threads and other places, I watched "The Great Global Warming Swindle" "Inconvenient Truth" and some other presentations from both sides, and am completely convinced from lots of data points that AGW is real and represents a serious problem for us humans.

As George Carlin points out the "planet" doesn't need saving - it'll be here for millions more years, it's us that face the interesting times.

I'd like to leave a world for my kids and their kids that is as hospitable as the planet I find myself on at the moment, as I see it the time for taking action has long since past.
 
Ambrosia said:
I can see you have a problem.

The graph I referenced earlier - runs over 4 decades, not 3. It's a line with a trend. ....
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My apologies. You have two data points.



Ever heard of lying with statistics (or getting fooled by those who do )?

I can see you have a problem in believing the lie presented by only the purple section.
 
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Ambrosia, MHaze just isn't going to concede ANY point, even when proved wrong. He just ignores the proof, moves the goalposts, and moves on. Not really worth arguing with except that he fills the role of one of the three voices in the AGW version of "Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems." I'll let you decide which one.
 
As mHaze and other conveniently ignore ENSO and the 1998 peak and 2008/2009 back to back LaNina trough ........tiresome nonsense....

natural warming aka voodoo...:garfield:
 
mhaze said:
I can see you have a problem in believing the lie presented by only the purple section.
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Actually the line I am worried by is closest to th red line in that graph, I am well aware that there are lies, damn lies, and statistics, and a savvy user of statistics can torture them to produce graphs that make any point they so desire for example. Speaking of cliched homilies "Asumption is the mother of all **** ups" , why you'd assume I am convinced by that purple line is intriguing, but lets not go there.

Again I am a layman - I don't have ANY points.

All I am saying is that I have looked at the evidence from both sides of the debate, and am now convinced by the AGW arguments.

I am not going to get into a comtinued argument over it :) - I am just stating my position and also thanking the posters to this and similar threads for helping to further my education on this subject.

Thanks - you know who you are :)

If there's some serious evidence somewhere I've missed then I'll revise my position accordingly in the future.

I am hoping that AGW is wrong, and that the effects are nowhere near as serious as some of the more moderate predictions, but the science is pretty convincing, at least for me.
 
It's funny how that picture only works with data before 1998...
When you insert the NCDC data some problems arise.



I would also like to know what dataset was used to make it. The reference periods change between datasets, so it's more correct to use the dataset of the original unsourced picture.
 
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Ben wrote
MacDoc there is some indication that the ENSO is changing locations due to warming and that this will bring about a novel (for our times) set of weather patterns...
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Back to back La Nina's as we have just seen are rare in any event and I would not be surprised if we see different over turn patterns in convective behavior in both ocean basins given the energy scales involved....

It MAY be a positive thing - picking up a lot of heat from the surface...long term tho - it just locks in the change and does nothing for ocean acidfication
 
mhaze said:
If as apparently the case Ambrosia bases his assertions on what climatically is one data point, I need no other. He may of course introduce alternative positions or simply state that he is comfortable within cult think.
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You might want to rethink that.
 
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