OT - Lights going out in three years

Science makes life simple and religious people always try to find some unmapped area in this universe where there may be room for one little god. There is no such room.

Salvation lies in humanity?s capacity for looking far ahead:

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Well I?ve said that hope lies in our unique human capacity for

Reply to
Jo Stein
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I don't think science does make things simple. Look at quantum mechanics and cell biology for examples.

Reply to
Mark

That is so flabbergastingly wrong that it takes my breath away. And shows so much ignorance of science, that it becomes clear how its author has been hoodwinked by pseudo science.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

:-) Don't upset his brain - it's already overheated. That why the earth is getting warmer, you know, so many stupid people are thinking - or trying to think - about it, that their brains are ALL overheating.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

because if iot goes between these tow plates here an atmic biomb will be triggered.

No Jo, thats you - your denialist stance on climate change where you cant accept that its 'natural' and nothing to do with CO2.

Yes, and your religion warmism - is just one more to add to the pot.

Science doesn't do anything to Life. That's supposed to be the point.

Yes, since your brother broke the last one by thinking it was his mummy's tit and sucked the end off, I do.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Religion makes life simple., Its all exactly what God intended and its perfectly OK to slit your neighbours throat because God told you so,.

Science sadly makes life fiendishly complicated.

Not only are there cases where we cant actually model at all, because the act of making the model changes the reality we are trying to model. but there is never any guarantee that the model is correct. All we can say is, that at best, it works accurately enough and often enough to be reliable,.. That we call a Law of science. Occasionally these get overturned when we realise that reality is not obliged to conform to our laws, but has its own...But also there are cases where even if we have the right selection of equations to do the modelling, they lead to more than one solution. The square root of a positive number is one such.

Finally even if we have an equation which is correct - not that we can ever be sure - we still have the cases where we cant get a reliable answer because the equation is too sensitive to initial conditions. There is nothing we don't understand about a pencil balancing in a freshly sharpened point but that wont tell us which way its going to fall. We can only say that it will.

This makes...

science like religion.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Of course it doesn't.

Listen to what a real scientist who isn't in the pay of a political organisation has to say about climate change science: =====================================================================

Let me tell you in a few short words why I am a skeptic. First of all, if one examines the complete geological record of global temperature variation on planet Earth (as best as we can reconstruct it) not just over the last 200 years but over the last 25 million years, over the last billion years ? one learns that there is absolutely nothing remarkable about today?s temperatures! Seriously. Not one human being on the planet would look at that complete record ? or even the complete record of temperatures during the Holocene, or the Pliestocene ? and stab down their finger at the present and go ?Oh no!?. Quite the contrary. It isn?t the warmest. It isn?t close to the warmest. It isn?t the warmest in the last 2 or 3 thousand years. It isn?t warming the fastest. It isn?t doing anything that can be resolved from the natural statistical variation of the data. Indeed, now that Mann?s utterly fallacious hockey stick reconstruction has been re-reconstructed with the LIA* and MWP** restored, it isn?t even remarkable in the last thousand years!

Furthermore, examination of this record over the last 5 million years reveals a sobering fact. We are in an ice age, where the Earth spends 80 to 90% of its geological time in the grip of vast ice sheets that cover the polar latitudes well down into what is currently the temperate zone. We are at the (probable) end of the Holocene, the interglacial in which humans emerged all the way from tribal hunter-gatherers to modern civilization. The Earth?s climate is manifestly, empirically bistable, with a warm phase and cold phase, and the cold phase is both more likely and more stable. As a physicist who has extensively studied bistable open systems, this empirical result clearly visible in the data has profound implications. The fact that the LIA was the coldest point in the entire Holocene (which has been systematically cooling from the Holocene Optimum on) is also worrisome. Decades are irrelevant on the scale of these changes. Centuries are barely relevant. We are nowhere near the warmest, but the coldest century in the last 10,000 years ended a mere 300 years ago, and corresponded almost perfectly with the Maunder minimum in solar activity.

There is absolutely no evidence in this historical record of a third stable warm phase that might be associated with a ?tipping point? and hence ?catastrophe? (in the specific mathematical sense of catastrophe, a first order phase transition to a new stable phase). It has been far warmer in the past without tipping into this phase. If anything, we are geologically approaching the point where the Earth is likely to tip the other way, into the phase that we know is there ? the cold phase. A cold phase transition, which the historical record indicates can occur quite rapidly with large secular temperature changes on a decadal time scale, would truly be a catastrophe. Even if ?catastrophic? AGW is correct and we do warm another 3 C over the next century, if it stabilized the Earth in warm phase and prevented or delayed the Earth?s transition into cold phase it would be worth it because the cold phase transition would kill billions of people, quite rapidly, as crops failed throughout the temperate breadbasket of the world.

Now let us try to analyze the modern era bearing in mind the evidence of an utterly unremarkable present. To begin with, we need a model that predicts the swings of glaciation and interglacials. Lacking this, we cannot predict the temperature that we should have outside for any given baseline concentration of CO_2, nor can we resolve variations in this baseline due to things other than CO_2 from that due to CO_2. We don?t have any such thing. We don?t have anything close to this. We cannot predict, or explain after the fact, the huge (by comparison with the present) secular variations in temperature observed over the last 20,000 years, let alone the last 5 million or 25 million or billion. We do not understand the forces that set the baseline ?thermostat? for the Earth before any modulation due to anthropogenic CO_2, and hence we have no idea if those forces are naturally warming or cooling the Earth as a trend that has to be accounted for before assigning the ?anthropogenic? component of any warming.

This is a hard problem. Not settled science, not well understood, not understood. There are theories and models (and as a theorist, I just love to tell stories) but there aren?t any particularly successful theories or models and there is a lot of competition between the stories (none of which agree with or predict the empirical data particularly well, at best agreeing with some gross features but not others). One part of the difficulty is that the Earth is a highly multivariate and chaotic driven/open system with complex nonlinear coupling between all of its many drivers, and with anything but a regular surface. If one tried to actually write ?the? partial differential equation for the global climate system, it would be a set of coupled Navier-Stokes equations with unbelievably nasty nonlinear coupling terms ? if one can actually include the physics of the water and carbon cycles in the N-S equations at all. It is, quite literally, the most difficult problem in mathematical physics we have ever attempted to solve or understand! Global Climate Models are children?s toys in comparison to the actual underlying complexity, especially when (as noted) the major drivers setting the baseline behavior are not well understood or quantitatively available.

The truth of this is revealed in the lack of skill in the GCMs. They utterly failed to predict the last 13 or 14 years of flat to descending global temperatures, for example, although naturally one can go back and tweak parameters and make them fit it now, after the fact. And every year that passes without significant warming should be rigorously lowering the climate sensitivity and projected AGW, making the probability of the ?C? increasingingly remote.

These are all (in my opinion) good reasons to be skeptical of the often egregious claims of CAGW. Another reason is the exact opposite of the reason you used ?denier? in your article. The actual scientific question has long since been co-opted by the social and political one. The real reason you used the term is revealed even in your response ? we all ?should? be doing this and that whether or not there is a real risk of ?catastrophe?. In particular, we ?should? be using less fossil fuel, working to preserve the environment, and so on.

The problem with this ?end justifies the means? argument ? where the means involved is the abhorrent use of a pejorative descriptor to devalue the arguers of alternative points of view rather than their arguments at the political and social level ? is that it is as close to absolute evil in social and public discourse as it is possible to get. I strongly suggest that you read Feynman?s rather famous ?Cargo Cult? talk:

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particular, I quote:

For example, I was a little surprised when I was talking to a friend who was going to go on the radio. He does work on cosmology and astronomy, and he wondered how he would explain what the applications of this work were. ?Well,? I said, ?there aren?t any.? He said, ?Yes, but then we won?t get support for more research of this kind.? I think that?s kind of dishonest. If you?re representing yourself as a scientist, then you should explain to the layman what you?re doing?and if they don?t want to support you under those circumstances, then that?s their decision.

One example of the principle is this: If you?ve made up your mind to test a theory, or you want to explain some idea, you should always decide to publish it whichever way it comes out. If we only publish results of a certain kind, we can make the argument look good. We must publish both kinds of results.

I say that?s also important in giving certain types of government advice. Supposing a senator asked you for advice about whether drilling a hole should be done in his state; and you decide it would be better in some other state. If you don?t publish such a result, it seems to me you?re not giving scientific advice. You?re being used. If your answer happens to come out in the direction the government or the politicians like, they can use it as an argument in their favor; if it comes out the other way, they don?t publish it at all. That?s not giving scientific advice.

Time for a bit of soul-searching, Dr. Bain. Have you come even close to living up to the standards laid out by Richard Feynman? Is this sort of honesty apparent anywhere in the global climate debate? Did the ?Hockey Team? embrace this sort of honesty in the infamous Climategate emails? Do the IPCC reports ever seem to present the counter arguments, or do they carefully avoid showing pictures of the 20,000 year thermal record, preferring instead Mann?s hockey stick because it increases the alarmism (and hence political impact of the report)? Does the term ?denier? have any place in any scientific paper ever published given Feynman?s rather simple criterion for scientific honesty?

And finally, how dare you presume to make choices for me, for my relatives, for my friends, for all of the people of the world, but concealing information from them so that they make a choice to allocate resources the way you think they should be allocated, just like the dishonest astronomer of his example. Yes, the price of honesty might be that people don?t choose to support your work. Tough. It is their money, and their choice!

Sadly, it is all too likely that this is precisely what is at stake in climate research. If there is no threat of catastrophe ? and as I said, prior to the hockey stick nobody had the slightest bit of luck convincing anyone that the sky was falling because global climate today is geologically unremarkable in every single way except that we happen to be living in it instead of analyzing it in a geological record ? then there is little incentive to fund the enormous amount of work being done on climate science. There is even less incentive to spend trillions of dollars of other people?s money (and some of our own) to ameliorate a ?threat? that might well be pure moonshine, quite possibly ignoring an even greater threat of movement in the exact opposite direction to the one the IPCC anticipates.

Why am I a skeptic? Because I recognize the true degree of our ignorance in addressing this supremely difficult problem, while at the same time as a mere citizen I weigh civilization and its benefits against draconian energy austerity on the basis of no actual evidence that global climate is in any way behaving unusually on a geological time scale.

For shame.

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Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Absolutely. It encourages anti-social behaviour. And tempts people to fraud.

And in the end it destroys a society.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

On the other hand trying to fix it with the wrong tool just means it happens anyway and you don't have any meony left to deal with it.

We know that renewable energy is simply a waste of our money and can never change CO2 levels appreciably even if that was related to global warming.

Time to stop trying to convert everyone to the new religion harry. we are sick of religions.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Of course one can, its so simple. They make incorrect and highly simplified assumptions about the nature of the physical processes. So many people have pointed this out and been shouted down as 'deniers' by the political; economic mevement that is the real driver of 'climate change, the movie' as opposed to 'climate change, the reality'

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

I myself don;t know all religions and then there's beliefs which are differ= nt from religion.

Except mine of course, which is that the sun is my God and it gives this pl= anet life and everything on it, that is my belief whether or not I can call= it a religion I doubt, but I think you'll find most scientists agree with = me :-)

Now I thinbk some pagan religions had the sun as the life giver and there m= aybe others that I just donl;t know abhout, but the vast number I do know a= bout seem to be wrong or just another form of dictatorship.

would they have come together without the sun ?

Reply to
whisky-dave

If you throw a dice, there are six possible results not one. That's just a simple one for you.

Reply to
harry

That's not science tho harry, that's gambling. You might as well say that if you throw a climate die (the singular of dice is of course 'die') there are six possible results ranging from 'its going to be planet snowball to 'its going to be planet Venus with 4 in between options two of which are 'its actually not going to be much different' so why waste money on solar panels?

Just shoot anyone who has installed them, and help save the economy.

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

Six possible, and for any given throw, one actual. Your point is *what*, precisely?

Reply to
Tim Streater

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All scientists are paid by someone. You can find others take a completely opposite view.

Reply to
harry

?Yes, but

That one isn't paid by anyone with a stake in global warming. But I guess that all you could say, since the post has Big Words in it,

And we all know that you find even capitals, 'challenging'...

Reply to
The Natural Philosopher

No. From that evidence we can only conclude that for n religions, at least n-1 are wrong. This does not rule out all being wrong or one being right.

SteveW

Reply to
SteveW

And those enormous carniverous worms - I think someone made a movie about them, once.

Reply to
Jules Richardson

And those enormous carniverous worms - I think someone made a movie about them, once.

Reply to
Jules Richardson

Can you pair of bastards please snip?

Reply to
Grimly Curmudgeon

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