Xeno wrote:

Seond lurker to fall by here today and leave a callling card, like they're waiting for what's gonna happen next?

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

Xeno wrote:

Seond lurker to fall by here today and leave a callling card, like they're waiting for what's gonna happen next?

We're waiting for a skeptic with enough balls to argue against global warming in this thread.

I'm pulling an all-nigther and am also starving, so I'm gonna make this short.

I want to use this current absence of deniers to make a quick suggestion concerning a different approach to the debate. In the RDF thread deniers kept parroting typical propaganda websites and when faced with evidence just copy & pasted some articles from McIntyre, Watts & Co. I remember one of them saying that Lindzen was preparing a rebuttal to his rebuttal and that this would surely put the warmists in their place. This is a great example for one of the main reason for the stagnation of the debate, namely Authority.

Without enough background knowledge the arguments all look like this: A says sth really long and sciency, B replies with sth equally sciency, A rebuts this with another lengthy article etc. If all scientific papers are met with a "meh, here is sth from McIntyre" then no real scientific debate can take place. You can still discuss the epistemology and methodology of those involved or lecture the completely uneducated (I admit, there are quite a few) about the basics of AGW, but all scientific arguments beyond the basics will end in a copy & paste war.

So maybe it would be a good idea for those who have repeatedly debunked the claims of Watts & co (Tarby, MacDoc et cetera) to start collecting the most easily refuted and most obviously misleading articles they have debunked, in order to create succinct posts showing the intellectual dishonesty of those individuals. If you seed out the parroting trolls and strip them of their sources, maybe the debate can go in a more meaningful direction.

atrasicarius wrote:

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

Xeno wrote:

Seond lurker to fall by here today and leave a callling card, like they're waiting for what's gonna happen next?

We're waiting for a skeptic with enough balls to argue against global warming in this thread.

I've done that, and all I got was a lousy t-shirt and a fucking headache. Will somebody else stand up?

Luis Dias wrote:

atrasicarius wrote:

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

Xeno wrote:

Seond lurker to fall by here today and leave a callling card, like they're waiting for what's gonna happen next?

We're waiting for a skeptic with enough balls to argue against global warming in this thread.

I've done that, and all I got was a lousy t-shirt and a fucking headache. Will somebody else stand up?

I dont know enough about the subject to do it. All I could do would be cite work other people did without really understanding it myself, and that's not a very good argument.

atrasicarius wrote:

Luis Dias wrote:

atrasicarius wrote:

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

Xeno wrote:

Seond lurker to fall by here today and leave a callling card, like they're waiting for what's gonna happen next?

We're waiting for a skeptic with enough balls to argue against global warming in this thread.

I've done that, and all I got was a lousy t-shirt and a fucking headache. Will somebody else stand up?

I dont know enough about the subject to do it. All I could do would be cite work other people did without really understanding it myself, and that's not a very good argument.

No, it isn't, but it doesn't stop your typical skeptic/denialist from using it all the time. It's a habit with them because they don't have much in the way of actual real science upon which to rest their case. So, they reach for the fast and loose and fire away. In most cases these prangs are not scientists or if they are their professions in some vastly unrelated field like the lifespan of bowling balls or something. In such cases, it becomes a political argument much more than a science argument.

I hope everyone here realizes that there's never been a paper published that offers a good solid case for what is causing the warming we've observed ... if it isn't us humans, we being the "A" in "AGW."

Most skeptiocs today agree that earth is warming, they just don't agree that GHGs are the cause. All sort and manner of papers have been published that have attempted to take that on and show, for example, that it's changes in the sun's radiance, or some kind of cosmic ray relationship.

Oh they've tried, but to date they've all been shot down by their author's peers. The normal workings of any science. Remember how long it took for the theory of plate tectonics to become mainstream? It sure didn't happen overnight. But its early proponents were right. Their theory held up.

As I suspect our climate scientist's are right today in this thing. They have a good workable theory. Its been signed off by every national academy of sciences in the Western world and by 40-odd professional associations, groups, and other respected scientific bodies. It has the kind of momentum that Plate Tectonics had in 1955:

Wiki, speaking of Plate Tectonics,

wikipedia wrote:
The first evidence that the lithospheric plates did move came with the discovery of variable magnetic field direction in rocks of differing ages, first revealed at a symposium in Tasmania in 1956. Initially theorized as an expansion of the global crust, later collaborations developed the plate tectonic theory, which accounted for spreading as the consequence of new rock upwelling, but avoided the need for an expanding globe by recognizing subduction zones and conservative translation faults. It was at this point that Wegener's theory became generally accepted by the scientific community. Additional work on the association of seafloor spreading and magnetic field reversals by Harry Hess and Ron G. Mason pinpointed the precise mechanism which accounted for new rock upwelling.

Following the recognition of magnetic anomalies defined by symmetric, parallel stripes of similar magnetization on the seafloor on either side of a mid-ocean ridge, plate tectonics quickly became broadly accepted. Simultaneous advances in early seismic imaging techniques in and around Wadati-Benioff zones together with many other geologic observations soon made plate tectonics a theory with extraordinary explanatory and predictive power.

Study of the deep ocean floor was critical to development of the theory; the field of deep sea marine geology accelerated in the 1960s. Correspondingly, plate tectonic theory was developed during the late 1960s and has since been accepted by almost all scientists throughout all geoscientific disciplines. The theory revolutionized the Earth sciences, explaining a diverse range of geological phenomena and their implications in other studies such as paleogeography and paleobiology.

But little help to climate science, which is just the way the cookie crumbled.

The big difference is that plate tectonics didn't face a $10 trillion industry that refused to recognize its legitimacy and vehemently propagandized against it, PT just faced normal scientific inertia, which it eventually overcame to go on and become one of the best globally-scaled theories we have about the planet, and then to have mapped the plates! Among other things, it means nobody has to ever again puzzle over the existence of the Ring of Fire!

PT's a great theory and AGW will go on to become the same. The horse is long since out of the barn and running. The IPCC's 2013 AR5 report should be a blockbuster.

Cheers!

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

I hope everyone here realizes that there's never been a paper published that offers a good solid case for what is causing the warming we've observed ... if it isn't us humans, we being the "A" in "AGW."

Most skeptiocs today agree that earth is warming, they just don't agree that GHGs are the cause. All sort and manner of papers have been published that have attempted to take that on and show, for example, that it's changes in the sun's radiance, or some kind of cosmic ray relationship.

Now, wait a second. The earth has been warming on average since the last major ice age, in particular since the Little Ice Age. That doesnt seem likely to have been caused by burning fossil fuels. Not that AGW isnt a real phenomenon, but it's hardly the only factor here.

atrasicarius wrote:

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

I hope everyone here realizes that there's never been a paper published that offers a good solid case for what is causing the warming we've observed ... if it isn't us humans, we being the "A" in "AGW."

Most skeptiocs today agree that earth is warming, they just don't agree that GHGs are the cause. All sort and manner of papers have been published that have attempted to take that on and show, for example, that it's changes in the sun's radiance, or some kind of cosmic ray relationship.

Now, wait a second. The earth has been warming on average since the last major ice age, in particular since the Little Ice Age. That doesnt seem likely to have been caused by burning fossil fuels. Not that AGW isnt a real phenomenon, but it's hardly the only factor here.

The problem that we always arrive in these discussions is the simple mindedness of simplistic caricatures of positions, as if there is a black and white position.

Fact Man falls into this obviousnessness trap, and is happy to define what a "skeptic" is for all of us. Fortunately, we are not bound by his demands, and we should ponder for a moment what the term "skeptic" is doing there and what it means.

Now, if we have a case as big and as complex, with so many questions and sub theories such as AGW, we can easily understand that "skepticism" can creep in in many different issues on that main "theme", that is, one can accept parts 1,2,3 of said theory and still be skeptical of 4,5,6. Or one can accept 4, 1 and 5, while being skeptical of 2,3,6.

IOW, skepticism is not "bound" by a theory, but by a criticism of parts of the theory. Now, such skepticism may not be enough to "rock the boat" of the overall theory. If a "skeptic" is skeptic of point 5, one can understand that this is not enough to warrant skepticism of all the other 5 points (of my caricature model).

This concept is called "graceful degradation":

wikipedia wrote:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault-tolerant_system

Fault-tolerance or graceful degradation is the property that enables a system (often computer-based) to continue operating properly in the event of the failure of (or one or more faults within) some of its components. If its operating quality decreases at all, the decrease is proportional to the severity of the failure, as compared to a naïvely-designed system in which even a small failure can cause total breakdown. Fault-tolerance is particularly sought-after in high-availability or life-critical systems.

This is why it is wrong to call any skepticism of one part of the theory a "denialist canard", and not engaging the answer in a serious manner. For it may well be true that every preacher of "climate denial" will stick to every single one of these "canards" to further his own case on how the theory is "fully" degradated, but such venom may well backfire, for it may well be true also that such one or two points are in real bad shape.

This is not only about PR. Scientists have been conducting malpractices for ages, as is now being shown in the UK hearings, and perhaps because they felt that it "didn't" matter in the long run, for if AGW is true, small details on how study X, Y and Zed are not that important: what is important is to give science fodder for blogs such as "Climate Progress" and etc., to soldier on and get political points to make the solutions happen.

But alas, Machiavel doesn't always work, and this stuff is backlashing. I am in the hope that transparency, honesty and less prima-donnaism within climate circles will result in better science overall. In the hurry to make a convincing case, I am afraid that scientists pushed too far, and now it will result in a much more slower process of convincing the public.

Now, wait a second. The earth has been warming on average since the last major ice age, in particular since the Little Ice Age. That doesnt seem likely to have been caused by burning fossil fuels. Not that AGW isnt a real phenomenon, but it's hardly the only factor here.

actually the overall trend was slightly downward over a very long drift as we are moving into a cooling part of the orbit.
The LIA and MWP are both within the range of the Holocene swing of +/- 1.5C.

this graph shows present day on the left - you can see the slow down trend within the swings...


Indeed land use and animal domestication have some play in temps once populations grew as does great life loss in reforestation situations ( thought to play a role in LIA along with vulcanism ).

The role of AGW is clear - we have been offsetting some of it with other anthro induced polluntants
Both need dealing with, C02 most of all as it is most long lived compared to aerosols.

Nothing in the Holocene prepares the biome or our agriculture for a 4-6 degree jump globally ( far more locally on some regions ) within a few decades.....add that to acidification, peak population and peak cheap oil and we have a nightmare brewing in an already human damaged biome. ( 6th great extinction event is now )

Just a wee reminder that this is the Science discussion thread. If you wish to discuss policy and action then we have our other thread in the Politics and Current Affairs forum:
news-politics/global-warming-policy-discussion-t1237.html

Luis Dias wrote:

atrasicarius wrote:

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

I hope everyone here realizes that there's never been a paper published that offers a good solid case for what is causing the warming we've observed ... if it isn't us humans, we being the "A" in "AGW."

Most skeptiocs today agree that earth is warming, they just don't agree that GHGs are the cause. All sort and manner of papers have been published that have attempted to take that on and show, for example, that it's changes in the sun's radiance, or some kind of cosmic ray relationship.

Now, wait a second. The earth has been warming on average since the last major ice age, in particular since the Little Ice Age. That doesnt seem likely to have been caused by burning fossil fuels. Not that AGW isnt a real phenomenon, but it's hardly the only factor here.

The problem that we always arrive in these discussions is the simple mindedness of simplistic caricatures of positions, as if there is a black and white position.

Fact Man falls into this obviousnessness trap, and is happy to define what a "skeptic" is for all of us. Fortunately, we are not bound by his demands, and we should ponder for a moment what the term "skeptic" is doing there and what it means.

Luis, you jump to an awfully lot of conclusions here, none of which are warranted.

First, your notion that "we always arrive in these discussions is the simple mindedness of simplistic caricatures of positions, as if there is a black and white position" ... literally flies in the face of the space limitations everyone deals with in a thread, because of which few ever go off into long-winded definitive explanatory expositions of their points or positions ... and instead often just state a few facts and render some generalizations to elaborate upon them, and then move on.

My comment comprised two brief paragraphs, the first of which is a fact, the second of which I think almost anyone would agree is a fair generalization of the view that's held by most of what are commonly known as "skeptics."

It should have been left at that.

But instead, you charactrize those remarks as me falling "into this obviousnessness trap," you invented and that I'm "happy to define what a "skeptic" is for all of us" ... while in truth my first comment is factually true and my second is a fair generalization, as noted, and I made no reference whatsoever to defining anything, yet you assert I was defining, which misses the point entirely. But I expect you chose to miss the point because your focus was somewhere else, like on opportunistically trying to make me look bad. That's a bad habit, it's often on exhibit in your posts.

My characterization of most skeptics followed naturally and logically on the statement of fact that preceeded it, forming a concise and meaningful narrative. Too bad narrative appears to be beyond your ken, leaving you only too happy to invent some kind of "trap" that isn't a trap for all practical purposes ... and allege that I have "obviously" fallen into it, and then belabor the point.

Needless to say, that's just a hair short of a personal attack/insult, which has been reported anyway because who knows the Mods may think it's actually a hair long and does constitute an attack/insult and treat you accordingly, and save me the trouble.

I don't usually respond to your grumbling, fretting, and griping, but in this case it deserves to be busted becaue it is insulting, disingenuous, misleading, mean spirited, faulty, and probably only designed to create an opportunity for your own whining and defining, which I'm passing on because, well, it just isn't worth my time.

And in future should you elect to attack and insult me, do it as a direct response to a post of mine, don't do it indirectly. Above all don't waste your time responding to this post, because as far as I'm concerned this is the end of it and I will ignore any response you post, as I expect everyone else will as well.

(now just watch, folks, as LD comes roaring back with a bagfull of inane bullshit about this).

atrasicarius wrote:

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:

I hope everyone here realizes that there's never been a paper published that offers a good solid case for what is causing the warming we've observed ... if it isn't us humans, we being the "A" in "AGW."

Most skeptiocs today agree that earth is warming, they just don't agree that GHGs are the cause. All sort and manner of papers have been published that have attempted to take that on and show, for example, that it's changes in the sun's radiance, or some kind of cosmic ray relationship.

Now, wait a second. The earth has been warming on average since the last major ice age, in particular since the Little Ice Age. That doesnt seem likely to have been caused by burning fossil fuels. Not that AGW isnt a real phenomenon, but it's hardly the only factor here.

It certainly isn't, there is a vast and quite complex natural system over which GHGs play.

And, as MacDoc has shown, Earth's temp was in a long slow and very attenuated decline over the past centuries, until we dumped thousands of megatons of GHGs into our atmosphere and blunted that trend.

Ice Ages don't end overnight, they aren't here one day and gone the next. The forcing effects of Milankovich curves operate very slowly over time so that an Ice Age comes on as temps decline and goes away when they rise again, over a period of thousands of years. The important thing to note about this is the very small increment of temp change that's involved and the long-scale time frame of their consequences.

Today, what took thousands of years to happen in those earlier times is happening within a span of 200 years, a mere blink of an eye on geologic time scales. What's notable about the observed warming trend (in which 2009's going down as the fifth hottest year of the last thousand years) ... is its exceptional rapidity and how fast its repercussive effects are unfolding before our very eyes.

That's massive quantities of GHGs at work, doing what they do, altering the energy equilibrium of the climate system.

None of this really helps the denialosphere explain anything. They still don't have any science. My bet is they won't ever have any science,

It's OK to be skeptical about some things. However, in this case I think we will just have to follow what happens.

I think the temperatures will keep rising, but what the effects on local climate end up being will be hard to predict.

One thing that keeps this beyond the grasp of the simple voter is that they can't relate the global warming to a local warming. The difference between winter and summer is much more plain. The smaller effect is easily ignored. For decades.

FACT-MAN-2 wrote:Luis, you jump to an awfully lot of conclusions here, none of which are warranted.

First, your notion that "we always arrive in these discussions is the simple mindedness of simplistic caricatures of positions, as if there is a black and white position" ... literally flies in the face of the space limitations everyone deals with in a thread, because of which few ever go off into long-winded definitive explanatory expositions of their points or positions ... and instead often just state a few facts and render some generalizations to elaborate upon them, and then move on.

Are you incapable of seeing how your paragraph is a corroboration of what I said? Yes, exactly, the "space limitations" (although one should point out that there's none really, it's just a matter of lack of patience and time) within the thread create the tendency of black-n-whitishness.

My comment comprised two brief paragraphs, the first of which is a fact, the second of which I think almost anyone would aree is a fair generalization of the view that's held by most of what are commonly known as "skeptics."

And by doing so, you've just caricaturized everything, as I said. I don't understand people who disagree with me and then underline the reasons of why I am right, they seem strange to me

But instead, you charactrize those remarks as me falling "into this obviousnessness trap," you invented and that I'm "happy to define what a "skeptic" is for all of us" ... while in truth my first comment is factually true and my second is a fair generalization, as noted, and I made no reference whatsoever to defining anything, yet you assert I was defining, which misses the point entirely. But I expect you chose to miss the point because your focus was somewhere else, like on opportunistically trying to make me look bad. That's a bad habit, it's often on exhibit in your posts.

"A fair generalization" is a definition. Your definition of a given situation, or of how one should read a word like "skeptic" in this climate debate context. Then you accuse me of "opportunistically" misrepresent your statement to paint you "bad". Well, that's plain paranoia. I was only using your text as an example of what I've witnessed over the years about this subject, and about human beings' taste for the polarization of ideas sometimes driven to the extreme insanity (not the case). If you don't like it, fair enough, but your victimization exercise is just ridiculous.

My characterization of most skeptics followed naturally and logically on the statement of fact that preceeded it, forming a concise and meaningful narrative. Too bad narrative appears to be beyond your ken, leaving you only too happy to invent some kind of "trap" that isn't a trap for all practical purposes ... and allege that I have "obviously" fallen into it, and then belabor the point.

I understand "narrative" pretty well, and albeit my relative lack of experience against you, I certainly haven't "fallen to the trap" of insult. As a matter of a fact, I was deconstructing your narrative with my own. And yes, I stick to my allegations. I don't know what you "think" a skeptic is, and perhaps your notions of one are more nuanced, but I have to deal with what you write, not with what you "think".

Needless to say, that's just a hair short of a personal attack/insult, which has been reported anyway because who knows the Mods may think it's actually a hair long and does constitute an attack/insult and treat you accordingly, and save me the trouble.

What?!?

Insane drivel. I was clearly going against your idea, not against your persona.

I don't usually respond to your grumbling, fretting, and griping, but in this case it deserves to be busted becaue it is insulting, disingenuous, misleading, mean spirited, faulty, and probably only designed to create an opportunity for your own whining and defining, which I'm passing on because, well, it just isn't worth my time.

And still you did this long post and threatened me with reports. Have you had a bad day, or something?

And in future should you elect to attack and insult me, do it as a direct response to a post of mine, don't do it indirectly. Above all don't waste your time responding to this post, because as far as I'm concerned this is the end of it and I will ignore any response you post, as I expect everyone else will as well.

Yes, the multitudes will all bow down to the wishes of a single poster. I wasn't insulting you, but your idea, and I don't think I was indirect at all.

(now just watch, folks, as LD comes roaring back with a bagfull of inane bullshit about this).

Please help. I am trying to debate against a denier who asserts that, because of "climategate" (a term that makes my skin crawl), we cannot trust any data on AGW, since the University of East Anglia provided the data that many other researchers used to come to their conclusions. I have pointed out that there are hundreds of independent research facilities around the world that generate their own data, but I really need to give more detailed information than what I can glean from a google search. Anyone?

patschican wrote:Please help. I am trying to debate against a denier who asserts that, because of "climategate" (a term that makes my skin crawl), we cannot trust any data on AGW, since the University of East Anglia provided the data that many other researchers used to come to their conclusions. I have pointed out that there are hundreds of independent research facilities around the world that generate their own data, but I really need to give more detailed information than what I can glean from a google search. Anyone?

Abusive generalization fallacy, or just bad statistics. Yes, there are problems, we are humans after all. To dismiss the whole of climatology due to UEA bad practices is a fallacy, but you have a problem in your paragraph: what do you mean by "hundreds" of "independent" research that generate "their own data"? What kind of a specific issue you are dealing here? You should know that there are hundreds of different issues in climatology, and most of them are not studied independently by "hundreds" of other research centers. Try not to exaggerate your claims, you'll do better.