4 ms·

First, I'd never say that not agreeing with me makes anyone an idiot. Not agreeing with thousands of people from around the world whose entire professional liv

First, I'd never say that not agreeing with me makes anyone an idiot. Not agreeing with thousands of people from around the world whose entire professional lives revolve around investigating these very issues, though, requires a higher standard of evidence than your steely gaze and good old horse sense. But speaking of standards of evidence: >>>> For example, there was a significant hiatus from warming for the last 10 years or so when there "shouldn't have been" (whatever that means) and it's only recently that some scientists have proven why <<<< The fact that you can't write down a model that predicts an extraordinarily complicated system down to the last detail is a very poor standard of evidence to require. It's the same flavor of argument that Big Tobacco used for all those years to squirm through legal loopholes about whether or not they knew that smoking killed people. I don't follow this literature but I'm not surprised that nobody can explain the handful of 100 year old ladies who smoked their whole lives and are as healthy as horses. The 'can you explain _this_ then???' defense isn't much of a defense when viewed in context.

msandford 12y ago
I've heard phrases like "the science is settled" on global warming. If you can't write down a VERY detailed model on global warming, then it seems to me pretty arrogant to suggest that in fact "the science is settled." The fact that "Big Tobacco" hid behind that argument doesn't make it wrong! That kind of thinking isn't terribly sound, all kinds of folks use various argumentation strategies to advance various theories; not all of them are right. By your logic that should eliminate all argumentation strategies from all pursuits because all have been used in service of incorrect ideas. Since this is an obviously ridiculous conclusion I would instead assume that your maxim isn't valid. Experts have been wrong in the past and will be again in the future. Economists -- whose sole job it is to understand the economy -- do no better than chance at predicting what will happen to GDP. You're making an appeal to authority and it's not terribly convincing. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-04/economic-forecasts-no-better-than-a-random-walk/4499098 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-04/economic-forecasts-no-... The science is largely settled on gravity and we've got an equation that tells us how it works in excruciating detail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation#Newton.27s_theory_of_gravitation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation#Newton.27s_theory_o... When climate science reaches that level of predictive ability then it won't be terribly contentious to say that the science is settled. Until then, it may well be.
- shanusmagnus 12y ago
  How about this: let's nobody ever say 'the science is settled' about anything. I'm fine with that. What about instead we use confidence interval logic, and say things like: 'With extremely high confidence we think that carbon emissions from humans are causing climate change.' You might not agree with that statement either, but it gets us over this non-productive pedantry and into an actionable discussion. Let's try it out: is human nutrition and metabolism settled? Nope. Do you want to feed your child a diet of 100% JIF peanut butter and candy corns until it is? I'm guessing not. We don't need to get to settled. We just need to stop reasoning backward from the conclusion we want to be true. Especially when the consequences for things are as high as they are.
  - msandford 12y ago
    Correct, I'm not sure that I do. There's a lot of research into what CO2 is doing, and a lot of people think it MUST be CO2. Where are all the other papers talking about how it can't be (or might be) refrigerants? I saw one paper saying that refrigerant concentrations and increasing temperatures are correlated and that author got excoriated as a "denier". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_refrigerants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_refrigerants You'll notice on that list that there are numbers for the "Net 100 year GWP" which basically means how much more a particular substance could cause heating versus CO2, which has an index of 1. You'll notice that there are a LOT of compounds on the list and numbers in excess of 100 are common, and in excess of 1000 are too. I've looked up a couple and a couple of them have non-trivial atmospheric concentrations. If something has 1/1000 the concentration of CO2 and a GWP number of 10x CO2 then it would contribute 1% as much. Over a list of about 1000 refrigerants if they all managed to be 1% (this is a stretch I know!) then you could get 10x the warming from refrigerants as from CO2. I might argue that you've already reached the conclusion that you want to (we gotta do something), and are reasoning backwards from there (carbon emissions are the cause) yourself. As another example, a lot of people think this project is funded by oil companies and employs professional climate deniers. http://www.surfacestations.org/ http://www.surfacestations.org/ Why? Because they have the audacity to try and make sure that the temperatures gathered from weather stations aren't accidentally biased. I personally think that's MORE important to the analysis than anything else you could do, because if the raw data's no good your conclusions are also no good. Put a bunch of crap detectors in the LHC and you can find whatever particle you want. But physicists don't do that do they?

msandford 12y ago

I've heard phrases like "the science is settled" on global warming. If you can't write down a VERY detailed model on global warming, then it seems to me pretty arrogant to suggest that in fact "the science is settled." The fact that "Big Tobacco" hid behind that argument doesn't make it wrong! That kind of thinking isn't terribly sound, all kinds of folks use various argumentation strategies to advance various theories; not all of them are right. By your logic that should eliminate all argumentation strategies from all pursuits because all have been used in service of incorrect ideas. Since this is an obviously ridiculous conclusion I would instead assume that your maxim isn't valid. Experts have been wrong in the past and will be again in the future. Economists -- whose sole job it is to understand the economy -- do no better than chance at predicting what will happen to GDP. You're making an appeal to authority and it's not terribly convincing. http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-04/economic-forecasts-no-better-than-a-random-walk/4499098 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-02-04/economic-forecasts-no-... The science is largely settled on gravity and we've got an equation that tells us how it works in excruciating detail. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation#Newton.27s_theory_of_gravitation http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitation#Newton.27s_theory_o... When climate science reaches that level of predictive ability then it won't be terribly contentious to say that the science is settled. Until then, it may well be.

shanusmagnus 12y ago
How about this: let's nobody ever say 'the science is settled' about anything. I'm fine with that. What about instead we use confidence interval logic, and say things like: 'With extremely high confidence we think that carbon emissions from humans are causing climate change.' You might not agree with that statement either, but it gets us over this non-productive pedantry and into an actionable discussion. Let's try it out: is human nutrition and metabolism settled? Nope. Do you want to feed your child a diet of 100% JIF peanut butter and candy corns until it is? I'm guessing not. We don't need to get to settled. We just need to stop reasoning backward from the conclusion we want to be true. Especially when the consequences for things are as high as they are.
- msandford 12y ago
  Correct, I'm not sure that I do. There's a lot of research into what CO2 is doing, and a lot of people think it MUST be CO2. Where are all the other papers talking about how it can't be (or might be) refrigerants? I saw one paper saying that refrigerant concentrations and increasing temperatures are correlated and that author got excoriated as a "denier". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_refrigerants http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_refrigerants You'll notice on that list that there are numbers for the "Net 100 year GWP" which basically means how much more a particular substance could cause heating versus CO2, which has an index of 1. You'll notice that there are a LOT of compounds on the list and numbers in excess of 100 are common, and in excess of 1000 are too. I've looked up a couple and a couple of them have non-trivial atmospheric concentrations. If something has 1/1000 the concentration of CO2 and a GWP number of 10x CO2 then it would contribute 1% as much. Over a list of about 1000 refrigerants if they all managed to be 1% (this is a stretch I know!) then you could get 10x the warming from refrigerants as from CO2. I might argue that you've already reached the conclusion that you want to (we gotta do something), and are reasoning backwards from there (carbon emissions are the cause) yourself. As another example, a lot of people think this project is funded by oil companies and employs professional climate deniers. http://www.surfacestations.org/ http://www.surfacestations.org/ Why? Because they have the audacity to try and make sure that the temperatures gathered from weather stations aren't accidentally biased. I personally think that's MORE important to the analysis than anything else you could do, because if the raw data's no good your conclusions are also no good. Put a bunch of crap detectors in the LHC and you can find whatever particle you want. But physicists don't do that do they?