While Joe Romm and Mark Serreze bloviate about the current Arctic sea ice being “lowest in history”, science that doesn’t have an agenda (or paying thinktank) attached says otherwise:
“More importantly, there have been times when sea-ice cover was less extensive than at the end of the 20th century.”
From the Hockey Schtck: Paper: Current Arctic Sea Ice is More Extensive than Most of the past 9000 Years
A peer-reviewed paper published in the Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences finds that Arctic sea ice extent at the end of the 20th century was more extensive than most of the past 9000 years. The paper also finds that Arctic sea ice extent was on a declining trend over the past 9000 years, but recovered beginning sometime over the past 1000 years and has been relatively stable and extensive since.
Although it seems like a day doesn’t go by without an alarmist headline or blog posting obsessing over the daily Arctic sea ice statistics (and never about Antarctic sea ice extent which reached a record high this year), this paleo-climate perspective takes all the wind out of alarmist sails. Satellite assessment of sea ice conditions is only available beginning in 1979 (around the time the global cooling scare ended), with only sparse data available prior to 1979. The alarmists at the NRDC fraudulently claim in a new video that due to “climate destruction,” Arctic sea ice reached the lowest in history in 2010 (actually the low since 1979 was in 2007 and 2010 was the 3rd or 4th lowest depending on the source). Probably wouldn’t bring in many donations if they mentioned the truth: the 21st century has some of the highest annual Arctic sea ice extents over the past 9000 years.
The figure below comes from the paper, but has been modified with the red notations and rotated clockwise. The number of months the sea ice extent is greater than 50% is shown on the y axis. Time is on the x axis starting over 9000 years ago up to the present. Warming periods are shown in gray with the Roman and Medieval warming periods (RWP/MWP) notated, a spike for the Minoan Warming Period about 5000 years ago, and two other older & unnamed warming periods. The last dot on the graph is the end of the 20th century and represents one of the highest annual sea ice extents.
Holocene fluctuations in Arctic sea-ice cover: dinocyst-based reconstructions for the eastern Chukchi Sea Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences, 45: 1377-1397
Authors: J.L. McKay, A. de Vernal, C. Hillaire-Marcel, C. Not, L. Polyak, and D. Darby
Abstract: Cores from site HLY0501-05 on the Alaskan margin in the eastern Chukchi Sea were analyzed for their geochemical (organic carbon, d13Corg, Corg/N, and CaCO3) and palynological (dinocyst, pollen, and spores) content to document oceanographic changes during the Holocene. The chronology of the cores was established from 210Pb dating of near- surface sediments and 14C dating of bivalve shells. The sediments span the last 9000 years, possibly more, but with a gap between the base of the trigger core and top of the piston core. Sedimentation rates are very high (*156 cm/ka), allowing analyses with a decadal to centennial resolution. The data suggest a shift from a dominantly terrigenous to marine input from the early to late Holocene. Dinocyst assemblages are characterized by relatively high concentrations (600–7200 cysts/cm3) and high species diversity, allowing the use of the modern analogue technique for the reconstruction of sea-ice cover, summer temperature, and salinity. Results indicate a decrease in sea-ice cover and a corresponding, albeit much smaller, increase in summer sea-surface temperature over the past 9000 years. Superimposed on these long-term trends are millennial-scale fluctuations characterized by periods of low sea-ice and high sea-surface temperature and salinity that appear quasi-cyclic with a frequency of about one every 2500–3000 years. The results of this study clearly show that sea-ice cover in the western Arctic Ocean has varied throughout the Holocene. More importantly, there have been times when sea-ice cover was less extensive than at the end of the 20th century.
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| Arctic summer sea surface temperatures are also currently lower than much of the past 9000 years |
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Paul Birch says:
September 24, 2010 at 7:16 am
The radiocarbon correction is standard, indeed required, in marine systems. Over-penetration of the sediment by pistons corers is very common (and very annoying). Neither of these problems is critical.
>>Oliver Ramsay says:
September 23, 2010 at 10:39 pm
Günther,
I would hate to spoil savethesharks’ fun getting you all worked up, but yes, you do have a point. I hope that your frustration with this extrapolation from the Chukchi sea to the whole Arctic and “at times” becoming “most” is something like what I feel about the barrage of impending doom stories your champions come up with.<<
I agree with you Oliver on both the points you make. Günther has a point and if he "gets" your point about his frustration possibly mirroring your (our) frustration over the typical media treatment of AGW, then maybe he will better understand you (us.)
And Günther, you could learn something from Richard Telford's method of commenting. Because of your vitriolic approach even though you had valid points in hand, you had to plow through moderators' snipping you (justifiably, I suspect), overcome a barrage skeptical sniping and generally make a bad name for yourself before finally getting things explained well enough that people could sort out your main point, i.e., that the study covered only one fringe area of the Arctic and that the title of the main post implied the entire Arctic.
Using Mr. Telford's approach (see his discussion of the reliability of the method the researchers used) you could have easily made that point succinctly and people would have understood your concern. While Anthony explained that he took the title from another site, I suspect that he might have considered changing it to reflect your concern if it was initially made respectfully instead of "snippably," or perhaps not.
And Anthony, I disagree with your logic for keeping the title. ClimateDepot, along with other skeptic sites, is quite likely to link to your post directly using the title you've chosen to use. That adds your name to the credibility of the title in a pretty direct way. By the third or fourth iteration, it becomes "Anthony Watts says…." and the original source has disappeared. Just my two cents.
Ed Forbes says:
September 23, 2010 at 4:27 pm
the map re-drawn by the Turk Piri Reis in 1513 with a mostly ice free artic has been of interest to me for many years.
A truly fascinating read, Ed. Thanks for posting that link.
Vince Causey says:
September 24, 2010 at 6:56 am (Edit)
Steven Mosher,
“If you double C02, you will see a 3C increase in temperature, IS a hypothesis.”
Agreed, but what if the prediction is that temperatures will increase by between 1.5C and 6C. Is it still a hypothesis then?
##########################
I would say no. That is why smokey’s NULL is not a proper null. Smokeys argument goes like this. Nobody has falsified the “natural variation hypothesis” I’ll do moshers version of that Null to show you how silly it is.
1. Earths temperature will vary between -273K and 4 trillion degrees C
(http://www.insidescience.org/research/hottest_temperature_in_the_universe_measured)
Nobody has disproved that! therefore, C02 cannot cause warming.
” You may wish for a hypothesis to be contained within AGW, but wishing does not make it so. The nearest thing to a hypothesis that I have come across has been the prediction that GCM’s have made for a tropical mid troposphere hotspot. Hows that one working out?”
There is a reason why I am a luke warmer. doh! Part of the complication of AGW hypothesis is that the “IF” is not controllable. In a controlled experiment, you can have this kind of hypothesis.
1. If you increase the mass of an object, it will fall to earth faster.
Then, you can actually go out and do a controlled experiment. and find out that your
prediction is wrong.
with the climate, you really cant do this kind of experiment. Why, because you cannot control the exact amounts of ALL the forcings and their exact measures. So you end up with a conditional on the conditional. IF C02 and other gases go up like so, and aerosols go like this, and the sun goes like it this, THEN you get a hot spot.
So, you end up with a model spread of predictions. Kinda like a hurricane model spread. To make matters worse you dont have good observations to compare against, you have spotty observations, corrected observations. So you end up testing something much weaker than a hypothesis. You end up testing two distributions against each other.
For my sensibility this puts us in the following situation. You have no science, no hypothesis, no theory, which predicts that more Co2 would lead to cooling. You do have physics ( fundamental physics) and imperfect incomplete theories, and gross models ( theory in code) that predict warming. Those theories, predictions, forecasts, are broad, they are confirmed by the observations, they are ( because of their broadness) HARD to falsify, they are not impossible to falsify. They give us limited knowledge of the future, but enough knowledge to warrant CONCERN over the amount of GHGs we put into the atmosphere. Any thinking person, would see that the science is young, imprecise, full of uncertainty. BUT, the fundamentals indicate that we cannot spew GHGs into the atmosphere with impunity and EXPECT no results. we do not expect that MORE C02 will lead to cooling. So, for me, the science give me cause for CONCERN. not alarm. Concern. because I am concerned I argue for better practices in climate science. because I am concerned I criticize bad arguments from skeptics. because I am concerned ( but not alarmed) I argue that there are some things we can do ( like nuclear) that will be good for us, regardless of accuracy of the models, observations, ect.
That’s basically lukewarmerism. More C02 causes warming, not cooling. We have evidence that warrents ( or justifies) a rational concern for the future. That concern is best addressed by better science, a more educated public, and policies that are focused on ‘no regrets’ decisions taken at a local level.
phlogiston says:
September 24, 2010 at 1:28 am (Edit)
Steven Mosher says:
September 24, 2010 at 1:21 am
Smokey
” No one has falsified the hypothesis that the observed temperatures changes are the result of natural variability.”
that’s because its NOT a properly formulated hypothesis. “natural variability” is NOT a cause. It is the admission that we dont know the cause.
We’ve been through this before. Rejecting “natural variation” because we dont understand all the sources of variation, is “argumentun ad ignorantium” i.e. bad epistemology and logic.
###################
Sorry, I do not reject “natural variation” Please read. I say that it is not A CAUSE.
it is RATHER the admission that we dont have a name for the cause. Further, when I state that it is not a valid NULL, I am being SPECIFIC. You need to quantify it. That means put numbers on it. Third, faliure to reject a natural variation Null, is not proof of its truth. see type II errors. Finally, the warming you see is a result of increased GHGs + variations yet to be explained by discrete physical processes.
The argument from natural variation, says what? that all variation is the result of a natural process? duh. unfalsifiable, that the warming and cooling is ALL explained by factors unrelated to GHGs? the point is, the hypothesis has not been laid out in a manner that is testable or falsifiable. And worse there is no logical connection with the thesis that increased GHGs cause warming… warming over and above the warming and cooling we see otherwise.
Simply, the cooling you see after a volcano falls well within the bounds of temperature variation in the last 150 years.
The cooling you see after a volcano is within the “natural variation” Does it therefore follow, that there is Nothing to explain? that the cooling is “caused” by natural variation?. that aerosals cannot cause cooling, because the cooling they cause is small and within the “natural bounds over the past 4 billion years on the planet”
The variations that people attribute to sun spots fall within “natural variation bounds” therefore, we can conclude that sunspots have nothing to do with the variation. The PDO falls “within the natural variation bounds”, therefore PDO cannot cause temperature changes. The warming we see falls within the natural variation, therefor C02 cannot cause warming. As you can see there is a large logical lacuna here.
basically, the argument from natural variation is wrong from the start. It is the appeal to ignorance and the haven of the incurious.
Anyways, natural variation is not a NULL. It is not stated in the proper form and even it it were it would have no logical consequence in the debate.
phlogiston says:
September 24, 2010 at 1:28 am
Steven Mosher says:
September 24, 2010 at 1:21 am
Smokey
” No one has falsified the hypothesis that the observed temperatures changes are the result of natural variability.”
that’s because its NOT a properly formulated hypothesis. “natural variability” is NOT a cause. It is the admission that we dont know the cause.
We’ve been through this before. Rejecting “natural variation” because we dont understand all the sources of variation, is “argumentun ad ignorantium” i.e. bad epistemology and logic.
Natural variation is a valid null hypothesis.
_____________________________________________________________
Natural variation is NOT a valid null hypothesis. TFTFY
You need to quantify the natural variability and it’s causes and effects.
Saying “I don’t know” which is EXACTLY what you are saying, is like burying one’s head in the proverbial sands of all the Earth’s deserts.
We know that the sands exist, but we all have the choice of NOT burying one’s head in said sands. I choose to NOT bury my head in said sands.
You would need to first model all (or most of) the drivers of the natural variability.
In other words, if you can’t trouble yourself with hypothesis and theories, and come up with your own GCM’s and analyses, like the IPCC has done, you are simply waving your hands in the air and then pointing at nothing, saying look over here, to turn a blind eye as it were, nothing to see here, move along.
Thus we do understand the major sources of variations, both natural and anthropogenic.
Therefore, if you are unwilling to accept the current state-of-the-art (SOTA) of climate science, then please do continue on with your argumentum ad ignorantiam.
Kind of like these posts digging up old science concurrent with the current 2010 Arctic sea ice extent/area/volume minimum.
Go figure.
Steven Mosher,
Ok, I guess I can agree with the jist of what you wrote: AGW is hard to falsify, but may be true because CO2 causes more warming. You have chosen to use guarded words, and there is nothing I could disagree with. However, we don’t, none of us, debate climate science in a vacuum; it is more than an exercise in philosophy. All discussions inevitably lead to the subject of mitigation. And the more we move along this road, the more it is beginning to dawn on even the most obtuse – yes, even politicians – that to make the kinds of emission reductions that would actually reduce warming, even by IPCC standards, is an impossibility.
Ultimately, even luke warmers have to decide what action they want to see happen.
richard telford says:
September 24, 2010 at 8:52 am
“The radiocarbon correction is standard, indeed required, in marine systems. Over-penetration of the sediment by pistons corers is very common (and very annoying). Neither of these problems is critical.”
What is critical is that, because the C-14 dates didn’t tie up even after the standard corrections, leaving them with an assumed loss of 1m from the top of the cores (not merely over-penetration), there is no overlap between proxies and observation. In its absence, the magnitude of the ice extent has been adjusted by line fitting, which is not adequate for robust conclusions. I’m not blaming them – they probably did the best they could with what they had – but it still needs a set of measurements extended to the present epoch to tie down the proxy reliably.
Colin from Mission B.C. says on September 24, 2010 at 10:04 am
My first thought is that it is a hoax, that is, it was drawn/doctored recently …
It has been very hard to prove that the Shroud of Turin was produced at a much different date that some of the claims around it … so I would take this map with a grain of salt as well.
John F. Hultquist says:
September 23, 2010 at 6:02 pm
Ed Forbes says: at 4:27 pm
“the map re-drawn by the Turk Piri Reis in 1513 with a mostly ice free artic ”
I went to that link. The map does not include the (artic) Arctic Ocean, rather the “northern coast of Antarctica” is the area in question. I note that the web site is titled World Mysteries. Any ideas?
————
Should have said 1528 when he made his second world map for a piece of Greenland.
http://www.diegocuoghi.it/Piri_Reis/McIntosh/McIntosh_PiriReis.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piri_Reis
Paul Birch says:
September 24, 2010 at 12:20 pm
What is critical is that, because the C-14 dates didn’t tie up even after the standard corrections, leaving them with an assumed loss of 1m from the top of the cores (not merely over-penetration), there is no overlap between proxies and observation. In its absence, the magnitude of the ice extent has been adjusted by line fitting, which is not adequate for robust conclusions. I’m not blaming them – they probably did the best they could with what they had – but it still needs a set of measurements extended to the present epoch to tie down the proxy reliably.
—–
They are using a giant piston corer in >400m water. This system often over-penetrates. This is what the authors mean by the sediment being lost. They do not mean that the sediment was collected and later misplaced. I can supply many many examples of this problem with this coring system.
It does not matter much for validating the proxy that it does not reach the present. Telford (2006) and Telford and Birks (2009) and various papers by Dale show dinocysts are a proxy with limited utility for salinity, ice cover and temperature. This is the real problem with the paper.
Hey Günther
Don’t bother arguing with the ideologues – it’s fruitless. Just because the study is from “site HLY0501-05”, just one piston core close to Point Barrow at 72.69N, and just because the title is deliberately misleading, they will believe whatever they read here and whatever they want to. It’s why they read stuff here, not actual science papers.
EFS_Junior says:
September 24, 2010 at 11:10 am
Natural variation is NOT a valid null hypothesis. TFTFY
You need to quantify the natural variability and it’s causes and effects.
There is another metaphor to describe this argument: a “jar of fleas”.
The Russian Tsar Ivan the 4th (“Ivan the Terrible”) used to punish troublesome boyars by demanding that they collect and present to him a jar of fleas. Finding enough fleas to fill a glass jar was of course practically impossible. Therefore, failure to meet this demand was assured.
It is impossible to “quantify the natural variability and it’s causes and effects”. We are no-where even close to coming anywhere near this. This AGW argument that skeptics need to fully qualtify and characterise natural variability and it sources – i.e. collect their jar of fleas, reveals that AGWers have an oversimplified conception of climate and really do not grasp its fundamental complexity.
Juraj V. writes,
“No wonder, since the last interglacial was warmer than today for most of the time;
Greenland ice core says so:”
No, Greenland ice core does not say so. And the ice core data graph you link twice on this page gives estimated temperatures from 20,000 years ago up to 1855, so it covers neither the last interglacial nor today.
Judging from Alley’s ice core estimates alongside modern temperature data, it is warmer in central Greenland now than it was during the Medieval Warm Period.
Smokey,
Me – “Couldn’t one falsify AGW by showing that the warming since the industrial revolution is not attributable to manmade GHGs? ”
You – “Your first question has the scientific method backward. The purveyors of the CO2=CAGW hypothesis have the burden of showing that it explains reality better than the null hypothesis: No one has falsified the hypothesis that the observed temperatures changes are the result of natural variability.”
Wait a minute, you’re changing the question from whether AGW is falsifiable to whether it has been proven. Regardless of whether it’s been proven, it is falsifiable for the reason I stated. It could be disproven by showing that warming since the industrial revolution is not attributable to manmade GHGs. Thus, it’s is not an unscientific hypothesis. At most it’s an unproven hypothesis. Therefore, your claim that AGW is not falsifiable is incorrect as I see it.
phlogiston says:
September 24, 2010 at 3:02 pm
EFS_Junior says:
September 24, 2010 at 11:10 am
Natural variation is NOT a valid null hypothesis. TFTFY
You need to quantify the natural variability and it’s causes and effects.
There is another metaphor to describe this argument: a “jar of fleas”.
The Russian Tsar Ivan the 4th (“Ivan the Terrible”) used to punish troublesome boyars by demanding that they collect and present to him a jar of fleas. Finding enough fleas to fill a glass jar was of course practically impossible. Therefore, failure to meet this demand was assured.
It is impossible to “quantify the natural variability and it’s causes and effects”. We are no-where even close to coming anywhere near this. This AGW argument that skeptics need to fully qualtify and characterise natural variability and it sources – i.e. collect their jar of fleas, reveals that AGWers have an oversimplified conception of climate and really do not grasp its fundamental complexity.
_____________________________________________________________
So what you are really saying is that you refuse to do the actual science.
Yet you claim to understand the scientific method, where clearly you do not fully understand the scientific method, as is abundently clear from your posts here at WUWT.
Nuff said.
Ed Forbes writes,
“the map re-drawn by the Turk Piri Reis in 1513 with a mostly ice free artic has been of interest to me for many years. ”
The Piri Reis map is apparently genuine, although the claim that it shows Antarctica (which it doesn’t) has made it popular on some websites about ancient extraterrestrials. It doesn’t show Greenland, either, and certainly can’t tell us that the Arctic was ice free.
Here’s one good look at what the map actually does show:
http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/piriries.htm
Steve Mosher,
See what you did? You went and got folks all riled up over your interpretation of what a null hypothesis is:
Dr Roy Spencer originally stated that the climate null hypothesis has never been falsified, and I don’t think he was appealing to the ignorant and incurious.
Dr Spencer makes clear the logical consequence of the null hypothesis — and warmists don’t like those consequences one little bit [for those who don’t know, Dr Spencer is an internationally esteemed climatologist.]
But don’t take it from me what the definition of a null hypothesis is. Here are three different sources that define a null hypothesis [and not one of them is from Wiki]:
click1
click2 [replace “alien burglary” with “CAGW.”]
click3
There are lots more citations that say essentially the same thing. Also, quantifying a hypothesis with numbers, as you will see in the links above, is not at all a necessary requirement for a null hypothesis.
The alternative to the null is the CO2=CAGW hypothesis, which has been trying to get a promotion to the status of a theory by falsifying the null, by showing that the new hypothesis explains reality better. But since the climate null hypothesis has never been falsified, the CO2=CAGW hypothesis, rather than becoming a theory, has been downgraded to the status of a conjecture; an opinion lacking empirical evidence or verifiable observations [keep in mind that model output is not evidence, and “adjusted” data is not evidence unless there is full and complete methodology and metadata attached to the adjusted data — extremely rare in the inbred climate doomsayer clique].
Further, the climate does not need to be understood completely, or even well, to form a hypothesis. If a hypothesis accurately and repeatedly predicts future events, it is well on its way to becoming a theory.
Since the planet’s temperature is well within its past parameters, the null hypothesis is that the current climate is a consequence of natural variability, just as the past climate was. The
hypothesesconjectures about tipping points, runaway global warming and climate catastrophe come from computer models, not from real world observations.Michael Mann tried to falsify the null hypothesis by claiming that there was never a MWP or a LIA, and look at all the tap-dancing and hiding out he’s been doing ever since. Your own book exposes his grant-hogging clique as being ethics-challenged.
Every attempt by alarmists to falsify the null hypothesis of natural climate variability has failed. No wonder they hate it so much.
This paper has been on my list from day one,
800 Peer-Reviewed Papers Supporting Skepticism of “Man-Made” Global Warming (AGW) Alarm
EFS_Junior says:
September 24, 2010 at 5:53 pm
So what you are really saying is that you refuse to do the actual science.
===============================
No. What he is saying that he doesn’t have to prove a damn thing. For “natural variability” it is science business as usual.
The burden of proof is on all the chicken little warmists out there.
You guys want to put forth a bizarre hypothesis?? Then prove it with real data and evidence.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
jakers says:
September 24, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Hey Jakers,
As I can tell you are a card carrying ideologue, don’t bother arguing with the people who simply want the truth – it’s fruitless. You will get beaten every time.
Chris
Norfolk, VA, USA
I am not surprised at all. The scientific evidence has always contradicted Al Gores crackpot theory. They just thought with media biased to their side and having paid off several formerly respectable institutions such as NASA, The Weather Channel, the National Geographic Society, Nature, Scientific American, etc…they would win an a priori argument. Luckily they were wrong.
No, you don’t get to put words in my mouth. However, you can read the paper for yourself and learn that they said the opposite was occurring (less ice) on the other side of the Arctic (Eastern Arctic) for most of the period. That’s not deterministic, but should put a brake on definitive claims of any kind.
What I said in one of my posts is that this paper does not give license to claim that the entire Arctic had less ice at times over the Holocene than current – it only refers to an area that is 4% (I said 10% before, mistakenly) of the entire Arctic ocean. I’m not claiming anything about total Arctic ice coverage over the Holocene – rather, I’m saying it is completely fallacious to do so based on this paper. But this is what was done in the top post.
Why must people invent arguments instead of address the point? Wild straw men abound…
Smokey,
You say AGW is trying to get “promotion to the status of a theory by falsifying the null”
You again seem to confuse proof with falsifiability. AGW is a valid theory. It can be falsified. It at most hasn’t been proven with sufficient evidence, although I might note that the majority science view is that it is a correct theory. See NAS reports from this year.
“Since the planet’s temperature is well within its past parameters, the null hypothesis is that the current climate is a consequence of natural variability, just as the past climate was”
Again I don’t see how this logically follows. The fact that temps are within past parameters does not mean AGW is wrong. Natural variability alone could have us at lower than normal temps, and then with the addition of AGW that puts us at average temps. You don’t even need higher than normal temps for AGW to be happening. In this scenario, AGW would be real but not harmful.
“an opinion lacking empirical evidence or verifiable observations [keep in mind that model output is not evidence,”
You seem to have a really cramped view of what evidence is. Evidence is anything supporting a theory. The evidence does not need to be sufficient to prove the theory to be evidence. Some evidence is better than other evidence, but we don’t disqualify the weaker forms of evidence as not evidence. Its just less persuasive or conclusive.
CO2 is up. CO2 warms the climate. The climate is warming. And it’s warming in ways consistent with how CO2 warms the climate as I understand it (correct me if I’m wrong). And some other mechanisms like solar have been shown to be insufficient to explain the warming (since the 70s at least). That’s all evidence that supports AGW. It may not be enough to prove it beyond doubt, but it’s evidence. Oh, and the models are evidence too. Additional evidence, and perhaps evidence with issues, but evidence nonetheless.
I guess what I’m saying is you’re overreaching. You should say AGW is unproven or an unpersuasive theory or natural variability is a much better theory. But AGW is not an illegitimate theory.
EFS_Junior says:
September 24, 2010 at 5:53 pm
So what you are really saying is that you refuse to do the actual science.
Yet you claim to understand the scientific method, where clearly you do not fully understand the scientific method, as is abundently clear from your posts here at WUWT.
The “jar of fleas” argument was not a council of despair. I do not argue that we cannot understand at least some key elements of the climate system. I have no problem with doing real experimental science – on the contrary, CAGW skeptic arguments tend to be based on experimental measurements while CAGW rests on a foundation of computer modeling. No – the jar of fleas argument was intended to demonstrate that You, Steve Mosher and others here are constructing a set of rules by which it is essentially impossible to falsify the hypothesis of CAGW.
I have argued on this site repeatedly and at length (to some maybe ad nauseam) about one of the leading philosophers of science, Karl Popper, and his main arguments that (a) a scientific hypothesis or conjecture must be falsifiable (and that means practically falsifiable) and that (b) scientific reasoning should favour deductive rather than inductive logic. Look it up if you want further details, I wont repeat it all again.
The world is a complex place. Complexity in dynamic systems means more than “Heath-Robinsonian” type complexity – many interconnecting parts but relatively simple linear mechanical relationships between them. Dynamic chaos and non-equilibrium pattern formation are dominant phenomena in many complex natural systems – key examples are living organisms, and climate. Some systems are well described by linear analysis. Others are nonlinear and chaotic and do not allow analytical predictions, although one can determine some characteristics of the system. Take two examples. Looking at the orbit of a comet, a scientist can predict that it will pass earth in August, 2025. But the same scientist looking at climate, cannot say that on August 20, 2025, there will be a thunderstorm over the town of Didcot, Oxfordshire.
Rene Descartes, who gave us vectorial 3D geometry, famously conjectured that if the properties of every particle in the universe was known, then the future behaviour of the whole universe would also be predicted. This conjecture is false – due to the operation of dynamic chaos and nonlinear behaviour, total knowledge of particles properties at time zero does not necessarily allow prediction of future behaviour.
The point of this discussion is the argument that for skeptics to falsify CAGW they have to fully characterise climate fluctuation and be able to predict its chaotic and unpredictable dynamics. This betrays an understanding of scientific analysis that is selective at best; and it is a “jar of fleas” argument.