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> It feels so surreal that the science is settled ???????? Is the global mean temp for the earth hotter: 1. Right now 2. During the Bronze Age ? What part

> It feels so surreal that the science is settled ???????? Is the global mean temp for the earth hotter: 1. Right now 2. During the Bronze Age ? What parts of the entire field of psychology from the last 50 years have not failed to replicate? What parts of nutrition science from the last 50 years are useful, or at least predictive? What assumptions were we certain about in anthropology and history 50 years ago that we now know are completely wrong? It feels so surreal that people think science is something you settle, at all. I cannot imagine the confusion that would lead an educated person into in thinking that.

akuchling 7y ago
Yeah, but climate change rests upon radiation absorption, thermodynamics, and a bunch of other 19th century science that was largely unaffected by the 20th century's upheavals in physics.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
paulddraper 7y ago
Also, the actual questions are not just "Has Earth's average surface temperature increased 0.8 degree Celsius since 1880?" but: * What is humanity's effect on global warming? * What meteorological and ecological effects does global warming have? * What is the magnitude of impact of hypothetical changes to human behavior?
- matthewmacleod 7y ago
  1. Lots 2. Very 3. Extensive I know this is flippant, but the answers are all generally pretty well-known
  - Bantros 7y ago
    The poster should not ask such silly questions, just trust the science!
  - superqwert 7y ago
    This answer is more flippant than you can imagine. #3 Is the worst - if we have learnt anything in the past century, it is that our attempts at behavioural changes rarely work[i], and even when they do they often result in the opposite effect[ii]. [i] - My favourite book that points this out is Behavioural Adaptation and Road Safety. Well worth a read. Examples are many, such as in the case of criminalising texting while driving, which results in "crotching" (texting from a phone on your lap) and has resulted in increased accidents. [ii] - Plenty of examples of this already on the environmental scene: - let's use plastic bags to save trees! oh no plastic bags are worse! - let's use diesel rather than petrol! Here, have subsidies! Oh no, it's making everything worse - let's improve energy efficiency! oh no, now more energy is used! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
  - paulddraper 7y ago
    Within orders of magnitude perhaps. In 2008, computer models from Naval Postgraduate School, NASA, Institute of Oceanology, and Polish Academy of Science predicted ice-free Artic summers by 2013. [1] The study was prominently cited in Al Gore's acceptance of the Noble Prize, which was awarded for his dedicated advocacy of climate change science. In 2013, the US Dept of Energy and US Navy predicted it would be gone before 2019. [2]. For more ice-free Artic science, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline#Ice-free_summer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline#Ice-fre... Complicated systems are complicated. Science knows as much about climate change as it does about cholesterol. [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm [2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/dec/09/us-navy-arctic-sea-ice-2016-melt https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/d...
    - jellicle 7y ago
      You've taken a quote from a study that talked about the lower bound of the range of estimates (earliest possible ice free date) and specifically mentioned the high range of uncertainty (even in the news story pull quote), and you've decided that was a firm prediction which has been invalidated. This is your bad science at best, your deceitfulness at worst. "We predict X will happen sometime between 10 and 50 years from now, sorry about the high range of uncertainty" "Welp, it has been ten years and one day and X didn't happen, THOSE SCIENTISTS WERE ALL LIARS, DON'T BELIEVE THE SCIENCE" Just dishonest.
      - paulddraper 7y ago
        The first instance was a requote from Al Gore's Nobel Prize speech. I'm not sure what the bounds were in the source material; it is possible that Gore (dishonestly?) cited only the lower bound. What was the upper bound? The second instance used the upper bound (2016 ± 3 years). I never said "THOSE SCIENTISTS WERE ALL LIARS, DON'T BELIEVE THE SCIENCE"; I said those scientists cannot yet predict accurately years ahead the effects in such a complex system.
  - Jamwinner 7y ago
    Are they? Then provide a source eberyone in the thread is asking for. I think this is the issue. Both sides declared themselves so correct that they see no need to 'show their work'. Clearly there is a progressive warming, there is a strong correlation with co2, the greenhouse model seems mostly confirmed, but what else? I am not contesting your assertion, but seeking understanding. Being flippnt is how we got in this mess.
    - claudiawerner 7y ago
      If you accept that humans pump a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, I'm not sure why you're asking for a specific citation; if you're looking for papers that answer the spefific question of whether humans are contributing to global warming, and the consensus among scientists in all disciplines concerned, there are several: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.summary https://science.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.summary https://science.sciencemag.org/content/292/5515/270 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/292/5515/270 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.800.4969&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.800...
- agent008t 7y ago
  Exactly - and I would add another 2: * What are the confidence intervals around the answers to the above? I.e., what are the probabilities of the ranges of answers to the above. * Assuming that such probabilistic models have been running, unchanged, for at least a decade - how have these probabilities held up, where it is possible to measure the actual outcomes?
  - merpnderp 7y ago
    One extremely humorous IPCC report mentioned that cloud cover changes are poorly understood, could massively increase or decrease warming feedbacks likely drowning out all other signals, but for the sake of the report would be ignored. So much science-y science you just can't stand it.
    - kaybe 7y ago
      We won't like the results of the updates on accuracy that have been made, say the rumors. Still some time off until publication though, who knows what'll happen until then. edit: One morbidly humorous plot is this one: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3b-724x1024.png https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3... P1, P2 and P3 are just.. kind of ridiculous with that emission drop. It's the kind of thing where you go 'haha sure' and then drown your thoughts in beer.
andrepd 7y ago
This is not a discussion about nutrition, or psychology, or anthropology. It's a discussion about two very concrete questions: 1. Is global warming happening right now? 2. Are humans responsible for it? The answer to those two questions is absolutely unreservedly settled: it's "yes". It's as settled as any question in science can be, it's as settled as the fact that electrons exist.
- rubbingalcohol 7y ago
  There's nothing "settled" about question #2. The extent to which humans are responsible for climate change, comparative to external factors (such as the sun heading towards the end of its hydrogen-burning life), is very much debatable. You can use adverbs like "absolutely" and "unreservedly" but that doesn't make your statement greater than an opinion.
  - whatisthiseven 7y ago
    "such as the sun heading towards the end of its hydrogen-burning life" Yes, that event will cause the sun to start burning helium instead, and will swell to a red giant approximately the radius of the orbit of Mars. In about 4-5 billion years.
    - rubbingalcohol 7y ago
      Yes and in the meantime it's burning steadily hotter.
      - aplummer 7y ago
        Completely irrelevant on the timescale of all human history, and delusional on the 100 year time scale of clear anthropogenic climate change.
        rubbingalcohol 7y ago
        Anthropogenic? People keep throwing out terms like "clear" and "settled" and when asked to elaborate give responses like "it's in the science." So what specific conclusion in the science is now beyond questioning? Citation needed.
screye 7y ago
It is nearly impossible to construct randomized control trials in Nutritional science and Psychology. Both are about average impact of specific things many entities, and even measurement itself is a nightmare (self reporting, placebo) On the other hand, climate science has a control, which is climate measurements from all the years when humans were not polluting. Additionally, the measurements are actual mathematical levels of atmospheric properties or compound concentrations. The statistics here is a lot more solid. Philosophy, Anthropology and History are unfortunately not sciences in the rigorous sense. Additionally, as looked down upon as anecdotes are, there are way too many of them to ignore. This year it has continued raining my home town into November. In my 25 years alive, it had never rained past Sept there. As much as anomalies do happen, these micro-level trends have only helped strengthen the case for climate change. Sure, no science is ever settled. There is always a non-zero chance of even the most settled science being false. All of modern medicine can be bogus and homeopathy can be the real solution. Yes, there is a non-zero probability of that. Skepticism is healthy, but when the odds of the contrary stance are so low, it helps to ask if deserves to be the level of questioning when the opposite stance offers almost zero evidence of the contrary. (apologies for weird sentence constructions. It sounded right in my head)

akuchling 7y ago

Yeah, but climate change rests upon radiation absorption, thermodynamics, and a bunch of other 19th century science that was largely unaffected by the 20th century's upheavals in physics.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

paulddraper 7y ago

Also, the actual questions are not just "Has Earth's average surface temperature increased 0.8 degree Celsius since 1880?" but: * What is humanity's effect on global warming? * What meteorological and ecological effects does global warming have? * What is the magnitude of impact of hypothetical changes to human behavior?

matthewmacleod 7y ago
1. Lots 2. Very 3. Extensive I know this is flippant, but the answers are all generally pretty well-known
- Bantros 7y ago
  The poster should not ask such silly questions, just trust the science!
- superqwert 7y ago
  This answer is more flippant than you can imagine. #3 Is the worst - if we have learnt anything in the past century, it is that our attempts at behavioural changes rarely work[i], and even when they do they often result in the opposite effect[ii]. [i] - My favourite book that points this out is Behavioural Adaptation and Road Safety. Well worth a read. Examples are many, such as in the case of criminalising texting while driving, which results in "crotching" (texting from a phone on your lap) and has resulted in increased accidents. [ii] - Plenty of examples of this already on the environmental scene: - let's use plastic bags to save trees! oh no plastic bags are worse! - let's use diesel rather than petrol! Here, have subsidies! Oh no, it's making everything worse - let's improve energy efficiency! oh no, now more energy is used! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox
- paulddraper 7y ago
  Within orders of magnitude perhaps. In 2008, computer models from Naval Postgraduate School, NASA, Institute of Oceanology, and Polish Academy of Science predicted ice-free Artic summers by 2013. [1] The study was prominently cited in Al Gore's acceptance of the Noble Prize, which was awarded for his dedicated advocacy of climate change science. In 2013, the US Dept of Energy and US Navy predicted it would be gone before 2019. [2]. For more ice-free Artic science, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline#Ice-free_summer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_sea_ice_decline#Ice-fre... Complicated systems are complicated. Science knows as much about climate change as it does about cholesterol. [1] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/7139797.stm [2] https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/dec/09/us-navy-arctic-sea-ice-2016-melt https://www.theguardian.com/environment/earth-insight/2013/d...
  - jellicle 7y ago
    You've taken a quote from a study that talked about the lower bound of the range of estimates (earliest possible ice free date) and specifically mentioned the high range of uncertainty (even in the news story pull quote), and you've decided that was a firm prediction which has been invalidated. This is your bad science at best, your deceitfulness at worst. "We predict X will happen sometime between 10 and 50 years from now, sorry about the high range of uncertainty" "Welp, it has been ten years and one day and X didn't happen, THOSE SCIENTISTS WERE ALL LIARS, DON'T BELIEVE THE SCIENCE" Just dishonest.
    - paulddraper 7y ago
      The first instance was a requote from Al Gore's Nobel Prize speech. I'm not sure what the bounds were in the source material; it is possible that Gore (dishonestly?) cited only the lower bound. What was the upper bound? The second instance used the upper bound (2016 ± 3 years). I never said "THOSE SCIENTISTS WERE ALL LIARS, DON'T BELIEVE THE SCIENCE"; I said those scientists cannot yet predict accurately years ahead the effects in such a complex system.
- Jamwinner 7y ago
  Are they? Then provide a source eberyone in the thread is asking for. I think this is the issue. Both sides declared themselves so correct that they see no need to 'show their work'. Clearly there is a progressive warming, there is a strong correlation with co2, the greenhouse model seems mostly confirmed, but what else? I am not contesting your assertion, but seeking understanding. Being flippnt is how we got in this mess.
  - claudiawerner 7y ago
    If you accept that humans pump a lot of CO2 into the atmosphere, I'm not sure why you're asking for a specific citation; if you're looking for papers that answer the spefific question of whether humans are contributing to global warming, and the consensus among scientists in all disciplines concerned, there are several: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.summary https://science.sciencemag.org/content/306/5702/1686.summary https://science.sciencemag.org/content/292/5515/270 https://science.sciencemag.org/content/292/5515/270 http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.800.4969&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.800...
agent008t 7y ago
Exactly - and I would add another 2: * What are the confidence intervals around the answers to the above? I.e., what are the probabilities of the ranges of answers to the above. * Assuming that such probabilistic models have been running, unchanged, for at least a decade - how have these probabilities held up, where it is possible to measure the actual outcomes?
- merpnderp 7y ago
  One extremely humorous IPCC report mentioned that cloud cover changes are poorly understood, could massively increase or decrease warming feedbacks likely drowning out all other signals, but for the sake of the report would be ignored. So much science-y science you just can't stand it.
  - kaybe 7y ago
    We won't like the results of the updates on accuracy that have been made, say the rumors. Still some time off until publication though, who knows what'll happen until then. edit: One morbidly humorous plot is this one: https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3b-724x1024.png https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/sites/2/2019/02/SPM3... P1, P2 and P3 are just.. kind of ridiculous with that emission drop. It's the kind of thing where you go 'haha sure' and then drown your thoughts in beer.

andrepd 7y ago

This is not a discussion about nutrition, or psychology, or anthropology. It's a discussion about two very concrete questions: 1. Is global warming happening right now? 2. Are humans responsible for it? The answer to those two questions is absolutely unreservedly settled: it's "yes". It's as settled as any question in science can be, it's as settled as the fact that electrons exist.

rubbingalcohol 7y ago
There's nothing "settled" about question #2. The extent to which humans are responsible for climate change, comparative to external factors (such as the sun heading towards the end of its hydrogen-burning life), is very much debatable. You can use adverbs like "absolutely" and "unreservedly" but that doesn't make your statement greater than an opinion.
- whatisthiseven 7y ago
  "such as the sun heading towards the end of its hydrogen-burning life" Yes, that event will cause the sun to start burning helium instead, and will swell to a red giant approximately the radius of the orbit of Mars. In about 4-5 billion years.
  - rubbingalcohol 7y ago
    Yes and in the meantime it's burning steadily hotter.
    - aplummer 7y ago
      Completely irrelevant on the timescale of all human history, and delusional on the 100 year time scale of clear anthropogenic climate change.
      - rubbingalcohol 7y ago
        Anthropogenic? People keep throwing out terms like "clear" and "settled" and when asked to elaborate give responses like "it's in the science." So what specific conclusion in the science is now beyond questioning? Citation needed.

screye 7y ago

It is nearly impossible to construct randomized control trials in Nutritional science and Psychology. Both are about average impact of specific things many entities, and even measurement itself is a nightmare (self reporting, placebo) On the other hand, climate science has a control, which is climate measurements from all the years when humans were not polluting. Additionally, the measurements are actual mathematical levels of atmospheric properties or compound concentrations. The statistics here is a lot more solid. Philosophy, Anthropology and History are unfortunately not sciences in the rigorous sense. Additionally, as looked down upon as anecdotes are, there are way too many of them to ignore. This year it has continued raining my home town into November. In my 25 years alive, it had never rained past Sept there. As much as anomalies do happen, these micro-level trends have only helped strengthen the case for climate change. Sure, no science is ever settled. There is always a non-zero chance of even the most settled science being false. All of modern medicine can be bogus and homeopathy can be the real solution. Yes, there is a non-zero probability of that. Skepticism is healthy, but when the odds of the contrary stance are so low, it helps to ask if deserves to be the level of questioning when the opposite stance offers almost zero evidence of the contrary. (apologies for weird sentence constructions. It sounded right in my head)