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Global warming - manmade or not?

  • 21-09-2010 10:31pm
    #1
    Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭


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Comments

  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,718 ✭✭✭The Mad Hatter


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    No, you've asserted this before. Anthropogenic climate change is a scientific theory with masses of evidential backing.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,981 ✭✭✭monosharp


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    Fact, Theory and Hypothesis -> http://pseudoastro.wordpress.com/2008/12/21/terminology-what-scientists-mean-by-fact-hypothesis-theory-and-law/

    Donegalfella I am really curious about some of your stances. I know we don't agree politically but that's not what interests me.

    Politics is pretty much everyones opinion. Science is not.

    I don't accept gravity/heliocentricity/evolution/global warming because I like it, because it agrees with my worldview etc. I accept it because the evidence behind it is overwhelming, that the scientific community as a whole accept it, that there is physical hard proof behind it.

    But you seem to accept things based on what fits your world view, global warming isn't on good terms with that world view so you reject it and look for something to support your decision.

    Surely you have to see this yourself ?

    I mean just do a google for the scientific view on it. Here's wikipedia, but choose any other and it'll tell you the same thing.
    The controversy is significantly more pronounced in the popular media than in the scientific literature,[1] where there is a strong consensus that global surface temperatures have increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused mainly by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases. No scientific body of national or international standing disagrees with this view,[2][3] though a few organisations hold non-committal positions.

    I know we disagree politically but I see that as a completely different situation altogether.

    None of my political leanings or any other view points have anything to do with what I accept as scientific fact. But I believe it has a strong influence on you.

    Honestly curious here.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


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    I'll reply to the other stuff later but this I can quickly respond to.

    Malty_T wrote: »

    "This material on X is a scientific theory and not a fact. This material should be approached carefully with an open mind and critically consider."

    Science is scepticism.

    I have no problem with placing AGW as a scientific theory not an absolute fact. The theory, while still young, is still robust enough to be classed as very near a colloquial fact.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,718 ✭✭✭The Mad Hatter


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    I'm frankly amazed that someone of your intelligence made this statement, usually trotted out only by creationists and flat-earthers.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


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    And I am unwilling to accept statements such as "anthropogenic global warming is a fact," because the evidence behind it is not overwhelming, the scientific community as a whole does not accept it, and there is no physical hard proof.
    Hang on now are we referring to the climate science community or does this include persons publishing in Economics/Physics/Neuroscience etc?
    No proof? Surely you're joking, the past 40 years have greatly agreed with predictions.
    Of course, Climatologists also use their models to predict past climates and they can do so to very reasonable degrees of accuracy.
    Not at all—this has nothing to do with my political views. I simply think there's plenty of room for reasonable doubt on the so-called scientific consensus. Have you read The Hockey Stick Illusion?
    Even though Mann's construction of the Hockey Stick was flawed it has been back up by numerous independent studies. That said, just like an Inconvenient Truth isn't the bees knees of Climate science, so too is the Hockey Stick.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 1,981 ✭✭✭monosharp


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    Well that all depends on what meaning of the word fact your using. If your using the common English language meaning of 100% certainty then no it is not a fact. But neither is Evolution, nor heliocentricity nor the shape of the Earth nor gravity.

    If your using the scientific meaning then it 'could' very well be considered a fact the same as as the theory of evolution can be considered a fact because of the amount of evidence behind it.

    By this I mean that some theories are so overwhelmingly supported by evidence that they can be considered 'facts' themselves. The chances of something like common ancestry in the theory of evolution been disproven are so remote that it makes sense simply to treat it as fact. (Unless of course we find evidence to the contrary)
    because the evidence behind it is not overwhelming,

    This is far from my area of expertise, in fact I know very little about the subject. I don't wish to argue this point with you regardless because I don't see it as all that relevant to my main point, see below.
    the scientific community as a whole does not accept it, and there is no physical hard proof.

    But donegallfella, the scientific community does accept it. That fact is easily searchable. There isn't a single national or international scientific body that reject it.

    Can you please show me any that do ?

    If by 'as a whole' you mean 'all scientists' then of course your correct and of course it's entirely pointless. There are scientists who reject evolution, heliocentricity, the shape of the Earth, virology, etc. It means nothing.

    What matters is what the majority consensus of the scientific community is and what that consensus is based upon.

    Science does not have an agenda, science does not have political leanings, science does not care if X is 1 or 2, if evolution is a fact or not, if the Earth orbits the sun or vice versa. Science only cares about knowledge. Individual scientists do have personal leanings, but science does not.

    Don't get me wrong, if global warming was disproven tomorrow it would make no difference to me. I accept what the scientific community accepts.

    Why don't you ?
    No, that's not true. I don't accept or reject the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis.

    I don't think your understanding my point.

    Why do you not accept it ?
    There are no other views? There is only one view? That seems rather suspicious.

    One view of what exactly ? As I've stated before there isn't a scientific national or international body in the world that rejects it. Of course there are differing views about the mechanisms involved just as there are in Evolution. But what your suggesting is a downright rejection of the theory ala creationists vs evolution. That doesn't exist in the scientific community for global warming anymore then it exists for evolution or heliocentricity or gravity.
    Not at all—this has nothing to do with my political views. I simply think there's plenty of room for reasonable doubt on the so-called scientific consensus. Have you read The Hockey Stick Illusion?

    No I haven't. But as I said, I don't know much about the subject.

    Out of curiousity why do you think the Scientific community accepts it ? (which they do)


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


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  • Banned (with Prison Access) Posts: 32,865 ✭✭✭✭MagicMarker


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    facepalm.

    By that logic, we should just stop teaching science, as it's all just a ''theory''.


  • Moderators, Science, Health & Environment Moderators Posts: 10,088 Mod ✭✭✭✭marco_polo


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    Walls of quotes tend to make me quite suspicious. Just out of interest I looked up the first quote on the list and found this article, fairly selective quoting TBH.
    http://pielkeclimatesci.wordpress.com/2008/02/27/trmm-tropical-rainfall-measuring-mission-data-set-potential-in-climate-controversy-by-joanne-simpson-private-citizen/

    “Since I am no longer affiliated with any organization nor receive any funding, I can speak quite frankly. For more than a decade now “global warming” and its impacts has become the primary interface between our science and society. A large group of earth scientists, voiced in an IPCC[1] statement, have reached what they claim is a consensus of nearly all atmospheric scientists that man-released greenhouse gases are causing increasing harm to our planet. They predict that most icepacks including those in the Polar Regions, also sea ice, will continue melting with disastrous ecological consequences including coastal flooding. There is no doubt that atmospheric greenhouse gases are rising rapidly and little doubt that some warming and bad ecological events are occurring. However, the main basis of the claim that man’s release of greenhouse gases is the cause of the warming is based almost entirely upon climate models. We all know the frailty of models concerning the air-surface system. We only need to watch the weather forecasts.

    However, a vocal minority of scientists so mistrusts the models and the complex fragmentary data, that some claim that global warming is a hoax. They have made public statements accusing other scientists of deliberate fraud in aid of their research funding. Both sides are now hurling personal epithets at each other, a very bad development in Earth sciences. The claim that hurricanes are being modified by the impacts of rising greenhouse gases is the most inflammatory frontline of this battle and the aspect that journalists enjoy the most. The situation is so bad that the front page of the Wall Street Journal printed an article in which one distinguished scientist said another distinguished scientist has a fossilized brain. He, in turn, refers to his critics as “the Gang of Five”.

    I wish that the CC skeptics would do a little less quote mining and charachter assassination and little more original scientific research to make their case against climate change.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,427 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


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    The quotewall -- a tactic straight out of the creationist debating manual -- eek!

    Pace marco_polo's suspicions concerning whether or not the quotes fairly represent the individuals listed, there do exist a small number of suitably-qualified scientists who disagree with the consensus view for one reason or another.

    That said, the overwhelming scientific consensus amongst suitably-qualified individuals certainly is that that global warming has been caused, for the most part, by human beings. And no amount of quotation -- selective or otherwise -- is going to change that.


  • Posts: 0 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    marco_polo wrote: »
    I wish that the CC skeptics would do a little less quote mining and charachter assassination and little more original scientific research to make their case against climate change.
    But you see, when they try to do that all they get is evidence that anthropogenic climate change is happening.

    So science must be broken or something.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,247 ✭✭✭stevejazzx


    I'm feeling embarassed for Donegalfella here.
    Did he really say that 'theory' thing?
    Tell him to go jump off a roof to test the theory of gravity.:)

    As for global warming, well great article in new scientist last month about the climategate scandal - I can't find it online but it explained the inner workings of the scandal very well and more than aptly covered the explanations. It's astonishing that so much doubt can be generated about climate change from simply implying that historical weather records show extreme patterns. Surely the masses of evidence relating to the make up of atmospheric Co2 and its direct cause on ocean temperature is enough is to convince anoyone...I don't know!


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 2,391 ✭✭✭PhiloCypher


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    Yes while its true that the theory of man made climate change is in its infancy the hard data on which it's based are not and have been around for longer then Darwins theory of evolution ever since infact the first captains kept records of the weather patterns they encountered on the high seas, with this archive of information and with technology far beyond what Darwin had to hand is it not reasonable to assume data could be collated quicker and conclusions reached faster ?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


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    Here you're just admitted that you don't understand how science works. I'm going to the ignore the quotes. For everything in science there are those people who don't agree with some aspect of a theory and there are even some who disagree with a theory outright. For example, there are some physicists who don't actually accept the big bang theory. Now far from there being an outcry that the theory is a religion (which many creationists do indeed do) the majority of them actively publish their opinions in respected journals. One model that challenges the big bang does away almost completely with dark matter because it explains the observed red shifts of supernovae rather well. The problem with such a theory though is that it can't (yet) explain the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation accurately - something the big bang model can explain with relative ease. As the big bang model explains far more than Wun-Yi Shu's one it is still regarded as the scientific consensus, but make no mistake just because something is consensus doesn't mean scientists that accept it aren't questioning it. All you have to do is look through climate journals to see that papers are published that challenge current accepted models. Phil Jones, for example, has published many papers expressing his criticisms on Tree Ring Data.
    Contrast that with so called Climate Skeptics who's majority publish their ****e in journals who might as well be publishing homoeopathy. There are holes in climate science and climatologists will freely admit that to you, the thing is the actual holes are so different to the ones so called skeptics claim exist.

    The bizarre thing is that because the public don't actually know about the aforementioned big bang debate and tonnes of others that take place almost daily in science, the minority skepticism isn't ideologically driven by groups with the intent of subverting the standard of science just to get their ideas accepted. The same is true of Global Warming, it seems bizarre to suggest that it a mass conspiracy when Climate Science took almost 110 years to arrive at the conclusion about the same age of modern psychology first established by Williams James. Nowadays 97% of climatologists believe the theory correct, it could still be wrong, but then again so could Einstein.


    Science thrives on skepticism. However, there is skepticism and then there's amateurs who like to profess their beliefs on a subject. Distinguishing between genuine skeptics and "wannabes" is the trouble when in the comes to a politically heated topic such as AGW. In science, what a person believes, is all well and good, to them the person, but meaningless to science. Even if you are 100% correct in your asserted hypothesis, if you have no evidence to support it, then you're going to be drowned alive. Slowly but surely, as data is obtained and analysed, the good science will come to the fro and the bad science will be filtered out.

    This is where the difficulty lies, currently the sum of the evidence obtained supports AGW way better than other alternative. In fact, every other hypothesis that has been proposed has hit murky water time and time again. They might be right, it could just be the sun, or cosmic rays but there isn't sufficient evidence at the current time to support either of these hypothesis. Climatalogists have looked through more than one hypothesis in the course of their history. At first they weren't sure what the effect of C02 in the atmosphere actually was.(Interesting "history" on the physics of the Green House effect article here.). Slowly but surely though more and more hyopothesis were eliminated, others formed, and were subsequently eliminated. Needless to say though AGW wasn't just the default position. It is now, but if the climatalogists are taught like the rest of us, then they are skeptical of their own theory. Let them sort it out though, not others who think they're wrong because they believe the problem to be too complicated or ideologically driven. To say AGW is a hypothesis is to ignore the tireless work made many researchers from different disciplines who invariably all arrived at the same conclusion from a plethora of different angles. We now know for a fact that over the last 40 years no other theory, or hypothesis, has as accurately explained the observed data as AGW. Consensus doesn't mean 100% agreement, such a situation would no longer be science, it simply means that one theory/model is the majority accepted one, that while having problems, explains far more than any other alternative theories or hypothesises.
    Michael Mann's hockey stick is so methodologically flawed that a first-year graduate student should be failed for presenting it—and yet this was the centerpiece of the 2001 IPCC report. Several teams of statisticians have since found significant failings in it. Others have criticized profoundly the merits of the various methods that have been used to reconstruct historical climate data from proxies. There is significant reason to doubt whether the hockey stick means anything at all; and yet it is right at the center of all our global warming alarmism.

    The hockey stick is flawed, no one denies that. Yet that doesn't mean it's entirely inaccurate. The hockey stick isn't the only temperature reconstruction that has been done. There have been several others. To my mind, none of the other methods including the two mentioned above have been found to have flaws in them, yet critics of AGW continously point to the Hockey Stick as the be all and end all. Why do they? I keep asking myself. The answer is rather depressing, the hockey stick is the popular culture item that somehow came to represent man's impact of the climate to the public and by knocking that you can so easily spread confusion. It's dishonest, but hey that's what folks do. Also, you seem to be neglecting the fact that Hockey Sticks which account for these so called first year undergrad failures have been published. Amazingly, there the general trend of temperatures still holds. These refined sticks are just far far more accurate.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 9,700 ✭✭✭tricky D


    These AGW arguments remind me of the old smoking propaganda.

    Once upon a time, we were told that smoking was good for us in many ways, despite the fact that it involved pumping toxic gases at high temperatures into a sensitive system. In the end, of course, it was found to cause cancer and other nastiness even though the lungs are an open system - you can breathe out.

    Our atmosphere isn't even such an open system. There is some carbon capture back into the ground, but that rate is a drop in the ocean compared to the amount of fossil fuels we have extracted and used in the last 200 years. We have put tens of millions of years' worth of fossil fuels into the atmosphere. This stuff is dirty and toxic and the atmosphere is very very thin. The notion that you could pour lots of this stuff into the atmosphere and have not a significant effect doesn't stand up. And the atmosphere can't just go and take another breath to get new clean air, it'll just asphyxiate. It has to change to find a new dynamic and choatic equilibrium - climate change.



    As for the argument about unproved theories being dismissed, we live in and design for a world that's to a massive extent based on empiricism. That's proof based on experience and observation not theories proved outright. It's the main foundation of how we live today and without that, we would very likely still be in caves.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


    stevejazzx wrote: »

    As for global warming, well great article in new scientist last month about the climategate scandal - I can't find it online but it explained the inner workings of the scandal very well and more than aptly covered the explanations.

    http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn19380-why-its-time-for-change-at-the-ipcc.html

    This one?

    It contains links to tonnes of other previous articles that explore the topic well.

    As for the whole climategate crap, I made this post in the Environmental showing just how similar this pseudo scepticism has got to creationism.

    NS debunked the whole thing rather nicely here.

    Edit: Oh and forgot this one showing Monckton's similarity to creationist pushers.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 4,718 ✭✭✭The Mad Hatter


    tricky D: it's interesting that you mention smoking - many of the PR companies hired by major polluters such as Exxon to set up phoney scientific organisations to deny global warming were also hired by tobacco companies to do the same on claims that smoking was bad for you.

    (If I have time, I'll write more on this this evening, but it's pretty well-documented.)


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


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  • Posts: 0 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


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    Well considering your "argument" consists of ridiculously out of context quotes and a very common misconception about science, your complaining is a bit silly.
    And these are tactics we've all seen before in creationism and other pseudo-sciences.

    Here's where you should start: A theory used in a scientific sense is not the same as a theory in the colloquial sense of the word.
    Can you explain this difference?


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,427 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


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    The quotewall is a favourite debating tactic of creationists and I do not expect an intelligent person to use it. And having pointed this out, I do not expect somebody to claim that this constitutes the hurling of insults animated by frenzied desire -- something which does, after all, miss the point completely.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


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    Well your proposition is false. Tree Ring Proxies are on the way out* and have been before McIntyre decided to do his statistical analysis. Did you not find it odd that the Wegman Report only analysed the statistical techniques and not the temperature record itself of the Hockey Stick? If you had asked any scientist they would have told you about the statistical flaws and no stupid inquiry would have been needed. It was purely a political move.

    And if you think that the people here who accept the theory think that anything in science is 100% settled you are being nothing less than ignorant. I'm not a believer; I'm a skeptic but I accept the AGW theory mainly because I have yet to see one argument from so called skeptics that doesn't end up making some inference that AGW is a religion. Can we just leave aside the ideological crap and discuss actual science?


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


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    Sigh, no but quoting people out of context is and you happened to do so. You also confused scientific consensus with 100% agreement, which then adding further salt to injury you claimed anyone who believes AGW thinks that there is 100% agreement. Really, that is bothering on creationist reasoning in my book. The majority of people who accept AGW, don't actually see anything in science as having a 100% agreement.

    You have also implicitedly assumed that posters here know nothing about a statistical methods, mathematics, etc. Thanks for thinking of us in such a positive light.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,247 ✭✭✭stevejazzx


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    No disrespect meant but you have aptly described a quotewall there.
    A line of quotes not anchored in context but laid out in sound bite fashion in an attempt to argue from authority.


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


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    This is becoming childish one more post like the above and I'm out. How does openly admitting an error was made, equate to saying they are incapable of error??
    The hockey stick is flawed, no one denies that.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,247 ✭✭✭stevejazzx


    Malty that newscientist link I'll post later; the one you posted earlier wasn't the right one. In it they interviewd a scientist at the heart of the climategate affair. It was a great article for debunking the kind of non-science which comes from smudging the data.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


    stevejazzx wrote: »
    Malty that newscientist link I'll post later; the one you posted earlier wasn't the right one. In it they interviewd a scientist at the heart of the climategate affair. It was a great article for debunking the kind of non-science which comes from smudging the data.

    No need. :)

    (I, er, tend to bookmark and log this stuff. :))


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,247 ✭✭✭stevejazzx


    Malty_T wrote: »
    No need. :)

    (I, er, tend to bookmark and log this stuff. :))

    Cool~! Ok
    Hey Donegalfella please read and get back to us.

    btw
    a quick google lets you read the article wihtout subscribing


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,427 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


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    And that's why I didn't say that you were a creationist, but simply somebody who, like creationists, uses the "argument from apparent authority".

    If you'd like to debate the maths of the topic, then I'm sure we'll have a good debate. But you don't debate by quotewalling people.
    This post has been deleted.
    Er, you used argument-from-apparent-authority :confused:

    At the moment, you haven't engaged at the scientific level but simply insulted people's motives, their ability to debate and misrepresented people's point of view. These tactics are also used by creationists and tend not to go down all that well in A+A.

    A bit more maturity would go a long way here.


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  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


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    Woa you really do see yourself as only the freethinker? Well, let's see, you started your "debate" by posting a quote wall and showing a complete misunderstanding of the idea of scientific consensus. Nobody here has actually yet discussed maths or statistics, so, to me, you are prophesying that you won't see knowledge of maths, or did you honestly expect people to start using maths and statistics as a basis for discussing your quote wall? Seems like an odd type of post choice for expecting a responses containing maths & stats.


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


    This post has been deleted.
    Actually you just contradicted yourself.
    This post has been deleted.

    This was your initial propostion, which I said was false because it is openly acknowledged proxy data has its problems. So it is in no way akin to the inivisible wizard one.
    This post has been deleted.

    Here you made the hash up that I am claiming scientists are incapable of error. Not only that but you also changed your proposition by removing the comparison and focused purely on the first part of the statement. In which case your proposition is true, but that is openly acknowledged and not news to me or the majority that accept AGW.


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  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,427 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Right folks -- mod note:

    Can we please reset this argument, stop the personal sniping and actually debate something in a fact-based manner which is relevant to the thread title?




    Donegalfella to serve.


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,922 ✭✭✭fergalr


    monosharp wrote: »
    I don't accept gravity/heliocentricity/evolution/global warming because I like it, because it agrees with my worldview etc. I accept it because the evidence behind it is overwhelming, that the scientific community as a whole accept it, that there is physical hard proof behind it.
    Malty_T wrote: »
    I have no problem with placing AGW as a scientific theory not an absolute fact. The theory, while still young, is still robust enough to be classed as very near a colloquial fact.
    monosharp wrote: »
    Well that all depends on what meaning of the word fact your using. If your using the common English language meaning of 100% certainty then no it is not a fact. But neither is Evolution, nor heliocentricity nor the shape of the Earth nor gravity.

    If your using the scientific meaning then it 'could' very well be considered a fact the same as as the theory of evolution can be considered a fact because of the amount of evidence behind it.

    By this I mean that some theories are so overwhelmingly supported by evidence that they can be considered 'facts' themselves. The chances of something like common ancestry in the theory of evolution been disproven are so remote that it makes sense simply to treat it as fact. (Unless of course we find evidence to the contrary)
    No, you've asserted this before. Anthropogenic climate change is a scientific theory with masses of evidential backing.


    An essential part of scientific and rational debate is being willing to define your terms.


    People talk about 'overwhelming' evidence, and 'fact' or 'near fact'.
    How much evidence is required before something is treated as a near fact? What does it mean to have 'masses of evidential backing'?

    To keep this simple:
    I think the evidence for gravity (one of the examples brought up) is so good that the theory of gravitation should be considered as fact (at the human scales we are used to). I would say that its only rational to assign a belief value to the theory of gravity that is very high. Lets say, probability .999 or above; 99.9% belief. Or, roughly, I'd be willing to be 1 euro against 1000 that the theory of gravity was correct.


    So, to the posters here, please, (including donegalfella, please) using words like 'overwhelming evidence', or 'near fact' when talking about AGW, could you please give some definition of what that means? Whats you degree of belief in AGW? ie, whats the odds its wrong, given the evidence we have? And could you please provide gravity and evolution to allow calibration?

    I'd expect from what I'm reading here that the answers will be:
    Gravity: >.999
    Evolution: >.999
    AGW causing climate change: >.999


    I'd be curious to see, because its easy to use words like 'overwhelming evidence' or near fact, but its hard to know exactly what someone means when they say them.


  • Posts: 0 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    This post has been deleted.
    No I was pointing out it was a tactic that creationists and other psuedo-scientists use.
    It's pretty clear it's a dishonest and non-scientific thing to do, especially when you moan about not getting "a scientific debate a few posts later.
    This post has been deleted.
    Yet you still dismiss climate change as "just a theory"?
    Somehow I don't think you actually know the difference
    This post has been deleted.
    LOL.
    A brash generalisation with no basis in reality, pretty much saying:
    "Any one who doesn't agree with me must be a closed minded believer."
    Right?


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,247 ✭✭✭stevejazzx


    robindch wrote: »
    Right folks -- mod note:

    Can we please reset this argument, stop the personal sniping and actually debate something in a fact-based manner which is relevant to the thread title?




    Donegalfella to serve.

    35 seconds later
    King Mob wrote: »
    LOL.
    A brash generalisation with no basis in reality, pretty much saying:
    "Any one who doesn't agree with me must be a closed minded believer."
    Right?

    Let the man serve first at least....


  • Posts: 0 ✭✭✭✭ [Deleted User]


    This post has been deleted.

    So our choices are either: hold the position that all climate scientists are infallible or by admitting they are not, must accept that they are always wrong?
    That doesn't seem right....


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


    fergalr wrote: »
    An essential part of scientific and rational debate is being willing to define your terms.


    People talk about 'overwhelming' evidence, and 'fact' or 'near fact'.
    How much evidence is required before something is treated as a near fact? What does it mean to have 'masses of evidential backing'?

    To keep this simple:
    I think the evidence for gravity (one of the examples brought up) is so good that the theory of gravitation should be considered as fact (at the human scales we are used to). I would say that its only rational to assign a belief value to the theory of gravity that is very high. Lets say, probability .999 or above; 99.9% belief. Or, roughly, I'd be willing to be 1 euro against 1000 that the theory of gravity was correct.


    So, to the posters here, please, (including donegalfella, please) using words like 'overwhelming evidence', or 'near fact' when talking about AGW, could you please give some definition of what that means? Whats you degree of belief in AGW? ie, whats the odds its wrong, given the evidence we have? And could you please provide gravity and evolution to allow calibration?

    I'd expect from what I'm reading here that the answers will be:
    Gravity: >.999
    Evolution: >.999
    AGW causing climate change: >.999


    I'd be curious to see, because its easy to use words like 'overwhelming evidence' or near fact, but its hard to know exactly what someone means when they say them.

    Well me personally, I don't believe in gravity or evolution. I just accept the theories and am open to the possibility that they are wrong. When it comes to all the alternative theories to evolution I simply can't at this point in time accept them. Likewise when it comes to the alternatives to AGW they simply don't explain anything tbh.

    That said you asked for figures of acceptance.

    Current General Accepted Theory of Gravity - .81 (The first force we begun to understand, yet the one we understand the least of.)
    Quantum Mechanics - .95 (Sooo many experiments.)
    Modern Theory of Neo-Darwinian Evolution - .97.
    AGW - .91 (I love reading the actual papers that publish results that challenge the consensus. In most of these the authors themselves freely admit they haven't enough in their theories (yet) to overthrow the current accepted one.)

    Figures are little arbitrary though.


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,427 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Right folks -- last mod note!!

    Can we please reset this argument back to square one, stop the personal sniping and actually debate something in a fact-based manner which is relevant to the thread title?



    Donegalfella is in the minority, so he gets choice of sub-topic.

    Donegalfella?


  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 24,427 Mod ✭✭✭✭robindch


    Folks -- please read the previous mod post :)


  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 26,578 ✭✭✭✭Turtwig


    robindch wrote: »
    Folks -- please read the previous mod post :)

    Sorry I'd begun posting it before you posted that last post.:o


  • Closed Accounts Posts: 39,022 ✭✭✭✭Permabear


    This post has been deleted.


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