It's all over but for the sweating?

[Arragonis]

A debate, with scientists and others, about policy.

Of which we are apparently not worthy to discuss.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard

We are not scientists, so we cannot debate this, anymore than we could debate plate tectonics or atomic theory or evolution.

Speak for yourself. I am. (And as a matter of fact, you could find my name as co-author on several papers related to computer modeling of air pollution transport.)

However, science isn't a forbidden temple, where only an elite caste of priests are allowed entrance to the holy of holies. Anyone is free to learn as much (or as little) of it as they wish. The real problem is that "debate" is fundamentally inconsistent with science, especially here. Debate is the manipulation of words to appeal to the emotions, invoking wishful thinking rather than rational thought. Debate is no more applicable to science than it is to doing jigsaw puzzles: we can debate all we like whether the piece we have in our hands will fit in a particular place, but no amount of debate will make it fit if it doesn't.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

This is the argument from authority, by proxy, and just as lacking in credibility.

But of course science IS argument from authority, with the universe being the authority. Your link is a perfect example of this. Wishful thinkers try to claim that it's not warming (or charitably, that a model attempting to deduce the extent of warming from limited data was not accurate), but the ice shelves still collapsed.

Or maybe you think it is heretical to question things ?

Questioning is fine, but (as above) questions should eventually be resolved by appeal to the ultimate authority. The sort of "questioning" our AGW sceptics are doing is not really questioning at all, it's rejection of authority (the authority of nature, that is) in favor of wishful thinking. It's on the same level as "questioning" the shape of the Earth by maintaining the fixed opinion that it's flat.

As I pointed out before, the miners are no longer so unionised - haven't been for 20+ years...

Things change, you know. There was a time when there were no unions, then a time when they became nearly all-powerful. Who's to say that, if Britain were exclusively dependent on coal, that they would not regain their power. Same applies to gas, of course, or to the scheme of providing European electricity from solar plants in the Sahara. To put it crudely, you're giving someone a grip on your balls and expecting them not to squeeze.

Additionally that fracked gas reduced the US co2 output and kept the lights on. Why shouldn't we do that too ?

For the same reasons the US shouldn't be doing it.

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Speak for yourself. I am. (And as a matter of fact, you could find my name as co-author on several papers related to computer modeling of air pollution transport.)

However, science isn't a forbidden temple, where only an elite caste of priests are allowed entrance to the holy of holies. Anyone is free to learn as much (or as little) of it as they wish.

Yeay, but...

Originally Posted by jamesqf

The real problem is that "debate" is fundamentally inconsistent with science, especially here. Debate is the manipulation of words to appeal to the emotions, invoking wishful thinking rather than rational thought. Debate is no more applicable to science than it is to doing jigsaw puzzles: we can debate all we like whether the piece we have in our hands will fit in a particular place, but no amount of debate will make it fit if it doesn't.

No, sorry, but this is bollocks of the first order.

"Science" and "debate" are fundamentally linked, if you think they aren't then I suggest you don't understand either, including your name on papers - At the start of modern science those in the know understood this, for example the exchanges between Isaac Newton and Hooke - where the famous quote

What Des-Cartes did was a good step. You have added much several ways, & especially in taking the colours of thin plates into philosophical consideration. If I have seen further it is by standing on the sholders of Giants

came from.

If "science" is totally certain of it's findings it should place ALL of it's evidence and conclusions into the open, it should have no fear of challenge and no fear of doubt - as Eric Raymond (open source software guy) suggested a couple of years ago.

There is only one way to cut through all of the conflicting claims and agendas about the CRU’s research: open-source it all. Publish the primary data sets, publish the programs used to interpret them and create graphs like the well-known global-temperature “hockey stick”, publish everything. Let the code and the data speak for itself; let the facts trump speculation and interpretation.

Extend this, open source the lot - all the records, the reconstructions, the source data (raw) and the processing software, the adjustments, and the processed data, and the software used after that. Make it so when you issue a paper you make it possible to reproduce so others can learn or note problems.

I (as only a pleb) kind of thought this is what scientists did with "peer review" - but it seems not in the case of climate science, where pal review is just fine.

If you are going to influence politicians to move our modern economy back to the 1600s I demand total proof, otherwise bog off.

[Arragonis]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

But of course science IS argument from authority, with the universe being the authority. Your link is a perfect example of this. Wishful thinkers try to claim that it's not warming (or charitably, that a model attempting to deduce the extent of warming from limited data was not accurate), but the ice shelves still collapsed.

Neither side proved their point, including those on the side of "simple physics" - think this through, maybe the world as a model is more complex ? And did you note the ice growth in the arctic this winter ? How did that happen with all this CO2 ?

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Questioning is fine, but (as above) questions should eventually be resolved by appeal to the ultimate authority. The sort of "questioning" our AGW sceptics are doing is not really questioning at all, it's rejection of authority (the authority of nature, that is) in favor of wishful thinking. It's on the same level as "questioning" the shape of the Earth by maintaining the fixed opinion that it's flat.

I did another post on this, my position is that "Science" as a community or an movement or, er, whatever - doesn't understand everything. If you are happy to think they do then woohoo.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Things change, you know. There was a time when there were no unions, then a time when they became nearly all-powerful. Who's to say that, if Britain were exclusively dependent on coal, that they would not regain their power. Same applies to gas, of course, or to the scheme of providing European electricity from solar plants in the Sahara. To put it crudely, you're giving someone a grip on your balls and expecting them not to squeeze.

Same for the US or anywhere else really.

Originally Posted by jamesqf

For the same reasons the US shouldn't be doing it.

Which are what ?

[Arragonis]

An analysis of the "new hockey stick".

Era of the Pharaohs: Climate was HOTTER THAN NOW, without CO2 ? The Register

It confirmed what I was mentioning earlier, that the data has been spliced with instrument readings at the end, so it isn't a graph of the same thing all the way along - it is reconstructions at one end and instruments at the other.

Marcott and his colleagues, published today in leading boffinry mag Science, have this to say:

Our results indicate that global mean temperature for the decade 2000–2009 has not yet exceeded the warmest temperatures of the early Holocene (5000 to 10,000 years ago)


Forget the spike at the right in this context

The graph produced by the researchers, to layman's eyes, appears to contradict this: but that's because Marcott and his crew say they produced it by bolting on the latest version of the famous/infamous "hockey stick" graph, produced partly from thermometer readings in recent times by the famous climate zealot Michael Mann, at the end. The problem with doing that is that the rest of the graph cannot and does not display any variation on scales shorter than 120 years: had there been thermometers recording temperatures globally for the last 10,000 years there may have been many such up-and-down spikes to be seen. That's why Marcott et al freely acknowledge that the world was hotter than it now is for much of the period before 5,000 years ago.

It also looks at the predicted consequences for warming now against what actually happened in the past given the same conditions, according to this reconstruction.

Nonetheless, according to those more realistic experts, even if we stop emitting carbon right now - so, perhaps, containing eventual warming to levels like those seen in the pre-Egyptian millennia - we could expect a metre of sea-level rise above present levels by the year 3000 AD.

And yet the ancient Egyptians, despite having lived through pretty much exactly that scenario, don't appear to have seen anything like those sort of sea levels. Respectable geologists project that sea levels just a metre above today's would see the port city of Alexandria become an isolated island or peninsula off the Egyptian coast: but that didn't happen. The Old Egyptian town of Rhakotis on the site which later became Alexandria was a major urban centre right back to 2600 BC and before. This would hardly have been the case had it been largely inaccessible from the fertile farmland of the Delta (much of whic would have been flooded and useless anyway in that scenario, as is expected in the imminent future by alarmists now).

It's interesting stuff, anyway - and doesn't really seem to support the agenda its authors might support.

*(I'm not particularly impressed with the author's choice of language - zealot, warming, doomsayer etc. - I don't believe this adds anything of value)

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Arragonis

"Science" and "debate" are fundamentally linked, if you think they aren't then I suggest you don't understand either, including your name on papers - At the start of modern science those in the know understood this, for example the exchanges between Isaac Newton and Hooke - where the famous quote

came from.

Please point out where there is any debate in that. Is there any appeal to emotion, prejudice, or wishful thinking? Any attempt to convince the listener by knowing falsification of data? I think you are confusing debate with reasoned discussion.

If "science" is totally certain of it's findings it should place ALL of it's evidence and conclusions into the open, it should have no fear of challenge and no fear of doubt...

And so it has.

If you are going to influence politicians to move our modern economy back to the 1600s I demand total
proof, otherwise bog off.

See, there you go with the debate again: a totally off-the-wall appeal to emotion.

[freebeard]

Quote: Originally Posted by jamesqf
For the same reasons the US shouldn't be doing it.
Which are what ?

What the shale gas industry doesn't want you to know about fracking

Dangers of Fracking

The Hard Facts About Fracking

Why Ban Fracking? | Food & Water Watch

Quick Overview ▼

Water
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Films

U.S. Energy Insecurity: Why Fracking for Oil andNatural Gas Is a False Solution

Not to mention the Amish

[NeilBlanchard]

Our planet wobbles, and this changes the climate without changes in the carbon dioxide:

From Hockey Stick to Ski Jump | Climate Denial Crock of the Week

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xMZSu...layer_embedded

The gradual changes through the Holocene were driven by changes in Earth’s rotation, says Marcott. The planet is tilted about 23° relative to the plane of its orbit, and this tilt increased early in the Holocene before decreasing again. “It sort of wobbles,” Marcott says. A greater tilt increases the amount of sunlight at the poles during summer, and this keeps the planet warmer.

If humans had not begun warming the planet by releasing greenhouse gases, Earth would eventually return to an ice age. “If we were following the orbital trend we’d still be cooling,” Marcott says.

[Arragonis]

More review of the Marcott paper

Let’s play hockey – again | Climate Etc.

by scientists (this one was part of BEST).

With a blog.