Roger Chapman wrote:
On 03/12/2011 03:18, The Natural Philosopher wrote:
Tim Streater wrote:
In article ,
Roger Chapman wrote:
I trained as an engineer, not a scientist, so I am much more open to
practical propositions than to either abstract theory or belief
systems unconnected with reality.
Theory is not abstract. A theory is based on a hypothesis that
explains current observation and that can make *testable* predictions.
Relativity is a good example of this.
But AGW is not testable.
We don't have a spare planet to run as a control. That in a philsophy se
sense makes it less scientific and more metaphysical.
On that basis neither theory of relativity is really a theory either.
Oh, but that is testable in a laboratory.
You dont need a whole planet.
So whilst there's no denying that it got warmer between 1960 and 2000,
and the CO2 in the atmosphere increased dur8ing that timem, thats really
the limit of the testable FACTS and we cant say that it was due to any
given thing with certainty.
At best we can say that having elminated a lot of things it almost
certainly wasn't (largely) due to, there is a large signal and the only
explanation so far put forward is CO2.
That CO2 is a greenhouse gas is certainly testable.
That is more sleight of hand.
AGW is not solely dependent on CO2 being a greenhouse gas.
In fact AGW doesn't fit the facts if you JUST assume CO2 is a greenhouse
gas.
IF it is down to that and ONLY down to that - and those are in real
terms pretty sizeable IFS. THEN even so, the numbers dont add up without
a multiplier. Which is held to relate to some noumenous mechanism that
has never been pinned down.
Given your denial above why should your other conjectures be taken
seriously?
Oh dear. You don't know the difference between a conjecture (inductive
logic) and deductive logic.
Ask someone who KNOWS about AGW what is core assumptions a You will
find its more than 'CO2 is a greenhouse gas'.
That is not a conjecture, that's an agreed fact.
That's where I get bothered. We have tow big IFS followed by an AND ALSO
before the thing matches the reality of the past 50 years. Ok, we can
run with that, BUT if we then extend the multiplier back in time, we get
nonsense figures for - say - the last ice age.
That is while IPCC are spectacularly successful at fitting a curve to
the last 50 years, they are average to completely crap in the greater
historical picture, depending on what data sets you take.
So you say but even if that were true everything prior to the keeping of
accurate records is based on secondary derived data where the margins of
error are much wider.
I think you can reasoanbly be certain that if ice came down as far as
Paris ore whatever, it was in fact a lot colder overall.
Of course tree rings are a lot more dodgy. Sunlight and water make trees
grow, not just temperature. AFAICR the IPCC prefers tree rings.
CO2 concentrations are, al other things being equal, reasonably easy to
work out from disallowed CO2 concentrations in things that are still there.
However, you make a curiouspoint. You say you cant refute AGW because no
one knows what the data was 10,000 years ago. Doesn't that make it a
very dodgy theory?
And really that's all AGW is - a curve fitting exercise on the best
guesses as to what drives climate. Or that's what it WAS till it become
political, and there common sense caution and good science flew out of
the window, and hundreds of BILLIONS of our money have been spent on the
assumption that it was in fact broadly correct.
Well that is the committed deniers position.
I am sorry it is a FACT that industries riding on the coat tails of
climate change are worth around a trillion dollars in taxcp[ayers money.
Something for you to get your teeth into TNP but don't get all excited
by the title of the link:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-...man-caused.htm
Can you imagine what it would do to the green economy, and the careers
of politicians and people who have supported it to the hilt and beyond,
if it became fashionable to believe that something else was in fact
happening?
Can you even imagine what you have done to the remains of your
reputation by espousing the deniers cause so strongly?
I am not denying it does something: Your argument is so very much teh ad
hominem - you insist I am a denier. I am not allowed in your book in
your closed mind, to raise any points at all, if I do, I am it seems a
denier.
You remind me of the man who said to the German at the dinner party 'You
murdered 6 million Jews"
"No we did not" replied the german.
"You are a holocaust denier"
"No, I was merely pointing out that in fact we murdered six and a half
million jews, and a lot of romanies, russians p[oles ..."
Do you REALLY believe they are going to say 'gosh, sorry, all those
solar panels and windmills, and all these climate change awareness focus
groups are a complete waste of time and money, so basically we will all
resign and go and do something more socially useful' ?
Politicians almost without exception are in permanent denial about
anything that doesn't fit their current message.
So, it seems, are third rate scientists.
The only problem they
have with a U-turn is accepting that it is a U-turn rather than a
continuation of their policy by other means. (With apologies to
Clausewitz for taking him out of context).
What gives you the idea that science has anything to do with belief
systems unconnected with reality?
What gives you the idea that AGW is a scientific theory?
In Popper's terms its borderline pseudo science because it is almost
irrefutable as its predictions are so broad, and there is no possibility
of running a control.
I wonder what Popper would have had to say about your very curious brand
of logic.
Ask him. IIRC he is still alive, and still concerned.
Its probably nearer creationism in that respect, than physics.
Keep on wallowing in the gutter. You have plenty of company there with
other closed mind deniers.
I am afraid there is only one closed mind here, and its not mine.
I didnt expect to find a full blown warmist apologist here, but thanks
for showing how the IPCC and its little friends play the game.
As such you take it on trust, or you don't. That's faith and belief, not
fact based irrefutability.
And in reference to your own question "What gives you the idea that
science has anything to do with belief systems unconnected with
reality?" the answer is 'a pretty intensive study of metaphysics and the
philosophy of science will enable the understanding that all ontologies
are based at some level or other on untestable assumptions: In fact that
may be said to be their defining feature, and there are sound logical
reasons to to with recursion and reflexivity why this is necessary, and
this can be seen in the particular case of mathematics and formal
ontologies through Godel's incompleteness theorem, and in the case of
algorithmic analysis Turings completion problem, and I strongly suspect
on qauntum physics in the observation problem.
In each case the problem arises when an ontological system is used to
analyse itself for correctness or for some other quality. It gives rise
to infinite feedback..science is such a system It cannot in the end know
whether the ontology of which it is a study - and a careful meticulous
study - is in fact anything like a 1:1 mapping with reality - the
'whatever is the case' of Wittgenstein.
However that has no bearing on the actual AGW theory: we must take the
premises of the physical world as out starting point, in order to do
science at all.
The why mention it at all other than to attempt to baffle the opposition.
To make the basic point that you talk the talk, but you really dont
understand much about science.
I guess its all parrot fashion received wisdom in your case.
You cant think critically, you dint know the difference between
induction and deduction, you are not even aware of the ontology and
metaphysics on which science is based.
You just dribble on about this and that that you read somewhere, without
ever really understanding what it says, or means, and call me a denier
when you are in danger of looking like an idiot, and that makes you look
even more foolish.
The question of just how scientific a theory AGW is, is in the end
extremely open to question.
You must apply Popper's test, and ask yourself 'what conditions would
amount to its refutation, and how may we proceed to demonstrate that
whatever we do, it is never refuted?
It is easy enough to set laboratory experiments to test various aspects
on the theory.
Yes. But that is not relevant is it?
yu can test the nuts and bolts on your car, but that wont help if the
tyre burst..
Well its stopped getting warmer since 2000, whilst C02 has increased,
but that, apparently, is not enough.
No it hasn't stopped getting warmer since 2000. Even ignoring the effect
of ENSO you would need to take 2005 as your high point but climate year
on year is so variable that it will be a decade or more before we can
look back with any certainty to see where 2001 - 2010 fits on the
temperature graph.
Sorry. I dont know how ou work that out,. Anyoine can look at te graphs
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/news/rel...al-temperature
of temperatures since 2000 and see that the upward trend has, at least
for that decade totally ceased.
Last winter was the coldest for 49 years. That, apparently, is not
enough.
Now you are just being incredibly stupid. The autumn just gone has been
either the warmest or second warmest on record for one or other of the
countries that make up the UK but that, like your coldest winter, was a
minor local event which contributed comparatively little to the global
average temperature. 2010 itself was one of the warmest years since
records began.
Ther you go. is temperature global or local then? 10 years of almost no
real change in global temperatures is just 'weather'. Lets say the next
100 years are colder due to 'weather'.. But of course AGW 'is still
happeniong'
Do we then actually CARE?
All we want is the sea stays where it is, and our towns dont become
uninhabitable,. and te crops still grow.
Let's say we crash build loads of nuclear power stations and it doesn't
get any warmer? would that 'prove' AGW?
You would need to suggest what effect that would have on the increasing
concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere before anyone could make a
prediction. Incidentally there is at least a suggestion that if the CO2
levels had not been climbing the global temperatures would actually be
falling year on year.
Why? Its not anywhere in the IPCC model that I can see,
Let's say we don't. renewable energy fails utterly as it must to make a
dent in CO2 and it goes up another 50% and in the next ten years, it
doesn't get any warmer..would that 'disprove' AGW?
Well for a start it has only gone up by a little over 20% in the last 40
years so 50% seems outside the realms of possibility given normal
progression. Since that seems as unlikely as the rest of your argument
it doesn't seem worthy of an answer. Should anything unexpected happen
over the next 10 years then of course the events would lead to a
modification to the theory but that is a very different animal to
completely disproving it. Einstein didn't totally disprove Newtonian
concepts with his theories of relativity.
I don't think it would, to its promoters.
It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that your 50% increase in
CO2/no increase in global average temperature could occur but it would
take a very noticeable event such as the overdue eruption of the
Yellowstone's super volcano to produce such an effect in the short term.
In the long term we are overdue for another Ice Age
How can we be? Wharts dtives ice agdes? AGW and rthe IPCC dont seem to
have any explanationm for them.
They just as you said earlier say 'we cant really rtell; waht was going
on that long ago'
Presumably during the ice age when CO2 was at say 1300AD levels, the
world was also just as warm?
if AGW doesn't
trigger a meltdown first.
What justification have you for suggesting that it even might?
I am sorry, it looks this way to me
'we are extremely uncertain about AGW'
'That's all right we turn that around to say 'really bad **** COULD
happen: That's basic marketing. play to your strengths and play your
weakest point as if it was a killer blow'
But I expect you haven't been exposed to marketing on the inside..
You believe what lots of people say if it comes in a nicely printed
brochure with pretty pictures on it.
I must dig out the Seroxat brochure my wife worked on...It's broadly
similar to any 'green' brochure. But examined critically, it is
virtually a criminal exercises in misdirection and misrepresentation.
But it fooled thousands of doctors into prescribing a very expensive
drug that no one needed and did many of them an awful lot of harm,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paroxetine
That is the point when I would say it passes completely from science to
metaphysics and becomes what is known as 'pseudo science'. It is no
longer an analytic of an ontology, it is the basis of a new ontology.
First put up your strawman. Then knock it down again. How clever is that?
I must have learnt it from you, then. If it were true, but I see that
its gone straight over your head again.
A pure act of faith.
You could say that about your entire rant.
ou could, you wouldn't be right, but I cant stop you.
Its a shame you haven't really done anything expcept parrot the third
rate trash straight out of et ''big green handbook of Climate Change,
made easy for Politicians and other simple peopel'
I had hoped you actually knew something about it.