4 ms·

Summer ice melts have generally been setting records year after year, both in the northern and southern hemisphere. So, uncertain, but probably more on the "su

by jbooth 17y ago

Summer ice melts have generally been setting records year after year, both in the northern and southern hemisphere. So, uncertain, but probably more on the "supervolcano" end of your spectrum there. Experiment: Fill a glass with ice water. Take the temp. 32 degrees or so. Drop a thimble full of boiling water in, some of the ice will melt. Take the temp. Still 32 degrees. Repeat. What happens when we're out of ice? (Situation is slightly different for a planet as opposed to a glass but the fundamentals still apply)

fauigerzigerk 17y ago
So are you saying that the temperature up until now should not have been going up since we're not out of ice? [edit] And my second question would be this. If all of this is so simple that it can be demonstrated with a glass of water and a few ice cubes, why is it that a minority of serious scientists has doubts? The same scientists would probably confirm that your experiment is correct.
- jbooth 17y ago
  Of course I'm not saying that, I even included a parenthetical to make it explicit -- you have higher temperature gradations on a planet than in a glass of water -- it's always hot in the tropics, always cold at the poles. But you still have an average. The answer to your second question is that no legitimate scientists have doubts about whether the temperature's rising. It's an established fact. What's uncertain is how much CO2 is related to the rising temperature. They correlate, CO2 is a greenhouse gas and it makes intuitive sense, but it's not "proven" and to certain levels of "proof", is impossible to prove because there's billions of confounding factors like sunspots, water vapor etc. You're probably confusing this with uncertainty over whether the temperature is rising (which is proven), because paid shills and ideologues (who get paid in emotional satisfaction) deliberately conflate the issue. Confusion is on their side -- educating people will probably hurt their argument, even if they're right.
  - fauigerzigerk 17y ago
    You're trying to refute an argument that I haven't made. The debate about the supervolcano was about our collective perception of the potential consequences of global warming, not whether or not warming takes place. I don't know nearly enough about climate science to make any claims about it. What I do know about is scientific methods and I do know that there is no scientific method that can credibly make long term predictions about complex systems. We had the Stern review tell us what the costs of climate change are going to be many decades down the road. It's not possible to make such predictions because it's not possible to know the social and scientific reaction to any change. It's that kind of government sponsored charlatanery that I don't like about this debate. I am still in favor of reducing CO2 and changing our energy infrastructure in a moderate fashion, because by and large I do believe that we are causing changes in the athmosphere that we should try to minimise (There are other good reasons for doing this as well). I just think we need not have a collective bout of panic and I don't need politicised scientists present things in a way that suggests way more certainty than we could ever possibly have about goings on in complex systems.
    - KirinDave 17y ago
      > I don't know nearly enough about climate science to make any claims about it. What I do know about is scientific methods and I do know that there is no scientific method that can credibly make long term predictions about complex systems. Like the Solar System. Or chemistry. Or biology. Or evolution. Or medicine. We're pretty much flying blind here. I'm not even sure if I'll be able to pay my taxes this year. If you don't know anything about climate science, maybe you should do the rational thing and listen to the experts and the best scientific consensus of the time.
      - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
        I find your comment interesting. Let's take a look at your list. Solar System -- after 500 years of research, multi-body problem still not solved, many features still amaze and baffle, scientists have no idea how common the system might be Chemistry -- in spite of having a great model with lots of reproducible experiments, issues remain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsolved_problems_in_chemistry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsolved_problems_in_chemistry Biology -- where to start? Evolution -- big vague term. Hard to critique this one. Do you mean natural selection inside a species? Speciation? Medicine -- wonderful ability to find and fix many diseases. Lots of things work although we have no idea why. Lots of things that we think should work don't. Lots of medicine is so much of a mystery that only statistical analysis can give us rough correlations to begin to form theories. The reason it is so advanced? Billions of test subjects (as opposed to one climate for Earth) And let's not even get into physics, quantum or otherwise. Or cosmology. Or the problems with the use of Cellular Automata as a modeling tool. I could go on. Be careful with grand sweeping statements. Ignorance is a fine position and should be the default. Science is a humble questioning of the cosmos, always willing to correct itself and always looking for reproducibility. Be careful about putting so much trust in scientists that you forget what science is about. Ignorant people have plenty of tools at their disposal to reason and understand the quality of the underlying science. The science itself may be complicated beyond belief, but the underlying meta-data -- how science is done -- is not.

by jbooth 17y ago

fauigerzigerk 17y ago

So are you saying that the temperature up until now should not have been going up since we're not out of ice? [edit] And my second question would be this. If all of this is so simple that it can be demonstrated with a glass of water and a few ice cubes, why is it that a minority of serious scientists has doubts? The same scientists would probably confirm that your experiment is correct.

jbooth 17y ago
Of course I'm not saying that, I even included a parenthetical to make it explicit -- you have higher temperature gradations on a planet than in a glass of water -- it's always hot in the tropics, always cold at the poles. But you still have an average. The answer to your second question is that no legitimate scientists have doubts about whether the temperature's rising. It's an established fact. What's uncertain is how much CO2 is related to the rising temperature. They correlate, CO2 is a greenhouse gas and it makes intuitive sense, but it's not "proven" and to certain levels of "proof", is impossible to prove because there's billions of confounding factors like sunspots, water vapor etc. You're probably confusing this with uncertainty over whether the temperature is rising (which is proven), because paid shills and ideologues (who get paid in emotional satisfaction) deliberately conflate the issue. Confusion is on their side -- educating people will probably hurt their argument, even if they're right.
- fauigerzigerk 17y ago
  You're trying to refute an argument that I haven't made. The debate about the supervolcano was about our collective perception of the potential consequences of global warming, not whether or not warming takes place. I don't know nearly enough about climate science to make any claims about it. What I do know about is scientific methods and I do know that there is no scientific method that can credibly make long term predictions about complex systems. We had the Stern review tell us what the costs of climate change are going to be many decades down the road. It's not possible to make such predictions because it's not possible to know the social and scientific reaction to any change. It's that kind of government sponsored charlatanery that I don't like about this debate. I am still in favor of reducing CO2 and changing our energy infrastructure in a moderate fashion, because by and large I do believe that we are causing changes in the athmosphere that we should try to minimise (There are other good reasons for doing this as well). I just think we need not have a collective bout of panic and I don't need politicised scientists present things in a way that suggests way more certainty than we could ever possibly have about goings on in complex systems.
  - KirinDave 17y ago
    > I don't know nearly enough about climate science to make any claims about it. What I do know about is scientific methods and I do know that there is no scientific method that can credibly make long term predictions about complex systems. Like the Solar System. Or chemistry. Or biology. Or evolution. Or medicine. We're pretty much flying blind here. I'm not even sure if I'll be able to pay my taxes this year. If you don't know anything about climate science, maybe you should do the rational thing and listen to the experts and the best scientific consensus of the time.
    - DanielBMarkham 17y ago
      I find your comment interesting. Let's take a look at your list. Solar System -- after 500 years of research, multi-body problem still not solved, many features still amaze and baffle, scientists have no idea how common the system might be Chemistry -- in spite of having a great model with lots of reproducible experiments, issues remain: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsolved_problems_in_chemistry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unsolved_problems_in_chemistry Biology -- where to start? Evolution -- big vague term. Hard to critique this one. Do you mean natural selection inside a species? Speciation? Medicine -- wonderful ability to find and fix many diseases. Lots of things work although we have no idea why. Lots of things that we think should work don't. Lots of medicine is so much of a mystery that only statistical analysis can give us rough correlations to begin to form theories. The reason it is so advanced? Billions of test subjects (as opposed to one climate for Earth) And let's not even get into physics, quantum or otherwise. Or cosmology. Or the problems with the use of Cellular Automata as a modeling tool. I could go on. Be careful with grand sweeping statements. Ignorance is a fine position and should be the default. Science is a humble questioning of the cosmos, always willing to correct itself and always looking for reproducibility. Be careful about putting so much trust in scientists that you forget what science is about. Ignorant people have plenty of tools at their disposal to reason and understand the quality of the underlying science. The science itself may be complicated beyond belief, but the underlying meta-data -- how science is done -- is not.