Originally Posted by Brian Rush

The models coming from the IPCC treat climate as a sum of its parts or their multiples. They accurately "predict" the climate change that has already occurred.

This is just the problem. They do not 'predict' what has happened, they reproduce it. That is, the impact-sizes of the selected forcing factors is determined by a best-fit to the existing dataset. It is then assumed that those relations actually correspond to the reality of the system (instead of simply being a best-fit between the existing input history datasets and the existing global temperature record) The leap that undeservingly made it to trust that these are real relationships with some sort of predictive power.

It would not be possible to do that if climate were a chaotic system. You cannot do that for the weather, for instance.

Yes you can. There is no dataset that, cannot be estimated as the sum of a set of polynomials. The problem when it comes to prediction is that outside the bounds of the dataset you used for polynomial-interpolation, your summed equations no longer work as an estimate.

That is, you can very easily (with a computer, since the volume of iterative work to do it pretty huge; the process itself, however, can be done by hand) set up a series of simple polynomials which, when summed, will match even a historical weather dataset. But their predictive power is nil. That is, you can produce a model to re-create any datasets from any sets of inputs.

Please see:
Polynomial interpolation
and
the Stone-Weierstrass Theorem

Originally Posted by Justin '77

This is just the problem. They do not 'predict' what has happened, they reproduce it.

No, within the term of art, it's a "prediction." I know that's weird, since what is being "predicted" has already occurred, but it's standard practice. Here's what I mean.

A set of data exist. One attempts, from known principles, to create a mathematical model that will accurately describe the data. The model must be consistent both with known principles AND with the data. Either it will succeed in "predicting" the known outcomes, or it will fail. (The early global warming models failed.) If it fails, then it needs to be modified, but the modifications themselves must also follow from known principles. With the global warming models, cooling effects of particulates, the impact of vulcanism, mitigating effects of CO2 sinks, and any positive feedback effects all had to be accurately included; however, those effects could not be arbitrary. The mechanism behind each of them is known, and the model had to be true to that mechanism.

We may know what has happened, but the equations don't. Either the math generates results true to known data, or it doesn't. If it does, we say it accurately "predicts" what has happened, because if we had used it before these events occurred, we would have "predicted" them in the ordinary sense.

Yes you can [predict previous weather long-term].

No, Justin, I'm sorry, but you CAN'T. That's what Edward Lorenz' experiment demonstrated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

An early pioneer of the theory was Edward Lorenz whose interest in chaos came about accidentally through his work on weather prediction in 1961. Lorenz was using a basic computer, a Royal McBee LGP-30, to run his weather simulation. He wanted to see a sequence of data again and to save time he started the simulation in the middle of its course. He was able to do this by entering a printout of the data corresponding to conditions in the middle of his simulation which he had calculated last time.
To his surprise the weather that the machine began to predict was completely different from the weather calculated before. Lorenz tracked this down to the computer printout. The printout rounded variables off to a 3-digit number, but the computer worked with 6-digit numbers. This difference is tiny and the consensus at the time would have been that it should have had practically no effect. However Lorenz had discovered that small changes in initial conditions produced large changes in the long-term outcome.

This is a fundamental problem that makes all long-term weather prediction models specious; at best, they will predict what the weather will do, given a very precise set of initial conditions, which cannot be measured with sufficient precision to allow the model to work. To do with the weather what the IPCC has done with climate is quite literally impossible.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Besides, when someone in "science," if we're still trying to keep things scientific, comes up with a theory, it's up for them to prove that it's right, not up to others to prove that it's wrong.

No, generally it isn't either of those. There's a division of labor between theorists and experimentalists, in physics anyway. Not so sure about biology, but climatology is closer to physics than to biology in that respect anyway. Einstein, for example, never conducted a single experiment demonstrating the validity of relativity. His published theory showed that it was mathematically valid, and he left it to others to find corroborating hard evidence in the real world.

If they don't accept your evidence as valid, that's your problem, not theirs. Accusing them of libertarianism or some other quasi-religious thing does nothing to further the validity of your argument. Scientifically speaking, that is.

I don't recall anyone here accusing any climate scientist of libertarian bias. If we're talking scientifically, then the venue of discussion is the peer-reviewed literature of the field, not the Fourth Turning discussion boards. All I did was to try to explain Justin's willingness to clutch at straws to provide alternative explanations. The absurdity of his scientific arguments had already been pointed out, repeatedly, and he seemed unable to see what was patently obvious to others, namely that his arguments were preposterous.

"Libertarian bias" was not a refutation of his arguments (that refutation had already been provided) but simply an explanation of his behavior. And besides, it's already been retracted, as clearly I was wrong.

Originally Posted by Brian Rush

No, Justin, I'm sorry, but you CAN'T. That's what Edward Lorenz' experiment demonstrated.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory

Actually, all that Lorenz' experiment showed was that such interpolated models are themselves sensitive down to the very smallest resolution at which they were calculated.

Which makes perfect sense; the sheer quantity of stacked polynomials that would be necessary to replicate something as complicated as a weather history would be very sensitive to changes in the data set on which is was built to be run.

The fact is, had Lorenz started his model in the middle, using the inputs at the actual resolution at which the model was calculated to work, it would have reproduced the results he was looking for. His is an object lesson of what could happen with an insufficiently accurate dataset.

The big difference between the history of weather modeling as versus climate modeling is that, since climate is a moving average on the scale of several years to a datapoint, whereas weather is considered on a resolution of several-seconds, weather modeling has been tested against reality and demonstrated to be fundamentally oversimplified and useless for more than the very short-term. Climate models have yet to be tested in anything approaching that way.

And given the fact that the assumptions-of-linearity that seem to dominate have been made based off the models, the validity of those assumption is similarly untested. And since climate, were it to be proven to be linearly-structured, would be the only complex physical system so far found to be so, it's not unreasonable to suspect that the models and their underlying assumptions, once tested, will turn out to have been similarly flawed.

No, within the term of art, it's a "prediction." I know that's weird, since what is being "predicted" has already occurred, but it's standard practice. Here's what I mean.

A set of data exist. One attempts, from known principles, to create a mathematical model that will accurately describe the data. The model must be consistent both with known principles AND with the data. Either it will succeed in "predicting" the known outcomes, or it will fail

I know what 'prediction' means to science. What you seem to be missing is that, while the experiment being predicted may already have been run and its results already known, from the framework of the model, it is completely new. That is, the dataset against which the predictive powers of the model are being tested is not -- cannot be -- the dataset from which the model was constructed. You need an absolute minimum of two events' datasets; one to build the model, and the other to verify that the model does more than just reproduce its parent set.

Unfortunately, when it comes to climate, we've only got the one -- and a not very big set at that, from the scope of what constitutes 'climate'. And reproducing one's parent dataset is not prediction in any sense of the term.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

the sheer quantity of stacked polynomials that would be necessary to replicate something as complicated as a weather history

Lorenz' model had only three interacting equations. It wasn't complex, it was actually pretty simple. It ran into the problem of infinite sensitivity not because of its complexity but because it involved nonlinear equations.

It wasn't a real working model of the weather and he knew it wasn't. He was experimenting with a working prototype, a first step. In a way, it was like a very simplistic climate model that showed the effects of CO2 without anything else added. If it were REALLY like that model, then we would expect -- and Lorenz did expect -- outcomes that were "weather like" and showed the POTENTIAL of weather prediction, without actually being able to predict the weather in practice. But that's not what he got.

Here's the difference. Vary the CO2 levels by a small percentage in that model, and you get small differences in outcome over time. No matter what you do, it won't match the observed reality, because you need to factor in other things. But it will show consistent results. But vary the initial conditions in Lorenz' weather equations by a small percentage, and the results will be WILDLY different.

And that's why I say that climate is not chaotic. Complex, yes: chaotic, no.

And since climate, were it to be proven to be linearly-structured, would be the only complex physical system so far found to be so

The orbits of the planets in a multi-planet system with interacting gravitational fields such as ours
The interaction of waves from multiple sources
Many processes in organic chemistry
Many processes in cellular biology

All of these are complex but linear physical systems. On the other hand, there are many very simple chaotic systems:

The pattern of bubbles in boiling water
The pattern formed by smoke as it rises from a fire
Turbulence in any moving fluid

These are all quite simple, having only a few significant variables impacting their outcomes, but they behave chaotically.

Complexity is not what determines chaos.

Originally Posted by Justin '77

I know what 'prediction' means to science. What you seem to be missing is that, while the experiment being predicted may already have been run and its results already known, from the framework of the model, it is completely new.

Not only am I not missing that, it's exactly what I was saying!

That is, the dataset against which the predictive powers of the model are being tested is not -- cannot be -- the dataset from which the model was constructed.

It's NOT, Justin! The models are constructed from known principles of physics and climatology. The dataset you're referring to (history of measured climate change) is what the model is TESTED AGAINST -- not what it is constructed from.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Ok dudes, I have a confession to make. In fact, I made it in my very first post on this thread. If you guys were really as evidence-based as you claim to be, you should have figured it out long ago. Here is what I said ...

"So I can't get too excited about the whole global warming thing. It's just one of many atrocities that our species imposes on the rest of the planet."

---
So congratulations, buttheads, you have managed to turn off someone who used to be on your side. I hope you are proud of yourselves.

FWIW, I think that the real environmental problems that humans will face on Planet Earth will smash us in a completely unpredictable way, such that it does not and will not seem obvious to us until it is too late.

On that cheery note, enjoy your Sunday afternoon!

Originally Posted by Justin '77

The models are fundamentally based on an assumption that a chaotic, mega-multi-input system can be understood on the basis of a small number of inputs over a vanishingly small time interval. Other inputs -- which both undeniably exist and are undeniably not tracked at present -- have impact, and as the last thirty-some-odd years of study of chaotic systems should have made clear by now to anyone, even small inputs can cause effects of all manner of scope.

Why do you think climate is necessarily chaotic? The motions of gas molecules in a closed container are chaotic, like balls on a billiard table, yet even more so because of highly nonlinear attractive forces operating between each pair of particles. Compare the moving particles to moving masses (flows) of air in the atmosphere, which are chaotic.

Despite the chaos of the particle movements themselves the pressure or temperature of the container not is unpredictable--not chaotic). This is because temperature and pressure are average properties. Climate is average weather and is not necessarily chaotic. For the special case of global temperature, this is completely analogous to the temperature of the gas in the container. It is perfectly predictable and well-behaved--given the energy inputs and outputs from the system.

Engineers make all sorts of boundary assumptions in their work; but those boundary assumptions are generally justified by either empirical evidence or by actually resolving the fundamental equations at least the one time to demonstrate that the assumed-out components are actually not critical at the scale of resolution and input being considered. This has not been done for the AGW hypothesis.

How would you know? As far as I can tell you lack the technical background to say much of anything about the science behind GW. You cited the warm soda analogy--apparently you are unaware of or had simply forgotten Henry's Law. You invoked galactic topology apparently without realizing that the time scale was far too long for the proposed effect to be relevant. Now you invoke chaos on averaged properties.

Global climate is not any more complicated than the systems chemical engineers work with. We certainly don't understand our systems completely, but we describe their important behavior sufficiently well to obtain reliably profitable results. I don't see why climate scientists cannot make forecasts of the direction of temperature trends for the next few decades. The crude models I have constructed myself reproduce some of the results of the sophisticated models and can generate some of the results knowledgeable skeptics like Nir Shaviv have obtained.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Ok dudes, I have a confession to make. In fact, I made it in my very first post on this thread. If you guys were really as evidence-based as you claim to be, you should have figured it out long ago. Here is what I said ...

"So I can't get too excited about the whole global warming thing. It's just one of many atrocities that our species imposes on the rest of the planet."

Sorry I missed that, but you posted it while I was still AWOL. I agree with you completely, by the way.

there is NO WAY to prove causality here. Just because something follows something else does not mean that the first event "caused" the second.

Of course that's true. But it's equally true of anything. You can't prove smoking causes cancer, either, only that there is a positive correlation between smoking and rates of certain kinds of cancer. That's enough to keep me from smoking, though.

So congratulations, buttheads, you have managed to turn off someone who used to be on your side. I hope you are proud of yourselves.

[Wet finger. Touch the Rani's forehead. Hear hiss. See steam rise.]

Originally Posted by Justin '77

the sheer quantity of stacked polynomials that would be necessary to replicate something as complicated as a weather history would be very sensitive to changes in the data set on which is was built to be run.

Since a weather history doesn't exist (and probably never will) I see no reason why one would want to replicate it. Besides the issue has nothing to do with weather.

The big difference between the history of weather modeling as versus climate modeling is that, since climate is a moving average on the scale of several years to a datapoint, whereas weather is considered on a resolution of several-seconds, weather modeling has been tested against reality and demonstrated to be fundamentally oversimplified and useless for more than the very short-term.

Since weather is a chaotic system, it can only ever be good for short term predictions. What you are missing is that short term weather forecasts, especially wrt to temperature are quite of bit better today than 30 years ago. This is due to models. Now if weather models were missing huge important factors then they would be worse than the approach used before which was entirely empirical. Since they do improve things that means the theory is helping--that is reality is verifying the model--within the limits of the model.

Climate models have yet to be tested in anything approaching that way.

Sure they have. By the late 1990's models had developed to a point where they could predict continuation of the warming trend then two decades underway. Skeptics predicted that cooling would begin soon. They are still predict this. The trend has continued. The GW skeptics have been as right about the climate as John X is about the stock market. That's a test--the only kind you can have of a historical process.

Remember I was a skeptic in the eighties based on the observation that three decades of rising CO2 before the mid 1970's hadn't warmed the climate. I figured, well if the GW folks are right then it will continue to warm and this issue will get important in the 2000's. If it's another flash in the pan then if will go way by then. Well it continued to warm so I have decided to take a look at the science so as not to be ignorant iof the issue (as I was for example in the discussion with Semo about the Vtech shooter).

Originally Posted by The Rani

Guess what, I DO believe in human-created global warming, but you liberal freak-out types missed this part completely, because I said that I also believed that climate changes go in cycles, and that forcing "denialists" to change their tune smacks of fascism. My "belief" that human activity has probably caused a temperature rise is nothing that can be "proven," as far as I'm concerned, because there is NO WAY to prove causality here. Just because something follows something else does not mean that the first event "caused" the second. Another basic scientific principle that people seem to be forgetting. I don't care how many models and graphs people want to throw in my face, either. You can only take analogies, lab experiments, and computer models so far when you are dealing with a system as complex as the entire planet. Yeah, given everything that I know about, I would guess that global warming is happening, but when you make it seem like this stuff is hard science you alienate people who know that it isn't, and you make yourself look like a bunch of goofballs.

I guess Newton never 'proved' that invisible fields of gravitic force existed. Thus, he wasn't proven wrong when Einstein proposed that space was curved?

But science is in part about creating predictions that match the observed reality. If you can do that better than anyone else, you can get published. In the old days, the theories and the phenomena were simpler. A laymen couldn't care less whether space is curved or if there are invisible fields of force, he could just understand if he lets go of the ball it will move down.

To what degree can a layman judge the more complex systems and tools being used today? There are those who believe Einstein's theory of relativity 'unproven.' Professionals designing particle accelerators know better. In order to make their tools work, they have to assume particle mass effectively increases with speed from day one. If they don't, their expensive toys don't work at all.

Regardless of how well or poorly a layman can understand the tools of the trade, one can tell if one's tools are working. You can look at the prediction not quite matching reality to within the expected noise tolerance and know how much work is left to be done. One can also leave CO2 forcing out of one's climate models, and watch said models fail much as a cyclotron would if it were designed to Newton's laws of physics.

But if the layman makes a faith based assumption that the tools available cannot possibly solve the problem, said layman will never be convinced by the mere fact that the tools have solved the problem. If one provides all the data in the world, and a skeptic dismisses it as 'just one data set,' what can one do? Should we accelerate the space program so we can visit other Earth like planets? Is that a reasonable requirement for proof? In the meanwhile, the layman skeptic need feel no inclination to respect the professionals?

Originally Posted by The Rani

People generally respect others who respect them. Nobody is inclined to respect someone who addresses them using terms such as "layman, faith-based assumption, and denialist." Arrogance seldom wins respect.

LMAO... such a simple concept

Originally Posted by The Rani

People generally respect others who respect them. Nobody is inclined to respect someone who addresses them using terms such as "layman, faith-based assumption, and denialist." Arrogance seldom wins respect.

I wouldn't think the distinction between 'layman' and 'professional' would be as emotionally laden as, say, between between calling someone an African-American and using the 'n' word. I'd consider myself a professional software engineer, but as a climatologist I'm a layman. I know something about software. Still, as far as I know, everyone contributing to this thread is a layman climatologist. There is no shame in that.

Do you or do you not deny the validity of the peer reviewed scientific work being produced today? Again, I didn't know 'denialist' was equivalent to a racial slur. One either denies peer reviewed published science or one doesn't. Yes, all bleeding edge science is somewhat controversial, but throwing out an entire field wholesale without providing an alternative is highly unusual outside of anti-greenhouse climate science and Christian creationist biology. If 'denialist' isn't an appropriate word for such behavior, what is the politically correct way of describing it?

Faith based might have been an unfortunate choice of words, but that one has been flying freely in both directions. Several on the denialist side have been associating climate science with a religion. It clearly isn't by any workable definition of 'religion' one would want to use to differeniate between churches and research centers in a tax code.

Still... "My "belief" that human activity has probably caused a temperature rise is nothing that can be "proven," as far as I'm concerned, because there is NO WAY to prove causality here." If someone's world view holds something to be so, and no amount of evidence will change his or her world view, if no tool will be considered adequate to change a person's mind, how does one bring this to everyone's attention in a politically correct manner? If someone's world view is not susceptible to evidence, how would you describe it?

EMOTIONALIZING CLIMATE CHANGE
Is the IPCC Doing Harm to Science?
By Uwe Buse

Is activism trumping science?

Originally Posted by Uwe Buse

in Der Spiegel
No matter where one encounters officials from the IPCC -- at the organization's headquarters in Geneva, in Brussels during the negotiations over the SPM or in Potsdam, where the German authors, together with the Federal Ministry of the Environment, are staging a workshop on the world climate report -- everyone seems to be talking more like environmental activists than scientists these days.

In Potsdam, Michael Müller, a member of the Social Democratic Party (SPD) and a state secretary in the Federal Environment Ministry, pleaded for a sea change in energy policy on a global scale, and the tone of his arguments was not unlike that adopted by Pachauri, the chairman of the IPCC, in Brussels. When asked about this, climate researchers respond: "And? Where is there a problem? What's wrong with warning the world about a catastrophe?"

The problem is that the IPCC is not a political group whose goal is to exert pressure, but a scientific institution and panel of experts. Its members ought to present their results and analyses dispassionately, the way pathologists or psychiatrists do when serving as expert witnesses in court, no matter how horrible the victim's injuries and how deviant the perpetrator's psyche are.

Peter Weingart, a sociologist of science from Bielefeld, a city in northwest Germany, believes that the climate experts' lack of distance has something to do with their training. Scientists usually learn only to reflect on the results of their work, not on their role within the social decision-making process. As a result, they join forces with politicians who share their views. And in this way they do harm to science.

But Rahmstorf, the professor from Potsdam, dubbed a climate protection zealot by some, is unswayed by these arguments. He sees climate change as an existential issue, "a baptism by fire for the developing global society." Rahmstorf is the father of a baby, which he drives through Potsdam in a bicycle trailer. He doesn't own a car. He wants to do his utmost to leave behind for his child a world that is as similar to today's world as possible, at least as far as the climate goes. He feels responsible, as someone who sees the big picture. And in half a century, when many things will be clearer, when things may even be worse, he doesn't want to have to answer the question: Why didn't you do anything?

The same question haunts IPCC chairman Pachauri. This week he will be in Bangkok, where the subjects of debate will be possible solutions, distribution of the burdens and the structure of the future. Pachauri will sit on the podium, follow the debate and do what he believes he has to do -- be on the side of a good cause and not on the side of science.

Originally Posted by The Rani

What you don't understand is that what you call my "world view" is a result of many years of being in the field of science myself.

Aren't a medical doctor? A psychiatrist? Don't you practice? Or are you a researcher?

Originally Posted by Virgil K. Saari

EMOTIONALIZING CLIMATE CHANGE
Is the IPCC Doing Harm to Science?
By Uwe Buse

Is activism trumping science?

More from the article:

The delegations from the industrialized nations dominated the debate, especially that of the United States, which, as is so often the case, had sent the largest delegation. The Saudi Arabian delegation, not much smaller, was aligned with the Americans, as were the Australians and the Chinese.

Their opponents -- the report's authors, supported by the delegations from the core European Union countries, as well as Great Britain -- would register collective outrage each time the US delegation demanded that an unambiguous phrase like "will happen" be changed to a less clear "will likely happen." The US delegation submitted this request alone more than a hundred times. These objections were possible because the IPCC's rules make it possible to negotiate the summary line by line and word for word -- a necessary provision when so much could be riding on a single word. No other document has such a far-reaching impact on global environmental and industrial policy.

[...]

Shortly after the negotiations began in Brussels, the room became divided into a coalition of the unwilling, under US leadership, and a coalition of the willing, consisting of the authors with support from Old Europe. The overwhelming majority of participants were silent throughout most of the debate.

The US delegates used a classic tactic to achieve as many of their demands as possible, a tactic that has proven effective in many venues, from UN diplomacy to living situations to marital disputes. The Americans simply talked long enough, were hardnosed enough in refusing to compromise and kept submitting new demands until their opponents were worn down and exhausted, and finally gave in.

[...]

[IPCC Chair Rajendra] Pachauri, exhausted and his suit wrinkled by then, listened to what the scientists had to say. He knew what would happen after the press conference. The speakers' sentences would make waves, big waves, and in the space of a few hours they would reach virtually every corner of the earth.

And he was right. A headline in the next day's issue of German tabloid Bild read: "Climate Report Shocks Germany." The British Independent reported: "Mankind will be divided." US newsmagazine Time complained: "Our feverish planet badly needs a cure." The world was in a panic, almost as if there had been a major terrorist attack.

Pachauri had good reason to be pleased, and not just over the media reactions. The scientists, supported by their European allies, had warded off most of the attacks from the coalition of the unwilling. Concessions were made, but they were more symbolic than anything else. Because the IPCC's rules require that politicians produce scientific arguments to implement changes, the scientists have, in a sense, a home court advantage.

The problem isn't whether scientists are "emotionalizing" climate change. That horse is already out of the gate. The "emotionalizing" has been going on for decades, by both sides, but most especially (and effectively) by the fossil fuel industry and its hangers-on, like the automobile industry. We have been "emotionalized" to believe that our way of life is non-negotiable.

The scientists have been playing chess, while the Bush Administration has been playing Pachisi (i.e. first, block your opponent from moving.) Perhaps it's time that the scientist play on the same "emotionalized" playing field...

Originally Posted by The Rani

What you don't understand is that what you call my "world view" is a result of many years of being in the field of science myself. You imply that it has nothing to do with "evidence," when in fact it is completely evidence-based. My evidence just happens to be a basic understanding of scientific principles, as well as years of personal experience dealing with biased researchers who have an agenda when they present their data.

You have to also consider the quality of the "evidence" being presented. Would you accept the Bible as evidence of God's existence? Is there any kind or amount of evidence that would make you believe in a flat earth? Don't pretend that you have less of a "world view" here than anyone else. When I was asking about cycles in climate and mentioned the Ice Ages, your response was to post a graph dating back a few hundred years. If you're going to provide evidence, at least make it applicable to the situation, and don't blame your own inadequacies on someone else's world view.

I know that some people believe the Bible to be evidence of God's existence, personality and power. I know others believe the Koran to be similar evidence. There are other holy text and other traditions. Members of these various traditions have not been able to come up with a definitive test to determine which of these conflicting text, if any, gives a true and accurate description of God's intent, and should be held to be True.

This leads me to believe that God, if he exists, is not interested in producing a definitively inspired and correct text. When I was in pursuit of God, the lack of a definitive and uniquely correct revealed text told me a great deal about how God might intend people to learn about Him. My conclusion was that he doesn't intend us to learn the One True Way by reading the answers in a book. The path to Him or Her is more complex.

Others do not share this observation. Others attribute to their own text a greater revelation than all other texts. Some of these attribute a better path to Truth comes from reading specific divinely inspired text than through observation, experiment, theory, and the rest of the scientific ritual. I have observed such individuals to be perfectly capable of comprehending technology and science up to the moment that the scientific method produces results that conflict with their religious text. At this point, they selectively throw out entire fields of science without altering their views on other scientific fields. The epistemology of science has one set of standards when science conflicts with revelation, and another set of standards when there is not conflict.

Again, I perceive my own values to place science first, politics second, and religion third. If an observed truth conflicts with a political or religious doctrine, I am inclined to doubt the doctrine. If there is a conflict, I would use observation, experiment and other scientific methods to determine which truth ought to prevail, if possible, if the question is one that is solvable by by observing what occurs in the real world. Not all questions are solvable through observation at this time. (No, Eric the Green, I'm not interested in discussing whether there is a real world just now. If there is no real world, can it be warming???)

Flat earth theory. OK. Good example. I will put that one in the same category as Christian creationist biology or libertarian climatology. Again, if you do not prefer the word 'denialist' to describe a rejection of entire fields of science with not better theory or data to justify the rejection, give me a preferred politically correct alternate description.

Flat earth... I worked a few software projects intended to point satellite dishes at satellites. There were equations that described the motions of the satellites. These equations assumed a round Earth. One of the major inputs to the equations were the longitude and latitude of the satellite dish. Other equations and parameters describe orbits of objects around Earth, assuming Newton's gravitational effects were dominant. (Nothing was moving at anything close to the speed of light, so we ignored Einstein.) If the world were flat, one would need quite different equations. This computer program worked. If one ran it, the software would scan for and lock onto satellite signals.

For a flat earther to convince me of his theory, I'd need him to explain how satellites stay stationary in place above a flat earth, how the same software using the same data set worked fine in both Taunton Massachusetts and Fort Huachuca Arizona. If he were truly serious, I'd ask him to develop his own software, based on a flat earth assumption, to predict the movement of satellites and point an antenna at them. If the flat earth software package worked as well as or better than the round earth software package, I'd have to sit down, take a long hard look at the flat earth equations, and maybe start asking him for pictures of the great waterfalls where the oceans are draining into the great void.

Of course, I am not really expecting that a flat earth theorist could write such a software package. As the round earth equations work, I would not expect alternative equations based on fundamentally different assumptions to produce identical results or match the reality of where satellites can be found in the sky. Still, I might fully expect a true believer to insist with intense fervor that such a software package could be written if they felt like it. Such a person might insist that their non-extant software should be taken as seriously as my functional software. Such a person would insist that my software is flawed, is based on something or other bad, even though it works. I would expect this even if the individual is a layman, and has no clue about orbital mechanics, software engineering, or how to point a satellite dish. Denialists somehow expect an uninformed opinion would still be more valid than a professional opinion.

OK, maybe there is another more politically correct way to describe such an argument other than 'denialist' or 'faith based.' I'm open to suggestions on how to put it politely, so as to not to insult the fragile egos of the flat earthers.

And, yes, you have put your finger on the nub of things. "My evidence just happens to be a basic understanding of scientific principles, as well as years of personal experience dealing with biased researchers who have an agenda when they present their data." People have biases. People confuse evidence with biases. People confuse their own biases and prejudices with other people's biases and prejudices. It is the nature of world views that one's own is correct, and thus everyone else's must be flawed. It's that classic big, "I'm right, the world's wrong."

Those who hold political or religious values highly might not agree with me, but in my not so humble opinion when the question is scientific, the faction that can best explain the data has a big leg up over those who can't explain the data.

Most people with strong religious or political values are quite willing to expose their biases to the world, to in fact shout their biases from mountain tops. Those who proclaim "I am a Fundamentalist, every word of the Bible is True!" will do so loudly and with considerable pride. If one is vaguely aware of the track records of such people, one knows where the Bible conflicts with scientific theory, one expects that certain fields of science simply cannot be objectively evaluated by people so blatantly and openly biased. Scientific evidence which conflicts with the Fundamentalist world view is voided in their minds. The researchers are perceived of as biased, the science is perceived of as flawed, there are conspiracy theories and hidden agendas behind every paper written in the entire field of evolutionary science. And, somehow, if one isn't a fundamentalist, few if any of the fundamentalist delusions and biases seem real.

I'm seeing the same effect here. If you say "I'm Libertarian and I'm Proud," more power to you when a political issue is being discussed. Me, I believe the rights of the individual should trump the will of the majority. Still, if the will of the majority is to respond to a serious and well documented threat, no individual rights are being violated in launching such an effort. As all citizens benefit from government manufactured transportation infrastructure and from police forces, so to do all citizens benefit from a habitable planet. There is nothing unique about the global warming issue which ought to grant libertarians some equivalent to conscientious objector status, that they should not have to contribute to what will be a significant job requiring group effort. No individual right involved in this issue preempts the will of the majority. If libertarians believe they have a right to fiddle while the world burns, they should attempt to pass a constitutional amendment to that effect. Good luck with that. Let me know how you would word your amendment to the constitution.

(The better argument would be based on global warming not being mentioned in the powers of Congress section of the Constitution, but the Supreme Court has been ignoring the list of enumerated powers for many decades now. Good luck with that too, though you should have a better case there. Still, even if the Supreme Court were to suddenly acknowledge Article 1 Section 8 again, the several states would still be sovereign and have jurisdiction over issues not delegated to the federal level.)

Now, if a libertarian should accept that there is a problem and suggest how it might be solved without a cooperative effort, I'm quite ready to listen. Still, somebody has to set a goal, and what isn't met by individual action is apt to be met by collective action. Denying the existence of the problem is not going to maximize the individual action, thus reducing the collective response.

Off topic...

Anyway, did you know that the lazy government procurement agencies supervising the satellite dish projects never once asked us to justify use of the round earth assumption? See how easy it is for the government to fall in with the easy habit of going with the scientific consensus?

There is also a tradition that satellite dishes should never be painted silver. It might look cool, but no. Every once in a while, orbital mechanics will form a straight line between satellite dish, satellite and the sun. When this happens, a silver satellite dish will thoroughly melt wave-guide, transceiver or whatever you have at the focus of the dish. Did you ever set a twig on fire with a magnifying glass? Picture what might happen with a magnifying glass 12 feet in diameter?

Just a word to the wise...

Accurately modelling what is going to happen to the climate of the earth is extremely diffcult. There are a hell a lot of variables, even the IPCC projections on temperature changes vary a lot.

One thing that is confusing me is that temperatures should be starting to skyrocket now, considering the amount of greenhouse gases we humans are injecting into the amosphere. Even the small amounts which have been injected since farmers first started clearing the forests and farming made temperatures a little higher than it should have been (the relative stablity of the holocene was no accident).

Originally Posted by The Rani

When I was asking about cycles in climate and mentioned the Ice Ages, your response was to post a graph dating back a few hundred years. If you're going to provide evidence, at least make it applicable to the situation, and don't blame your own inadequacies on someone else's world view.

Are Ice Ages relevant or are they a red herring? Humans are perturbing the atmophere in a fashion unprecedented for at least 800,000 years. This perturbation is known to produce warming. Warming is being observed in real time.

Nobody denies this. But then you bring up the possibility that some cyclical phenonenon that happens every several hundred centuries just happens to be operating in exactly the same century as humans are perturbing the atmopshere. That's quite a coincidence.

It is like watching a mugger shoot a man, who dies, and then speculating that he might have died from natural causes.

Not only that but this phenomenon is doing its work without anyone being able to see it! This is akin to the man having been in apparent good health before the shooting.

Just because we are not sure exactly what caused the Ice Ages doesn't mean that the mechanism was undetectable. If scientists were on the spot while the Ice Ages were happening, it might be obvious what was causing them, but since we don't have time machines we can't be there to observe. We are here today and we can watch what is happening. There are natural forces that can easily produce major effects on climate. A mere 5% drop in solar output would induce an ice age according to the Stefan Boltzmann law.

If you look at the global temperature record you see that it doesn't go up montonically. It wiggles. Frequency analysis of these wiggles shows the presence of an 11-year cycle that corresponds to the 11-year solar cycle. The average size of these wiggles is 0.24 degrees. If solar activity changed (in the appropriate direction) by a value 10-20 times the cyclical activity currently observed, the temperature effect should be enough to induce an ice age. Such a change would be associated with a change in solar output around 1%. A new theory, the cosmic-ray mediated effect of solar activity on cloudiness explains how such small fluctions in solar activity can produce large effects on climate.

The natural forces that produce big changes in climate like Ice Ages aren't mysterious at all. If they were doing so today, we could easily see this.

We don't see this. Direct measurements of solar output today show fluctations that are about 0.07%, much less than 1% or 5%. Nor do we see cosmic rays changing in the fashion necessary to produce observed warming.

Originally Posted by Tristan

One thing that is confusing me is that temperatures should be starting to skyrocket now, considering the amount of greenhouse gases we humans are injecting into the amosphere.

The effect is logarithmic, not linear. We should expect about twice as much CO2 warming between now and 2050 as was observed between 1950 and now. An acceleration (which the plots show), but hardly skyrocketing.

Originally Posted by Tristan

... One thing that is confusing me is that temperatures should be starting to skyrocket now, considering the amount of greenhouse gases we humans are injecting into the atmosphere. Even the small amounts which have been injected since farmers first started clearing the forests and farming made temperatures a little higher than it should have been (the relative stability of the Holocene was no accident).

I also wonder whether the seasonal effect exists. During growing season, we remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and replenish it in the off seasons. Unlike H2, for example, CO2 is not as mobile. Does the local concentration thus vary by season? Is there hysteresis?

I have no idea. These are just questions.

Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon

I also wonder whether the seasonal effect exists. During growing season, we remove CO2 from the atmosphere, and replenish it in the off seasons. Unlike H2, for example, CO2 is not as mobile. Does the local concentration thus vary by season? Is there hysteresis?

I have no idea. These are just questions.

The above chart does indeed show a pretty enough concentration by season. Mauna Loa is a volcano in Hawaii. Samples are taken there in an attempt to get as far away from any truly local source.

I'm not used to seeing such pretty curves in samples from nature. Both the straight line base signal and the seasonal sine waves are very regular.

Originally Posted by The Rani

Tell ya what, I'll let you keep your world view, and you let me keep mine. Deal ... or no deal? There is no million dollars to be won, only living together in an atmosphere of freedom, harmony, and tolerance. Doesn't that sound beautiful?

An atmosphere that doesn't get warm enough to cause a major extinction event would be beautiful too. Is this a multiple choice question?

Originally Posted by The Rani

A Major Extinction Event might actually be beautiful, if you're on the right drugs?

The dinosaurs couldn't stop the meteor (or whatever else it was that killed them) and we can't stop our own demise if Big Mamma Nature decides that's what we get. You can't stop Karma, man, just ask the hippies. In the meantime, let's party!

Sorry to be snarky, but some of us have children, so we're not so cavalier about the future.

Originally Posted by The Rani

The dinosaurs couldn't stop the meteor (or whatever else it was that killed them) and we can't stop our own demise if Big Mamma Nature decides that's what we get.

The dinosaurs were stupid. We may be, too, but that has yet to be finally proven.

You can't stop Karma, man, just ask the hippies.

Karma is the outcome of one's own actions, cause and effect.

I guess they didn't tell you that when you visited India.

In the meantime, let's party!

Vegan food and organic booze only of course. And we'll all arrive on bicycles. (I no longer have a working car, so that's not a choice.)

All kidding aside, I'm just not prepared to accept fate as inevitable without at least trying to do something about it. If we do, that makes it inevitable for certain.