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Thursday, February 11, 2010
A Few Notes On “Global Warming / Climate Change”
The foofaurauw over the East Anglia CRU document leak has been somewhat beneficial to the refutation of the "climate change / global warming" scam, but never imagine that the proponents of this absurd apocalyptic fantasy will be thwarted with just one such stroke. Herewith, a summary of the most significant arguments and evidence against the anthropogenic global warming thesis.
1. A thesis that can't predict is no thesis at all.
A genuine scientist will tell you that knowledge is confirmed by a chain of successful predictions. It's not enough to get it right just once -- that is, to perform a single experiment, get the expected results, and claim that one's hypothesis is verified on that basis alone. Your thesis must be tested repeatedly, by multiple agencies, in objectively reproducible settings, without a single failure of prediction.
Successful predictions by the warmistas, including every "scientist" who's ever signed onto the proposition: NONE.
2. If the data is kept secret, it isn't science.
Warmista "scientists" have repeatedly refused to release their raw data, or to define the mechanisms by which that data was captured, or to commit themselves to an error bar around their measurements. In a handful of cases, these "researchers" have admitted that they can't produce their raw data -- that it's somehow been lost. This is "the dog ate my homework" masquerading as scientific procedure.
It wouldn't fly for Michael Bellesiles, and it won't fly for the warmistas.
3. Heterogeneity in the data.
Heterogeneous data sets are incapable of proving anything.
Two data sets can be unsuitable for combination for a variety of reasons. One such reason is wide variation in the measuring techniques and instruments used. If temperatures were measured in recent years by thermometers placed in locations X with uncertainties E0, while the measurements from earlier years came from thermometers placed in greatly different locations Y, or with greatly different uncertainties E1, there is no statistically valid way to use them as inputs to a single computation.
The warmistas' data sets are so heterogeneous that they don't dare to describe them accurately. Deep-past temperature "measurements" are inferred from tree rings. The more recent past "measurements" come from several thousand thermometers of unknown quality. Immediate-past temperature data comes from a much smaller number of thermometers of better quality, but which are nowhere near the sites of earlier measurements, and in a great many cases are situated in or near heat islands such as cities or airports.
To suggest that data that heterogeneous can be made into a basis for long-range inference is to trade in fantasy. It's about like predicting the average and distribution of human foot sizes based on their comparison to a human thumb -- and in every individual case, to some new person's thumb.
4. Deliberate omission of contributing factors.
In part, this hearkens back to the heterogeneous-data-set problem, but it also addresses the deliberate omission of explanatory factors such as solar input. The Earth's energy influx is not constant, because the Sun is not constant. The Sun's output varies by about 4% from its mean, and is also influenced by sunspots and other anomalies in the photosphere. Such variations are neither predictable nor easily accounted for in predictions of Earth climate conditions. But the warmistas refuse to accept that solar input can have a significant effect on global climate.
Also, with the recent increase of sea-bottom exploration and activity, particularly in the Arctic Circle, there have been a number of releases of methane gas from ocean-floor concentrations of disturbed decayed matter. The overall size of these releases is unknown, as facilities for measuring them have only become available very recently. However, since methane is itself a "greenhouse gas," and more potent in that connection than CO2, these releases introduce additional uncertainty into all studies of heat-trapping by atmospheric gases.
5. Tendentious computer simulations.
Your Curmudgeon creates simulations for a living, and so is unusually sensitive to any prediction based on a simulation. A simulation of conditions that cannot be produced deliberately, which is the sort of simulation on which the warmistas rely, can only demonstrate what would come of those conditions if the assumptions and mechanisms built into the simulation were correct. Therefore, it can only be used as an argument for a given hypothesis if:
- All the initial conditions required by the simulation come to pass simultaneously;
- No extra contributors, or factors that would disturb measurements, are introduced by Mother Nature;
- The outcome reached by Nature matches that produced by the simulation.
Need your Curmudgeon state explicitly that, to this point, those three requirements have never been satisfied -- that the warmistas' simulations have yet to attain any standing for climate-change prediction?
6. The importance of deceit and motivation.
Many of the best known warmista "scientists" have been caught red-handed lying about their data, their techniques for "adjusting" it, and the reproducibility of their measurements. Additionally, as the East Anglia CRU documents make plain, these persons are not averse to using bullying tactics to deny dissenters a public voice. As the warmistas are the beneficiaries of large amounts of government funding that would come to a halt if their hypotheses were conclusively refuted, they have powerful reasons to shout down those who disagree. As their opponents have far smaller resources -- no access to public treasuries -- they are fatally hobbled in any contest of volume, despite their considerable numbers and eminence.
Science cannot be conducted like a popularity contest or a street brawl. Yet the warmistas routinely avail themselves of their superior access to the Main Stream Media -- journalists love a "crisis" -- their ability to harass or threaten dissenters, and their influence with the editors of scientific journals. They've made "peer-reviewed" into a swearword, by claiming that status for papers reviewed only by one another. They've perverted the processes of science by intimidating editors and wielding the club of government funding against dissenters. And they continue to insist that only their "data" and the simulations they've produced, and not their inability to predict short-term climate variations, nor to account for recent cooling, nor the data and inferences offered by dissenters, are of relevance to an issue politicians could well ride into global totalitarian control of all human life and activity.
Thoughts?
Comments
This is the most succinct explanation of why “AGW science” is not science at all that I have ever seen.
Congratulations.Posted by on 02/11/2010 at 10:49 AMPsychobama, his propaganda machine, and assorted vested interests drone on in spite of true science and engineering; aptly described here.
Someone on the net calculated that a human can stand, unfettered, on five square feet of the Earth’s surface. Thus, six billion humans could stand together, without touching, in the area of the state of Rhode Island. This may not be an important discovery, or ever likely to happen, but the scale of impact of each human is quite small.
Consider also the vast area of Earth’s surface untouched by human activity. Even in North America, all human habitation uses only a small sliver.
Global warming is the biggest of big lies. Fear mongering for fun and profit. The total contempt of this plot is staggering in the scale of it’s fraudulent claims.
Soft-sell is the order today; the gloves will come off, the mask discarded and the iron fist unleashed. This is who they are.
The United States Government is at war with the people. Know this and act accordingly.
Posted by on 02/11/2010 at 11:58 AMPreaching to the choir, man.
“Successful predictions by the warmistas… NONE.”
Worse: their models do not even reliably POST-dict prior events! When the models are as unreliable looking back as forward, then the models are useless, except as propaganda for illiterate boobs’ consumption.
Data problems are worse than just “dog ate my homework” and “[h]eterogeneous data sets”. AFAIK, none of the data collection stations have even been calibrated against one standard. That means: useless, period.
Just about everything the Church of Anthropogenic Global Climate Alarmism does is disingenuous--at best. “What? That big light in the sky? Irrelevant. Ignore the big light in the sky,” is a perfectly workable tactic when dealing with a populace that can’t even find Grandma’s house (Hey! It’s over the river and through the woods, you idiots!) without turn-by-turn directions from a GPS and politicians who simply want ANY excuse to exercise more control over the sheeple.
I really do not know how to
1. Clean the toxic sludge of the Church of Anthropogenic Global Climate Alarmism from the eyes of enough sheeple to
2. Effect an awakening large enough to make politicians need to change their Depends® on their way to quickly reversing their power grabs using the excuses offered by the Church of Anthropogenic Global Climate Alarmism.That’s the sticking point: How to drum enough of the facts into a populace that’s spent years in self-enstupiation and has, as a result, been gulping down the Church of Anthropogenic Global Climate Alarmism’s toxic sludge for years.
Posted by David on 02/11/2010 at 03:48 PMI’d throw in that there’s the underlying assumption that a warmer Earth will be bad.
Of course, there will be losers as the Earth changes, but there will be winners as well. What is the net effect? Is it even worth fighting against a warmer planet?
Posted by Liquid Egg Product on 02/11/2010 at 04:06 PMIt’s a sad reflection on the decline of critical thinking that so many millions of people swallowed the AGW myth.
Posted by Charles Sakai on 02/11/2010 at 04:55 PMOf course. The dire predictions of the Church of Anthropogenic Global Climate Alarmism would have the earth almost as warm as…
when there were dairy farms in Greenland that were net exporters of dairy goods
when England was warm enough to compete with France as a wine producer
when Newfoundland was known as Vinland because of its climate, suitable to viniculture.
Or even nearly as warm as the warm as Roman Warm Period, which was a large factor in Rome’s productivity and expansion.
Warmer is generally better for humans than colder, as the history of the human race has demonstrated over and over again.
Not exactly pertinent, but something that pops into my head now and again when the Church of Anthropogenic Global Climate Alarmism spews some more sludge,
Fire and Ice
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.Robert Frost
Rabbit trail: why do so many in the Church of Anthropogenic Global Climate Alarmism run their global temp numbers (as unreliable as they are) back to 1885? Hmmm, seems there was a catastrophe in 1883 that had global effects on climate, depressing temperatures for the next two years at least. Krakatoa, anyone? I suspect that by choosing a temperature-depressed baseline, someone may have been attempting to bias the whole thing from the get go. But that’s just a suspicion and without enough supportive evidence to even state as a theory.
Of course, they dare not run their baseline back to the Medieval Climate Optimum. That would blow every dire prediction they have completely out of the water.
(Rabbit trail deeper into the underbrush: irritating. Had to add “viniculture” to an inline spell checker that’s apparently not as strong as I had thought. Grr. And “inline” too. *sigh* ... *heh*)
Posted by David on 02/11/2010 at 05:20 PMSo you don’t allow dissenting opinion around here. You someone who doesn’t agree.
I wonder why?
Just kidding. I don’t wonder why.
You’re cowards who have no interest in defending your patently false assertions.
Such cowardice.
Posted by Darrel on 02/12/2010 at 12:48 AMNo, little Darrel, what I don’t allow around here is slander. I’ve allowed this emission of yours to appear as an example of why your crap hasn’t been approved.
If you have a point to make, make it. But as I’ve already told you, I’m a scientist, and this is a scientific controversy. You won’t be permitted to say anything that derides or demeans others for not holding to your position. Nor will I permit you to ramble about unrelated matters, or to change the subject from the one in the post. Did you understand that, or should I have used shorter words?
Now run along and play with your little lefty friends. I’m sure you can keep one another amused with jokes about Rush Limbaugh’s weight problem for years and years to come.
Posted by Francis W. Porretto on 02/12/2010 at 05:25 AMI am so tired of leftists - and warmistas in general - first refusing to discuss this matter in any way, and then taking the moral high ground on the issue as if they are somehow smarter or better than you for simply touting the party line for an issue of which they have no knowledge.
No, you are not smarter than me, leftist, because I’ve questioned and researched to come to my conclusions. You, on the other hand, have simply watched the lies being told to you in “An Inconvenient Truth”, and from a politicized and non-scientific IPCC, and assumed that because of this that you are an expert. Furthermore, you refuse to accept any information imparted to you that may put the information that you “learned” into question.
Just so you know, that doesn’t make you smarter than me, Darrel. It makes you an illogical, unscientific, religious zealot no different than those people who persecuted Galileo for speaking his own inconvenient truths to power.
The sooner you lose your anti-intellectual, anti-science, and anti-human prosperity blinders and find the truth, the better for all of humanity.
Or are you still hung up on the “peer-reviewed science” of the IPCC (and by “peer-reviewed” they mean “taken from a Bachelor’s student’s paper on local, non-scientific, third hand observations, and from a mis-quoted telephone conversation with a guy who didn’t say what we say he said?”)
Wake up. Stop the squealing ad-hominems, and try some logical intellectualism on for size.
Posted by on 02/12/2010 at 07:42 PM[FWP: “Darrel” has been back with more nonsense, including all the usual unsubstantiated assertions. He also attributes to me comments and statements made by commenters here, which indicates that whatever his pretensions, his reading skills are a bit sub-par. Frankly, I have no more time for his nonsense and will tolerate no more of it. Got me, “Darrel?"]
Posted by Darrel on 02/13/2010 at 01:53 AM
