Are only Environmentalists scientists?

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But you will hear the likes of keet and his merry band of followers decrying the relatively immanent catastrophic end of the world, they even have their own advocates who hijack and remove the limelight from real scientists who with drivel which supposedly falsifies evolutionary theory.

Thing is Keet, environmentalists and those learned in earth sciences are getting heard and reported because anthropomorphic climate change is a very big deal. Science is not something you believe in, it follows a distinct procedure and as far as I am aware no one has credibly falsified the findings that anthropomorphic climate change is a reality.

So, they're getting publicity because what they say is true? Well, that would mean that whatever is heard and reported is true also, wouldn't it? If something is true, then it will be reported and if something is not reported or heard, then it must be false, right?

I don't know either, sorry. However, the nitrogen in our atmosphere protects us from gamma radiation, the triple bond between the nitrogen atoms being suited for absorbing gamma radiation and separating temporarily into radical nitrogen atoms. We're fairly safe here, although a few nitrogen molecules may beg to differ. Cool that something about space made the mainstream news, although it would be neat if spaceflight made the new more often. The launch of Atlantis will probably receive some attention, but after that who knows how long it will be until the news outlets start caring again.

There are many levels of climate change skepticism.

1. Utter deniers of the scientific fact that the world is warming up: These guys are probably worse than YECs in their hatred of science. At least YECs do it in their attempt to justify their religious beliefs, what would be the excuse of these climate deniers?
2. Denying that the cause is unnatural. These are the guys who claim out of no evidence that it is something natural like the sun just getting angry at us and sending us more heat.
3. Denying that the cause is the green house effect. This becomes less unscientific, but imho there is enough of evidence to think of this.
4. Skepticism that the main cause of the green house effect is CO2. That is actually a good question. Methane is important too.
5. Denying the increase in CO2 is human-caused. I think this is non-sense anti-science.
6. Skepticism in that actually reducing CO2 emissions would reduce CO2 world wide or that reducing CO2 would revert the global warming thing. I actually think that the warming is caused by the CO2 emissions, but personally am not as optimistic that just reducing CO2 emissions would fix anything. I think we need a better plan.
7. Believing that CO2 emissions can't actually be reduced.

Then again, they may be experts at applying thermodynamics, but it is not their specialization.

M_P I bow to your prescience

Politicians, like Weiner and the like, are keeping mainstream media pretty busy, here lately. It's a sad comment on our culture, but Weiner's Weiner will probably still be getting more media attention than Atlantis by July 8th.

I found out that the gamma ray blast at 3.8 billion light years away is much too far away to affect us. My understanding is we would receive an effect if the source of the blast was 100 to 200 light years away.

Fortunately, the closest gravitational singularity is about 1,600 lightyears distant from our solar system.

Fine, your entire statement:



Science is also something which you just can't keep adding epicycles to when your predictions continue to fail.

'Keet, that last statment has no relevance to this argument because the predictions of climate change theorists are overwhelmingly coming true.

But the causes have not been positively established.

The following must be eliminated

1. Orbital variation.
2. Variation of axial tilt
3. Effects of secondary and tertiary cosmic rays on cloud formation.
4. Solar output

When these have been eliminated what is left are the effects of greenhouse gases.

Then all non anthropic production of greenhouse gases such as CO2 and water vapor must be eliminated.

What is left is anthropic production of CO2 and other greenhouse gases.

Have the eliminations been done? If so, provide references in refereed scientific journals.

ruveyn

You're asking a lot here, but they are good questions. I'm pressed for time now so I'll start with my memory and provide a journal that I read a while back about solar output. I'll try to get to the others later, but to the best of my knowledge - yes, all of the above have at least been accounted for. Not eliminated as factors, but negligent compared to anthropogenic forcings.

Here's the abstract, title, and link for further reading:


Climate Forcing by Changing Solar Radiation

Judith Lean
E. O. Hulburt Center for Space Research, Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, D.C.
David Rind
Goddard Institute for Space Studies, National Aeronautics and Space Administration, New York, New York

Abstract

By how much does changing radiation from the sun influence the earth’s climate, presently and in the recent past, compared with other natural and anthropogenic processes? Current knowledge of the amplitudes and timescales of solar radiative output variability needed to address this question is described from contemporary solar monitoring and historical reconstructions. The 17-yr observational database of space-based solar monitoring exhibits an 11-yr irradiance cycle with amplitude of about 0.1%. Larger amplitude solar total radiative output changes—of 0.24% relative to present levels—are estimated for the seventeenth-century Maunder Minimum by parameterizing the variability mechanisms identified for the 11-yr cycle, using proxies of solar and stellar variability. The 11- and 22-yr periods evident in solar activity proxies appear in many climate and paleoclimate records, and some solar and climate time series correlate strongly over multidecadal and centennial timescales. These statistical relationships suggest a response of the climate system to the changing sun. The correlation of reconstructed solar irradiance and Northern Hemisphere (NH) surface temperature anomalies is 0.86 in the pre-industrial period from 1610 to 1800, implying a predominant solar influence. Extending this correlation to the present suggests that solar forcing may have contributed about half of the observed 0.55°C surface warming since 1900 and one-third of the warming since 1970. Climate model simulations using irradiance reconstructions provide a tool with which to identify potential physical mechanism for these implied connections. An equilibrium simulation by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies GCM predicts an NH surface temperature change of 0.51°C for a 0.25% solar irradiance reduction, in general agreement with the preindustrial parameterization. But attributing a significant fraction of recent climate warming to solar forcing presents serious ambiguities about the impact of increasing greenhouse gas concentrations whose radiative forcing has been significantly larger than solar forcing over this time period. Present inability to adequately specify climate forcing by changing solar radiation has implications for policy making regarding anthropogenic global change, which must be detected against natural climate variability.

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/full/10 ... 2.0.CO%3B2

No, they f*****g aren't good questions. They've been answered over and over, both here and all over the f*****g internet. If Ruveyn were genuinely interested in the answers, he could find plenty of scientific resources rather than relying on a sort of 'warming from the gaps' argument over and over that is about as logically sound as Bill O'Reilly arguing that his God makes the tide go in and out.

I think the questions are fair. They represent a quest for fact-based scientific data. These are questions that we should expect scientists to be asking themselves (I know, they have). Sure, we've been over this a thousand times, but Ruveyn doesn't just want to take some random person's claim as fact. He wants real, peer-reviewed proof. Now, if after reading the requested proof he still decides to go on about taking a vow of poverty and fiddlesticks science, then I'll completely agree with you. But for now, I'd like to give him the benefit of the doubt.

even if they are fair that doesnt mean they should have any impact on legislation.
there is no need nor gain to be had from not decreasing what we know affect the enviroment.
it's ike saying the bp oil spill wasnt a problem because there is natural oil outlets somewhere.

I have yet to see a definitive elimination of the alternate causes. What I do see are statistical models with enough adjustable parameters to fit just about any data.

There is no -climate science- yet. There are statistical climate models.

Weather is chaotic dynamics and turbulence and no one knows how to solve the Navier Stokes equations in their full generality.

When climate science gets as good as the quantum physics of particle and fields and can predict accurately to 12 decimal places under controlled conditions, then we may reasonably rely on it.

I will be damned if I will take an oath of poverty based on highly adjustable statistical models.

ruveyn

In light of Ruveyn's most recent comment, nevermind.