Man made global warming poll.

[Oddball]

Falsifiability: Definition from Answers.com

 

[BrianH]

Man-made global warming enthusiasts conveniently forget (and fail to explain) what caused and ended the Ice Age (as well as the Little Ice Age-that peaked in the 1700s). Like I said, Global Climate Change, possible. Man-Made...No.

I will agree that pollution does have an effect on the earth, but I don't believe that human emissions has accelerated our global temperatures and put our existence on a collision course with extinctions.

 

[Midnight Marauder]

Since polls are in vogue this week, I'm curious how the board leans on the global warming issue.

This is a Conservative board

Where did you get that idea?

It's a discussion board. A message board. It's a non-partisan board. All stripes and no-stripes all are welcome.

You're saying the membership is mostly "conservative?" That's some assumption, clearly you wish to pigeonhole everyone. Some of us don't fit into the stereotype.

 

[Oddball]

Total hoax.

None of the so called "science":

1) Has any physical static control model or group...Just computer models that are no more perfect than the imperfect people who created them....No control, no science.

2) Is physically reproducible, in the context of a complex ecosystem with millions of variables...If you can't reproduce it, it ain't science.

3) Is falsifiable for all other plausible explanations...If you can't positively discount all other possible explanations, it ain't science.

I disagree with #3 but I wholeheardely agree with #1 and #2. In fact, I think much of what's called "science" isn't really science. It's observational study. The process of science includes controlled, reproducible experiments. Technically, there's no such thing as "Climate Science." It's really "Climate Observational Study."

Falsifiability: Definition from Answers.com

 

[JohnStOnge]

Falsifiability: Definition from Answers.com

Note that the article at the link you posted indicates "...according to the influential views of Karl Popper." "Falsifibability" is a philosophy of science, not a "rule" of the scientific method. The four basic steps of the scientific method are:

1. Observation and description of a phenomenon or group of phenomena.

2. Formulation of an hypothesis to explain the phenomena.

3. Use of the hypothesis to predict the existence of other phenomena, or to predict results .

4. Performance of experimental tests of the predictions by several independent experimenters and properly performed experiments.

I took the basics of that from the article at Introduction to the Scientific Method and generalized it beyond physics.

Anyway, I think that if you look into it enough you will see that the "falsifiability" thing is not universally accepted. And it's certainly not necessarily part of the four basic steps described above.

Let's say I want to show that a drug cures the common cold. I can design an experiment in which I randomly assign some subjects to the treatment (drug) and others to the control group (give them placebos). If I get a "significant" difference between the treatment and control groups (the cold "goes away" in short order in the treatment group but not in the control group), I have inferred that the drug has the effect of curing the common cold. If I were not to get that "significant" difference, I would not have "falsified" anything. Failure to get "significant" results does NOT infer that there is no effect. It only leads to the statement that there is not sufficient evidence to infer that an effect exists.

Now, what I'm doing there is falsifying the null hyphothesis of no effect. But that's not falsifying some other plausible explanation. Also, the hypothesis that the drug has "no effect" is not falsifiable. You can never, ever prove that something does not have some effect. And that, to me, is why Popper's philosophy is bankrupt.

 

[Oddball]

Apparently, having a static control group and reproducible results aren't "universally accepted" amongst the enviro-Malthusians, yet that doesn't stop them from declaring that AGW twaddle is "settled science".

 

[Midnight Marauder]

NO ONE wants a polluted planet. That fallacy is an ad-hom card the EnviroNazis love to play. If you're against AGW, you're a "denier" and like pollution. You don't care about the planet. All that rot. It's just typical attempts to quash debate. To squelch observations and even data. NONE of that is part of science, or the quest for knowledge.

The truth is, we do not know nor can we ever know all the effects of pollution. The ecosystem is so complex, our understanding of it is still in its infancy.

Currently the focus of the AGW theories is on CO2 emissions. Well, that's certainly a convenient devil, it's at least what, 18th on the list of greenhouse gases? Far behind the thousands of times more potent and dangerous NF3? But CO2 IS the one which is emitted by combustion of fossil fuels -- that evil oil and gas stuff.

Well, if the science is settled and there's no room for debate, let's get serious about it! Let's immediately ban ALL manufacture and use of CO2 for entertainment purposes -- fake "smoke" at rock concerts, sporting events, wrestling events, Hollywood special effects... Soda pop carbonation, paint ball guns, any and all toys... also for uses where it's been superseded, such as water treatment, fire fighting.... If it's REALLY so bad these are the cheapest, easiest and fastest ways to stop millions of tons of it from going into the atmosphere every year.

Lets just get the fuck off foreign oil by NOT buying it anymore! Let's do that NOW. The free marketplace will come up with viable, economic alternatives real fast, and we'll bankrupt our enemies instead of financing them.

Also while we're at it, let's get that NF3 stopped by redesigning manufacturing processes so they don't produce and emit this highly dangerous for the environment gas. NF3 -- nitrogen trifluoride -- is a compound used in manufacture of flat panel televisions, computer displays, microcircuits, solar panels and is 17,000 times more potent greenhouse gas than CO2. Also stays in the atmosphere 800 times longer than CO2, yet you never hear anything about it, because it's not a product of fossil fuels combustion.

THESE are things they would do, if they really truly themselves believed in their own cause. But they don't, the cause is simply an excuse to gain more control over people's lives.

The "science was settled" that the Jews were inferior and had to go, too. What a convenient devil they were to Nazi Germany! Those who fail to learn the hard lessons of history are doomed to repeat them.

 

[editec]

It appears to me that the global climate is getting weird.

Warming?

Well that's what most of the experts seem to think.

 

[Oddball]

Care to quantify and qualify what constitutes "most" scientists??

 

[Midnight Marauder]

Care to quantify and qualify what constitutes "most" scientists??

He said "most experts" not scientists, and that's a handy-dandy, throwaway term. After all, Gore's an expert.

 

[Oddball]

I stand corrected.

 

[JohnStOnge]

I stand corrected.

LOL! By the way, in looking at the link you posted I noted this:

"All empirical work that uses statistical methods is explicitly or implicitly falsificationist in its approach. "

I disagree with that in this respect:

Statistical methods do not involving attempting to falsify the hypothesis at hand. They involve falsifying the null hypothesis. For instance, in the example I gave about curing the common cold the null hypothesis is that the treatment has no effect. If you get a result that shows that the idea that that the treatment has no effect is very unlikely, you reject the null hypothesis. That is NOT embracing Popper's philosophy. You are NOT trying to establish your hypothesis of effect by trying to falsify it and failing. You are attempting to establsih your hypothesis by falsifying the the idea that it doesn't have an effect.

 

[Oddball]

Well, there's that too....However that doesn't entirely shoot down the premise that falsification is one of the standard acid test methods of proving/disproving any given phenomena.

 

[code1211]

Supposed "conservative" politics has nothing to do with looking at all available evidence, comparing it and holding it up to traditional acid tests of science that have been the standard for centuries.

When you do that as a dispassionate observer, the "science" doesn't hold up to even the a moderate amount of reasoned analysis.

Conservative politics has alot to do with it. I'm willing to bet you a large amount of money that the majority of Liberals think it exists and majority of Conservatives say it doesn't. Willing to take me up on that bet?

A poll on the topic means nothing. A consensus means nothing. I used to be a beleiver and then I was convinced by the evidence that this thing just doesn't hold water.

Rocks is fond of pointing to three examples in 4 and a half billion years in which CO2 may have caused warming.

Every other example from the the same 4 and half billion years goes the other way.

 

[Sinatra]

First it was the next ice age. I was in elementary school during those days in the 1970s when our teachers gave us the same doom n gloom that the global warmers always trot out. Also we had the population explosion, the nuclear winter, followed by AIDS (anyone remember Oprah coming on TV and proclaiming by the year 2000 half of all heterosexuals were projected to have the HIV virus?) As the AIDS scam started to wind down we got hit up with the same idiots who brought us man-made Ice Age - this time with man-made Global Warming. The earth cooperated with some marginally warmer than average temps for a few years before levelling off. When this happened, the nameplate was changed again to the all-inclusive "Climate Change", and since then, the earth has ignored all of their pleas for warming temps by erasing all the temperature gains of the last 30 years in just a few short years.

Now the reason we hear that temps have declined is that sunspot activity is reduced and there has been a La Nina event. These very same dinks will of course dismiss increased sunspot activity in the 1990s, and a very strong El Nino event in '94 and '97 that were directly responsible for the warming trends.

All the while, figures such as Al Gore, GE, Goldman Sachs, etc, have invested signficant funding that will net them billions in revenues if Cap n Tax is passed by the Democrat Congress and President - with no actual indication that Cap n Tax will have any measurable impact on actual "climate change".

It is an epic scam.

 

[Missourian]

Resurrecting another old poll.

Current tally as of today:



It's true, I am totally convinced. ............................

1 ............4.00%

Undecided but leaning towards true.........................

4 ..........16.00%

Undecided but leaning toward false. .......................

4 ...........16.00%

It is a hoax.........................................................

16 ..........64.00%

 

[Missourian]

Back to the future from 2009...add your vote.

 

[nawpar]

I believe man is making the planet hotter with the burning of fossil fuels.
I think it's a mistake to accuse carbon emitters of sin. All the tar sands will be burned. All the dirtiest brown coal will be burned. Accusing someone of sin for doing it, just blinds your own eyes.

 

[Noomi]

Since polls are in vogue this week, I'm curious how the board leans on the global warming issue.

Darn it! I voted for the wrong option! I believe GW is more natural than man made.
Is there a way to remove my vote from the poll?

 

[Old Rocks]

Every Scientific Society, every National Academy of Science, and every major University in the world states that AGW is real, and a clear and present danger. Since that poll, we have seen a continued increase in exteme weather events, the Arctic Sea Ice has had another record low, and last year in the US we saw over 30,000 heat records broken.

And now the CO2 and CH4 levels are at new record highs, and the Arctic Ocean clathrates are starting to outgas bigtime, kilometer wide bubble streams going directly into the atmosphere. And we are seeing the permafrost emitting more CO2 and CH4 every year.

There is no longer talk of avoinding consequences, but rathar how to deal with those consequences. And the sad part is that the people, the 'Conservatives' that prevented any action from being taken on avoiding the consequences are now doing their best to avoid preparing for the consequences.

Such as the South Carolina legislators that voted to make it a law that you could consider only past sea level rises when planning preparation for future sea level rises. This kind of politicting with peoples basic safety will eventually bite them in the ass, bigtime.