/sci/ - Science & Math

>Professor Ross McKitrick of Guelph University, an economist and forecaster who has made a specialty of examining and challenging the IPCC’s pronouncements, summarizes the latest proclamation thus: “Since we started in 1990 we were right about the Arctic, wrong about the Antarctic, wrong about the tropical troposphere, wrong about the surface, wrong about hurricanes, wrong about the Himalayas, wrong about sensitivity, clueless on clouds and useless on regional trends. And on that basis we’re 95% confident we’re right.”

>Actually, the IPCC is 95% sure—not that Armageddon is inevitable, but merely that “human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951−2010.” This is not a statement about the future at all; it is a statement about the past. Many seem not to have spotted the distinction. This is about as underwhelming a claim as can be made, meaning much less than half a degree Celsius of change since soon after the end of World War II is down to mankind. There are very few people who would disagree with this remark, even in the most skeptical circles. To trumpet it as a new cause of alarm is bizarre.

>Global average temperatures did not rise at all for the last 15 years. “Models do not generally reproduce the observed reduction in surface warming trend over the last 10–15 years.” This was a fact skeptics were vilified for pointing out just two years ago.

>Antarctic sea ice increased, instead of decreasing as predicted: “Most models simulate a small downward trend in Antarctic sea ice extent, albeit with large inter-model spread, in contrast to the small upward trend in observations.” This is awkward. If the models get the Antarctic wrong, then maybe they got the Arctic right by accident.

You would have more traction for this on /pol/.

This board (/sci/) is populated by extremely dogmatic and anti-scientific liberals. You are more likely to get banned for posting scientific evidence which contradicts their faith based beliefs than to spark any discussion.

>>6056041

Figured as much, but I thought I'd give it a try.

Expecting a ban any minute now

>the IPCC is 95% sure that “human influence on climate caused more than half of the observed increase in global average surface temperature from 1951−2010.”

Is this supposed to debunk climate change?

>>6056050

>This is about as underwhelming a claim as can be made, meaning much less than half a degree Celsius of change since soon after the end of World War II is down to mankind. There are very few people who would disagree with this remark, even in the most skeptical circles. To trumpet it as a new cause of alarm is bizarre.

>meaning much less than half a degree Celsius of change since soon after the end of World War II is down to mankind

>half a degree Celsius of change

>Focus on temperature increase
>Don't focus on ocean acidification
>Don't focus on the local environmental effects of burning fossil fuels
See, this is why I fucking hated the furor that Gore started, it was incredibly alarmist so when you have people pointing out evidence that runs contrary to some of the warming claims it completely derails any argument for limiting the use of carbon-heavy fuels.

>>6056064

this. There is a litany of reasons we should be reducing fossil fuel consumptions apart from climate change effects, first example being peak oil and the catastrophic fallout it will bring.

>>6056040
>This is not a statement about the future at all; it is a statement about the past.

So you're prepared to present evidence which suggests that trend doesn't continue into the present-day? We are anxiously awaiting.

>>6056072

Well seeing as you're the one who's insisting that it WILL continue, I believe burden of proof is on you to demonstrate as much.

>>6056055

Half a degree isn't fuckhuge?

>the actual warming likely to be experienced by around 2080 is now thought to be in the range 1 to 2.5 degrees Celsius.

In other words, half a degree might not seem like much now, but by 2080 it's going to matter, and then another 50 years from then, it will really start to matter.

But yea, like the guy above me says, we also need to look at things like ocean acidification and all the ice that is melting.

Anyway my stance on all of this is "better to err on the side of caution" or "better safe than sorry".

On the other hand, "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", and I'm not sure we could say that the evidence is extraordinary enough.

Overall I'm happier to err on the side of caution though. Think of it like health insurance. You pay a little bit more tax now to safeguard against some possible future catastrophe. I'm sure you're paying more for your health insurance than what it would cost you in tax to insure against climate change.

>>6056078

I think the real dilemma here is that the amount of material expenditure that would be necessary to halt or even reduce that increase over the specified period is so enormous as to not be justifiable in any context. You could solve an entire generation of other global problems for what it would cost to slow global warming even a fraction of a degree.

>>6056073
How the fuck else are we supposed to make inferences about future temperatures other than to look at past trends? What else more could you possibly want?

>>6056064
>Don't focus on the increases in crop yields directly resulting from the higher levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.
I don't understand people who demand that we panic over how the world is going to shit when things are clearly getting better overall.

When you look at the big picture, we're doing pretty well. Industry keeps getting cleaner. Science marches on. The rich get richer, and the poor get less poor.

Why can't we just have a nice talk about whether X might be a little better than Y, against a background of things probably turning out fairly well either way, instead of someone always starting a screaming match about how the world's going to end if they don't get their way?

>>6056083

>inferences

there's the problem buddy. Until you can come up with a better method than this there is no reason to grant you empirical credibility.

>>6056073
>proof
This is the paradigm of the entire propaganda campaign. You simply cannot build super computers, throw a bunch of numbers in there and spit out doom and call it science. That harkens back to the computer axiom garbage in garbage out. Meteorology is one thing, so is geology. These computer models and everyone who supports them, including a tyranical world government apparatus ressurected from the ashes of a religious holy war - the UN are the cancer and reveals their true sinister purpose. Draconian technocratic global dictatorship through carbon control. Life control in a nutshell.

>>6056078

Totally agree with being cautious. However, I want to paste something I read in an article discussing the economics of mitigation. The numbers help put this issue into perspective.

>Australia emits just 1.2%[25],[26] of global anthropogenic CO2. No more than 5% of Australia’s emissions can now be cut this decade, so no more than 0.06% of global emissions will be abated by 2020. Then CO2 concentration will fall from the now-predicted 410 μatm[27] to 409.988 μatm. In turn, predicted temperature will fall, but only by 0.00005 Cº, or 1/1000 of the minimum detectable global temperature change. This is mainstream, consensus IPCC climatology.

>The cost of this minuscule abatement over ten years will be $162 billion[28], equivalent to $3.2 quadrillion/Cº. Abating just the worldwide mean warming of 0.17 Cº predicted for this decade would cost $540 trillion, or $77,000/head worldwide, or 80% of ten years’ global GDP[29]. No surprise, then, that in the economic literature the near-unanimous consensus is that mitigation will cost more than adaptation[30],[31]. The premium vastly exceeds the cost of the risk insured. The cost of immediate mitigation typically exceeds by 1-2 orders of magnitude that of eventual adaptation.

I think 8 years worth of global GDP per decade for that decades warming is a bit too much to ask. And if you reduce the amount of mitigation to a cost that is more realistic, then the amount of warming mitigated is too negligible to make a difference. That is, if you go by the word of the so called alarmists.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aylLhPHI1TI&t=1m17s

top lel

>>6056101

Thanks for putting hard numbers behind my post.

>>6056081

>>6056101
I never specified how much I think we should be spending on climate change mitigation, and I suspect the figure of $77,000/head is dishonest as it would scale proportional to someone's net income and assets, with additional incentives and rebate schemes on top of that. I would need a source for the paragraphs you've quoted, and even then I'm no economist so I have no way of knowing how accurate the figures are. All I can really do is look at who came up with the figures and make a judgement about how likely I am to trust them.

bump

>>6056103
Apparently the photos of the ice caps he was holding up were bullshit

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGYEZ9H63zA

>>6056132

>NASA photographs
>bullshit

having a hard time buying this one

>>6056089
You're just gonna have to deal with the fact that climate science is not the ultra mega hard science that something like physics is. This outcome is too fucking catastrophic to even want to consider for more than a second. It means the last of the Homo genus to walk this beautiful Earth could cease to exist in a matter of centuries. We're just going turn our backs on our ancestors and all the trials and tribulations they went through because we've become privileged first world cultured dickheads? Fuck that shit man, this planet is too beautiful. We've got a universe to explore and so many other strange and beautiful creatures to meet along the way. We've only been around for 200,000 years. Our track record is pretty shit compared to the Neanderthals. You really gonna let those faggots beat us out?

Oh for fucks sake, are you still trying to make it look like there's any argument about this?

>lrn2science

>>6056134
No, the NASA photographs show that the speaker (Farage) was talking bullshit as he had cherry picked 2 photos when really one needs to look at the whole trend to see that the ice is in fact melting.

>>6056136
It's easier than that. Arguing against inference would make him/her a radical skeptic about everything. pic related.

>>6056136

The prophets all predicted extinction
The virgin spoken in apparition
And if all came to pass now
You'd feel we all deserved it somehow

>>6056144

Every branch of science in existence today owes an incalculable debt to philosophy and philosophical works. Have some fucking respect.

Oh wow thos lib fags must be tearing up..Fuck yes..I'm gonna try to call into rush tomorrow and have him read the link.

>>6056125

That's not dishonesty, it's just not factoring in scaling. If you want to scale it then scale it but not doing so doesn't make the number wrong.

Saying so is dishonest.

>>6056144
You're a kid calling your Dad a faggot. Philosophy invented science.

>>6056073
>all things being equal the situation will not change
>burden of proof is on you

Burden of proof is on the person claiming things will change for no reason.

>>6056151
No, it's more like a brother calling his sibling a faggot for saying he can't prove anything to 100%, when his sibling can't either

The reason they are siblings is because science = rationalism + empiricism (i.e both disciplines).

You can't figure out the world just by thinking about it (rationalism) and empirical evidence trumps pure rationality, therefore empiricism is the big brother to sibling little brother rationalist, therefore big brother gets to call him a faggot.

>>6056136

Climate science is a physical science, just like physics. Many of the people who call themselves climate scientists are actually physicists.

The problem is with people cherry-picking data.

When you look at a correlation 150 years old and ignore the history of the last 500 million years, you're being dishonest. When every single one of your top models fails to predict a 17 year trend and you say "Oh 17 years is cherry-picking, it's better to look at 150 out of the 3.5 billion. That gives you a better idea of what's happening" then your hypothesis was wrong and you're being dishonest.

That's science though. They formulated a hypothesis and their predictions failed. But they should have reformulated a new hypothesis, instead of making AR after AR for the IPCC, repeating the same lies and half-truths and erasing the same facts.

Does this pic make CO2 look like a primary climate forcing? No. And it's because it's not.

>>6056137

Yeah, 30 years is a "whole trend".

Lol.

>>6056155

Those people aren't claiming that. The climate changing naturally does not mean it's changing for "no reason".

You're claiming CO2 is doing it. Burden is on you.

>>6056156
Extending the metaphor. Nice.

>>6056158
So what are you saying, that prior to 1980 the arctic sea ice was smaller? Source?

>>6056164

Due the Arctic sea ice has only been around 2.6 million years.

Earth is how old?

Philosophy has fucking nothing to do with science. Science is the application of the scientific method, it is a means of ascertaining empirical fact. Which is not the same as, nor does it have a single fucking thing to do with philisophical 'truth,' which is purely what holds relevance to humanity and human perception. The scientific method is exceedingly effective, but is not a philisophical truth, nor does it have jack shit to DO with philosophy
And while I understand philosophy was the means by which science was advanced for most of human history, id hesitate to call it science. Knowledge was perceived very differently. It was perceived through spirituality and..And, well, generally not via empiricism.

>>6056166
see pic
>>6056144

>>6056169

You do realize empiricism was a school of philosophical thought long before it became the foundation for hard science, right?

It's important to distinguish between the historical practice of philosophy, the current practice of philosophy, and the present academic field called "philosophy".

Because that last one doesn't deserve any of the respect earned by the other two.

>>6056169
>Philosophy has fucking nothing to do with science

Science is "The intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment"

>intellectual and practical activity

So the intellectual part would be the philsophical part (rationalism) , and the practical activity would be the empirical part (empiricism)

It's a combination of both deal with it

The good part is that empiricism trumps rationalism. Rationalist might say "it's impossible for something to be in two places at once" then the empiricist comes along and says "well actually it can see here.." and the empiricist would win.

>>6056160
I think the more basic assumption is that it's even changing.

>>6056041
Actual scientists know how to handle being wrong, we do dumb stuff every day in our labs. If a scientist isn't wrong at least half the time it means they aren't trying enough stuff. You have to try as much stuff as you can to get something that works. If the climate scientists turn out to be wrong then the scientific community won't have a problem swallowing it. The people that *will* have a problem swallowing it will be political demagogues that latched onto climate science because it happened to align with their political ideology. Do not conflate the two. The fact that you are shows you really don't understand science.

>>6056174
>>6056171
In which case its a completely specific half-philosophy with no releation to anything else involving it, then?

>>6056176
> If the climate scientists turn out to be wrong then the scientific community won't have a problem swallowing it.
There have been an awful lot of members of the scientific community who declared that there was no controversy, and no doubt, that there was a consensus and a certainty.

Actually, science has mostly moved forward by old scientists dying and taking their viciously-defended bad ideas to the grave.

>>6056177

Science is for the establishment of facts and measurements valid in relation to a clearly defined canon of certainty, itself based on perception-based axioms.

Philosophy is for the creation and elaboration of values; it assigns a rank and order to things, it says, 'this is good, this is bad; this is superior to that', and so on.

Science is not essential for life; it is a lively luxury made possible through man's exceptional intellectual endowment.

>>6056173
what is the last one, anyways?

>>6056181

Philosophy at the universities.

A circle of humbug and obfuscation taught by prattling old men.

>>6056034
Here's a summary for policy makers, it's also dumbed down but not to drooling retard level like your pop article is.

http://www.climatechange2013.org/images/uploads/WGIAR5-SPM_Approved27Sep2013.pdf

>>6056181
Mostly wallowing in bad old ideas, idolizing dead nitwits, and trying to come up with things that sound similar to them.

I don't give a fruck about this thread, but I do think it's funny that a picture of Wayne has been near the top of page 1 on /sci/ for the last couple hours.

Steady on

>>6056180
And would you agree that its foolish to use science as your philosophy, your religion, then, that science is not so much a measure of what is true with regards to the humanity that creates and embraces said values, but a means to advance our knowledge of the world around us that is incomplete if we are incapable of interpreting that information outside of the context of the means of its discovery, discounting the practical applications of it?

>>6056179
What you see as "a lot" are just a small fraction of professors. Behind each of those professors in the media there is an army of grad students and post docs who toil tirelessly over data and experimental hardware for very little pay. They remain silent and you judge them all based on your perception of a tiny cross section of scientists.

The first publication I got my name on overturned two previous publications. It was also the first publication out of our lab. No one had to die for us to overturn those results. Science doesn't work like that, really. We had no clout in the community. The data simply spoke for itself. It was easy for anyone to repeat and check.

If you have a dataset and you can show rigorously there are no systematic flaws in how it was collected, it simply cannot be denied.

>>6056187

Since you're making an effort and putting some thought into your posts, I will return the courtesy.

>>6056191
There's a difference between a purely scientific issue, and one that has become political.

>>6056204
Its getting late, and Im too tired to keep doing that, so dont take it as an argument when I state that I cant really abide by what that post says, so much as a respectful disagreement towards one of the most tolerable empircist sorts ive seen on this board.
No belief worth respecting promises endless happiness and glad tidings, dismissing strife is petty and immature. That post focuses only on such things as physical health and balanced logic
But to go deeper into this, we need to go much deeper, and define alot of terms that would take a long while to define, and what sort of interpretation or model we talk about when we use them. Morals is a particularly nasty example.
I suppose its worth saying, to clarify my view before I go, Ive always perceived philosophy to be about rational interpretation of irrational perception, and that the latter, filled with emotion and whimsy, is essentially what is the most 'true.' (Mind you, that doesnt discount logic or rationality by any stretch. But that'd take a while to go into, and I didnt do a very good job explaining anyways.)
Thanks for being decent to talk to, anon.

>>6056144
Philosophy is much less like this than you would expect.

>>6056215

Have a good night.

Climate change caused by CO2 etc is just one part of the problem of pollution. Maybe we can deal with that.

But consider

a) Other forms of pollution such as the radioactivity spewing out of Japan at the moment.
b) Overpopulation
c) Declining water supplies and exhaustion of fossil water supplies such as aquifers.
d) Exhaustion of energy supplies particularly oil.
e) Exhaustion of raw materials for fertilizers such as phosphates.
f) Exhaustion, depletion of soils.
g) Falling food supplies per capita.
h) Exhaustion of fisheries.

There are so many problems and they interact, making, the other problems worse eg overpopulation makes the food shortages worse. Running out of energy makes it harder to deal with pollution and makes some areas too expensive to farm eg most of Australia and other arid regions.

And no-one gives a damn as long that they can drive around in their SUV for another few years.

>>6056231
Also
i) Running out of high yield minerals.

>>6056231
>>6056233
See, just talk about these. When all these get tangled up in the alarmism around climate change, it means nobody sees anything past climate change. If you're going to argue for these, argue for these - don't make climate change the centerpoint of your argument.

Also
>Falling food supplies per capita

Could you cite this? I was actually unaware of anything like this happening. Not trying to "disprove" you; I'd just genuinely like some information.

bumping for philosophy vs. science

this thread gave me cancer

>>6056183

/pol/ is illiterate. It's a waste of time trying to get through to them.

>>6056262
Every time /pol/ and /sci/ have debated, /pol/ has completely dominated until /sci/ cries for censorship to hide their shame.

>>6056034
>http://ideas.time.com/2013/09/27/what-the-climate-report-concedes/
Dat high quality scientific journal. Thanks for good infos OP.

how about an alternative hypothesis

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-RvUedfKpk

>>6056345
>be /pol/
>start argument about genetics
>post research papers from when genetics was in it's infancy
>post pseudoscience research papers (social sciences)
>cry when no one takes them seriously
>get banned for living in the 18th century.

>>6056066
peak oil is the reason they are pushing climate change.

see, you cant tell people that oil is running out and that you want to save it for yourself and a select group of people, you have to tell them that oil is really, really, really bad for their future.

>>6056345
Racism is disapproved of because it can be a self-fulfilling prophecy if it's used by the ignorant masses. Racial traits are often encompassed by more relevant traits (black construction workers are not less intelligent or stronger than construction workers) but people usually don't update properly. Because of this, the meme that racism is wrong is sponsored, and now popular enough that public opposition to the meme is an excellent measure of antisocial behavior and/or stupidity.

Which of your claims, if any, are actually true is not all that relevant. The subject is taboo.

But oil isn't running out due to tar sands breakthroughs and fracking, at least for a few more decades, and we have centuries worth of coal.

>>6056040
>economist
TOP LEL

>>6056374
yea I lol'd at that too.

>an economist being an authority on climate change

>>6056390
>Ross McKitrick
hes also a creationist, no suprise there.

>>6056393
That just looks like a cheap shot.

>>6056401
But he is a creationist... a creationist and a climate change denier. Perhaps he should just stick with economics.

>>6056401
>Earth and its ecosystems – created by God's intelligent design and infinite power and sustained by His faithful providence – are robust, resilient, self-regulating, and self-correcting
>hence no global warming
Welp, can't argue agains that.

In reality though I was just looking if he had 20 years of working experience in shell or something, apparently not though.

>>6056401
>Doesn't matter anyways, Jesus will come back soon.