YA! well my scientists can beat up your scientists!
I see that we cause environmental damage and I am 100% for conservation and stricter controls on polluting, 100%.... but...
Just a few points here….
Science requires experimental controls – (there are none with global warming)
The basis of belief....
CO2 causes an increase in global temperature, but so does solar radiation. The question is does the amount contributed by man made CO 2 is significant compared to the changes due to the sum of the confounding variables
CO2 has gone up and surface temperatures have gone up, so? The odds of this being the case are 50%.
Now, statistics do not prove cause and effect. I know it a human tendency to not to accept that some things just not knowable, no matter how much money is poured into research.
AND, Water vapor accounts for about 70% of the greenhouse effect with carbon dioxide somewhere between 4.2% and 8.4%. Water vapor averages 25,000ppm of the lower atmosphere compared to CO2 which is only about 360 ppm and the atmospheric CO2 change is only about +60 ppm. Water vapor is about 16 times larger than the change in CO2 near the ground.
The key to separating scientific knowledge from belief is that science can be demonstrated. We may never have good enough error bands on the data about global temperature data; thus it is something that is just not knowable. Opinions on things unknowable are called beliefs. Because of the inapplicability of the scientific method when dealing with open systems, opinions on global warming are beliefs akin to a sort of religious view and not scientific fact.
"Climate science" as reported in the press is not really science. In real sciences the scientists first job is to prove himself wrong - that is to list the numerous way that the results my be in error and how the conclusions are limited. No forthright "bending over backwards" efforts are made by the global warming proponents. Instead, there are efforts to state things in emotional terms and a disturbing pattern of data errors and omissions. When claims are made dealing with an open system using correlations of data without knowable error bands, it fails to be science. There is no way to separate out the increased use of irrigation and the resulting increase of low altitude water vapor (very much a green house gas). Could changes of global low altitude humidity be a plausible competing theory? The correlation of temperature and variations of solar output is ignored.
I failed to see even an estimate of the amount of error of natural emissions of CO2 in the bandied documentation. Using real science, means you figure the answer and then you do the hard part of calculating the minimum, maximum, and probable errors. It is not possible in this case to even have hard numbers on CO2 venting - thus we are again not looking at science, but only estimates and speculation. Attaching numbers to speculation does not elevate it to science.
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/079.htm ;
http://www.climateaudit.org/
http://www.aip.org/history/climate/cycles.htm
Climateaudit.org
http://www.warwickhughes.com/papers/idso98.htm
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/smother.asp
http://danhughes.auditblogs.com/2006/12 ... -fragment/
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1240
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1235
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1175
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1134
http://danhughes.auditblogs.com/2007/02 ... al-issues/
http://danhughes.auditblogs.com/2007/02 ... rs/#more-4
http://www.grida.no/climate/ipcc_tar/wg1/079.htm
http://www.swpc.noaa.gov/SWN/
I wrote a paper on this a few classes back... bottom line is... It can't be proven, you just choose to believe it. at best, you only have a 50% chance of being right... but no more than that.
by MSG Hall » Wed Nov 28, 2007 5:40 am 
