Posted on 12/06/2015 1:40:40 AM PST by Cincinatus' Wife
Climate skepticism is just bad science: "There is no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming"
At some point in the history of all scientific theories, only a minority of scientists-or even just one-supported them, before evidence accumulated to the point of general acceptance. The Copernican model, germ theory, the vaccination principle, evolutionary theory, plate tectonics and the big bang theory were all once heretical ideas that became consensus science. How did this happen?
An answer may be found in what 19th-century philosopher of science William Whewell called a 'consilience of inductions." For a theory to be accepted, Whewell argued, it must be based on more than one induction-or a single generalization drawn from specific facts. It must have multiple inductions that converge on one another, independently but in conjunction. "Accordingly the cases in which inductions from classes of facts altogether different have thus jumped together," he wrote in his 1840 book The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, "belong only to the best established theories which the history of science contains." Call it a "convergence of evidence."
Consensus science is a phrase often heard today in conjunction with anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Is there a consensus on AGW? There is. The tens of thousands of scientists who belong to the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, the American Geophysical Union, the American Medical Association, the American Meteorological Society, the American Physical Society, the Geological Society of America, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and, most notably, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change all concur that AGW is in fact real. Why?
It is not because of the sheer number of scientists. After all, science is not conducted by poll. As Albert Einstein said in response to a 1931 book skeptical of relativity theory entitled 100 Authors against Einstein, "Why 100? If I were wrong, one would have been enough." The answer is that there is a convergence of evidence from multiple lines of inquiry-pollen, tree rings, ice cores, corals, glacial and polar ice-cap melt, sea-level rise, ecological shifts, carbon dioxide increases, the unprecedented rate of temperature increase-that all converge to a singular conclusion. AGW doubters point to the occasional anomaly in a particular data set, as if one incongruity gainsays all the other lines of evidence. But that is not how consilience science works. For AGW skeptics to overturn the consensus, they would need to find flaws with all the lines of supportive evidence and show a consistent convergence of evidence toward a different theory that explains the data. (Creationists have the same problem overturning evolutionary theory.) This they have not done.
A 2013 study published in Environmental Research Letters by Australian researchers John Cook, Dana Nuccitelli and their colleagues examined 11,944 climate paper abstracts published from 1991 to 2011. Of those papers that stated a position on AGW, about 97 percent concluded that climate change is real and caused by humans. What about the remaining 3 percent or so of studies? What if they're right? In a 2015 paper published in Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Rasmus Benestad of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, Nuccitelli and their colleagues examined the 3 percent and found "a number of methodological flaws and a pattern of common mistakes." That is, instead of the 3 percent of papers converging to a better explanation than that provided by the 97 percent, they failed to converge to anything.
"There is no cohesive, consistent alternative theory to human-caused global warming," Nuccitelli concluded in an August 25, 2015, commentary in the Guardian. "Some blame global warming on the sun, others on orbital cycles of other planets, others on ocean cycles, and so on. There is a 97% expert consensus on a cohesive theory that's overwhelmingly supported by the scientific evidence, but the 2-3% of papers that reject that consensus are all over the map, even contradicting each other. The one thing they seem to have in common is methodological flaws like cherry picking, curve fitting, ignoring inconvenient data, and disregarding known physics." For example, one skeptical paper attributed climate change to lunar or solar cycles, but to make these models work for the 4,000-year period that the authors considered, they had to throw out 6,000 years' worth of earlier data.
Such practices are deceptive and fail to further climate science when exposed by skeptical scrutiny, an integral element to the scientific process.
“If the start of a rise in mean global temperature occurs simultaneously with increased emissions of CO2 from industrialization, it does not mean that the latter caused the former.”
In the ice core data, the increase in CO2 lags; ie FOLLOWS the temperature increase.
There you go. The Earth 4.5 Billion years ok with life guided by intelligent design can work. Micro evolution without macro. since this is a CW thread, a certain candidate I support says climate change has been going on millions of years. It is called weather, and is cyclical.
I am not a scientist, nor do I play one on TV,however...
If you start with the wrong premise, you get the wrong answer.
Few would doubt that earth’s climate changes. That is not not what those that oppose to “Global Warming” are against.
It is the idea that the cause of climate change is man made, and that only by redistribution of wealth and bringing all industrial nations down to third world level is the answer.
Once again, as with all socialist lies, it is not about “climate change”, it is about social engineering.
....Term "Lysenkoism" is also used metaphorically to describe the manipulation or distortion of the scientific process as a way to reach a predetermined conclusion as dictated by an ideological bias, often related to social or political objectives."........
There is no consistent alternative theory that can line ones pocket better than Human Caused Global Warming. And the potential for power is better than the electricity generated by coal. Power over people has such a warming effect.
Psst, Salon, here’s a cohesive, consistent alternative theory: “The Sun did it, and what you knotheads call ‘climate change’ is natural climate variability, caused mostly by that huge yellow ball 93 million miles away.”
That there is a consensus on AGW is an unsupported assertion. There is no scientific basis to the claim that man-made carbon dioxide emissions are the cause of global warming. The "science" is nonsense. The data, assumptions, and methodology are fatally flawed.
Citing that thousands of "scientists" agree that man is causing global warming is an empty claim.
Climate change is caused by the Sun, not by money given to people to prove the mankind is no good.
Sometimes, the purpose of science is to find out what relationships are NOT present as much or more than to find out which relationships exist.
Edison not having an immediate working alternative to linen thread did not make the linen light bulb filament successful.
Besides, it is decidedly difficult to propose correct alternatives which fit data which has been altered or completely suppressed.
“There is no cohesive, alternate theory”
All depends by what you call cohesive - apparently these folks value a limited social cohesiveness over a scientific one: solar variability provides a scientifically-consistent and rational alternate explanation for historical changes in climate (http://myweb.wwu.edu/dbunny/pdfs/solar-variability&climate-change.pdf), although of course the warming alarmists do their best to discredit it (hence the lame-o “hockey stick” business).
And even their efforts to evaluate a human cohesiveness are bogus. That oft-repeated “97%” agreement is actually based on the subjective assessment by a couple of individuals of about 100 papers of almost 12,000 evaluated:
The judgment that there is an absence of any agreement on any alternative theory is similarly based on a subjective evaluation of a small collection of papers of already distorted representation due to corruption in the peer review system in the climatology community, as illustrated in the commentary found in the emails leaked from the folks at East Anglia.
Finally, what Republicans and Democrats think about the book of Genesis is completely irrelevant to whether the trends in global temperature are more affected by the solar flux or by how many miles I put on my SUV - it’s a scientific question, and it has a scientific explanation which either stands up to critical analysis (provided criticism is allowed) irrespective of whether one believes in Isaac Newton, the Easter Bunny, neither, or both.
Funding — the BIG difference with MMGW compared to the past. Then, political control and taxation of the masses stemming from it.
MMGW theory is much more a money- and power-grabbing scam than science.
The Left are the “bitter clingers” to bad science and to socialism.
Arrogant Atheists!!
Solar output and sunspots.
When solar activity is low, the temps go down.
Ditto that.
This web site presents actual data to refute the global warming alarmists: http://wattsupwiththat.com/
King of Government Subsidies and the Carbon Kick Back Scheme:
Elon Musk: Climate change should be addressed by using taxes to stop companies burning fossil fuels
Climate? Not skeptical at all. There will always be climate. When the sun gets hotter we will get hotter. When the sun gets cooler we will get cooler.
I recommend going to Weather Bell and listening to Joe Bastardi. Or the fact based novel State Of Fear by Dr Michael Crichton
June 2015 - The Daily Caller: Valerie Jarrett Secretly Lobbying Big Corporations To Support UN Climate Talks "White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett is quietly working behind the scenes to build a coalition of major U.S. corporations to back President Barack Obama's goal of hashing out a global agreement to cut greenhouse gas emissions at the upcoming United Nations summit in Paris.
The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained a letter that outlines how, by the end of June, Obama is looking to build a coalition of businesses to show support for UN climate talks. After that, the White House will then try to grow this group of businesses to 250 in the run up to the Paris talks this November.
The way the letter is written, it's likely being circulated by someone or some group on behalf of the White House. The source could not disclose who was circulating the letter on the White House's behalf, but did confirm the business they work for was approached to support the Paris climate talks......."
Nov 30, 2015 - Slate: Bill Gates Is Finally Tackling Climate Change. That's Good News for the Climate
"At the same time, Gates is spearheading something called the Breakthrough Energy Coalition, a group of 28 private investors who will commit various amounts of their respective fortunes to clean energy ventures, provided the governments follow through on their promises. Gates is personally pledging to invest $1 billion, while others have not yet announced the size of their contributions. Among the tech magnates participating are Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, Virgin's Richard Branson, Alibaba's Jack Ma, Hewlett-Packard Enterprise's Meg Whitman, LinkedIn's Reid Hoffman, and SalesForce's Marc Benioff. More are expected to sign on in the days to come.
Gates' leadership here is significant. He and his wife, Melinda Gates, have built the world's largest private foundation, and they've dedicated their efforts in developing countries to fighting poverty and disease. Perhaps belatedly, Gates appears to be recognizing that climate change could undo all of that good work....
Gates' charitable efforts in some fields, including U.S. education, have been criticized by some as naive and misguided. (Zuckerberg, too, has misfired on education funding.) But his technocratic approach could be a breath of fresh air in the climate battle, which is too often viewed as a zero-sum conflict: between energy producers and environmentalists, government regulators and private industry, rich countries and poor countries........"
Other things can affect tree ring growth besides temperature or even climate. We had a huge spruce broken off about half way up in a storm event. The rest of the tree was allowed to live on until a a heavy, wet snow/ice storm exfoliated it (peeled it apart). When the trunk was cut off, the hundred or so early years of the trees life showed variation, but the last twelve were all very thin. The injured tree had simply not grown as much in the years after the injury. Whether disease, climate, physical injury, dust in the atmosphere or smoke, there are more things than just the weather which will cause variation in tree rings.
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