Could "we" be wrong about global warming?

[Jason Rees]

The problem with wikipedia should be obvious to anyone who's used it for any length of time. It's pedantically liberal in content because they push, shove, harrass and get anyone who sees things differently kicked off or convinced to leave.

Where do these estimates of the past come from? Does anyone really believe sea level was a constant from 1800 to 1870, and suddenly started rising? And whose projections of the future? The answer's different depending on who you ask. Unless you're on Wikipedia, where global warming and a racist, violence-loving, empire-building, power-gluttoned USA exist in the same tired lexicon; not as fiction or even something debateable, but as 'undeniable,' imperically-self-evident facts.

Ok. So ends my wikipedia rant. Yeah, I tried to do some justice to some articles there, and eventually tired of their antics.

[JimHawkins]

Then just search the web....


Here's about a gazillion graphs all going in the same direction...

http://images.google.com/images?client= ... a=N&tab=wi


That graphic isn't from the liberal elite <insert right wing conspiracy theory> wiki site.. Or are they all in on the conspiracy ?

Past estimates and future estimates are quite irrelevant to what is known in any case...

[Bill Glasheen]

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

Umm... Right! That's a pretty laughable curve.

• The past is an "estimate" which shows no change. Riiiggghhtt!!!
• The measured present shows a whole tenth of a meter variation Ooooohhhh! Honey, get the kids off the beach!
• Note the negative 2nd derivative trend (in real data) before the "projection" which magically changes the trend. Riiiggghhhttt!!!

Meanwhile, the article I just cited questioned the veracity of the models that produced this projection. You did read the article, right? You do realize why I started this thread, right?

Climate will change; it has in the past (without human intervention) and it will happen in the future. But that "estimate" of the past has enough variation to drive a truck through it, never mind that the variance band is almost as large as the change in the present (which is only precise in the past few years). And that "projection" just ain't happening.

I wish it would. I really didn't want to buy an AWD drive vehicle. And I went a string of winters there w/o having to shovel my 100 foot driveway. That all changed last winter. Damn!



Sigh...

- Bill

[JimHawkins]

Sorry Bill... i didn't say we were all in danger of flooding.. I am not even concerned really at this point beyond the caps melting and changing the flow of the gulf stream...blah, blah...

But as far as I know everyone seems to agree SL is rising. I thought you said it wasn't at all..

My mistake...

And sorry I missed any citation..

[Jason Rees]

Hey, Bill, shoveling's hard enough when you do it in a straight line...

[Bill Glasheen]

Courtesy of a well-known lurker.

- Bill

[f.Channell]

Past levels of the ocean are taken by soil sampling and testing.

Warming is still up for debate among scientists, you can always find someone to agree with no global warming.

Of course some scientists went to their graves thinking the earth was flat....

[Bill Glasheen]

Of course some scientists went to their graves thinking the earth was flat....

Good example, Fred! I think I'll use it.

Every person - scientist or liberal artist - should read Thomas Khun's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Among other things, Khun's insight popularized the word paradigm and the expression paradigm shift.

From Wikipedia (Jim's favorite source... ).

What is arguably the most famous example of a revolution in scientific thought is the Copernican Revolution. In Ptolemy's school of thought, cycles and epicycles (with some additional concepts) were used for modeling the movements of the planets in a cosmos that had a stationary Earth at its center. As the accuracy of celestial observations increased, the complexity of the Ptolemaic cyclical and epicyclical mechanisms had to increase in step with the increased accuracy of the observations, in order to maintain the calculated planetary positions close to the observed positions. Copernicus proposed a cosmology in which the Sun was at the center and the Earth was one of the planets revolving around it. For modeling the planetary motions, Copernicus used the tools he was familiar with, namely the cycles and epicycles of the Ptolemaic toolbox. But Copernicus' model needed more cycles and epicycles than existed in the then-current Ptolemaic model, and due to a lack of accuracy in calculations, Copernicus's model did not appear to provide more accurate predictions than the Ptolemy model. Copernicus' contemporaries rejected his cosmology, and Kuhn asserts that they were quite right to do so: Copernicus' cosmology lacked credibility.

(snip)

The Ptolemaic approach of using cycles and epicycles was becoming strained: there seemed to be no end to the mushrooming growth in complexity required to account for the observable phenomena. Johannes Kepler was the first person to abandon the tools of the Ptolemaic paradigm. He started to explore the possibility that the planet Mars might have an elliptical orbit rather than a circular one. Clearly, the angular velocity could not be constant, but it proved very difficult to find the formula describing the rate of change of the planet's angular velocity. After many years of calculations, Kepler arrived at what we now know as the law of equal areas.

And the rest is history.

It seems to me that the CO2 theory of anthropogenic global warming is becoming "strained." There seems to be no end to the mushrooming growth in complexity required to account for the observable phenomena.

And that's where Occam's Razor comes in. More from Wiki...

When competing hypotheses are equal in other respects, the principle recommends selection of the hypothesis that introduces the fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities while still sufficiently answering the question. It is in this sense that Occam's razor is usually understood. To quote Isaac Newton: "We are to admit no more causes of natural things than such as are both true and sufficient to explain their appearances. Therefore, to the same natural effects we must, so far as possible, assign the same causes."

No need to create more assumptions to support a crumbling hypothesis. Perhaps a paradigm shift is in order.



- Bill

[Glenn]

As Kuhn emphasized, if the evidence leads away from a particular paradigm then a paradigm shift will occur, it is just a matter of time. Young scientists are always eager to make a name for themselves by discovering the latest greatest breakthough, and are quick to exploit weaknesses in theories/models for that purpose.

Regarding sea-level rise, it has been rising since the last ice age maximum about 20,000 years ago (when it was a lot lower than it is today). The fact that it exists as a variable natural phenomenon is why it is so difficult to tease out of the data if there is any current anthropogenic impact to the process.

[Topos]

Encarta info: " The principal constituents of the atmosphere of Earth are nitrogen (78 percent) and oxygen (21 percent). The atmospheric gases in the remaining 1 percent are argon (0.9 percent), carbon dioxide (0.03 percent), varying amounts of water vapor, and trace amounts of hydrogen, ozone, methane, carbon monoxide, helium, neon, krypton, and xenon."

Can the class say altogether " POINT ZERO THREE PERCENT"?
Or 0.0003.

Dr. Warren McCulloch at MIT in the 1950's had a cartoon of a hunter pointing at an escaping rabbit as his hound dog stared at his hand. The caption; "Look at where I am pointing to, stupid, NOT at my finger!"

The finger pointing to the neo-Lysenkos [Trofim Denisovich Lysenko] issues, which stand to transcend the Bernie Madoff scam, with Al Gore standing to profit in the 'CO2 trading' in the order of $100 million, is the Rabbit running off with our freedoms and cash via taxes. The finger is the pseudo science based on vote taking by grant seeking academic 'scientists'. Albert Einstein stated that no experiment can prove his theories, just one can destroy them. Is it not poetic that Al Gore's conferences on 'Global Warming' were cancelled by 'abnormally' low temperatures and snow this past year?

Are you going to believe Al Gore and the other experts or your lying eyes, such as Dr. Bill and us shoveling and freezing this last winter?

[Glenn]

Encarta info: " The principal constituents of the atmosphere of Earth are nitrogen (78 percent) and oxygen (21 percent). The atmospheric gases in the remaining 1 percent are argon (0.9 percent), carbon dioxide (0.03 percent), varying amounts of water vapor, and trace amounts of hydrogen, ozone, methane, carbon monoxide, helium, neon, krypton, and xenon."

Can the class say altogether " POINT ZERO THREE PERCENT"?

Hence the concern. If such small percentages of carbon dioxide and other trace gases are what is currently keeping the planet as warm as it is then just adding a small amount could have a big impact.

The finger pointing to the neo-Lysenkos [Trofim Denisovich Lysenko] issues

Lysenko was a discredited Soviet agronomist/geneticist, nothing to do with global warming.

which stand to transcend the Bernie Madoff scam, with Al Gore standing to profit in the 'CO2 trading' in the order of $100 million

Documentation?

is the Rabbit running off with our freedoms and cash via taxes

Devil's advocate here, but since when is trying to protect what we can of Earth and human existance an infringement on freedom? Do you think continued environmental degradation will result in continued freedoms as we fight more to control less? Seems to me corporations losing the free-market exploitation rights that they hold at everyone else's expense is the only freedom truly in jeopardy by environmental policies.

The finger is the pseudo science based on vote taking by grant seeking academic 'scientists'.

It is very easy to slander what one does not agree with as "pseudo science", but believe it or not science is based on the evidence, not "vote taking". And science is good about self-policing itself, as scientists demand evidence and are very quick to point out the mistakes of other scientists. Note that grant funding accounts for a minority of total research conducted in the world. And the majority (60-70% depending on the field) of funding that does occur is provided by corporations and other private entities, with another 20-30% being provided by universities and 10-20% by the government. The corporations are the ones in control of the money, and yet with global warming the evidence goes against what most corporations want to see. Sounds like the scientists are not the ones we should be worrying about.

Albert Einstein stated that no experiment can prove his theories, just one can destroy them.

That's true for all science, and is not specific to Einstein. All scientists know the principle of falsification in science, where no hypothesis/theory can ever be proven true (new evidence in the future could disprove it) but all can be disproved.

Is it not poetic that Al Gore's conferences on 'Global Warming' were cancelled by 'abnormally' low temperatures and snow this past year?

Are you going to believe Al Gore and the other experts or your lying eyes, such as Dr. Bill and us shoveling and freezing this last winter?

As I have said many times before, you cannot build a case either for or against global warming simply based on the temperatures of one or even a few years. You have to look at the long-term big picture.

Extreme conservative views promoting science as a scam and advocating doing nothing simply on that mis-perception is no more meaningful to the debates then extreme environmentalist views advocating extreme changes based on incomplete science. And of course the scientists at the heart of the research simply wish both sides would go away so that they could work on solving the puzzle.

[Bill Glasheen]

the scientists at the heart of the research simply wish both sides would go away so that they could work on solving the puzzle.

Yes and no. Controversy and doom/gloom scenarios stir interest and generate more research funding. Careers are rarely made on negative findings, and extended research grants don't go to problems that are easily solved.

The Ivory Tower types are not beyond reproach, nor are they on average agnostic with respect to politics.

- Bill

[f.Channell]

Carbon dioxide is on a steady alarming incline. I'll look for some data, I just saw a chart this morning, shown to me by a geology professor.

And the scientific community calls it "climate change" while some areas are going up in temperature, others are going down. Bills snow shovelling might be a sign of that. Our own cold wet summer in New England may also be, too soon to tell.
Shifts in weather can have horrible consequences, look at the dust bowls during the depression.

Global warming seems to be more of a political or media term.

[f.Channell]

This page has a carbon dioxide chart

National Medal of Science awarded

Please shrink it to a smaller link Bill! Never done that...

.......... Done! And here's your chart.

..........

.......... - Bill


Charts I've seem from the 1700's are more dramatic. CO2 measurements are taken from glacial ice for earlier recordings.
And if ocean temps rise, guess what gets released? More carbon dioxide stored in cold ocean waters.
Here's another good site for researching this
http://www.ipcc.ch/

F.

[Glenn]

The Ivory Tower types are not beyond reproach, nor are they on average agnostic with respect to politics.

No one is beyond reproach, and I have detailed in other threads some reproachable acts committed by individual scientists. What is equally reproachable (not sure if that is a word, but I like it) however is to apply an inflammatory negative stereotype to a whole group. This forum is quick to reject negative stereotypes applied to martial artists as a whole, I am just extending the same consideration to academic scientists. In my experience in both realms, the typical academic scientist is no more a liberal data-fudging grant hog than the typical martial artist is a McDojo-running chister scam artist. There is a wide spectrum in both realms.