Miss Palin: Global warming not man made

[landscaper]

PHD Science

 

[our_kid]

First off, re-read what I wrote. The wiki page is a list of authoritative sources. I did not say the wiki page itself was an authoritative source. If you bothered to visit the page you will see it is just an exhaustive list of sources, it is not an article, it is a list of links to the authoritative agencies and what they've said on the topic.

And I have seen and read exhaustive lists of sources refuting man-made global warming. Some have even been posted on here in past threads.

That's correct. NO theory can ever be proven 100% right or wrong. In fact it's a virtual certainty that every theory, from relativeity to the standard model of particle physics to the theories around global warming to evolution--they are all wrong in some way.

In fact our theory of gravity is utterly incompatible with our theory of particle physics. One of them MUST be wrong. On this basis you can argue, accurately, that gravity is just a theory and not proven. Nevertheless when you drop a hammer on your toe you will find out that this wrong theory of gravity anyway makes reasonably good predictions.

No one doubts that gravity exists, but debate about its cause still rages on. Research looking for the graviton particles is happening right now. I have friends in that field.

The same is true of theories about climate change. They turn out to have useful predictive power--the ones that posit a human cause of climate change anyway. They turn out to have accurately predicted data that wasn't know when the theory was generated. The alternative theories turned out to predict wrong values for that data. Just like the hammer falling on your toe the theories which to date have had the best predictive power predict that the pollution we are generating is warming the planet.

Computer-run simulations and prediction are nowhere near as credible as hard data. All the global warming alarmists have it seems is computer predicted data. There's no way a computer can take into account all the variables necessary to truly determine the effect on one variable (like humans) on another single variable (global temperatures). Christ, or computer simulations can't even predict the accurate weather one week from now most of the time. There is hard data observed by scientists in Ontario, England, and most recently Finland, showing that carbon dioxide levels in fact are going up after a rise in temperature. This even makes sense because if ocean temperatures rise, less CO2 gas is held in the oceans, which are the largest reservoir of CO2 on Earth.

See the list of citations on the Wiki link to see how many scientists agree with you. It's an exhaustive list of the peer reviewed journal articles and statements from other peer reviewed circles on the topic.

The reality is that most scientists do not agree with you.

A few thousand scientists hardly constitutes most of the scientists in the world. There are a few thousand scientists at Canadian Universities alone. They do constitute most of the scientists in the world. Just like if I found a link citing articles by a thousand scientists supporting creationism, that does not make it the global consensus. Consensus by definition means that everyone agrees. The fact that thousands of papers have been published disputing the man-made global warming (and even the very happening of global warming) shows that there is hardly a consensus on the issue. I will say that many scientists do not agree with my point, but many also do. 'Most' and 'many' are two different things.

Another reality is that from your description of science I can tell that if you actually are a scientist it is not in any of these areas, because you talk of controlled experiments as though they were the only way to provide evidence for a theory.

In fields like climate research the gold standard is whether or not your theory correctly predicts the values that will be found for data that is as yet unmeasured or even unmeasurable. When that data is finally discovered those theories that predicted it properly are strengthened, and those that predicted radically different values are invalidated by the findings.

It was through this process that the theories that global warming had non-human causes were invalidated: they predicted values that turned out to be false. The theories that global warming had at least partial human causes predicted values which, when finally measured, confirmed the predictive power of the theory.

Though I have studied atmospheric chemistry in the past, my main field of study now is chemical physics. So I know the invaluability computer simulations and predictions provide when looking at unmeasurable data to support a theory. However, they are not a substitute for hard, observable data like tree rings, for example, and other measurements, that provide indisputable facts.

Your error is in the phrase "the atmosphere", what exactly do you mean by that? Gasses at ground level are irrelevant.

Perhaps you should leave this to scientists who actually study this field rather than speculating on your own, you obviously lack the required expertise. In that respect you, and any policy maker who lacks the required expertise (which is pretty much all of them) should instead rely on the current best information available from the community of scientists who are experts in this area.

By atmosphere I was referring to the lowest level, the troposphere, where over 80% of the green house gases are, by mass, but I figured that wouldn't mean much to most people on here. Other outer layers of atmosphere are also observed to have experienced warming, lending credibility to solar radiation and not "man-made" gases as a cause. Cooling of the outer layers should be observed since greenhouse gases would be absorbing the surface-reflected infrared radiation before it reaches the outer layers. Although the latter could also be explained by the global heatsink theory. The actual cause is not proven, all we have is the observations, and several theories that suit them.

I know how science research works. If you aren't researching something that people want, you're not going to get money. There's a lot more money to be made saying "the global warming we're causing is getting worse and we're all going die if we don't do something." That something is often getting more money to do more research. Scientists have found a golden goose and they're not going to let go of it easily. They've found a problem that little certainty is known, most people don't understand, and there's no real solution for. I know some people on here think I'm probably a conspiracy theorist, harping on the supposed corrupt scientists of the world, but believe, no one was more disillusioned than I back when I started grad school and saw how financially driven 'science' often is. I know now that science can be a business like any other business and have politics like any other business.

And just to get things sorted, Fuji, I do accept man-made global warming as a theory. I do not, and feel that no one should, accept it as the god-made truth. Just as I think that non-man-made global warming and even anti-global warming theories should not be accepted as the truth. Once they are, the search for the truth stops.

 

[fuji]

And I have seen and read exhaustive lists of sources refuting man-made global warming. Some have even been posted on here in past threads.

Check that list dude.

Computer-run simulations and prediction are nowhere near as credible as hard data.

The theories that global warming has no human cause failed to predict the hard data and were therefore rejected. You PLAINLY don't understand what you are talking about.

All the global warming alarmists have it seems is computer predicted data.

What they have is that their models accurately predicted the correct values for hard data that had not yet been measured, while the opposing theories predicted wrong values and were rejected.

If you don't know that, you don't know enough about this topic to have an opinion on it.

A few thousand scientists hardly constitutes most of the scientists in the world.

Most of the scientists in the world are not in this field and are not qualified to comment on it. Your cluelessness on this matter is increasingly apparent!

I will say that many scientists do not agree with my point, but many also do. 'Most' and 'many' are two different things.

You're wrong. At least, if you are referring to those scientists who are experts in this area, as provided for on the link I gave you, most think you are wrong.

I know how science research works.

It's not apparent from your posts but I guess anything is possible.

There's a lot more money to be made saying "the global warming we're causing is getting worse and we're all going die if we don't do something."

Actually the reverse. There are some powerful industries that would like anything but that to be true, and they shell out big bucks to anyone who will publish what they want to hear.

I do not, and feel that no one should, accept it as the god-made truth.

No-one is asking you to. The claim is much more modest: It is simply the theory that has proven to have, by far, the greatest predictive power out of all the available theories on climate change.

 

[y2kmark]

Tobacco scientists ...

And I have seen and read exhaustive lists of sources refuting man-made global warming. Some have even been posted on here in past threads.

The fact that thousands of papers have been published disputing the man-made global warming (and even the very happening of global warming) shows that there is hardly a consensus on the issue. I will say that many scientists do not agree with my point, but many also do. 'Most' and 'many' are two different things. QUOTE]

Will continue to crank out this kind of fantasy as long as those with vested interests in taking no effective action continue to crank out the grant money.