Now you are making scientific claims without doing the science. There is no "cyclic historical record", only the "historical record". If you analyse it you find that the temperature has started to increase. This has been confirmed by multiple independent analyses.

Actually there are greater and lesser cycles upon cycles upon cycles in the historical/environmental/geological records ranging from the roughly 11 year or less solar cycles to the lesser and greater glacial periods that are 10's of thousands of years long and everything in between and beyond.

I think of it as trying to analyze a complex analog signal like trying to map out a song of unknown length based on a few seconds of what was played while not even knowing where exactly in the song the sample was taken.

Educated guesses at best where we think we know what note nature is going play next yet so far the overall average of what has been guessed at seems to strongly suggest we don't have clue or at least what we do have has a rather high margin of error that in most any other scientific venues would never be taken as a serious level of accuracy or prediction to make large scale changes to or with.

To put it more simply how many here would trust the predictive accuracy of the climate science as it is now and apply that to say driving your vehicle across a unknown number of active railroad crossings in the middle of the night with all the windows blacked out and the radio playing so loud that you could not hear a train coming until it already hit you?

Would you risk blindly driving onto active tracks based on the as seen statistical accuracy of what has been claimed was going to happen Vs where reality went?

I wouldn't.

 

It's been interesting. I find it fascinating that folk that take a scientific approach to technical problems refuse to accept that there is a scientific approach to this issue. The top scientists in your country (some of the best in the world) have published material detailing the evidence and the choices that leads to, yet I suspect almost none of those with fixed views have read it. Supposedly they believe that this is some sort of conspiracy, that scientists globally are engaging in some sort of green-left conspiracy to deindustrialise the world. This conspiracy extends to your National Academy of Sciences, the Royal Society in England, the national academies of France, Germany, Italy, China, Japan, Russia, Brazil, Mexico, India and many others I can't remember off the top of my head.

I engaged as I think it is an important issue and there is a (small) chance I may encourage folk to look at the science. It was also a challenge to have a discussion on GW and keep it about the science so that the thread wouldn't get shut down. I've probably spoilt that now.

It's a little sad that the country that dominated the last century largely through the pragmatic adoption of science and technology, is setting sail into the 21st with a weighty ballast of an energy policy committed to fossil fuels, supported by a misinformation campaign funded from fossil fuel profits.

I'm no alarmist, change is happening, it just could happen more smoothly if people knew who the experts were, challenged them through the scientific process not through google searches, and weren't prepared to rely on Dr Spock appearing to save their grandchildren.

My view, in short, is that we're living in an age of mistrust, but misplaced mistrust for that matter... an era self-proclaimed experts that think that since they're financially savvy or great actors or entertainers, then they must also be great scientists, theologians, philosophers and historians... I think people in this century are turning their heads to the wrong sources simply because they like what they're saying, and the sources keep telling them things that they like to hear...

 

The Oxford English Dictionary defines the scientific method as "a method or procedure that has characterized natural science since the 17th century, consisting in systematic observation, measurement, and experiment, and the formulation, testing, and modification of hypotheses."

Is that definition still valid in today's environment?

This is true, but the scientific process, where scientists are forced to publish their results into an audience of paid whistleblowers, any one of whom gains kudos for finding errors in other scientist's work, is one of the most reliable things we have ever developed. Occasionally it makes mistakes, but even then it is self-correcting.

I guess Dr. Hwang Woo Suk was an "occasional mistake" that was NOT caught by the paid whistleblowers and we would have still been duped if the doc didn't fess up.

Paid whistleblowers ... yeah, right. Skeptics are browbeaten. All I've heard was their funding sources, not any dissertations directly attacking their papers.

It's more like an opinion poll where the clique is polled.

Peer review ... you have a lot of faith in a process that doesn't "check the validity" of data, only that the process appears to be correct and it's worthy of publication.

Keep the faith.

A skeptic sends.

 

Actually there are greater and lesser cycles upon cycles upon cycles in the historical/environmental/geological records ranging from the roughly 11 year or less solar cycles to the lesser and greater glacial periods that are 10's of thousands of years long and everything in between and beyond.

I think of it as trying to analyze a complex analog signal like trying to map out a song of unknown length based on a few seconds of what was played while not even knowing where exactly in the song the sample was taken.

Educated guesses at best where we think we know what note nature is going play next yet so far the overall average of what has been guessed at seems to strongly suggest we don't have clue or at least what we do have has a rather high margin of error that in most any other scientific venues would never be taken as a serious level of accuracy or prediction to make large scale changes to or with.

To put it more simply how many here would trust the predictive accuracy of the climate science as it is now and apply that to say driving your vehicle across a unknown number of active railroad crossings in the middle of the night with all the windows blacked out and the radio playing so loud that you could not hear a train coming until it already hit you?

Would you risk blindly driving onto active tracks based on the as seen statistical accuracy of what has been claimed was going to happen Vs where reality went?

I wouldn't.

OK, it's clear I can't get you to read up on the actual science, let me ask you this: We know that CO2 traps heat, we can see that the CO2 level is rising, we can see that the temperature is rising, we can see from the paleoclimate record that the climate has flipped between much warmer and much cooler states than now and our best understanding is that this was triggered by thermal imbalances smaller than we are causing now, what do you think is going to happen?

 

My view, in short, is that we're living in an age of mistrust, but misplaced mistrust for that matter...

In Cognitive Therapy and Research, an article titled: Publication prejudices: An experimental study of confirmatory bias in the peer review system, had this in it's abstract

Confirmatory bias is the tendency to emphasize and believe experiences which support one's views and to ignore or discredit those which do not.

 

This is the most brilliant example of confirmation bias I have ever seen! You appear to have found a plot of something with no trend, so you assume it is temperature. Go and read the article that these plots come from http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/2011JD016187/full
and you will discover that the caption to the figure reads:


Homogenization is the statistical process they apply to raw temperature records to correct for artificial offsets to readings, e.g. moving the station, encroaching buildings etc.. This attracts criticism as it is always possible to cherry pick the results and show half a dozen weather stations that it adds a warming trend to.

In the light of recent comedy suggesting skeptics "pick apart" arguments supporting the science, I think it's time to more fully address this and other tactics used by the skeptics. To be clear, all of the rhetoric about data being manipulated by the scientists to create an illusion of warming come from this very thing; deniers "cheery picking" very few of the measurements that were adjusted in favor of warming, and leaving out the complete record. This begs the question; if all of the data and analysis is so easily picked apart, and there is a significant body of work done by the skeptics that disprove the conclusions borne out by scientific publications, then why would any need to do this kind of cherry picking of the data? Why indeed run the risk of being exposed for blatant dishonesty if all the data you need is available, true and correct. Why tarnish your reputation by misleading when there is no need? Basically, if the skeptics had the goods, they would use them rather than this kind of theater, but they don't, and that's why they have to cherry pick and show data skewing where none exists.

To review the above, when data corrections are subjected to homogenization, no bias towards or away from warming results. These analysis have been confirmed by independent study, at least one conducted by non-paid volunteers. So, in essence, if warming deniers published the complete data record in their dissents, they wouldn't be able to demonstrate any bias and thus their whole argument would quickly fall apart. Further, no skeptical or other review of the data addressed this shortcoming in the literature. It's something to be ignored with the hope if they ignore it, then the general public will ignore it as well.

This kind of tactic is widely used by denier bloggers. Every time I follow up on an issue brought up by a skeptic, I find the same basic obfuscation at play. So far, after reviewing reams of information published (or posted) from the denier sect, none of their findings have remotely cast the scientific research into doubt. There has been something 'hidden' each time, and when exposed, the authors fail each time to address the questions about their own work.

 

I guess Dr. Hwang Woo Suk was an "occasional mistake" that was NOT caught by the paid whistleblowers and we would have still been duped if the doc didn't fess up.

Not according to Nature http://www.nature.com/news/cloning-comeback-1.14504

he was caught by people involved in the program informing on him, leading to an investigation by his university and his confession. The fact that the science was faked would have been ultimately caught by the fact that others could not reproduce it. I don't know any details, but I suspect that attempts at replication may have proceeded slowly as there are a lot of ethical limitations in many countries. Had he claimed cold fusion for example, then the inability to replicate it probably would have been discovered much sooner.

Paid whistleblowers ... yeah, right. Skeptics are browbeaten. All I've heard was their funding sources, not any dissertations directly attacking their papers.
It's more like an opinion poll where the clique is polled.

In the popular media that may be all you hear, but it is the letters, comments and follow-up publications in the scientific literature that scientists both want and fear. Scientific publishing really is a blood sport.

Peer review ... you have a lot of faith in a process that doesn't "check the validity" of data, only that the process appears to be correct and it's worthy of publication.

This is true, and that is a fundamental tenet of the process. If the scientific reasoning is sound and if the experiment is scientifically sound, then it is important to disseminate the findings. If it turns out to be a fake it will be torn apart by the audience. Useful lessons will be learned.

There is a famous paper in Nature (1988) which suggested it could show a physical basis for Homeopathy
http://www.researchgate.net/profile...gainst_IgE/links/0046351408de6cfe94000000.pdf
where the authors were making claims that a diluted solution had an observable affect on cells, even if the dilution was so great that there was almost no chance it containing a single molecule of the original solution. This was published with an editorial reservation (see the final paragraph of the paper) that the results were so astounding that Nature had arranged to send experts to observe the experiment. Subsequent publications failed to reproduce the result and the Nature team reported problems with the experimental method, but the paper was never withdrawn. This is science, there is still a possibility that there may be some glimmer of a useful idea here, the results of the paper should never be quoted because of the subsequent investigations, but the scientific literature includes a lot of dirty linen.

 

And round and around we go.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/03/31/s...y-is-a-death-blow-to-global-warming-hysteria/

 

In Cognitive Therapy and Research, an article titled: Publication prejudices: An experimental study of confirmatory bias in the peer review system, had this in it's abstract

Here is the complete abstract:

Confirmatory bias is the tendency to emphasize and believe experiences which support one's views and to ignore or discredit those which do not. The effects of this tendency have been repeatedly documented in clinical research. However, its ramifications for the behavior of scientists have yet to be adequately explored. For example, although publication is a critical element in determining the contribution and impact of scientific findings, little research attention has been devoted to the variables operative in journal review policies. In the present study, 75 journal reviewers were asked to referee manuscripts which described identical experimental procedures but which reported positive, negative, mixed, or no results. In addition to showing poor interrater agreement, reviewers were strongly biased against manuscripts which reported results contrary to their theoretical perspective. The implications of these findings for epistemology and the peer review system are briefly addressed.

So want were the implications that were addresses? 75 journal reviewers were asked to rate a report as positive, negative, mixed or no results. However, this in no way measured the professional integrity with reviewing methods, data, analysis and conclusions. Everyone has biases, but the real question is how do you put these aside and focus on doing good and correct work? Scientists, despite all of their human failings, are very disciplined in their approach to science. They work together to get the very best published science they can. To quote an actual scientists/journal reviewer, "We get accolades when we find errors in the papers we review" Dr. Neil Degrassy Tyson And so, the real motivation here is to find those mistakes or wayward directions. In that way, the scientists gets double gratification; he gets his accolades as Dr Tyson described, and he gets to contribute to better science.

 

And round and around we go.

http://dailycaller.com/2015/03/31/s...y-is-a-death-blow-to-global-warming-hysteria/

That clearly demonstrates the hysteria of that website when reporting news. Maybe they provide click-bait for aggregating sites?

The actual study is here https://powerfolder.gwdg.de/dl/fi6cZtMfgDdaTwSPsrcnJznC/AerosolForcing_Stevens_2015.02.23.pdf. I hope that the daily caller is right and it shows that the climate is much more resilient to CO2 levels, but we are a long way from there. It has just been published, we have to see what remains when the broader scientific community test it. It would be good if it was a lot, but that remains to be seen.

In the context of this thread though, note that the work was done at the Max Planck Institute for Meteorology in Hamburg which I think is publicly funded.

This is science, pure and simple, seeking answers without ulterior motives. It would be fantastic if we could show that the climate sensitivity was at the lower bounds of the current models, and somewhat ironic if this was done with publicly funded science (remember - that stuff that does the government's bidding). But we are a long way from there - don't watch the Daily Caller for the answer, look at those scientists at your National Academy - they are much more trustworthy.

 

It would be fantastic if we could show that the climate sensitivity was at the lower bounds of the current models.

If that proves to be true, then I'll swallow my pride and trade in my Prius for a Ford Expedition. There is a huge problem with calling this a "death blow" and illustrates the hysteria anti-science blogs like to whip up. A single study doesn't cancel out all studies that came before it; it merely adds to the body of scientific work. That blog entry was disgraceful in it's hyperbole.

 

what do you think is going to happen?

Life will go on. The weak, lazy and clueless will whine about it but those who have half a brain will find ways to adjust adapt and in many cases thrive.

Some civilizations will fall and new ones will form just as it has been for countless centuries now for countless reasons. Politicians will lie, media will continue to spout off ridiculous doomsday scenario nonsense while they continue to ignore overall good changes that come about.

The planet wont burn and hopefully survival of the fittest will thin out the human race a considerable amount allowing those who can adapt and thrive to do so unimpeded by the weak lazy and clueless being as a whole human nature has shown that we are not a exclusively climate and weather dependant species but a highly adaptable and cleaver one that is very good at adapting to and changing the resources we have around us to suite our needs.

 

I USED to have a great respect for authority.

Not anymore.

All it took for me, was watching and reading about the TSA.