The Junk Science of Climate Change

[william.scherk]

I will again state my premise.

In terms of the discussion of AGW, is the human race part of the environment, or not? This is a simple yes or no question...

It is not a simple yes/no question, Adam. And as I stated, you can have no role as gatekeeper in a discussion you will not enjoin. What seems obvious to me is not at all apparent to you. I will restate: you asked a question as a qualifier. I reject your ability to set terms -- because you have dodged discussion consistently.

But let us entertain the rhetorical gambit, to help you advance whatever point you may eventually get around to ...

Let's take your question and remove the first part:

In terms of the discussion of AGW, is the human race part of the environment, or not? That is your question, but I sense that you side with Yes. In which case, your contention would be this:

The human race is part of the environment.

That is, you likely contend that the human race is part of the environment.

Next comes the part where you patch your assertion into a coherent statement that somehow will allow you to enter discussion.

...

Edited December 11, 2012 by william.scherk

[Selene]

You agree that "The human race is part of the environment?"

[syrakusos]

Just because we - and penguins and parameciums - are "in the environment" does not mean that nothing we do has moral consequences. And I mean moral in the Objectivist sense of promoting your life as man qua man.

I don't know how far you are from the sea, Adam, but I know that here in Central Texas I am about 100 miles from the next ocean shoreline. That does not mean that I am opposed to air conditioners or in favor of electric cars. It only means that knowing that global warming is real (including the possibility of AGW) I plan accordingly... as I do knowing what I know about fiat money... and I did when I completed a master's degree I did not really need knowing how hiring managers view degrees... as I stand at the stupid fucking Don't Walk sign when there is no traffic knowing that Austin City Police love to write jaywalking tickets. But be that as it may, if you deny that Earth is warming, then don't complain to us when the New Jersey Turnpike gets swimlanes.

[william.scherk]

You agree that "The human race is part of the environment?"

I agree that you want to make a point about humans being part the environment. In what ways, by what measure, to what purpose, I don't know. The humans fish, they build, they emit, they consume, they encrust and leave middens and concrete. They thrive.

And then some other part of an argument?

[anthony]

"Any people who would give up a little liberty to gain an uncertain guarantee

of an unchanging Garden of Eden on Earth, will deserve neither, and lose both."

[With apologies to the spirit of Ben Franklin.]

[syrakusos]

Over on the ITOE Test topic, I mentioned Proto-IndoEuropean. Our best guess after 200 years of scholarship is that they were living on the shores of a little fresh water lake we now call the Black Sea. Then, about 7500 years ago, melting glaciers overflowed the Dardanelles and they had to find a new home. You know... back when Catherine of Aquitaine was birthing Richard the Lionhearted, people in England grew grapes for wine. English wine: goes with English cooking. Some people think that you can get good wine from the Great Lakes - New York Catawba wine, Rielsings from Traverse City - but I think it tastes like kerosene. Someday, soon though, they will fill the niche once held by California and Italy. Anyone with marketing foresight and an interest in politics can get a jump by forming the Michigan Citrus Council now before the rush. Warm... cold... warm... cold... dinosaurs... mammoths... North Pole... West Pole...

[caroljane]

Over on the ITOE Test topic, I mentioned Proto-IndoEuropean. Our best guess after 200 years of scholarship is that they were living on the shores of a little fresh water lake we now call the Black Sea. Then, about 7500 years ago, melting glaciers overflowed the Dardanelles and they had to find a new home. You know... back when Catherine of Aquitaine was birthing Richard the Lionhearted, people in England grew grapes for wine. English wine: goes with English cooking. Some people think that you can get good wine from the Great Lakes - New York Catawba wine, Rielsings from Traverse City - but I think it tastes like kerosene. Someday, soon though, they will fill the niche once held by California and Italy. Anyone with marketing foresight and an interest in politics can get a jump by forming the Michigan Citrus Council now before the rush. Warm... cold... warm... cold... dinosaurs... mammoths... North Pole... West Pole...

Excuse me young man, but it was I who birthed Richard, little knowing the fortune he would cost me in ransom money and not a grandchild would he beget...oy, vey...

We did not employ surrogates in those days contrary to the silly conjectures of revisionist Objectivist historians.

Eleanor R.

[caroljane]

English wine is still produced from English grapes. English cooking has declined somewhat since my day.

E.R.

[BaalChatzaf]

But be that as it may, if you deny that Earth is warming, then don't complain to us when the New Jersey Turnpike gets swimlanes.

Earth is surely warming just now. And some day Earth will cool again. The question is: How much to humans and their doings drive this change.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Selene]

Ok gentlemen and gentle ladies.

We seem to all agree that the temperature of the earth has been much cooler and much warmer over the last few thousand years.

My gut tells me that before the human race entered the global environmental path these cycles also existed.

Now that brings me to the point that we are currently in one of these cycles. To assert that we are warmer, or cooler, merely because of man's piece of the total global environment does not pass any scientific standard that I am aware of.

Apparently, the most recent very quiet release of data from the suspect East Anglia folks states that there has been no, let me repeat that, no global warming over the last two or three decades.

A...

[Reidy]

Meanwhile, not far from East Anglia, another reminder that weather is not climate: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/2012/12/today-in-pictures-foggy-winter-ice-skating-nobel-peace-prize-and-fish-heads/

[caroljane]

Over on the ITOE Test topic, I mentioned Proto-IndoEuropean. Our best guess after 200 years of scholarship is that they were living on the shores of a little fresh water lake we now call the Black Sea. Then, about 7500 years ago, melting glaciers overflowed the Dardanelles and they had to find a new home. You know... back when Catherine of Aquitaine was birthing Richard the Lionhearted, people in England grew grapes for wine. English wine: goes with English cooking. Some people think that you can get good wine from the Great Lakes - New York Catawba wine, Rielsings from Traverse City - but I think it tastes like kerosene. Someday, soon though, they will fill the niche once held by California and Italy. Anyone with marketing foresight and an interest in politics can get a jump by forming the Michigan Citrus Council now before the rush. Warm... cold... warm... cold... dinosaurs... mammoths... North Pole... West Pole...

Excuse me young man, but it was I who birthed Richard, little knowing the fortune he would cost me in ransom money and not a grandchild would he beget...oy, vey...

We did not employ surrogates in those days contrary to the silly conjectures of revisionist Objectivist historians.

Eleanor R.

My descendants report that Niagara Peninsula wine does indeed taste somewhat like kerosene, but it is cheap kerosene which gives a fine buzz.

E.R.

[BaalChatzaf]

It is clear that when you have different groups of closely related peoples you will have different IQs - Chinese IQ is 108, the Ashk Jewish IQ is ~119, some African groups [67-71] , and blacks in the USA 87. Europeans are known to have a wide curve of high and low - some Asians a tighter and higher average distribution, other Asians a different story.

That Asheknazic non-spatial physicist Albert Einstein nailed gravity pretty well. Not bad for a Jewish patent clerk in Berne.

Don't worry too much about spatial visualization. We have computers that can do it better than people.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[dennislmay]

PS. R. Paul Drake is a physicist who has been active in The Atlas Society for many years. The last time I heard him talk about the subject (which was several years ago) he definitely believed that human production of CO₂ is producing significant global warming, though I can't say which Global Circulation Models he thinks are the best, or whether he personally views the trends as catastrophic or in need of the immediate application of governmental and transnational measures to suppress the consumption of fossil fuels.

Notice that he invokes models.

There is no decent -theory- of climate and weather (because they are the result of chaotic dynamic processes)

Ba'al Chatzaf

That is more or less the end of the discussion - all else being noise. Science 101 [chaotic processes] has spoken whether or not political scientists want to listen. Anyone with a legitimate modeling background in complex processes and an elementary understanding of the variables involved can see the modeling is going nowhere and the entire thing is junk science politics. There is no real attempt to treat it as a science - no controlled experiments in the actual environment.

Dennis

[dennislmay]

It is clear that when you have different groups of closely related peoples you will have different IQs - Chinese IQ is 108, the Ashk Jewish IQ is ~119, some African groups [67-71] , and blacks in the USA 87. Europeans are known to have a wide curve of high and low - some Asians a tighter and higher average distribution, other Asians a different story.

That Asheknazic non-spatial physicist Albert Einstein nailed gravity pretty well. Not bad for a Jewish patent clerk in Berne.

Don't worry too much about spatial visualization. We have computers that can do it better than people.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Regular IQ tests are engineered to produce gender neutral results. Analytical oriented testing and testing geared specifically towards spatial reasoning produce vastly different outcomes from regular IQ tests - not at all gender neutral. I have not seen studies specifically addressing this issue between different genetic groups. I suspect such a study would be very interesting. The only such testing I am familiar with would be the USAF Officer Entrance exam and to a lesser degree subject specific testing such as the GRE exams. Some presidential elections [Kerry V. Bush] have mentioned military officer entrance exams when attempting to equate IQ's between people who don't have IQ tests on record. As long as you don't cross gender lines that might have some validity in scaling to an IQ score.

Dennis

[Ellen Stuttle]

That Asheknazic non-spatial physicist Albert Einstein [...].

Where do you get the idea that Einstein was non-spatial?

Ellen

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I saw an article somewhere in my browsing around that had an interesting premise.

It claimed that green plants have had a devastating impact on the earth's atmosphere over millions of years.

Michael

[BaalChatzaf]

That Asheknazic non-spatial physicist Albert Einstein [...].

Where do you get the idea that Einstein was non-spatial?

Ellen

The General Theory of Relativity makes use of curvature tensors which in their full generality (pertaining to four dimensional spaces or higher) are impossible to visualize. He made full use of Riemann's tensor calculus as well as elaborations of curvature tensors. Once we get beyond three dimensions our powers of visualization begin to fail us and even deceive us.

Einstein, however, was very talented at constructing scenarios. This are his famous gedanken experiments.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[dennislmay]

Once we get beyond three dimensions our powers of visualization begin to fail us and even deceive us.

I would take the point of view that proponents of extra physical dimensions beyond three have deceived themselves and/or are attempting to deceive others. Three dimensions plus variables are all that are required. GTR plus dark matter has already failed. There are 3-4 modified GTR contendors - all are curve fitting exercises without foundation. MOND is a curve fitting exercise from the beginning. I posted my dog in the fight [2 component gravity some time ago - only required 3 dimensions and variables].

Dennis

[BaalChatzaf]

Once we get beyond three dimensions our powers of visualization begin to fail us and even deceive us.

I would take the point of view that proponents of extra physical dimensions beyond three have deceived themselves and/or are attempting to deceive others. Three dimensions plus variables are all that are required. GTR plus dark matter has already failed. There are 3-4 modified GTR contendors - all are curve fitting exercises without foundation. MOND is a curve fitting exercise from the beginning. I posted my dog in the fight [2 component gravity some time ago - only required 3 dimensions and variables].

Dennis

Let us see how many coon your dawg brings in.

ruveyn

[dennislmay]

Once we get beyond three dimensions our powers of visualization begin to fail us and even deceive us.

I would take the point of view that proponents of extra physical dimensions beyond three have deceived themselves and/or are attempting to deceive others. Three dimensions plus variables are all that are required. GTR plus dark matter has already failed. There are 3-4 modified GTR contendors - all are curve fitting exercises without foundation. MOND is a curve fitting exercise from the beginning. I posted my dog in the fight [2 component gravity some time ago - only required 3 dimensions and variables].

Dennis

Let us see how many coon your dawg brings in.

ruveyn

Being popular has its perks - being right is all that matters for the self-actualized.

Dennis

[BaalChatzaf]

Being popular has its perks - being right is all that matters for the self-actualized.

Dennis

Good science brings in more than was put in in the first place.

Given any finite set of facts there exist an infinite number of non-equivalent theories that will "predict" them. What counts is predicting something completely new. Good science is like good business. It runs at a profit. That is why string theory is a dud. It has not brought in new wonderful and -corroborated- results.

Ba'al Chatzahf

[dennislmay]

Good science is like good business. It runs at a profit. That is why string theory is a dud. It has not brought in new wonderful and -corroborated- results.

String theory is a good example of why government supported science can still be very profitable for some even though it has produced nothing except well paid tenure.

Dennis

[Ellen Stuttle]

Bob,

Re your http://www.objectivistliving.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=11719&p=175084'>post #193:

OK, I "see" what you were talking about. I was thinking of Einstein's talent for gedanken experiments -- which you mention in post #193 -- and was puzzled, since I took you to mean that Einstein lacked ability at spatio-visualization.

Ellen

[BaalChatzaf]

Bob,

Re your post #193:

OK, I "see" what you were talking about. I was thinking of Einstein's talent for gedanken experiments -- which you mention in post #193 -- and was puzzled, since I took you to mean that Einstein lacked ability at spatio-visualization.

Ellen

Einstein's ability to visualize 2 and 3 space does not help in higher dimensions. Proof: When David Hilbert hear Einstein's original presentation of the General Theory of Relativity he was able to derive an equivalent in less time using purely formal methods, to with the minimization of action Lagrangians.

Visualization is over rated. Einstein got to his best theories by abstraction too.

I am sure Einstein had better than average visualization talent. When he worked in the Patent Office in Berne he was able to dope out the patent specifications for concrete three D physical devices in no time flat. That is why he had time to invent relativity theory while he was on the job. He was moonlighting on the Patent Office's nickel. But 3 d visualization does little good when dealing with 4 dimensional spaces and higher and defining curvature on a space manifold no human eye could possibly see. At this point mathematical abstraction comes to the rescue.

Ba'al Chatzaf