No Science Zone

[diver0008]

@Murky Waters, of course you don't have to buy it. The same scientific method that has brought you computers, medicine, and engineering has also elucidated the problem of climate change. So pick and choose as you will, the science is available for you to read.

I am not a climatologist.

How will I be able to tell if I am being manipulated or fed half-truths?

There seems to be an element of faith in the necessity to believe.

 

[They call me Tater]

Ryan you are incorrect. The 'science' that brought you computers has nothing to do with climate change. Binary numbers, hexadecimal numbers and number systems has Nothing to do with data that is assimialted over years of estimated or deduced data that may or may not be true.

Science is heavily influenced by politics. Binary math not so much.

If you are trying to government fund a climate study, would you produce a hypothesis that there is or isnt climate change to present for funding? If there were no change, you wouldn't need a future study. If there was funding you could produce endless studies, no?

It is a lie to say that 'scientist' are not influenced by money. Like businessmen they relie on funding for their existance.

 

[Skeptic14]

Yes, so back to my original challenge. Read the studies and then explain why those studies are flawed. You say that you agree that "parts" of science climate are real. Please tell me which parts are not real.

I've done the global warming, religion, politics, interwebz debates for long enough to know how pointless they are and so if it's not personally entertaining than I'm not interested.

I tried to make a simple point about the absurd 97% quote that always gets used, and not too surprisingly it was ignored/missed and a few people have tried to drag me into an argument ever since that I don't find nearly as entertaining as I did the first dozen times I've had the online debates...

But I'll summarize my thoughts:

Empiricism (science) is our derived understanding of the world based on observation. We make predictions and test those predictions to validate falsifiable theories. Climate models are currently woefully incapable of making accurate meaningful predictions; there is too much noise and we currently can't be certain we can separate the natural variability of our planets climate (pre-industry) from anthropogenic affects. Climate models are tested against historic data, hopefully that is shocking and disturbing too people, if not it should be. That is not science, that is not making future predictions and testing the prediction. Also, it has become highly politicized and filled with ideologues, in fact some of the secondary agenda was actually spelled out in the Kyoto protocol from the early 2000s, paraphrasing, a tertiary result of ratifying the policies was to help less industrialized economies at the expense of the more industrialized, that too isn't science and isn't related to climate, it's entirely a political ideology.

@Murky Waters, of course you don't have to buy it. The same scientific method that has brought you computers, medicine, and engineering has also elucidated the problem of climate change. So pick and choose as you will, the science is available for you to read.

Problem with the above analogy is that while the scientific method isn't flawed people are, science is riddled with examples of mistakes and when you add ideologues it just gets worse. Oh and there's also a difference between logic (computer science) and empiricism.

 

[drrich2]

If you are trying to government fund a climate study, would you produce a hypothesis that there is or isnt climate change to present for funding? If there were no change, you wouldn't need a future study. If there was funding you could produce endless studies, no?

Might be worth mentioning the scientific research approach in case anyone's interested.

If such studies are done the way I was taught scientific research ideally works, the study starts with the default assumption of a null hypothesis (that there is no difference between compared groups, whether Tylenol vs. Ibuprofen for head ache or regional climate across 2 specified time periods you have data for). If you find differences (typically you do), you run statistical analyses to determine the % likelihood those differences can be accounted for by random chance. If that % is 5% or less (1 in 20 chance accounts for your results), you've achieved statistical significance.

That should be reliable, objective data. But...

1.) Statistical significance doesn't necessarily = practical significance.
2.) Someone familiar with the subject at hand may be able to design his study to influence the outcome, if so inclined.
3.) Sometimes studies with a particular type of outcome are more prone to get published in journals (such as medication trials that show benefit for a pill, vs. trials that didn't).
4.) Future studies may still disagree or reveal major flaws in interpretation. If you base major worldwide political & industrial changes on a given hypothesis or theory, then a few years later on the strength of newer research or re-analysis decide 'Oops, sorry,' it's hard to change course. That doesn't mean climate change would be debunked; it might be a faster or slower progression, proposed mitigation strategies might be less effective than predicted or the consequences more or less dire.

Ideally, you then design a large study to test a hypothesis going forward. So you don't just come up with interpretations of past data; you create a hypothesis based on that, then put it to the test and see if your unfolding data support it.

Those of you familiar with the climate change research; is it all retrospective analysis? Given the fairly gradual, low change rate involved averaged over long periods of time, is it practical to do 'going forward' research or must we rely on historical temp. records?

Richard.

P.S.: If my grasp of how researchers approach such issues is wrong, please explain. Been a long time since I had general scientific formal coursework.

 

[RyanT]

How will I be able to tell if I am being manipulated or fed half-truths?
There seems to be an element of faith in the necessity to believe.

No element of faith is necessary. Back to my original challenge, read the science for yourself. It is publicly available. You can just go to Google Scholar and run searches (e.g. climate change, sea level rise, etc.). Then get the pdfs and read the peer-reviewed science reports. In these reports, the researchers lay out their questions, their methods, give their data, and present their interpretation. So you can read the science directly and make a decision about whether you buy their argument. Just make sure you are reading the direct peer-reviews studies from reputable journals such as Science, Nature, etc.

The 'science' that brought you computers has nothing to do with climate change.

Actually this is not true. The scientific method is applied to both atmospheric science and the development of semiconductors. Without testing hypotheses, we never would have arrived on the use of silicon chips to drive modern computers.

If you are trying to government fund a climate study, would you produce a hypothesis that there is or isnt climate change to present for funding? If there were no change, you wouldn't need a future study. If there was funding you could produce endless studies, no?

This is simply not how science works. If scientists had a good reason to believe that climate change wasn't happening, then yes, they would propose that. Funding for climate change research does not come from a pot labeled "climate change." It comes from directorates at the National Science Foundation and elsewhere aimed at overall atmospheric science, physical chemistry, physical oceanography, glaciology, etc. Many scientists are applying for grant money from these directorates to study this particular problem. If as a scientist, you had a compelling reason to show that climate change was not occurring, then you would get funding. If you then presented compelling evidence from that research to show that climate change was not happening, you would become famous. And then, atmospheric science grant funding would continue, scientists would just shift their research to address different questions. There is no financial incentive to foster a false claim of climate change, it's just not how it works. BTW, I'm a research scientist who has received federal research dollars, and I've served on NSF panels to decide how funding is to be allocated. So I know well how the system works.

Problem with the above analogy is that while the scientific method isn't flawed people are, science is riddled with examples of mistakes

Yes it is! And that's why consensus is important. That's why for an issue as massive and complex as climate change, no scientist worth his/her salt will rely on a single study. That's why independent studies, approached from different angles, done at different times are critical. In this regard, science is a self-correcting endeavor.

@drrich2, there are certainly some nuances to the scientific method, but I think you've got a pretty good grasp on it! Regarding climate science, it is practical to do research going forward. As I mentioned, it really is a massive endeavor encompassing science from lots of different spheres. For example, where I conduct research in Panama, they have projects going on that are examining how changes in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels influence forest structure. They are finding, for example, that increased CO2 levels (e.g. current atmospheric levels) are promoting shifts to more lianas (vines) and fewer trees. Vines sequester much less carbon than trees do and this is reducing the carbon absorption of tropical forests. So these scientists are making predictions about the future of atmospheric carbon levels based on these changing carbon cycling of our forests.

 

[diver0008]

That's why for an issue as massive and complex as climate change...

And yet you expect a layman to "read the science", and be convinced.

Asinine.

 

[Storker]

And yet you expect a layman to "read the science", and be convinced.

Asinine.

You have two choices.

1. To read the research literature and make up your mind about the soundness of the claims put forward. You've just said that you aren't competent to do that, which leaves you with the other option:
2. To trust those who are competent to evaluate the current scientific literature (i.e. actual scientists in the field we're talking about), and trust their opinion. You're saying that you aren't going to trust those who actually know about this stuff, so where does that leave you? Whatchagonnado?

 

[diver0008]

You have two choices.

1. To read the research literature and make up your mind about the soundness of the claims put forward. You've just said that you aren't competent to do that, which leaves you with the other option:
2. To trust those who are competent to evaluate the current scientific literature (i.e. actual scientists in the field we're talking about), and trust their opinion. You're saying that you aren't going to trust those who actually know about this stuff, so where does that leave you? Whatchagonnado?

Do? I'll ride my bike instead of driving my car when I can, I'll buy my groceries with the earth in mind, I'll recycle, not litter or be wasteful, and be nice to animals while I wait patiently for Armageddon.

Nothing new.

But if governments collude to try and take my money and send it to the third world for some apparent sins of industrialization upon which I have benefitted, I will speak up and suspect that this is the actual motive behind the whole thing, and in the absence of any proof of this whole apparent crisis that I can see with my own eyes in my 50+ years on this planet, and in the face of failed catastrophic predictions from doomsayers for decades, and given the benefit of the doubt that it is actually real, dangerous, or even stoppable, I will leave it to the young people to do as they see fit, and wonder themselves if they are being manipulated for nothing but politics.

 

[RyanT]

Storker pretty much hit the nail on the head.

But....@Murky Waters, I'll give you an alternative, I'll train you how to read scientific papers. I take freshmen biology students with no science background and train them to do this all the time. Yes, there is a lot of jargon, etc. in the reports, and it takes time, but if my freshmen can do this, so can you. Let's start here. I'm posting links for two papers, one is a review that summarizes a bunch of existing studies (by Parmesan). The other is an empirical study. Take a look at these and then shoot me questions. I'll start explaining any terms and methods that don't make sense.

Regards,
Ryan

https://brage.bibsys.no/xmlui/bitst...212/bg-10-161-2013.pdf?sequence=3&isAllowed=y

http://www.rosemonteis.us/files/references/049004.pdf

 

[Storker]

Problem is, to have an informed opinion about an area of research requires quite a few hours of pretty hard work. A research paper provides info about only a very, very tiny piece of the huge jigsaw puzzle. Reading just one paper for proper comprehension isn't done over your lunch break. So, reading up on a previously poorly known subject - even if it's within your general field of knowledge - takes time. Lots of time. And effort.

Which is why I thank every deity imaginable - and some more - whenever I find a good - and recent - review article about a field I'm not intimately familiar with and need to read up on.