Global Warming. Fact or Fiction?

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Doing the same calculations a trillion times doesn't make the underlining hypothesis any more right. The fundamental problem of this branch of so-called science is the way they consistently mis-use statistics. The way they do things is akin to doing an opinion poll in the republican/democratic headquarter and claims that is representative of the general public.


It's not within his authority to commit this country to any treaty. Whatever he agreed to has to pass through the congress, and I think it's unrealistic to think this carbon debt idea will. He had tried to play foul by having the EPA declared CO2 as a pollutant, so I guess this unfortunately isn't over yet.

As for solar activities. Usually the butterfly diagram and the area coverage chart is more useful than simply counting sunspots.

[img][650:800]http://solarscience.msfc.nasa.gov/images/bfly.gif[/img]

Personally, I found it quite funny that on the one hand, you hear nasa predicting Maunder Minimum like events, but otoh, some scientists are predicting solar winds that will cause big trouble for the next olympics.

I also read that all major scientific bodies of national or international standing (like the National Academy of Sciences, the American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)) agree with the theory of anthropogenic global warming. ( http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/f ... /5702/1686 )

You do not understand what 'replicable' means in a scientific context. It means that many different scientists ask the same question but use different methods to answer it, and they all get the same answer.



Please submit an example of climate change science that is based on statistics. The studies I have read are based on direct examination of gasses in ice cores, on snowfall records in ice cores, on direct examination of atmospheric gasses, on direct measures of insect emergence times and bird migration patterns, on climate modeling (calculus and chaos), on tree ring comparisons from many continents, on observable lizard extinctions, on direct satellite measurements of ocean surface temperatures, etc.




Duh. But he could have committed to at least putting something before congress that would have made a significant difference.



...Nnnnnnno. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachuse ... ion_Agency
Note that this ruling took place in 2007, during Bush II's second term. Declaring CO2 a pollutant is not exactly a surprise after the supreme court gave the EPA the responsibility of regulating greenhouse gasses under the clean air act - it's basically just defining what a greenhouse gas is, and CO2 was just one of several.

using the same polluted data and inaccurate models does not count as replication. These climate "scientists" have attempted to make the Medieval Warming Period disappear with statistical tricks. There was a time when Greenland was green, but that is an embarassing fact. It was warmer prior to the industrial revolution than it is now.

ruveyn

ruveyn

they don't start with the same data or models; please re-read what I said. They start with the same question.

I DARE you to read Science for three months in a row (it comes out weekly).

I read Nature every week. That is enough for me. I have no time for Science.

The climate models are statistical in nature. The basic physics of climate is not that well understood and there is much work to be done in the real science of climate, not the statistical crapdoodle that is currently being done.

ruveyn

As far as I know it appears there is no scientific consensus currently about global warming, is it?

omg. Besides "observable lizard extinctions" and "direct satellite measurements", all things you mentioned depends on statistics to yield even the most basic data before any further analysis can be done. The tree rings of a single tree is just a single sample, it's subjected to huge sample variation. You apply statistics to a number of samples to try to get what the underlining population looks like. Even "observable lizard extinctions" is not immune to statistics. The number by itself is meaningless, species extinct all the time. What you need to do is compare the rate of extinctions to other periods and apply statistics to estimate the probability that the difference is not purely by chance. You are also mistaken if you think that "direct satellite measurements" doesn't involve statistics. Almost no studies uses satellite data alone. When you combine satellite data with other data, you again uses statistics. If you only use satellite data then I think we need to talk back in another few decades. Satellite data has error margin of 0.5-1°C (depending on the generation of hardware), well above the temperature difference in the collected data. btw, when you have equipments with certain limitations, how do you calculate the error margin for the data set? Statistics!

Seriously, if you think about it, no matter how you get the temperature data (which is almost impossible to get without using statistics), you still need to use statistics to convert them into a trend. You also need statistics to justify that it's not purely by chance.


No, the supreme court only ruled that the rationale given by EPA at the time is inadequate. It remanded the case back to EPA and required it to review its position. The endangerment finding is initiated and issued under Obama's administration.

I certainly hope so. But besides a few exceptions, it look more like they start with the same conclusion and used whatever means it take to reach there.


Actually, to study global temperature trend, you inevitably need global temperature data. There are only 3 such data sets available. All 3 maintaining organizations have budgets in the millions to do that. You are dreaming if you think every research can somehow come up with his own data set.

Ok, for one thing a lot of global warming evidence is NOT based on modeling; for another, statistics and modeling is hardly 'crapdoodle.' Hell, even weather prediction is no longer crapdoodle, and climate more predictable than weather by orders of magnitude.

Only if by 'no consensus' you mean that less than one percent of climate scientists still disagree.

Oh, I beg your pardon. I assumed you were challenging 'statistics that could arguably be open to interpretation,' not 'basic statistics that a high schooler could understand. It must make it easy to dismiss science that you don't agree with if you won't accept anything using any statistics.

The number by itself is meaningless, species extinct all the time. What you need to do is compare the rate of extinctions to other periods and apply statistics to estimate the probability that the difference is not purely by chance.

Eeeyeah.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/a ... 8/5980/894

Not that you'll accept that - it involves basic statistics.



even if I decline to argue with you about the details of that SCOTUS ruling, it proves that it's not exactly a sneaky/underhanded/novel move by the Obama administration to have the EPA getting into the CO2 game, as you implied.

*shrug*
since that's basically unspecific name-calling, there's not much I can say to contradict it.



That might be true of climate change science that directly examines global temperatures (I don't know if it is or not, but will accept it for the sake of argument), but it's not true of ice cores; it's not true of sea ice measurements; it's not true of glaciation studies; it's not true of any of the hundreds of other measures of climate change on the planet. Since I'm a biologist, I tend to look more at the climate change predictions involving populations and ecosystem shifts - and those are all pretty specific to the region and/or the system under study (ie, studied and measured separately). What is happening is that, in study after study, the predictions of what would happen to a given population if the predictions of climate change and/or increased atmospheric CO2 content* were true, are not only happening to populations but happening much sooner and to a greater degree than was initially predicted.

*note that climate change is not the only detrimental impact of increased atmospheric CO2. Ocean acidification and decreased plant productivity are also not only predicted, but borne out in the evidence.
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/a ... 8/5980/899
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/s ... 21/5885/51

If you don't have a subscription to Science, can't help you with those.

The underlying physics of weather is chaotic dynamics (highly non-linear and very sensitive to initial or boundary conditions). Which is why the weather cannot be predicted reliably more than ten days or two weeks out.

Current physics does not handle chaotic dynamics or the dynamics of turbulence nearly as well as it handles basically linear processes. The underlying dynamics of quantum physics is linear (based on Hermitian operators on Hilbert Spaces) which is why quantum physics is so successful.

ruveyn

No, I actually think that statistics is an essential tool to science. Whether it's "basic" or "advanced" is irrelevant, what is important is how it's applied. Even a high schooler should know that the result is rubbish if there's sample bias. I also think that a scientist with integrity should admit it when something is beyond our understanding. Was it Newton who said that "I feign no hypotheses"?


Your point being? I don't see how citing a study that use statistics as I said is going to help your argument. That whole paragraph (not just the snippet you quoted) is clearly meant to show that statistics is the basics of all climate studies. Do I need to refresh your memory of what you've said earlier and why I've to explain how it worked? It's a response to:



The climate is supposed to change on the planet. The real question is whether it's anthropogenic. So far when putting all the available data together, recent changes in climate cannot be shown to be tied to human activities with statistical significance. Well, unless one called up dubious "tricks".