The Science & Skepticism Thread

[OldCarlos]

We ultimately pay for all the `green` issues.

The governments, rich landowners, energy suppliers, cap & trade, carbon trading....... The green parties etc. all have a vested interest in blaming us so they can make more profit or further their political agendas.

tbh, the topic is best avoided on this thread, otherwise it'll only end up

 

[Llamaman]

Anthropogenic Climate Change has been studied for decades (although the term ACC is recent) - long before it received mainstream political acceptance or significant targeted funding, and long before any public policy to tackle it.
To claim that it's a hoax borne out of a political conspiracy is utter nonsense and strips other comments of any credibility they may otherwise have had.

The science and the public policy are different things and if you cannot distinguish between them you're probably not suitably equipped to be able to critique the science.

 

[Llamaman]

tbh, the topic is best avoided on this thread, otherwise it'll only end up

Perhaps if you brought some science to the thread rather than politics and conspiracy theories, there'd be something on-topic to discuss

 

[OldCarlos]

Anthropogenic Climate Change has been studied for decades (although the term ACC is recent) - long before it received mainstream political acceptance or significant targeted funding, and long before any public policy to tackle it.
To claim that it's a hoax borne out of a political conspiracy is utter nonsense and strips other comments of any credibility they may otherwise have had.

The science and the public policy are different things and if you cannot distinguish between them you're probably not suitably equipped to be able to critique the science.

& you are.

Okey dokey

 

[big soft moose]

 

[OldCarlos]

Perhaps if you brought some science to the thread rather than politics and conspiracy theories, there'd be something on-topic to discuss

If anyone isn't allowed an opinion unless they are an `expert` on a certain subject, conversation & the OOF section on here may as well be closed!

Not sure why you keep bringing the subject up, when it's obviously something that will end up in a slanging match.

 

[Cobra]

conspiracy theories,

But for every argument there is a counter argument, that's what make the world go around or indeed TP OoF so damned active

 

[simon ess]

Surely though, this is a thread about science not about politics.

Oh - I just realised where I am.

Sorry.

 

[big soft moose]

next on the agenda tinfoil hats, do they really work and if so why ?

 

[Cobra]

next on the agenda tinfoil hats, do they really work and if so why ?

No, its been proven that they act like an aerial and magnify the signal ... Next ..

 

[viv1969]

View attachment 51569

Mods...mods!!!......The meme thread is leaking!!!

 

[Llamaman]

& you are.

Okey dokey

Experts in the field are, and they mostly (97%) agree.

I've been out of the game for nearly 15 years, but I did study Geological Sciences at university and have a masters degree in it, so have at least seen some of the literature and evidence and discussed it with some of the very talented researchers working in the field.

As a leading elderly professor said to me (and I paraphrase as it was a few years ago now)... 'We are conducting the largest experiment the world has ever seen - pumping a planet's atmosphere full of CO2 and observing what happens. I will not - perhaps luckily - be around to see the conclusion'.

My lecturers were all convinced, and this was in 2001. The scientists I'm still in touch with appear to be of the opinion that the evidence since then is even more conclusive.

 

[OldCarlos]

 

[Llamaman]

If anyone isn't allowed an opinion unless they are an `expert` on a certain subject, conversation & the OOF section on here may as well be closed!

I never said you weren't entitled to an opinion, only that on a science thread it would be nice if some evidence could be presented. Most of your comments have been around taxation policy, which this isn't the thread for.

Not sure why you keep bringing the subject up, when it's obviously something that will end up in a slanging match.

I didn't introduce the topic and have only responded to others' comments.
Are you now admitting to bringing the subject up with the express intention of starting a 'slanging match'? Tut tut. I think that draws this discussion to a close...

Edit for much-needed smilies

 

[Cobra]

Ok how's this for starters?
Just ( snippets from) one article after a quick google

Homewood checked a swathe of other South American weather stations around the original three.
In each case he found the same suspicious one-way “adjustments”.
First these were made by the US government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN).
They were then amplified by two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC),
which use the warming trends to estimate temperatures across the vast regions of the Earth where no measurements are taken.
Yet these are the very records on which scientists and politicians rely for their belief in “global warming”.


One of the first examples of these “adjustments” was exposed in 2007 by the statistician Steve McIntyre,
when he discovered a paper published in 1987 by James Hansen, the scientist (later turned fanatical climate activist) who for many years ran Giss.
Hansen’s original graph showed temperatures in the Arctic as having been much higher around 1940 than at any time since.
But as Homewood reveals in his blog post, “Temperature adjustments transform Arctic history”,
Giss has turned this upside down.
Arctic temperatures from that time have been lowered so much that that they are now dwarfed by those of the past 20 years.

Homewood’s interest in the Arctic is partly because the “vanishing” of its polar ice (and the polar bears) has become such a poster-child for those trying to persuade us that we are threatened by runaway warming.
But he chose that particular stretch of the Arctic because it is where ice is affected by warmer water brought in by cyclical shifts in a major Atlantic current –
this last peaked at just the time 75 years ago when Arctic ice retreated even further than it has done recently.


Source
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ear...data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html

 

[Deleted member 49549]

But for every argument there is a counter argument, that's what make the world go around or indeed TP OoF so damned active

Thats what the BBC thought when it came to the 'Autism caused my MMR' and allowing Andrew Wakefield equal prominence in any article / discussion on the subject.

And they were wrong!

 

[Cobra]

Thats what the BBC thought when it came to the 'Autism caused my MMR' and allowing Andrew Wakefield equal prominence in any article / discussion on the subject.

And they were wrong!

No idea not seen it and not heard of him.
So I can't comment on whether he was right or wrong.

Edit Ok a quick google tells me who he is and what he is (im)famous for.
But of course there is your counter argument which proves my point.

 

[Yves Geza]

Like @OldCarlos, I too have questions about climate science. However I'm impressed that when @nilagin asked questions about evolution, several of us attempted to answer them for him. It seems that no one here [with the honourable exception of @jbw] is willing - or more probably actually able - to discuss the science of the planet's environmental system with any knowledge rather than chosen belief or anecdote.

Sadly, the climate debate is totally politically charged and, even here, rather feeds back into Christopher Booker's recent article on sociology - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ear...ister-groupthink-powers-the-modern-world.html

A pity because I started to read through this thread in the hope of information or education! I still hope.

As for the "97% of scientists" trope, apart from the fact that it's inherently absolutely unscientific as a statement, Cook et al's paper is open to huge criticism and questioning about its inherent self-reporting bias. It has very little scientific credibility except for its political value.

Having been through a University Science degree, I'm aware of the necessity of research grant funding and I remember that the major points I took from Channel 4's 2007programme "The Great Global Warming Swindle" was the research bias inherent in the "Increased availability of funding for global warming research. The film asserts that scientists seeking a research grant award have a much more likely chance of successfully obtaining funding if the grant is linked to global warming research". In other words, if a researcher sought funds to investigate, say, the mating habits of baboons, his or her chances of obtaining that money were increased by adopting the shibboleth "The effects of Global Warming on the mating habits of baboons". The programme was widely derided if not discredited but that particular bias struck a note with me, as I'm sure it does with anyone here who has far closer familiarity than I with any scientific research.

Edited to add - here's another Patrick Moore opinion. The transcript of a speech he gave last week in London. He certainly presents his not-conventional argument with logic -

http://www.breitbart.com/london/2015/10/15/greenpeace-founder-lets-celebrate-co2/

 

[praxis]

Co2 is not a pollutant. It a trace gas in our atmosphere, life on earth would die without it. Even if it was 5 times higher than it is now the earth would be a lot greener and food crops would flourish.

 

[Nod]

If we did in fact evolve from apes, which apes did we evolve from and why? Evolution would suggest changes for the better, so why do apes still exist and not become extinct?

Humans (whether modern man [Homo sapiens] or other, now either extinct or interbred with by H. s.) are apes. Plenty of species of proto-humans have either died out or have been interbred with and so incorporated into the Homo sapiens species.

So if both apes and man evolved from the same ancestor, why two species instead of just one and why did one evolve more than the other? As a result of our evolution, man learnt a different form of vocal communication to apes, again why? Also as man converses in different languages, do apes communicate in different languages?

Quite apart from the obvious point that humans (a single species) communicate in many different languages, different species of apes also have their own (probably limited compared to the range of human languages and even dialects) vocal languages alongside body language and pheromones. Different populations of the same species may also "speak" different languages.

 

[Deleted member 49549]

Ok how's this for starters?
Just ( snippets from) one article after a quick google

Homewood checked a swathe of other South American weather stations around the original three.
In each case he found the same suspicious one-way “adjustments”.
First these were made by the US government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN).
They were then amplified by two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC),
which use the warming trends to estimate temperatures across the vast regions of the Earth where no measurements are taken.
Yet these are the very records on which scientists and politicians rely for their belief in “global warming”.


One of the first examples of these “adjustments” was exposed in 2007 by the statistician Steve McIntyre,
when he discovered a paper published in 1987 by James Hansen, the scientist (later turned fanatical climate activist) who for many years ran Giss.
Hansen’s original graph showed temperatures in the Arctic as having been much higher around 1940 than at any time since.
But as Homewood reveals in his blog post, “Temperature adjustments transform Arctic history”,
Giss has turned this upside down.
Arctic temperatures from that time have been lowered so much that that they are now dwarfed by those of the past 20 years.

Homewood’s interest in the Arctic is partly because the “vanishing” of its polar ice (and the polar bears) has become such a poster-child for those trying to persuade us that we are threatened by runaway warming.
But he chose that particular stretch of the Arctic because it is where ice is affected by warmer water brought in by cyclical shifts in a major Atlantic current –
this last peaked at just the time 75 years ago when Arctic ice retreated even further than it has done recently.


Source
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ear...data-is-the-biggest-science-scandal-ever.html

Here is a comprehensive rebuttal:-

http://arstechnica.com/staff/2015/02/temperature-data-is-not-the-biggest-scientific-scandal-ever/

 

[Llamaman]

No idea not seen it and not heard of him.

Seriously? The biggest medical scandal for a generation and what kick-started the anti-vaccination hysteria?
Have you been hiding under a rock?

The point here is that other scientists looked at the claims, spotted the obvious flaws and his research was never consensus (and far from it).
It would be naive to assume that there has not been naughtiness in some climate scientists' works - it occurs in all fields.
But this is why scientists want to see results that can be replicated independently - this is the best way to uncover fraud.
The fact that almost every research team, using different data and different methodology, are coming to the same conclusion suggests that there is a real underlying cause that transcends a few rogue scientists tweaking their results.

It is also often overlooked that if pro-ACC teams are fabricating data, anti-ACC teams will be too - especially as the financial temptations would have been enormous (can you imagine how much an oil company or a Republican thinktank would pay for that?). Look at how much tobacco companies were willing to pay scientists to 'prove' smoking was benign.
The wealth of evidence for ACC overwhelms the possibility for individual data manipulation to have any significant effect.

 

[big soft moose]

Co2 is not a pollutant. It a trace gas in our atmosphere, life on earth would die without it. Even if it was 5 times higher than it is now the earth would be a lot greener and food crops would flourish.

its hardly a trace gas being the 4th highest concentration - however this isnt exactly news , we all know that animals breath out CO2 and plants use it in photosynthesis producing oxygen as a by product, in a circle of life way

however that is by and large an irrelevancy as we are discussing its effect on the climate , in particular the impact of releasing carbon from fossil fuels since the industrial revolution started - if CO2 were to increase five fold i can pretty much assure you that food crops wouldnt be flourishing - for the very good reason that many of them would be under sea water

 

[Nod]

The National Geographic would appear to believe otherwise... http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2013/09/rising-seas/if-ice-melted-map (BTW, that's if ALL the water on Earth was liquid, not just that that would be released if the carbon dioxide levels rose five fold. A five fold increase wouldn't make much difference to our comfort level.

Looking at that, the major effect would be to drown many major centres of human population, possibly "curing" the planet's major malaise.

 

[Ricardodaforce]

Talking of the National Geographic magazine, sad to see its now under control of one of the Murdoch companies. I expect quality will drop as they attempt to increase readership.

 

[Cobra]

Having been through a University Science degree, I'm aware of the necessity of research grant funding and I remember that the major points I took from Channel 4's 2007programme "The Great Global Warming Swindle" was the research bias inherent in the "Increased availability of funding for global warming research. The film asserts that scientists seeking a research grant award have a much more likely chance of successfully obtaining funding if the grant is linked to global warming research".

Unfortunately, like everything else Science is also largely dictated by money

Here is a comprehensive rebuttal:-

As I said, for every argument there is a counter, I'm not gonna bother reading, because then I'll be obliged to google more proof, and you will counter.
And there we will be Ad nauseam till the end of time life is too short

Seriously?

No not really, I'd been out of medical research for a few years before that hit,
Yes I was aware ( after my memory was jogged) but by that time that "broke" I'd lost interest in the whole subject of medicine.

 

[viv1969]

Talking of the National Geographic magazine, sad to see its now under control of one of the Murdoch companies. I expect quality will drop as they attempt to increase readership.

To be fair though, it's just an expansion of an already 18 year old partnership, and it's all things "National Geographic" which is far bigger than just the magazine.

 

[praxis]

The Earth’s atmosphere is composed of the following molecules: nitrogen (78%), oxygen (21%), argon (1%), and then trace amounts of carbon dioxide, neon, helium, methane, krypton, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, xenon, ozone, iodine, carbon monoxide, and ammonia. Lower altitudes also have quantities of water vapor.

its hardly a trace gas being the 4th highest concentration - however this isnt exactly news , we all know that animals breath out CO2 and plants use it in photosynthesis producing oxygen as a by product, in a circle of life way

however that is by and large an irrelevancy as we are discussing its effect on the climate , in particular the impact of releasing carbon from fossil fuels since the industrial revolution started - if CO2 were to increase five fold i can pretty much assure you that food crops wouldnt be flourishing - for the very good reason that many of them would be under sea water

Why would we be under seawater? the Icecaps are not melting.

You need to take your tinfoil hat off and do some thinking. try it, it won`t hurt.

 

[big soft moose]

Why would we be under seawater? the Icecaps are not melting.

You need to take your tinfoil hat off and do some thinking. try it, it won`t hurt.

Yes they are - also global warming causes sea level rise due to the expansion of water as it warms , added to which a more energetic atmosphere leads to greater low ptressure areas and storm surges that lead to temporary inudation of low lying areas (which include a lot of the most fertile ones)

 

[Llamaman]

Will it affect handbag production?

 

[big soft moose]

Will it affect handbag production?

more will need to be made out of llama skin as there'll be less grazing for cattle when the low lying areas flood

 

[praxis]

Yes they are - also global warming causes sea level rise due to the expansion of water as it warms , added to which a more energetic atmosphere leads to greater low ptressure areas and storm surges that lead to temporary inudation of low lying areas (which include a lot of the most fertile ones)

No, they are not!

And you would be right, IF the globe was warming, but it isnt, Theres been no appreciable warming for the last 20 years! (although co2 emissions have probably tripled.) As for the sciency bit, the real question is: does the small rise in co2 drive the climate? No! The Sun drives the climate, co2`s contribution is tiny (it being a trace gas and all) can have little to no effect.

 

[Llamaman]

And you would be right, IF the globe was warming, but it isnt, Theres been no appreciable warming for the last 20 years!

Only if you pick the unusually warm 1995 as your reference point.
Are denialists still trotting out this refuted nonsense? They need to update their websites.

 

[big soft moose]

No, they are not!

And you would be right, IF the globe was warming, but it isnt, Theres been no appreciable warming for the last 20 years! (although co2 emissions have probably tripled.) As for the sciency bit, the real question is: does the small rise in co2 drive the climate? No! The Sun drives the climate, co2`s contribution is tiny (it being a trace gas and all) can have little to no effect.

Seriously do you understand anything about climate science or are you just repeating rubbish you've found on the internet - there has been appreciable warming in the last 45 years (since records began in 1970), as to what is driving the climate , you are right that the sun is the root source of the energy driving the climate (no one denies that) , however the issue is the greenhouse effect caused by CO2 (and methane and various other gasses) which bounces solar radiation back and causes the warming effect.

Also no one denies that co2 is much less concentrated than say nitrogen or oxygen, but this doesnt mean it doesnt have an effect, it may only be 0.039% of the atmosphere , but 0.039% of 5.15x10 to the power 18 kg (the mass of the atmosphere) is still a f*** of a lot ... very roughly i make that 20085,000,000,000,000 kg , which is somewhat more than a trace.

 

[Cobra]

Are denialists still trotting out this refuted nonsense?

And if the scaremongers are correct, they can all say I told you so from the Atlantis type communes we will be living in, in a few thousand years

But I suspect that we will have managed to destroy ourselves long before that happens

 

[big soft moose]

there are natural ups and downs year to year but over the long term you don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand the trend (and before you say 'oh but thats only a degree or so' the point is a) that it doesnt require much, and b) if the trend continues upward it will get worse (and if the permafrost melts enough to release the trapped methane the increase will be substantial)

 

[Ricardodaforce]

To be fair though, it's just an expansion of an already 18 year old partnership, and it's all things "National Geographic" which is far bigger than just the magazine.

Fox have had their mitts on the TV channel for a while. Control of the magazine is new.

 

[praxis]

http://notrickszone.com/2013/08/07/...ation-2012-was-among-coolest-in-21st-century/

 

[big soft moose]

so what - you are looking at a tiny fragment of time, too small to predict a curve - if you look carefully at the graph i posted the peaks and troughs from your graph are present - but the upward trend is clear.

Also you denialist link says "it is clear that the earth has stopped warming" leaving aside the fact that no actually it isnt , does that mean that they accept that it was warming previously (which at the time they denied ? )

as to 2012 was one of the coldest this decade - again so what ? , all that link confirms is that you, and they, don't understand how to read a graph

 

[Llamaman]

http://notrickszone.com/2013/08/07/...ation-2012-was-among-coolest-in-21st-century/

Epic comprehension fail.