[LINK] the weather makers

[Alan L Tyree]

On Mon, 09 Apr 2007 12:56:22 +1000
Richard Chirgwin <rchirgwin at ozemail.com.au> wrote:

> Stewart Fist wrote:
> > Kim writes:
> >   
> >> I have a question for you: what would it
> >> take for you to believe that global warming is actually happening?
> >>     
> >
> > You've missed the whole point Kim.
> >
> > I do believe that global warming is happening -- because that is
> > the one measurable change that scientists agree upon
> >
<SNIP>

> Actually, the number of available causes of a change in temperature
> are not so great as to be completely bewildering.
> > If they did know how to apportion this, and what caused the natural
> > component, then they could explain the history of climate change.
> > They can't.
> >   
> That's not quite so, either. There exist quite a number of models for 
> discussion of past events. What scientists avoid is trying to make an 
> absolute statement about something like "what happened 100,000 years 
> ago", because they are quite aware that anybody can claim to have 
> "predicted the past".

These models are purporting to predict 50 to 100 years ahead. It surely
is fair to ask that they be validated with data from 1900. I don't
think it is "dishonest" to ask this, nor do I think that it is BS
science. Nor am in the pay of (think-tanks | big business |
creationists | any other bogey man).



> 
> What happens, however -- in a think-tank technique borrowed from 
> creationists -- is that a general wariness about 'predicting the
> past' is held up as "see? They admit they can't tell with certainty
> what happened in the Little Ice Age! We can't trust what they say
> about global warming!"
> 
> This is deliberate and dishonest: people who know better are
> deploying lies and misdirection to try and avoid the "man in the
> street" forming an unfavourable opinion.
> > 3. Just because a theory becomes fashionable, doesn't mean it is
> > right (nor does it mean that it is wrong, either of course).  It
> > just means that those who disagree and still want study grants,
> > tend to keep their heads down and keep silent.  Popular science
> > often acts as a suppresser of open inquiry.
> >
> > In the case of climate change, a number of scientists have kept
> > their heads down for years -- ever since the 1962 Rio Summit made
> > this a political and economic issue in scientific circles.
> >
> >
> > 4. The secondary projections that arise from this warming --
> > sea-level rises, ice-cap collapse, long-term droughts, starvation,
> > extinctions of species, islands disappearing, etc. etc, -- are yet
> > another level removed from the science, which is itself in
> > dispute.  All this is even further abstracted from any real
> > evidence. 
> Umm, I usually like to keep to "parliamentary language" in Link 
> discussions, but Stewart, where did you start borrowing arguments
> from the bollocks bin?
> 
> Sea level rises are not "another level removed from the science".
> They are empirical observation - as are the ice-cap issues. Islands 
> disappearing is a very mundane addition to the observed sea-level
> rises 
> - and in fact, this has already taken place (some little island in
> the Indian Ocean). Species extinction may be viewed as speculative,
> except that some species are already experiencing catastrophic
> decline (eg, small alpine marsupials); the fact of extinction is not
> in doubt, merely the extent (about which there will be varying
> predictions).
> >
> > 5. And my main point, is that computer processing of massive
> > amounts of contemporary data is not a substitute for real evidence
> > and logical argument arising from provable events in the past.
> >   
> "Logical argument", I am sorry to say, is not science (and in fact is 
> just as often deployed against science as for). Science is the boring 
> stuff of observation, analysis, theory, prediction, etcetera.
> 
> A temperature change observed in ice cores is a provable event ...
> more so than, for example, "grapes in Vinland" which may have been
> another slice of Erik the Red's propaganda! Just because the proof
> lies in knowledge not available to the lay training does not
> invalidate it as science. And ice cores aren't the only indicator of
> very long-term climate trends.
> 
> My final point: humanity doesn't need a "end of life on earth"
> climate change for a crisis. We only need enough crisis to make our
> own society non-tenable, our current practises or farming non-viable.
> The Earth will go on quite well without us.
> 
> There is no inherent risk involved in reducing our energy use.
> Switching off unnecessary lights is not an act which involves
> privation or loss of the Western lifestyle; it's just that a bunch of
> idiots (there, I used the word!) believe that simple frugality must
> somehow be associated with "green communism" - in other words, in the
> strange world of the IPA, the Cato Institute, the Frazer Institute
> and other bought lobbies, *not* being recklessly wasteful with every
> available resource is evidence of a political state of mind which is
> a threat to the western way of life. What's wrong with calling "B.S."
> on such drivel?
> 
> RC
> >
> >   
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-- 
Alan L Tyree                    http://www2.austlii.edu.au/~alan
Tel: +61 2 4782 2670            Mobile: +61 427 486 206
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