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Koch Brothers pay to show global warming is real
Topic Started: Oct 31 2011, 08:01 PM (4,902 Views)
Chris
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Brewster
Nov 2 2011, 03:36 AM
While I'm at it, let's look at Chris's last bit of hilarity:

In the 20th century, a hypothetico-deductive model[12] for scientific method was formulated (for a more formal discussion, see below):

1. Use your experience: Consider the problem and try to make sense of it. Look for previous explanations. If this is a new problem to you, then move to step 2.

This is a good one for Chris. He's always got the same old "previous explanation" to fall back on: The government is out to scam us. and the rest of us are fools for not seeing it. I don't know why he ever went to step 2.

2. Form a conjecture: When nothing else is yet known, try to state an explanation, to someone else, or to your notebook.

He's got this one covered.The government is out to scam us. and the rest of us are fools for not seeing it.

3. Deduce a prediction from that explanation: If you assume 2 is true, what consequences follow?

Well, Obviously, since we're such fools, the government is going to rob us blind.

In the case of Climate Change, if Chis's theory is correct, it would be obvious to everyone that (a)temps have not risen, that (b) the Arctic is not melting, (C)no crops were destroyed by drought or flooding, there would be (d) no extreme storms or wildfires, and the (e)goverment would have taxed energy to the point that it is totally unaffordable.

4. Test: Look for the opposite of each consequence in order to disprove 2. It is a logical error to seek 3 directly as proof of 2. This error is called affirming the consequent.

So what is the opposite? (BTW, Chris, this step is called "Falsifying")

Well, let's see if Chris's theory is false by looking for opposites as he suggests, at least in the case of Climate Change:

(a) 97% of all Climate Scientists, and most others as well, including the majority of Deniers, agree that temps are rising steadily. Even Jim here on this board, among many others, admits that temps are rising. (Exactly the opposite of Chris's theory.)

(b) It is very obvious that the Arctic IS melting. so much so that countries like Canada, Russia and the US are gearing up for confrontations over the mineral rights, and shipping companies are planning to change routes to take avantage of the open water. Just look at this ice volume chart:
Posted Image
(Again, exactly the opposite of his theory.)

(c) Crops are being destroyed all over the world, driving food prices sky high.
I could come up with dozens of examples, but here's one so close to Chris he could see it just by looking out the door:
$5.3 Billion Texas Drought (Looking bad for Chris. The opposite of his theory yet again.)

(d) Extreme weather of all types has broken all records across the US this year. It's been mentioned so often it's not worth bringing up examples at this point.(Need I say it again?)

(e) Not one US government agency has raised a single energy tax this year, and Gasoline prices in particular are lower than they were in 2007.(Ooops - I bet he thought he was going to win on that one.)


So every single element of Chris's theory has been proven false, by his own schema.

If he were the true believer in the scientific method that he claims to be, he would now be an even stronger advocate of action against AGW than I am.

But if he's just blinded by his own dogma, then he'll continue to Deny everything, claiming my data, confirmed by many sources, is totally false, without supplying an authoritative source of any kind.

Which is it, Chris?
Your comments on the four step of the scientific method are nothing but ad hom. So I will skip them.

Other than one error: "BTW, Chris, this step is called "Falsifying"" Uh, Bruce, affirming the consequent is just that, a logical fallacy that you engage in. You have a dogmatic conclusion for which you will accept only data that supports it and reject the rest. I have shown that, but you do not comment on that.


"Well, let's see if Chris's theory is false by looking for opposites as he suggests, at least in the case of Climate Change"

I have offered no theory, Bruce. I have simply presented data that falsifies your hypothesis.

"(a) 97% of all Climate Scientists..."

Argumentum ad populum. Not scientific.

"(b) It is very obvious that the Arctic..."
"(c) Crops are being destroyed..."

Affirming the consequent.

"(d) Extreme weather of all types"

See discussion with Mike about the distinction between weather and climate and the data given to show his claim about TX drought being extreme false.

"(e) Not one US government agency..."

Irrelevant.

"So every single element of Chris's theory has been proven false"

What theory, Bruce? I have not presented a theory. Nice straw man.

"If he were the true believer..."

Poisoning the well.

"But if he's just blinded by his own dogma...."

Back to ad hom.

So much for the bull.




Now, back to facts and logic.

Bruce claims the following hypothesis: "human caused CO2 is the cause of recent warming"

He has presented data, BEST data, for the last 200 years, to support that. And it does, at a general, abstract level.

I have presented data, BEST data, same source as Bruce's, that shows the trend of world average temperatures over the last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all – though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly.

Bruce's hypothesis has been falsified. CO2 levels are rising but warming has not continued. His hypothesis does not fit the facts.

And speaking of scientific method, such an approach to this problem would abandon the hypothesis and find another that fits the data. That's how science works.

Bruce has never addressed this.
Edited by Chris, Nov 2 2011, 07:20 AM.
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donsm60
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Brewster, don’t have any comments for or against the warming because I have no clue one way or the other. But I do appreciate the drive you have, it’s the same as mine and from the heart on the gun topic knowing firsthand they aren’t going away here and the only solution to bads guys is to combat fire with fire. They're our babies we don’t back down from.
Edited by donsm60, Nov 2 2011, 08:28 AM.
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Chris
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Arguments from the heart are fine, but insufficient, arguments require facts and logic. You just can't argue with heartfelt beliefs.
Edited by Chris, Nov 2 2011, 08:33 AM.
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Chris
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Quote:
 
Bruce claims the following hypothesis: "human caused CO2 is the cause of recent warming"

He has presented data, BEST data, for the last 200 years, to support that. And it does, at a general, abstract level.

I have presented data, BEST data, same source as Bruce's, that shows the trend of world average temperatures over the last decade is absolutely flat, with no increase at all – though the levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere have carried on rising relentlessly.

Bruce's hypothesis has been falsified. CO2 levels are rising but warming has not continued. His hypothesis does not fit the facts.

And speaking of scientific method, such an approach to this problem would abandon the hypothesis and find another that fits the data. That's how science works.

Bruce has never addressed this.

Interesting, Bruce doesn't seem to want to offer a scientific explanation why his hypothesis doesn't fit the data.

Actually, I shouldn't say that Bruce hasn't addressed the data that doesn't fit his hypothesis, he has, attacked Curry personally and claimed her data is cherry picked.

Recall NGC's initial post was about Richard Muller changing from skeptic to advocate? The following article chronicles why Muller is involved and why his colleague Curry is skeptical--colleague is not the way self-proclaimed expert on this Bruce painted her.

Anyway, from the following article I'll skip the climategate stuff and pick up where Muller, the new proponent of AGW, and Curry, a skeptic, come in and continue with where the argument stands within the scientific community. Let's see if it matches Bruce's passionate hand waving.

The End of Climategate? New data on global temperature trends sheds light on the 2009 climate change scandal

Following the climategate scandal...
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In 2010, University of California physicist Richard Muller decided to become just such an outside researcher. Why? In a lecture back in October 1, 2010, Muller made it clear that he was extremely provoked [video] by the implications of the “hide the decline” adjustments made to the tree ring data. Consequently, Muller established that Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature (BEST) group* with the goal of checking the accuracy of the temperature datasets assembled by the climatologists involved in Climategate.

BEST is where both Bruce and I are getting data. Yet his is good and mine is bad?

The results were what NGC posted in the OP:
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So what did the BEST team find? On October 20, BEST issued a press release that declared [PDF], “Despite issues raised by climate change skeptics, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature study finds reliable evidence of a rise in the average world land temperature of approximately 1°C since the 1950s.” Muller added, “Our biggest surprise was that the new results agreed so closely with the warming values published previously by other teams in the U.S. and the U.K. This confirms that these studies were done carefully and that potential biases identified by climate skeptics did not seriously affect their conclusions.” So much for that aspect of Climategate.

What we didn't hear about were two shortcomings, incomplete data and inability to tie in human influences--this is still Muller, the new proponent of AGW, speaking:
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The BEST team focused on the land temperature data because those were considered to be the most likely ones to be biased. The team suggested that once ocean temperature data are included the increase since the 1950s in global average temperature would be reduced to about two-thirds of a degree centigrade. Muller stressed, “What Berkeley Earth has not done is make an independent assessment of how much of the observed warming is due to human actions.” Nevertheless, one of the four studies issued by BEST looked at the influence of ocean currents on global temperature trends, specifically the effect of shifts in sea surface temperatures associated with the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO). The study acknowledged that either greenhouse gas increases or natural variation might be driving AMO temperature changes. If the latter, that would suggest “the human component of global warming may be somewhat overestimated.”

Naturally, proponents of anthropogenic global warming were pleased with the BEST results and skeptics disappointed. However, Muller told the BBC on October 29 that the BEST land data showed no indication [audio] that man-made global warming has stopped or slowed down. He did also note that data combining land and ocean temperatures indicated that global temperature increases had slowed down in recent years. Interestingly, even some proponents of anthropogenic warming have accepted that “global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008.” They blame factors like natural variability and increased air pollution for the hiatus.

So that's Muller's whole story. Interesting how Muller, a scientist, and proponent of AGW, so readily admits these shortcomings, when Bruce is so absolute in rejecting them. Science vs passion?

Anyway, this is where Curry comes in, except not as the demon Bruce paints.
Quote:
 
Muller’s assertion about recent temperature trends incited skeptics and a member of Muller’s BEST team, Georgia Tech climatologist Judith Curry. An article with the provocative headline, “Scientist who said climate change sceptics had been proved wrong accused of hiding truth by colleague,” in the Sunday Daily Mail (U.K.) reported that Curry was accusing Muller of “trying to mislead the public by hiding the fact that BEST’s research shows global warming has stopped.” The article quotes Curry as asserting, “There is no scientific basis for saying that warming hasn’t stopped. To say that there is detracts from the credibility of the data, which is very unfortunate.”

It’s surprising how quickly people jump to (apparently predetermined) conclusions when it comes to a slowly unfolding phenomenon like climate change. The Daily Mail article engendered a flood of headlines from warming skeptics including, “The Climate Scam Continues,” and “Time for Another Climate Science Scandal.”

However, it seems that Curry has learned a rueful lesson about answering leading questions from reporters. On her Climate Etc. blog she clearly states, “This is NOT a new scandal….There is NO comparison of this situation to Climategate.” In fact, Curry and Muller talked together for 90 minutes earlier this week at the Third Santa Fe Conference on Global and Regional Climate Change. “I have to say that there isn’t much that we disagree on,” reports Curry. “So all in all, I am ok with what is going on in the BEST project.” End of scandal.

I suppose we could blame the media for politicizing this, but why did Bruce, so concerned with the science, react politically?

This is where I came in, post #3, reporting what Curry said about the last decade or so of data showing no increase in warming. We've seen Bruce's reaction to it, which he claims is scientific, right, name calling and dismissing data.

Here's how the scientific community is dealing with the recent data:
Quote:
 
Contacted via email, Curry tells me that she “does not regard their initial findings and analyses as the last word on any of this” but adds, “Their interpretation is not unreasonable.” She pointed to the BEST FAQ on the issue which concludes that “the decadal fluctuations [in global temperatures] are too large to allow us to make decisive conclusions about long term trends based on close examination of periods as short as 13 to 15 years.”

A new study [PDF] just now being published by a leading group of climate modelers argues that “temperature records of at least 17 years in length are required for identifying human effects on global-mean tropospheric temperature.” Considering that the warming pause in some temperature records has already been going on for 13 to 15 years perhaps we will soon find out if the climate models are producing valid results or not and get a better idea of how much warming can be attributed to accumulating greenhouse gases.

In short, in the scientific community, the jury is still out. The argument goes on.

I guess Bruce, as a passionate and self-proclaimed scientific authority, just forgot to mention all this.
Edited by Chris, Nov 2 2011, 08:40 PM.
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Chris
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An interesting comment on the preceding dialog between an authority and a skeptic that looks at the global warming controversy from the eyes of a scientist, David Deutsch, and his observations of what science is in The Beginning of Infinity.

Does climate change denial have a place in science?
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So I’m reading The Beginning of Infinity by author an Oxford physicist David Deutsch. He begins the book with a discussion about the origins of modern science which include several pages that have a surprising relevance to the question of “scientific consensus”. We are told over and over again that there is scientific consensus and that the authorities in science – the IPCC and major organized societies like the National Academies of Science, the Royal Society and so on – all support the theory of manmade global warming. First of all there is not nearly as much consensus as the media and Al Gore would have you believe but that’s not what I want to address today. Right now I am interested in a more fundamental question, which is does consensus or proclamations by some geological society even matter? According to Deutsch this sort of authority based proclamation is decidedly anti-science (although to be clear he is not addressing climate change or any specific issue).

He begins the discussion with this interesting passage:

The misconception that knowledge needs authority to be genuine or reliable dates back to antiquity, and it still prevails…It converts the quest for truth into a quest for certainty(a feeling) or for endorsement (a social status). This misconception is called justificationism.

I totally agree with this statement – and the implication is that just because the IPCC says something is true does not make it so. It also illustrates how some sectors of climate science have become corrupted by groups of scientists seeking social status by conforming to the “consensus” view. Deutsch continues:

The opposing position – namely the recognition that there are not authoritative sources of knowledge, nor any reliable means of justifying ideas as being true or probable, is called fallibilism…to those of us for whom creating knowledge means understanding better what is really there, and how it really behaves and why, fallibilism is part of the very means by which this is achieved. Fallibists expect even their best and most fundamental explanations to contain misconceptions in addition to truth, and so they are predisposed to try to change them for the better.

It would seem to me that whether they are ultimately correct or not, it is the climate skeptics who are playing the role of the “fallibists” to use Deutsch’s terminology – and hence are vital for keeping climate science part of true science. It’s also interesting that while Deutsch emphasizes that a scientist expects their theories to contain misconceptions we are told by Al Gore and others that climate science is settled. In contrast Deutsch describes modern science this way:

the logic of fallibilism is that one not only seeks to correct the misconceptions of the past, but hopes in the future to find and change mistaken ideas that no one today questions or finds problematic.

The climate science establishment takes the opposite view – they are absolutely certain that carbon dioxide will cause catastrophic global warming and that natural factors like solar/cosmic rays and ocean cycles are minor players. According to the definition of science Deutsch is describing – the climate science establishment is actually anti-science. Deutsch then produces a quote from Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes mysteries that also applies to the climate change debate:

circumstantial evidence…is a ‘very tricky thing…It may seem to point very straight to one thing, but if you shift your own point of view a little, you may find it pointing in an equally uncompromising manner to something entirely different…There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact’

Indeed – the obvious fact in climate science is that carbon dioxide levels go up and then the temperature follows. Some scientists have shifted their point of view – and found that solar magnetic fields and cosmic rays correspond better to temperature changes on earth than carbon dioxide levels (see video below).

Deutsch then continues will some interesting observations that can be applied to the notion that the IPCC is an authoritative body dispensing truth – that we must accept because the National Academy of Sciences has said it is true in a statement. Deutsch says its actually rebellion against authoritative knowledge which is vital to science:

one thing that all conceptions of the Enlightenment agree on is that it was a rebellion, and specifically a rebellion against authority in regard to knowledge. Rejecting authority in regard to knowledge was not just a matter of abstract analysis. It was a necessary condition for progress, because, before the Enlightenment, it was generally believed that everything important that was knowable had already been discovered, and was enshrined in authoritative sources such as ancient writings and traditional assumptions.

For climate science, it is generally believed (by some) that everything important is already known – carbon dioxide is causing a catastrophic warming of the earth. The debate is settled and looking at other causes of climate change is not permitted. This is now enshrined in the authoritative writings of the IPCC. All that is left to do now is to work out the consequences like how high the sea level will rise or how many climate refugees there will be. Deutsch continues with a discussion of the value of rebellion – including mentioning the motto of the Royal Society which now says any debate on climate change is over.

progress depended on learning how to reject their authority…the Royal Society …took as it’s motto ‘Nullius in verba’, which means something like ‘Take no one’s word for it.’…What was needed for the sustained, rapid growth of knowledge was a tradition of criticism. Before the Enlightenment, that was a very rare sort of tradition: usually the whole point of a tradition was to keep things the same. Thus the Enlightenment was a revolution in how people sought knowledge: by trying not to rely on authority.

The attempt to shut down climate skeptics, whether it’s the BBC refusing to give them any news coverage, calling people names like “climate deniers”, cheering consensus, relying on the IPCC as an authority – all goes completely against the Enlightenment. Whether the skeptics are right or not shutting them down is doing huge damage to science as a whole. It’s time for scientists to get some courage and speak out against this nonsense.
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ngc1514
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The misconception that knowledge needs authority to be genuine or reliable dates back to antiquity, and it still prevails…It converts the quest for truth into a quest for certainty(a feeling) or for endorsement (a social status). This misconception is called justificationism.

But prevails among who?
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Brewster
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Chris, nice to see your Confirmation Bias is still intact - One little repeatedly disproved, cherry picked graph from a dubious source wiith no climate training, and you hang onto it like a drunk to a lamppost - more for support than illumination.

Nobody in the know is going to pay any attention to you until you roll out something from a real, working climate scientist not in the pay of big energy, but go ahead, keep making a fool of yourself.

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Jim Miller
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Brewster
Nov 11 2011, 11:30 AM
Nobody in the know is going to pay any attention to you until you roll out something from a real, working climate scientist not in the pay of big energy, but go ahead, keep making a fool of yourself.

Braha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha. Of all the people to make a statement like that. Braha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha,ha.
Edited by Jim Miller, Nov 11 2011, 11:53 AM.
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Ad hom, ad hom, ad hom. Whatthe heck is ad hom?
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Jim Miller
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It is what you constantly do when you are getting your ass kicked by Chris. Name calling.
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