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What could falsify anthropogenic global warning (serious posts only)

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  • #16
    Originally posted by seer View Post
    If we don't know for a fact, we don't know. It is supposition.
    That's the stock line we get from Creationists all the time too.

    'If we don't know everything then that means we don't know anything!"

    I wish you could just for a moment step back and see how silly that sounds.

    Comment


    • #17
      Originally posted by seer View Post
      If we don't know for a fact, we don't know. It is supposition.
      You need to be a little more specific about what is known and what is not. I can give you my general layman's understanding, for what it's worth:

      1) We know that climate is very complex, and we probably haven't even identified all the important variables yet. Much less the short, medium and long-term dynamics of how they all work together.

      2) We can identify and quantify quite a few climate drivers. Those at the top of the list (the sun) and near the top (methane, water vapor), and well down the list (CO2).

      3) We can reasonably assume that all of these drivers are in something close to an equilibrium, so that while they all go up and down from time to time, only one is going up only, and steadily. That one is CO2. Human activites add about 15 gigatons of CO2 to the atmosphere each year over and above what is reabsorbed by plants and the ocean. That's only about 3% of the total CO2 in the atmosphere at any one time, and it isn't a particularly strong greenhouse gas, but it is cumulative.

      So: If we're steadily adding to the amount of a known greenhouse gas, and nothing else is much off a steady equilibrium, then broadly speaking we can predict warming. Now, how does that warming affect such things as ocean currents, jet streams, trade winds, rainfall patterns, the standard deviation of temperature (that is, more extremes of both hot and cold), and so on? Here seems to be where our knowledge is limited, and our models incomplete.

      You can think of all of science as being composed of reasonable suppositions and the base of evidence on which they rest. Some are more reasonable than others, but none are pure guesses.

      Comment


      • #18
        Originally posted by seer View Post
        How about a 15 year hiatus in warming that no model predicted? Would that qualify?

        http://www.seas.harvard.edu/climate/...ature_2013.pdf
        I provided the source because it gives the foundation of the different cycles, ie solar radiance, and ocean temperatures, that contribute to the over all ups, downs and plateaus of climate change in a predictive way later models do. It is fundamental to understanding the over all climate cycles in geologic history. Models have both predictive and explanatory abilities. Your example is only ~12 to 15 years, and to short to reflect any thing significant in the long term trends, and yes in different models do take such short term trends into consideration

        For a more recent similar use of this showing the ups, downs, checkout David Hone here . . .

        Originally posted by http://blogs.shell.com/climatechange/?s=climate+trends

        About every eight or nine months the MIT Joint Program on the Science and Policy of Global Change holds a forum where it shares its latest research with the program sponsors and invitees from a variety of academic institutions and government. External presenters from similar institutions are also encouraged. The most recent event was in early June and was a hometown event held in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

        The forum was excellent and covered a variety of topics, with a particular focus on water and climate, but the opening talk was of particular interest. In the pre-work for the forum the organizers canvass the invitees and ask if there are any particular subjects that should be included (in an otherwise very full agenda). Several responders (including me) had apparently asked for a better explanation than had given at previous forums of the current hiatus in the global temperature trend. Previous explanations largely relied on the fact that the decadal increase in temperatures remains clear (i.e. each decade was higher than the previous). While this remains true, comparing 1980-1989, 1990-1999 and 2000-2009 rather obscures the fact that not a whole lot has happened in the period 1998-2012.

        So MIT took up this challenge and organized an opening lecture on this subject. The talk brought together a number of recent peer-reviewed papers that are starting to show what may well be going on. As I discussed in a previous posting on this topic, the likely culprit is the oceans with a particular focus on the role of ENSO (El Nino Southern Oscillation).
        With nice graphs of predictions and trends.
        Glendower: I can call spirits from the vasty deep.
        Hotspur: Why, so can I, or so can any man;
        But will they come when you do call for them? Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 1, Act III:

        go with the flow the river knows . . .

        Frank

        I do not know, therefore everything is in pencil.

        Comment


        • #19
          Originally posted by seer View Post
          You know what - in light of the links that have been posted, and from what I can understand, they really don't have a clue what cause this hiatus.
          Everything I've encountered points to the oceans being a much better heat sink than we imagined. That means overall temperature isn't rising as dramatically as expected, but sea life is certainly just as affected.
          I'm not here anymore.

          Comment


          • #20
            Originally posted by seer View Post
            Yes and like in my thread they blame it on La Nina. And I guess, from what I could understand, the heat was transferred to deep oceans. But again, what computer models predicted this before the fact - not after? The point being, if no models predicted this hiatus then how reliable are our models?
            The models did not predict it. In this, they were incomplete. Once the evidence no longer matched the models, scientists dug into the evidence to find out why the models didn't work.

            That's the point, Seer--they didn't just say "See, the model's incorrect, we can all go home now." They looked at the evidence they had, and they saw there was a problem, so they went out in the field to find what the problem was. The correction of the model does not mean the idea as a whole was wrong: it does mean that it was incomplete. Once they found the data they were missing, the variations make sense.

            Comment


            • #21
              Originally posted by rwatts View Post
              I guess if the increase in CO2 concentrations continued but the increase in temperature rise stopped, and no reason for this could be found, then we would have to begin to wonder.
              We would certainly begin to wonder, but I do not believe the scientists would stop looking.

              Comment


              • #22
                Originally posted by seer View Post
                You know what - in light of the links that have been posted, and from what I can understand, they really don't have a clue what cause this hiatus.
                They didn't when it was first noted. They do now. Why is that a problem?

                Comment


                • #23
                  Originally posted by HMS_Beagle View Post
                  That's the stock line we get from Creationists all the time too.

                  'If we don't know everything then that means we don't know anything!"

                  I wish you could just for a moment step back and see how silly that sounds.
                  HMS--that's enough. ANy more, and I will ask the moderators to remove your posts.

                  Comment


                  • #24
                    Originally posted by seer View Post
                    How about a 15 year hiatus in warming that no model predicted? Would that qualify?
                    The currently weak solar maximum might be shielding us from the worst affects of global warming. Some scientists are comparing the lack of sun spot activity to the infamous Maunder Minimum starting about 1645 and lasting until 1715. That might mean that our children and grandchildren will have to face a very steep incline in extreme weather events if the sun is doing something similar now.
                    “I think God, in creating man, somewhat overestimated his ability.” ― Oscar Wilde
                    “And if there were a God, I think it very unlikely that He would have such an uneasy vanity as to be offended by those who doubt His existence” ― Bertrand Russell
                    “not all there” - you know who you are

                    Comment


                    • #25
                      Originally posted by Outis View Post
                      Rule of this thread: No personal attacks. We are discussing the science, and ONLY the science. If you cannot abide by that, please post in the other thread.

                      Now, it has been asked what would falsify the theory of anthropogenic global warming. The answer is simple, and there's more than one way to do it, but they all boil down to one thing.

                      Find a significant flaw in the climate models being used.

                      A significant flaw can (among other possibilities) be a mistake in the models, an error in the data, or a missing factor driving the change. Things like "But it's cold today" are not significant flaws. Things like "They used the word 'trick,' so it's all a hoax" are not significant flaws. Accusations of fraud, conspiracy, hypocrisy on the part of this or that proponent (especially accusations given without evidence) are not serious flaws.

                      It's that simple.
                      The fraud and conspiracy in this matter has been amply proven. Are you not aware of the intercepted messages, fraudulent data and economic/political-agenda-driven interpretations of data that have occurred? If not then you need to do some basic research - it's all out there for anyone to see if they just look. 'Nuff said.

                      Jorge

                      Comment


                      • #26
                        Originally posted by Jorge View Post
                        The fraud and conspiracy in this matter has been amply proven. Are you not aware of the intercepted messages, fraudulent data and economic/political-agenda-driven interpretations of data that have occurred? If not then you need to do some basic research - it's all out there for anyone to see if they just look. 'Nuff said.

                        Jorge
                        Actually, Jorge is entirely correct in his assertions. The far right-wing denialists have indeed cooked the data, misrepresented the facts, and misinterpreted all the results. Many of them have, not too surprisingly, been funded by the likes to Exxon-Mobile, and others with a strong vested interest in not derailing the gravy train.

                        Unfortunately, the trends refuse to listen to these people, and instead keep repeating the depressing news that we are polluting our world. Much as most of us would much prefer if Exxon-Mobile's foregone conclusions were correct.

                        Comment


                        • #27
                          Originally posted by Outis View Post
                          We would certainly begin to wonder, but I do not believe the scientists would stop looking.
                          I hope they would not stop looking, either way.

                          Questions like this are ginormously complex. So a degree of skepticism always needs to be maintained.

                          I think the whole concept of man made climate change is a valid one to consider and to be worried about given that, in essence, we are digging up a lot of ancient, buried carbon, and pumping it back into the atmosphere. Along with this, we are performing a largish change to the earth's environment via the building of cities, and the altering of forest and grass land for agricultural purposes.

                          While it's very hard to prove that human activities are to some extent definitely causing global warming, I think the evidence is good enough, but we should nevertheless continue looking, testing and evaluating.

                          Falsifying it can be a difficult thing to do however. The term "falsification" can be overplayed. It's often stated that if a theory is truly scientific then it has to be falsifiable. Well, just how does one falsify the atomic theory of matter? The time of it being falsifiable has long since passed.

                          With man made global warming I think it can only be falsified by performing a series of observations which cast legitimate doubt on the idea to the point that, as time goes by, the theory becomes less and less respectable.

                          Even if that point were reached, I don't think we should ever stop being worried about it though, for the reasons given above.

                          Comment


                          • #28
                            It's helpful, I think, to regard scientific theories as models, generally fairly complex models. So it's rare if ever than an entire model can be shown to be false. Much more common for a model to be shown to be not very predictive, or unable to account for some set of observations. I think it's rare for any scientific model to be entirely discarded in favor of a totally different model. Instead, models experience steady refinement.

                            So far, I get the impression that climate models have the dubious advantage of being better than nothing. I hope we see big improvements, because I think modeling the climate well is a worthy goal regardless.

                            Comment


                            • #29
                              Originally posted by Jorge View Post
                              The fraud and conspiracy in this matter has been amply proven.
                              I am quite aware of the _assertions_ of fraud and conspiracy. I am also aware that the assertions have been amply demonstrated as false (not to mention the assertions have been traced back to companies and individuals with a vested profit interest in continuing with fossil fuels). Again, I am interested in discussing the science, not the false assertions of the paid shills (a category I do not include you in).

                              Comment


                              • #30
                                Originally posted by rwatts View Post
                                Falsifying it can be a difficult thing to do however. The term "falsification" can be overplayed. It's often stated that if a theory is truly scientific then it has to be falsifiable. Well, just how does one falsify the atomic theory of matter? The time of it being falsifiable has long since passed.
                                A valid point. How does one falsify sunrise? I don't think global warming has been established to that level of certainty, but it is more certain than (for instance) quantum gravity or dark energy.

                                Comment

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