Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion Climate Change Forum Global Warming: Man-Made or Natural?

"AGW has already been proven to the satisfaction of the climate scientitist." As the original post suggests, S. Fred Singer, professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia, would disagree with you.

Count suggests that "there have been many thousands of peer reviewed articles on this subject," but there are none that prove a link beyond correlation. All we have is a discredited hockey stick graph and some computer models that the IPCC 2007 report shows are incorrect. Count's saying that there are many thousands of peer reviewed articles on this subject is just another way of trying to convince people that a consensus exists and that a consensus matters in science. It does not exist. It does not matter. Climate is too complex. Climate science is still in its infancy.

It took 7 years for someone to figure out that there is an error in the post 2000 temperature data. The peer reviewed reports that were based on that data ended up being wrong. Look at the data for yourself. Don't rely on other people's opinions. Figure it out for yourself. The AGW theory does not match observations.

AGW is based on elementary physics that most high school physics students know about. The complexity of the climate is only a factor in determining whether the climate sensitivity is 2.5 °C per doubling of Co2 or if it is 3.5 °C per doubling of Co2. But to say that the effect is way below these figures is nonsensical as that is in conflict with basic physics.

The hockey stick and temperature adjustments are just meaningless straw man attacks by people who do not know one iota about the science behind climate science. In astronomy, an error was found in the Hipparcos data. The Hipparcos satellite had accurately measured the parallaxes of nearby objects, but there was a small error. So, a mistake in old data was corrected. Can we now say that astronomy as a science is fundamentally flawed? Of course not!

Why is climate science different? It's different because unlike astronomy it is a politically charged subject and then all these rightwingers who have a problem with the fact that actions may need to be taken that contradict their ideology will not buy the scientific conclusions.

Oh, and consensus does exist and it does matter. Peer reviewed papers wrong? Nonsense again, because the adjustments are not statistically significant.

Count - you're showing your ignorance in both "elementary physics" as well as a little something called the "scientific method".

I'm not going to bother challenging you on your points, because it's not going to do any good.
"The hockey stick and temperature adjustments are just meaningless straw man attacks....." Wow, just wow. This puts you into the Al Gore league.

Count - even if the physics is basic (I don't fully understand it I'm certainly not stupid), the interplay between all the climate factors is hugely complex. As John has stated, understanding these inter-relationships is in its infancy.

And what is happening right here and now (on this forum) is a form of peer review - a form of challenge. Doesn't it bother you that for two seasons in a row, lots of hurricanes have been predicted and what has happened - the opposite. Are't you curoius as to how the IPCC 2001 models could be so far out in a short 6 year time span ? Don't you want to know why ? Aren't youa little perturbed when Al Gores film is banned from British schools on a stand-alone basis because there are so many untruths in it ?

I'm curious as to how a scientist like yourself isn't bothered by these problems. To me this behaviour is more interesting than the science itself.

Al Gore's film banned?

Criticism posted in this forum is "peer review"

And I would be bothered if the peer review system did not function well. E.g. if you had many scientists who had skeptical ideas who were complaining that their articles were unfairly rejected on political gorounds. In my field (physics) scientists will complain very loudly when they feel that they are being treated unfairly. If there were any truth in what Canuck is saying, then there should have been a huge amount of turmoil within the climate science field itself. This is not what we see. What we see is criticism from outside the climate science field by people who do not agree the scienctific consensus on climate change.

Count - I have 3 points to make :
1) You may be correct that not everyone who writes something on this site is an expert or maybe not even YOUR peer. But your assumption that they aren't (when you have no idea who they are) displays only condescension and arrogance.

2) Below is the BBC report of the story about the High Court judgement on Al Gores film. READ this and then compare to the story posted on the RealClimate website. As you will see the judge banned the film from being shown on a 'stand alone' basis because of its bias and errors. If the RealClimate site wants to twist this to make it sound like the judge rejected a call to totally ban the film then you will never find a better demonstration of how the truth can be twisted and how SPIN can be put onto a topic to make it look different than it really is! JUST COMPARE THESE TWO STORIES.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/education/7037671.stm
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/10/convenient-untruths/


3) You never answered my criticism : aren't you a little bit curious as to how the 2001 IPCC temperature predictions could be so far out by 2007 - just 6 short years into the future ? Stop spinning your own little wheels and answer this question - from a peer.

Imran

No Count, what we see is environmental scientists working outside their fields as statisticians. Can they do the work? Possibly, but regardless it should be checked by actual statisticians. McIntyre (who I'm guessing you're referring to) is doing exactly that. He's rightfully staying away from the actual science, but focusing on how historical temperature reconstructions were generated.
Data is just that, data. The hocus pocus that people use to turn that data into temperature reconstructions is not climate science, but statistics.

But then again, the discussion surrounding the hockey stick graph is immaterial - right?
We just know climate from 1000 to 1850 was steady.

Count. Here is some wisdom from the Financial times:
"Statements about the world derive their value from the facts and arguments that support them, not from the status and qualifications of the people who assert them. Evidence versus authority was the issue on which Galileo challenged the church. The modern world exists because Galileo won."
Hat Tip

Imran, I know enough of climate science (I work in physics) to know that I'm not expert enough in climate science to criticize it in the way it is criticized here.

McIntyre's criticisms may have some validity. But what matters is how relevant that criticism is. Statisticians may know much more about statistics than climate scientists. But they do not know more about physics. Take e.g. the field of astrophysics. When we do weak lensing studies we look at deformations in the images of far awy galaxies to infer the mass distribution inbetween theose galaxies and our postion that is bending the light a bit, thereby causing the deformations. There is a ,ot of statistcis involved in here.

Now, the astrophysicists who do these studies are not the best experts in statistics. That could lead to incorrect results in case of a lack of data. But usually you have enough data and the reconstructed picture of dark matter distributon is pretty accurate. The only thing you could argue about is if the probability that the dark matter shown in a particular reconstructed image is there at all instead of it all being due to a statistcal fluctuation should be 99.999% or 99.9999%. Now, we would be more than happy to let McIntyre figure that out.

In case of climate change it is the same story. You can argue about the Hockey Stick as long as you like, but it is not relevant anymore. It's like finding a flaw in Copernicus' reasoning that the Sun is at the center of the solar system. Right or wrong, it is irrelevant because we already know that the Sun is at the center anyway.


Now, as I wrote, I'm not an expert. I'm expert enough in physics to know that I cannot reasonably claim to know enough of the details of climate science to be able to have valid technical criticisms. I just note that most people who have critcisms do not understand even the basic physics involved and would thus be even less qualified to conclude that there is something seriously wrong with climate science.

Does this mean that a lay person can never criticise any science? Not really, but there are spme hurdles to overcome (for good reasons). In science peer review is very important, so one should try to write a peer reviewed article on the subject. Of course, the average non expert won't be able to do that. However, it should still be possible to contact scientists who are willing to listen and discuss the issue with them.

In this case, the skeptics could contact the few scientists who are sympathetic toward the cause of the skeptics, e.g. Richard Lindzen. He works in the field, and he would certainly be prepared to collaborate with a person if he has good ideas...

Translation - If you don't have a PhD in climate science (and likely draw your research dollars from global warming funding sources) you're not allowed to wonder/question/criticize.
Sorry, don't buy it.

Besides you saying the hockey stick isn't relevant anymore, can you back up this statement?
Our current understanding of the climate is based on 1 thing, and 1 thing only - observations. Yes, theoretical science may be able to explain portions of the climate - but due to climate being as close to a chaotic system as you can get, theory only gets us so far. So we're left with observation.
Now, if our observations are incorrect (or rather the temp reconstructions), where does that leave us with respect to our understanding? What if the globe has experienced temperature fluctuations over the past 1000 years that rival the current one? Wouldn't that suggest that natural forcings have the ability to cause the current warming? The concept that natural forcings are not significant enough to cause the present trend is based on the "fact" that historical temperatures have not varied significantly in response to them. Remove that 'fact', and we're left with a pile of cards.

Knowing how the system has previously responded to forcings is absolutely required to understand it.

It does not take an expert to realize that when somebody assumes a positive linear correlation between tree growth and temperature, in the face of studies that have shown the exact opposite - that there's a significant issue with pre-instrumental temperature data.
Actually - it's called critical thinking.....

Count
Thansk for the sincerity of your reply. I agree with you that this site is not a place of 'peer review' - the way it was described in Wikipedia. As an hugely ironic aside, isn't the main criticism of Wikipedia that it mimics an Encyclopedia but it actually popluated by non-experts ??

However challenge and critical thinking can come from anywhere. Don't forget, it was a young boy who asked "why isn't the emperor wearing any clothes ?"

I think I am aligned in the thinking of Canuck - it must be healthy for ANYONE to wonder, question and criticise. In this case here I am not questioning the physics - to be honest I don't have the depth of knowledge to really do that. What I am questioning is, if it is so "simple", why have the IPCC 2001 temeprature prediction models been proven to be so far out. Questions like that are hugely important to the rest of us "non-experts". Seeing as I haven't been able to get a straight or any answer from you, I'll try and answer it myself : Given that the physics is simple, I can only come to the conclusion that the worlds climate is a much more complex than we can currently model reliably. And if we can't model it reliably how can your statement "AGW has already been proven to the satisfaction of the climate scientist" be true.