global warming models proven "huge"-ly wrong

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Nexus
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02 Aug 2011, 12:20 am

oldmantime wrote:
you do realize that there is huge potential for investors to make money off carbon credits, right? there is money to be made on either side. the fact that there have been warmer periods with less man made co2 and periods of the same temp with MANY times the amount of co2 proves to me that it's a hoax. that and the fact that their models are never right.


Funny because 30 years ago, climate change was considered a utter joke when scientists were originally warning about it. If this was all an elaborate scam, why now than 30 years ago? Think of all the money that could have been obtained over the course of several decades if they started promoting it sooner.


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02 Aug 2011, 12:38 am

Nexus wrote:
oldmantime wrote:
you do realize that there is huge potential for investors to make money off carbon credits, right? there is money to be made on either side. the fact that there have been warmer periods with less man made co2 and periods of the same temp with MANY times the amount of co2 proves to me that it's a hoax. that and the fact that their models are never right.


Funny because 30 years ago, climate change was considered a utter joke when scientists were originally warning about it. If this was all an elaborate scam, why now than 30 years ago? Think of all the money that could have been obtained over the course of several decades if they started promoting it sooner.

Carbon traders would have made bank if this racket was started sooner, but businesses and the rest of the economy would have suffered even more than they are now from the global warming scam.


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02 Aug 2011, 2:50 am

oldmantime wrote:
oh, i never said pollution wasn't bad. we do need to do something about it. I'm just arguing that our co2 output is causing it.


Then I don't really understand the problem. Pollution is bad. We are polluting. Hence, we should go towards stopping pollution. As far as the carbon credit madness goes, you have a point there. I was unaware of the relationship between camels and carbon credits, but I do kind of get the point (also, I've heard that camels are a pest in Australia, so the idea in itself isn't bad). It's not my preferred way of handling things and I am aware of the scams that are going on with it, but it's (in my opinion) better than nothing. I'm more of a fan of green tech subsidies, though.



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02 Aug 2011, 3:35 am

number5 wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
oldmantime wrote:

he means that people find the data that they want regardless of whether or not it's correct.


Or even worse, with the appropriate adjustable parameters one can fit the model to any data.

Real theories cannot be arbitrarily adjusted. If the don't fit the facts, one has to toss them and think of a better theory that will fit the facts.

ruveyn


Which is exactly what scientists do. This whole notion that somehow scientists want global warming to be proven is total crap. Scientists - the real ones, not the ones hired by private corporations with a clear agenda - are only trying to find the truth here. Their motivations are pure. There is no win either way. Wins only occur with discovery, regardless of what that discovery is. If the data shows that CO2 is less of a concern than previously thought, then fantastic.

The only people searching for a specific outcome here are the big oil companies. They have a clear motivation because their profits are a direct result of our dependency on oil. They have a heck of a lot to lose here. Green technology has the potential to ruin their empire. Of course they're going to fight the science, just like the tobacco companies did.

As far as the banking industry goes, one has nothing to do with the other. That's truly tinfoil hat territory.


QFT

Any number of scientific fields use modeling. As an undergrad in Astrophysics, I used modeling to understand certain aspects of supernova. Modeling is a tested method of scientific discovery. The recent data on the search for the Higgs boson is a great example of models at work. Climate models operate under the same methodology. I don't see non-scientists complaining that the Higgs boson models are wrong, but somehow these same non-scientists feel qualified to disavow climate models. They feel as though their opinion should hold equal privilege with scientific data. Well that's plain bollocks.



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02 Aug 2011, 8:05 am

AsteroidNap wrote:

Any number of scientific fields use modeling. As an undergrad in Astrophysics, I used modeling to understand certain aspects of supernova. Modeling is a tested method of scientific discovery. The recent data on the search for the Higgs boson is a great example of models at work. Climate models operate under the same methodology. I don't see non-scientists complaining that the Higgs boson models are wrong, but somehow these same non-scientists feel qualified to disavow climate models. They feel as though their opinion should hold equal privilege with scientific data. Well that's plain bollocks.


Models with too many adjustable parameters are soft and squooshy. What you want is a theory that cannot be fiddled or snockered. It is either right or it is wrong. Einstein's General Theory is in that category. There is very little fiddling that can be done. Einstein himself said adding the cosmic stability factor was his biggest blunder.

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02 Aug 2011, 8:17 am

ruveyn wrote:
AsteroidNap wrote:

Any number of scientific fields use modeling. As an undergrad in Astrophysics, I used modeling to understand certain aspects of supernova. Modeling is a tested method of scientific discovery. The recent data on the search for the Higgs boson is a great example of models at work. Climate models operate under the same methodology. I don't see non-scientists complaining that the Higgs boson models are wrong, but somehow these same non-scientists feel qualified to disavow climate models. They feel as though their opinion should hold equal privilege with scientific data. Well that's plain bollocks.


Models with too many adjustable parameters are soft and squooshy. What you want is a theory that cannot be fiddled or snockered. It is either right or it is wrong. Einstein's General Theory is in that category. There is very little fiddling that can be done. Einstein himself said adding the cosmic stability factor was his biggest blunder.

ruveyn


Even in physics, people disagree over the correct model. And even the correct model makes predictions difficult: you know that Schrödinger's cat is half dead and half alive and that if you open the box you will find out which, but you cannot predict what he is. And that's at a minute level. The earth's climate is a huge, chaotic system. Chaotic systems are, sadly, highly vulnerable to specific inputs, as small perturbations can lead to huge differences in results. We can model an atom, and we can even model the weather. But modeling something is not tantamount to being able to perfectly predict something.


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02 Aug 2011, 8:31 am

Artros wrote:
. But modeling something is not tantamount to being able to perfectly predict something.


Scientific theories make quantitative testable predictions. Anything else ain't science. Quantum theory predicts the odds. As an ensemble theory it has passed empirical tests and has not been empirically falsified.

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02 Aug 2011, 9:12 am

ruveyn wrote:
Artros wrote:
. But modeling something is not tantamount to being able to perfectly predict something.


Scientific theories make quantitative testable predictions. Anything else ain't science. Quantum theory predicts the odds. As an ensemble theory it has passed empirical tests and has not been empirically falsified.

ruveyn


Yes, quantum theory predicts the odds. But the weather is a complex system. Basically, if you have a complex system, you do not wind up with simple and easily testable laws. You cannot easily do weather experiments because we only have one Earth. You might be able to reproduce them in the lab, but then we presuppose a model and then wish to test it, which is already problematic, and we can't even see if we're right. Even if we could somehow reproduce the Earth in a laboratory environment, you're still stuck with a complex system: you do not know what happens if you move from small-scale Earth to large-scale Earth.

Chaos theory argues that even massively complex systems are reliant on simple laws. That doesn't mean that these laws can be easily tested, or that predictions can come out of it. For example, we can use a double pendulum (Link). Its behaviour is extremely sensitive to the initial impulse given to it, and for some impulses, it behaves chaotically. As the article states, "[...] the pendulum can flip, but it is a complex question to determine when it will flip."

The weather is such a system. Add to that that we can not easily experiment with the weather and it becomes difficult to build hard scientific models of the weather. Climate change is even more difficult. The only way to know if the model is correct is to sit and wait and see what happens, and while I'm sure that some of the scientists among us would be happy with being right, I'm sure most of us would be unhappy with drowning.


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02 Aug 2011, 3:24 pm

ruveyn wrote:
AsteroidNap wrote:

Any number of scientific fields use modeling. As an undergrad in Astrophysics, I used modeling to understand certain aspects of supernova. Modeling is a tested method of scientific discovery. The recent data on the search for the Higgs boson is a great example of models at work. Climate models operate under the same methodology. I don't see non-scientists complaining that the Higgs boson models are wrong, but somehow these same non-scientists feel qualified to disavow climate models. They feel as though their opinion should hold equal privilege with scientific data. Well that's plain bollocks.


Models with too many adjustable parameters are soft and squooshy. What you want is a theory that cannot be fiddled or snockered. It is either right or it is wrong. Einstein's General Theory is in that category. There is very little fiddling that can be done. Einstein himself said adding the cosmic stability factor was his biggest blunder.

ruveyn


I presume you're talking about the cosmological constant? Which, it turns out, is exactly what the model needed. Einstein was in fact wrong about being wrong. He was correct all along.

But again I assert that the models that describe and explain particles like the Higgs boson are fairly complex, with many adjustable parameters. I don't see any non-scientists trying to tear that model apart via opinion.



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02 Aug 2011, 3:43 pm

AsteroidNap wrote:
number5 wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
oldmantime wrote:

he means that people find the data that they want regardless of whether or not it's correct.


Or even worse, with the appropriate adjustable parameters one can fit the model to any data.

Real theories cannot be arbitrarily adjusted. If the don't fit the facts, one has to toss them and think of a better theory that will fit the facts.

ruveyn


Which is exactly what scientists do. This whole notion that somehow scientists want global warming to be proven is total crap. Scientists - the real ones, not the ones hired by private corporations with a clear agenda - are only trying to find the truth here. Their motivations are pure. There is no win either way. Wins only occur with discovery, regardless of what that discovery is. If the data shows that CO2 is less of a concern than previously thought, then fantastic.

The only people searching for a specific outcome here are the big oil companies. They have a clear motivation because their profits are a direct result of our dependency on oil. They have a heck of a lot to lose here. Green technology has the potential to ruin their empire. Of course they're going to fight the science, just like the tobacco companies did.

As far as the banking industry goes, one has nothing to do with the other. That's truly tinfoil hat territory.


QFT

Any number of scientific fields use modeling. As an undergrad in Astrophysics, I used modeling to understand certain aspects of supernova. Modeling is a tested method of scientific discovery. The recent data on the search for the Higgs boson is a great example of models at work. Climate models operate under the same methodology. I don't see non-scientists complaining that the Higgs boson models are wrong, but somehow these same non-scientists feel qualified to disavow climate models. They feel as though their opinion should hold equal privilege with scientific data. Well that's plain bollocks.


okay, as for what you quoted, how is one tin foil hat territory and the other not? they're both conspiracy theories.

second off, if these people can't even correctly predict the weather that has happened, which they haven't, they've been totally dead wrong for the past decade or so, then how is it that they can predict the climate patterns many many years from now?


and perhaps i shouldn't have said bankers, but there is a lot of money to be made by various individuals off this carbon scam. al gore is one of those people. the bankers are also in position to make money off all the new tech people would buy.



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02 Aug 2011, 5:17 pm

AsteroidNap wrote:

I presume you're talking about the cosmological constant? Which, it turns out, is exactly what the model needed. Einstein was in fact wrong about being wrong. He was correct all along.

.


Actually not. Einstein was after a steady state universe. He postulated that cosmological factor to produce what he wanted. Hubble later showed him that the Universe was expanding which is exactly what Einstein did not believe. He put in the cosmological constant to cook the books. In that he was mistaken. Only later on, long after Einstein died did it turn out that the cosmological constant (so-called) was useful.

His original field equations implied that the universe was either expanding or contracting. Einstein lost his nerve and let his philosophical convictions override the mathematics of his theory as originally stated.

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02 Aug 2011, 7:06 pm

AsteroidNap wrote:
Any number of scientific fields use modeling. As an undergrad in Astrophysics, I used modeling to understand certain aspects of supernova.

But while you can't do a supernova in a lab, you can look at multiple observations of supernovae and compare it to your model.

You can test it and see if it works.

What do climate scientists have to work with? Not very many decades of good data, about a century of decent data, and beyond that they can get a good estimate of global parameters. Human technology hasn't been in the mix for very long, and climate changes are usually relatively lengthy things.

They have only crappy data for the timescale they're studying, and only one data point (the earth). On top of that, they can only guess what impact humans have.

I'd put a lot more faith in your models than in theirs.

Quote:
Modeling is a tested method of scientific discovery. The recent data on the search for the Higgs boson is a great example of models at work. Climate models operate under the same methodology.

I know almost nothing about the Higgs boson, but the normal method of particle physics is to guess what particles are going to be like, then smash things together at high speeds and see if they can make one.

Their guesses would be better than mine, but I would still have more confidence in their data than in their guesses. If they look at a Higgs boson and say 'look we were right', then I have no reason to doubt them. If they say, 'we think a Higgs boson will look like this, but we haven't looked at one', it isn't unreasonable to doubt that.


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03 Aug 2011, 9:34 am

oldmantime wrote:
AsteroidNap wrote:
number5 wrote:
ruveyn wrote:
oldmantime wrote:

he means that people find the data that they want regardless of whether or not it's correct.


Or even worse, with the appropriate adjustable parameters one can fit the model to any data.

Real theories cannot be arbitrarily adjusted. If the don't fit the facts, one has to toss them and think of a better theory that will fit the facts.

ruveyn


Which is exactly what scientists do. This whole notion that somehow scientists want global warming to be proven is total crap. Scientists - the real ones, not the ones hired by private corporations with a clear agenda - are only trying to find the truth here. Their motivations are pure. There is no win either way. Wins only occur with discovery, regardless of what that discovery is. If the data shows that CO2 is less of a concern than previously thought, then fantastic.

The only people searching for a specific outcome here are the big oil companies. They have a clear motivation because their profits are a direct result of our dependency on oil. They have a heck of a lot to lose here. Green technology has the potential to ruin their empire. Of course they're going to fight the science, just like the tobacco companies did.

As far as the banking industry goes, one has nothing to do with the other. That's truly tinfoil hat territory.


QFT

Any number of scientific fields use modeling. As an undergrad in Astrophysics, I used modeling to understand certain aspects of supernova. Modeling is a tested method of scientific discovery. The recent data on the search for the Higgs boson is a great example of models at work. Climate models operate under the same methodology. I don't see non-scientists complaining that the Higgs boson models are wrong, but somehow these same non-scientists feel qualified to disavow climate models. They feel as though their opinion should hold equal privilege with scientific data. Well that's plain bollocks.


okay, as for what you quoted, how is one tin foil hat territory and the other not? they're both conspiracy theories.

second off, if these people can't even correctly predict the weather that has happened, which they haven't, they've been totally dead wrong for the past decade or so, then how is it that they can predict the climate patterns many many years from now?


and perhaps i shouldn't have said bankers, but there is a lot of money to be made by various individuals off this carbon scam. al gore is one of those people. the bankers are also in position to make money off all the new tech people would buy.


And this thinking has been the large success of the oil industry. No, both issues are not conspiracy theories (the banker thing would have been). I was studying and researching climate back in the 90's, before Al Gore went and f*cked everything up. Al Gore is *not* a scientist. He does not speak for the scientific community. He took an issue and spun it towards his own views. There is a solid argument that he did it for political and financial gain, or he may have been sincere in his quest. Either way, you can count on any opposition to name him out as justification for discrediting all climate research, even though he never participated in said research and even though most scientists completely disagree with his predictions.

Scientists are not politicians. They have no gain either way here. You cannot conflate public policy with scientific research. These are independent issues.

As for the oil companies trying to discredit climate researchers in order to protect their assets from a movement away from oil-based energy - well that's just business 101. These companies exist solely for profit. Their primary function is to maximize those profits. They are contractually obligated to do so with respect to their shareholders. There's no conspiracy here at all. It's sh*tty, but expected behavior. Go back to the OP for an example. This story is brought to you by The Heartland Institute. Please go ahead and look into this organization for yourself. And of course, Al Gore is mentioned in the article.



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03 Aug 2011, 11:06 am

oldmantime wrote:
Jory wrote:
oldmantime wrote:
then why have we been cooling?


It's climate change, not just global warming. Summers get hotter and winters get colder. Right-wing nutjobs love using the second fact to "disprove" the warming part.


the year round temp would not be cooler if there was no cooling.

no one is arguing against climate change, just the means by which it is caused. it has been happening ever since the earth was formed. co2 levels have been far higher than they are now with temps the same as they are now. there have also been period warmer than the current one with lower co2 levels.

MAN MADE climate change is a hoax.

the climate is always changing and always has.

Hoax? Douchebag. Your accusation that thousands of scientists are deliberate lyers completely discredits you as a right-wing partisan hack. Your brain has been invaded by the noxious popular meme of climate change denial.



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03 Aug 2011, 11:40 am

oldmantime wrote:
second off, if these people can't even correctly predict the weather that has happened, which they haven't, they've been totally dead wrong for the past decade or so, then how is it that they can predict the climate patterns many many years from now?

*sigh*
I get so fricking tired of this one. I don't know if I should even bother explaining since I'm not sure you have the mental capacity to understand.

One does not have to accurately predict what the weather will be on any given day to predict a long term climate trend. Climate is an example of a chaotic attractor. While the weather at any given time and location fluctuates chaotically, fluctuations are statistically bounded by the attractor. In other words, the mean state which varies as a long-term trend is far more predicable than short term fluctuations. This is because short term weather fluctuations are largely a matter of dynamical processes that conserve energy. Meanwhile, long term fluctuations are a function of the overall energy budget which is mostly due to radiative processes which DO NOT conserve energy. In more simple terms if "energy in" > "energy out" you have warming, and if it's the other way you have cooling. How the energy is stirred around within the atmosphere is much less relevant.

Here's a more concrete example. Say you wrote a computer model to simulate a boiling pan of water. The model doesn't have to accurately predict the time and location of each individual vapor bubble that forms in the pan or each individual turbulent motion of the water to predict that X amount of water will boil off in a given amount of time. That's because the X amount of water that boils off is governed by the net energy balance of the system. The positions and timings of individual vapor bubbles and chaotic convective currents do not effect the net energy balance of the system to any large degree.



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03 Aug 2011, 12:50 pm

marshall wrote:
oldmantime wrote:
second off, if these people can't even correctly predict the weather that has happened, which they haven't, they've been totally dead wrong for the past decade or so, then how is it that they can predict the climate patterns many many years from now?

*sigh*
I get so fricking tired of this one. I don't know if I should even bother explaining since I'm not sure you have the mental capacity to understand.

One does not have to accurately predict what the weather will be on any given day to predict a long term climate trend. Climate is an example of a chaotic attractor. While the weather at any given time and location fluctuates chaotically, fluctuations are statistically bounded by the attractor. In other words, the mean state which varies as a long-term trend is far more predicable than short term fluctuations. This is because short term weather fluctuations are largely a matter of dynamical processes that conserve energy. Meanwhile, long term fluctuations are a function of the overall energy budget which is mostly due to radiative processes which DO NOT conserve energy. In more simple terms if "energy in" > "energy out" you have warming, and if it's the other way you have cooling. How the energy is stirred around within the atmosphere is much less relevant.

Here's a more concrete example. Say you wrote a computer model to simulate a boiling pan of water. The model doesn't have to accurately predict the time and location of each individual vapor bubble that forms in the pan or each individual turbulent motion of the water to predict that X amount of water will boil off in a given amount of time. That's because the X amount of water that boils off is governed by the net energy balance of the system. The positions and timings of individual vapor bubbles and chaotic convective currents do not effect the net energy balance of the system to any large degree.
B-b-b-but the planet has always gone through warming and cooling cycles, obviously thousands of scientists who have spent years studying it would overlook such simple factors and fail to take them into account! Never mind that we might be adding insult to injury when it comes to these cycles! :roll: