Skeptic Arguments and What the Science Says 2

Trying again, hence "2" in the subject. The original thread was moved to a closed part of forum, because we started to talk religion. No warnings were given prior to moving the thread, wich I find strange, but the message is clear. I ask people to NOT PULL INN CLAIMS FROM ANY RELIGIOUS PEPOPLE IN THIS THREAD. I hope moderators can delete religious posts in this thread immediately instead of closing the whole thread. If people want to talk faith, it has to be limitied to secular faith, going against science or pro science. I am also posting this in the On-topic Debates group instead of current news, as it somehow fit better here. Thank you

Original first post:

Lately, there have been a lot of zombie arguments from a climate denier or two on AD. Here is all you need to make replies(feeding the troll?).

Arguments from Global Warming Skeptics and what the science really says

The stuff you mention about journals, is from the so called "climategate". You claiming to have to resort to faith, declaring yourself an agnostic, while buying flawed conclusions from deniers is... faith? ..good luck.

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The emails are right there. It's not pretty. It would take dogmatic faith to accept the apologia of the AGW crowd over what the emails actually say.

I'm not surprised really. Based on their strident rhetoric, I never thought those guys would be willing to accept any data that contradicts their opinions. I've seen such behavior in my engineering days. It's unfortunately all too common.

first of all, that type of emails is common for many people. Even politicians (I'm sure they were looking for this type of email from Sarah Palin). Even lawyers. They usually have strong emotional opinions about things (I often seen them come on message boards and debate with people -- you would think, are they even professionals?????) , and they have scattered datas, and so on, but they take what' they think is true and unbiased and make a report on it.

If your point is that climate science involves just as much confirmation bias, petty politics, and group think as any other human endeavor, I would agree with you. That's what I've said for a long time. It's only now that we're getting past the mystique that this work is open, unbiased, and driven by science rather than agendas.

darkdog said:

The emails are right there. It's not pretty. It would take dogmatic faith to accept the apologia of the AGW crowd over what the emails actually say.

I'm not surprised really. Based on their strident rhetoric, I never thought those guys would be willing to accept any data that contradicts their opinions. I've seen such behavior in my engineering days. It's unfortunately all too common.

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Have you actually read the mails? I doubt so, because those mails don't talk about "any data that contradicts their opinions", but a specific case. The case itself was a scandal, with other people involved.

Sure you are an agnostic, and not just another denier?

Lighthouse77 said:

first of all, that type of emails is common for many people. Even politicians (I'm sure they were looking for this type of email from Sarah Palin). Even lawyers. They usually have strong emotional opinions about things (I often seen them come on message boards and debate with people -- you would think, are they even professionals?????) , and they have scattered datas, and so on, but they take what' they think is true and unbiased and make a report on it.

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What's funny with this vast archive with emails, is that they don't reveal any secret world order, no one admiting that AGW is a hoax, no plan to sabotage MWP, no talk about funding from corrupt politicans or corporates, no talk about crushing evil capitalism, no secret gatherings to exchange false data, no backing up to trick the average joe and so on.

But do the deniers notice this? Of course not...

flip said:

Have you actually read the mails? I doubt so, because those mails don't talk about "any data that contradicts their opinions", but a specific case. The case itself was a scandal, with other people involved.

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I haven't read all the emails, but I've read quite a few. Many are boring, routine, and innocuous, but many others are not so much. Which case are you talking about? The "hide the decline" case? I'm more talking about the corruption of the peer review process. Reading the emails, it's clear they feel with absolute certainty that they're right and anyone who doubts them or publishes papers that don't agree with them is wrong, and as such, they're illegitimate scientists and deserve to be marginalized along with any journal that publishes their papers. However, "hide the decline" is a good example too because it's a situation where they truncated tree ring proxy data merely because it didn't back up their message. That's not science.

flip said:

Sure you are an agnostic, and not just another denier?

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I'm firmly against the global warming establishment, although I'm agnostic as to the physical realities much as I am about, say, string theory.

Interesting

You have to admit... science took on a new direction. A rather political one. Nowadays with environmentalism... it's more about "how not to entrench on someone's habitat" versus "collecting data to see whether or not it will have an effect." Not that I have a problem with it, but it seems like it took on a new direction because those that are interested in the old ways are no longer able to get a job unless they work with oil companies and so on.

darkdog said:

I haven't read all the emails, but I've read quite a few. Many are boring, routine, and innocuous, but many others are not so much. Which case are you talking about? The "hide the decline" case? I'm more talking about the corruption of the peer review process. Reading the emails, it's clear they feel with absolute certainty that they're right and anyone who doubts them or publishes papers that don't agree with them is wrong, and as such, they're illegitimate scientists and deserve to be marginalized along with any journal that publishes their papers. However, "hide the decline" is a good example too because it's a situation where they truncated tree ring proxy data merely because it didn't back up their message. That's not science.


I'm firmly against the global warming establishment, although I'm agnostic as to the physical realities much as I am about, say, string theory.

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Yes, I got it you were talking about the peer review process.

It was a scandal back in 2003, where a flawed paper with fake acknowledgements made editors of a journal resign. But that part of the story don't fit the reality of deniers anyway.

As for your second denier argument, the "hide the decline" stuff, check out what science says about it in the link I posted in first post.

It's in argument 53, let me paste some of the stuff here:

"The most common misconception regarding this email is the assumption that "decline" refers to declining temperatures. It actually refers to a decline in tree growth in certain high-latitude regions since the 1960s. This is known as the "divergence problem" where tree ring proxies diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. The divergence problem is discussed in the peer reviewed literature as early as 1995, suggesting a change in the sensitivity of tree growth to temperature in recent decades (Briffa 1998). It is also examined more recently in Wilmking 2008 which explores techniques in eliminating the divergence problem. So when you look at Phil Jone's email in the context of the science discussed, it is not the schemings of a climate conspiracy but technical discussions of data handling techniques available in the peer reviewed literature. More on the hockey stick divergence problem..."

souggy said:

You have to admit... science took on a new direction. A rather political one. Nowadays with environmentalism... it's more about "how not to entrench on someone's habitat" versus "collecting data to see whether or not it will have an effect." Not that I have a problem with it, but it seems like it took on a new direction because those that are interested in the old ways are no longer able to get a job unless they work with oil companies and so on.

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Not sure what you mean?

I see a lot of denier arguments on the net nowdays. It's getting incredible easy to debunk them. Those arguments don't circulate in universities and among researchers because they are so flawed and got so many logical fuckups.

Just a personal observation what happened to universities' herpetology programs... for the students anyway. Geology and biology programs have been tweaked the same way.

They changed from zoological studies... to... "how can we protect this wetland for this species" kind of agenda.

souggy said:

Just a personal observation what happened to universities' herpetology programs... for the students anyway. Geology and biology programs have been tweaked the same way.

They changed from zoological studies... to... "how can we protect this wetland for this species" kind of agenda.

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Ah, ok. I notice the same. I admit environment care not is the most exiciting stuff to talk about. It's much funnier to talk about how we can blow up things and putting grass on fire

flip said:

It's in argument 53, let me paste some of the stuff here:

"The most common misconception regarding this email is the assumption that "decline" refers to declining temperatures. It actually refers to a decline in tree growth in certain high-latitude regions since the 1960s. This is known as the "divergence problem" where tree ring proxies diverge from modern instrumental temperature records after 1960. The divergence problem is discussed in the peer reviewed literature as early as 1995, suggesting a change in the sensitivity of tree growth to temperature in recent decades (Briffa 1998). It is also examined more recently in Wilmking 2008 which explores techniques in eliminating the divergence problem. So when you look at Phil Jone's email in the context of the science discussed, it is not the schemings of a climate conspiracy but technical discussions of data handling techniques available in the peer reviewed literature. More on the hockey stick divergence problem..."

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Yup, that's the one. Translation: They have this tree ring proxy data that doesn't match what the thermometers say after 1960, so they figure something must be wrong with the trees starting that year, although they don't know what. They label the problem "the divergence problem" and end up truncating the data because hey, the trees aren't behaving like they should, or something. All the while they assume all the previous centuries' tree ring proxy data must be good. All just data handling.

This all reeks badly of cargo cult science, to borrow from Richard Feynman.

darkdog said:

Yup, that's the one. Translation: They have this tree ring proxy data that doesn't match what the thermometers say after 1960, so they figure something must be wrong with the trees starting that year, although they don't know what. They label the problem "the divergence problem" and end up truncating the data because hey, the trees aren't behaving like they should, or something. All the while they assume all the previous centuries' tree ring proxy data must be good. All just data handling.

This all reeks badly of cargo cult science, to borrow from Richard Feynman.

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Cargo cult science according to your faith, perhaps, but not according to real world science. More from what the science says:

"In past weeks (even predating "Climategate"), there has been a kneejerk reaction among skeptics to assume that climate scientists are conspiring to cover up the divergence problem. Unfortunately most critics fail to acquaint themselves with the actual science before voicing their conspiracy theories. A perusal of the many peer reviewed papers since 1995 (conveniently summarised in D’Arrigo 2008) reveal the following:

The divergence problem is a physical phenomenon - tree growth has slowed or declined in the last few decades, mostly in high northern latitudes.
The divergence problem is unprecedented, unique to the last few decades, indicating it's cause is anthropogenic.
The cause is likely to be a combination of local and global factors such as warming-induced drought and global dimming.
Tree-ring proxy reconstructions are reliable before 1960, tracking closely with the instrumental record and other independent proxies."

Arguments from Global Warming Skeptics and what the science really says

The problem is that in the real world, science all too often resembles cargo cult science. That's why Richard Feynman gave his famous speech about it. Here's a link where he gives real-world examples of sloppiness in sciences dealing with systems far less complex than the climate. http://www.lhup.edu/~DSIMANEK/cargocul.htm

All that stuff you posted doesn't really tell me anything more. They only have vague guesses why the trees might have varied from other temperature data after 1960, but even though they don't understand how the trees work, they go ahead and assume the trees must have been right for centuries prior to that, even when they didn't have thermometer measurements. That's not exactly rigorous science.

What's important is the *open* and rigorous science, and not about shutting out scientists who have other alternative, even better, theories. Prof. Henrik Svensmark tried to submit his papers 4 times last year to four different journals who rejected his results purely on the basis that the sun and cosmic rays were found to be the major influence on global warming (and cooling) which went against the so-called "settled science." How could journals turn down such detailed work that not only involved real laboratory experiments using a real physical model of our atmosphere and cosmic rays, along with large scale observations at the surface and from space (satellites) to get the results?
Cosmic Ray Decreases Affect Atmospheric Aerosols And Clouds
http://agbjarn.blog.is/users/fa/agbjarn/files/svensmark_bondo.pdf

Dr. Svensmark used all the protocols that science called for and yet zealousness from scientists who are bent to protect "their" CO2 theory, which is already flawed, at any cost rather than allow open and honest debates regarding alternative theories. That's not what science is all about.

Red flags seen in this global warming issue would be to call scientists, real practicing scientists with PhD degrees, as "deniers" or "flat earthers" for coming up with very valid alternative theories. Or that they constantly use and abuse doomsay scenarios continuously over the last several years with the recent one with a little girl hanging onto a tree branch for dear life while water comes rushing in flooding the land, over-dramatizing the whole global warming schtick. That just makes it all the more obvious. And that it isn't about science but politics and control. No wonder the Copenhagen climate summit was a failure. The whole global warming issue reeks of sloppiness.

The Climategate emails allow us to see the mindset of those people who are intent on doing everything they can to protect "their" CO2 theory, even if it means skewing their data, do a little cheating, or shutting out debates.

darkdog said:

The problem is that in the real world, science all too often resembles cargo cult science. That's why Richard Feynman gave his famous speech about it. Here's a link where he gives real-world examples of sloppiness in sciences dealing with systems far less complex than the climate. Cargo Cult Science

All that stuff you posted doesn't really tell me anything more. They only have vague guesses why the trees might have varied from other temperature data after 1960, but even though they don't understand how the trees work, they go ahead and assume the trees must have been right for centuries prior to that, even when they didn't have thermometer measurements. That's not exactly rigorous science.

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As for the tree stuff, there are studies that found consistent and statistically significant relationships between growth of the trees and the flux density of galactic cosmic radiation. Not that it's the answer but merely goes to show that this global warming theory (CO2) is certainly not settled science.

And speaking about melting ice at the North Pole and about how Gore continued with his patented doomsday scenario that ice will be gone in 5 Years (that was 2 years ago and he revised it last week to 5 to 7 years from now ice will disappear) are simply hokey stuff. Why? Well, again it's the gloom and doom scenarios that we're gonna drown in 20 feet of water soon are just more red flags. All one needs to realize is that the Arctic sea ice has always expanded and contracted within the same range with each passing season, even through the warmest period over the last decade.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6j8SGs_gnFk]YouTube - Arctic Sea Ice timelapse from 1978 to 2009[/ame]
30 year time lapse movie of Arctic sea ice contracting and expanding with each passing seasons.

This movie is to show the complete 30 year history of the NSIDC satellite derived arctic sea ice extent in a single video. Brown is land, black is shoreline, blue is water except for the large blue dot in the center of the plot. The movie plays double speed at the beginning because the early satellite collected data every other day. Youll see the large blue circle change in size flashing back and forth between the older and newer sat data just as the video slows down.

After staring at the graphs above you think you understand what is happening as ice gradually shrinks away. Well the high speed video shows a much more turbulent world with changing weather patterns in 2007 and 2008 summer blasting away at the south west corner of the ice. Ive watched it 20 times at least, noticing cloud patterns (causing lower ice levels), winds, water currents and all kinds of different things. Im not so sure anymore that were seeing a consistent decline to polar bear doom, with this kind of variance it might just be everyday noise.

Note that despite some mainstream media reports, our Arctic Sea ice has not melted away, but comes back every year as it has done for millennia..This is the normal season cycle.

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darkdog said:

The problem is that in the real world, science all too often resembles cargo cult science. That's why Richard Feynman gave his famous speech about it. Here's a link where he gives real-world examples of sloppiness in sciences dealing with systems far less complex than the climate. Cargo Cult Science

All that stuff you posted doesn't really tell me anything more. They only have vague guesses why the trees might have varied from other temperature data after 1960, but even though they don't understand how the trees work, they go ahead and assume the trees must have been right for centuries prior to that, even when they didn't have thermometer measurements. That's not exactly rigorous science.

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If you had bothered to read the articles I hinted about, you would find studies on tree growth around the world, and that it's evidence for both local and regional causes. It's amazing how those cute cargo cult scientists are able to examine and discuss data that diverges, and, know what? They are so stupid they keep on publishing those papers, when they actually want to hide those datas(according to you).

By the way, what does theremometer measurements have to do with this? Heard of climate proxies? At least you are ditching a lot of the reasoning behind another denier argument, the MWP, if you only accept thermometer measurements.

Please try to come up with something else, not based on wild guesses, zombie arguments, cargo cult, pseudo or junk science, thank you