Offline much of today and this week as I’m doing a special project that will have me offline a lot. Guest posters feel free to jump in. Details below.
Those that wish to write guest posts can compose them and submit via the newly created Submit Story submission form. For image insertion into posts, may I suggest the free www.tinypic.com which Bob Tisdale regularly uses?
Posts don’t have to be long. They can be short news blurb summaries of about 150-250 words, much like is done at slashdot.org or they can be full fledged posts with embedded data and images.
Those of you that have guest author privileges – you know what to do.
– Anthony
UPDATE: Apologies – the Submit Story feature got hidden yesterday by an errant goof by one of our moderators who marked the page as “private” – fixed now – Anthony
Uh, the quote is actually “Absence of evidence is NOT evidence of absence.”
It’s evidence that evidence hasn’t been competently searched for, generally.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/06/05/open-thread-7/#comment-674538
Sure; I’d happily be prominently tattooed with “CO2 Global Warming is Bunk”. Provided you can make it painless and hygienic.
Apparently there can be significant volcanic local CO2 out gassing even without a ‘major eruption’. They have measured CO2 concentrations up to 6500 ppm at one of the six craters of this Indonesian volcano. At these levels, CO2 can be acutely toxic as noted in the article –
Reference – Jakarta Globe – CO2 Hits Dangerous Level at Mount Dieng | June 01, 2011
http://www.thejakartaglobe.com/news/co2-hits-dangerous-level-at-mount-dieng/444349
“Poisonous gases spewing from Mount Dieng in Central Java caused increasing alarm on Tuesday as concentrations of one of the gases breached levels deemed safe for humans. Sutopo Purwo Nugroho, a spokesman for the National Disaster Mitigation Agency (BNPB), said that at Timbang, one of Dieng’s six craters, levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the air hit 0.65 percent on Tuesday, higher than the safe level of 0.5 percent and more than five times greater that the usual concentration of 0.1 percent.”
…
“Since Sunday, the government has relocated more than 1,100 people living in the area to shelters in nearby Batur subdistrict. Sutopo said that a number of small volcanic earthquakes had been detected as well, lasting from five to 15 seconds.”
“Surono, PVMBG chief, said that in 1979, CO2 from the Timbang crater killed 149 people”
————————————————-
I found this article via the link posted by Ed Mertin says: June 6, 2011 at 12:04 am
Which led me to another article at that site “Carbon dioxide as a volcanic hazard at the Dieng Plateau (and beyond)” http://bigthink.com/ideas/38704
Thanks Ed .. and a big thank you to all who post and comment here at WUWT.
The problem is your weak English.
“absence of evidence of X” is “not evidence of not-X” might come closer.
And “evidence” does not have a plural. It is a “general uncountable” noun in English, so “evidences” is a non-word.
Etc., etc.
Kim Oyhus’ “proofs” have been discussed previously at the Air Vent (http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/04/23/reply-to-a-believer/ and http://noconsensus.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/34/).
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/the-dangers-of-boneheaded-beliefs-20110602-1fijg.html
now tattoos for deniers
Since this is an open thread, how about some comments on this story
http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2011/06/04/3235561.htm
Andy G55: No. In orthodox Christian theology numerous biblical passages speak to the inability of humankind to know everything. See the last chapters of the book of Job for a wonderfully poetic example. Granted there are some of shallow depth who will try to cover their ignorance (such as recent doomsday predictors), but wiser heads are not so foolish. Honest theologians and scientists both ask questions and try to understand the unknown. The difference is that their methods are not completely congruent.
@Kathleen Marquardt
Richard Glover wrote in the Sydney Morning Herald:
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/society-and-culture/the-dangers-of-boneheaded-beliefs-20110602-1fijg.html
“Surely it’s time for climate-change deniers to have their opinions forcibly tattooed on their bodies.”
Bring it on. I’ll put up with a tattoo if only in 20 years when everyone is yammering about global cooling and the coming ice age they can’t deny that they were saying the exact opposite before.
I would like to see your responses to this:
and this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wbzK4v7GsM
It may have been noted, but it’s still bullfeathers. You can survive 5X that concentration as long as the O2 levels aren’t compromised. CO2 can suffocate, or (somewhat) confuse the breathing reflex, but is not toxic.
Here’s an observation on what seems to be a serious problem w/weather models, which are very similar to climate models. For example in my area, the NWS forecasts high temps of 96, 97F several days in the future. Since the soil here is saturated (and forests are in full leaf), I know from previous experience that it will never reach those temps — there’s just too much evaporation. Sure enough, those two days end up w/highs of 88 and 90F even w/no cloud cover. I see this too-hot forecast repeated consistently in summer. The only time it is accurate is during very dry conditions like last (late) summer.
Forecasts too high by 7-8F is huge considering uniform, light wind & sunny conditions. IMO there must be a serious underestimation of evaporative cooling at the surface by the models, or CO2 “forcing” is greatly overestimated, or UHI-heated cities are taken as the “real” temps.
Scottish Skeptic;
Excellent sense, I was with you right up till you said, “Cheap meet = cheap lives = back to the ages when most people had a brother or sister who they saw die during their childhood.”
What does an inexpensive social encounter have to do with devalued lives? And childhood mortality? I suppose if you really disapprove of “Meat market” venues …
😉
>The difference between a science and a religion is that in science,
>we accept that we don’t know everything, and try to find the answers
If you look up the founders of most branches of science, you generally find fundamentalist Christians. One, Sir Francis Bacon, is attributed to developing the scientific method. Here is an interesting quote which particularly applies to the debate over AGW;
“Men have sought to make a world from their own conception and to draw from their own minds all the material which they employed, but if, instead of doing so, they had consulted experience and observation, they would have the facts and not opinions to reason about, and might have ultimately arrived at the knowledge of the laws which govern the material world.”
Noctilucent cloud season in the northern hemisphere again …
AIM completed its 8th PMC season (4 in NH and 4 in SH) on 8th April. Interesting results here: http://aim.hamptonu.edu/mission/status_archv/20110508status.html
First cloud of NH 2011 season observed by CIPS on 24th of May currently shown here:
http://aim.hamptonu.edu/mission/status.html
Any guesses for what the NH 2011 season might end up looking like?
Perhaps a topic of only “guest posts”, but on a specific topic:
“How and/or Why I Became Skeptical of the CAGW Concept”.
Might be interesting to read what brought each of us to our current position on the “global warming” discussion. Each person wouldn’t have to write a novel, just something relatively short.
For example, my story –
Prior to Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” I pretty much just believed the main stream party line regarding “Global Warming” – all the facts were in, all the scientists agreed, the debate is over. The temperature of the earth was getting higher and the primary cause was anthropogenic CO2 emissions into the atmosphere (well, at the time I simply called it “man made”, didn’t really even know the word “anthropogenic”).
When I saw Al Gore on the late night shows promoting his movie, my only non-believing thought was that Al Gore is a very polarizing person and probably wasn’t the best spokesman for this GW problem, especially in the US. But then I started hearing “reviews” of “AIT” describing all of the errors, misrepresentations, and false information in the movie. Not just little things like “the temperature in Podunk, OH on July 27, 1967 was 87 degrees F when it really was 86 degrees F”, but major items like showing a graph representing millions of years of temp and atmospheric CO2 levels and stating clearly that CO2 was causing the temps to rise and fall when, in fact, it was the temp that rose and fell first followed by the CO2 level.
I began to wonder – why did Al Gore need to use misrepresentations, manipulated data, and false information to show something that “all the scientists agreed with, all the facts were in, and the debate was over”? I then started seeing what was on the Internet regarding the subject and I quickly took a puck in the face from the “hockey stick” – whoa! It is not just Al Gore! Even worse, the World’s Policy Makers were also being provided with the UN’s IPCC report and it also had to use misrepresentations, manipulated data, etc. to arrive at its conclusions. The main stream media was telling me things like “the Polar Ice Cap would be ice free for the first time in millions of years” in bold, assertive letters on the front pages while a week or so later in very small print way back in a obscure section would be a “correction” saying the Polar Ice Cap has been ice free many times in the past and it has nothing to do with anthropogenic CO2.
Instead of discovering that “all the facts were in, all the scientists agreed, the debate is over” what I’ve been discovering is that “the facts” are somewhat in dispute, there are many scientists who do not agree, and the debate, whenever it is allowed to happen, is far from over.
I am skeptical
I am skeptical
Skeptical I am.
(Apologies to Dr. Seuss)
Dang Gnomish! You beat me to it!
The forcible tattooing of people has a very dark history. (I would mention those who were the last ones to do just that. But then I’d probably get “snipped”)
Sometimes, you just have to wonder where these buffoons got their education. Is he ignorant, stupid or really evil?
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
Kim Øyhus says:
June 5, 2011 at 11:17 pm
Absence of evidence is evidence of absence.
This phrase has been quite controversial. Many believe it to be wrong,
and many think it is true, but may be uncertain about it.
So, to stop the doubt, I proved it mathematically to be true:
_______________
HaHaHa ha
The irony in your “proof” is that only someone like God could determine whether or not there is a true “abscence” of evidence, so an application of the “proof” is only theoretically possible, unless you are God.
Perhaps some logicians think they are omniscient. Most first and second year philosophy students lose their faith in God. Only the more gifted students of philosophy allow for the existence of God.
Change the statement to, “Apparent absence of evidence is evidence of apparent absence.” and I could go along with it as it’s used in your examples of applications.
Brian H, if you had actually followed the link to my proof, and read it, you would have seen plenty of text about where the quote is from, and which forms it had.
Hint: Carl Sagan.
http://kim.oyhus.no/AbsenceOfEvidence.html
Your understanding of my proof, its text, and what I mean, is absent.
And if you had checked “evidences” in say Merriam-Webster, you would have seen that it is indeed a word.
From this I know now that Brian H makes strong claims without checking facts.
There is therefore no reason for me to read further what he writes.
On the Richard Glover rant calling for tattoos for “deniers”, I found this paragraph illuminating:
“People on the left instinctively believe in communal action, the role of government and the efficacy of international agencies such as the UN. They were always going to believe in climate change; it’s the sort of problem that can best be solved using the tools they most enjoy using.”
Yawn.
Etc.
Absence of evidence is worth noting ONLY if extensive, competent, and thorough efforts have been made to find it. Until then, it is only evidence of failure to look.
What is missing from the climate record is evidence that it has never changed. And even if there were evidence that it has never changed, that would be a change from the norm.
What is normal is change. Absence of climate change is not. Those who would spend trillions resisting or reversing change would hasten a dramatic change from the norm.
This is a simple question: Shown the past, use your best guess to predict the future. Start here. The question is What will happen next?:
http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/8/8f/Ice_Age_Temperature_Rev.png
Several places, they’re showing the NOAA chart showing, as they say, the number of strong to violent EF-3, EF-4 and EF-5 tornadoes from 1950 to 2011. According to that chart’s caption, “…There is not a decades-long increasing trend in the numbers of these most dangerous of tornadoes…”
Personally, I see a problem with the chart. Mainly, the F scale was introduced in 1971 by Tetsuya Fujita of the University of Chicago.
“…In the United States, tornadoes from 1973 onward were rated soon after occurrence whereas the scale was applied retroactively to tornado reports from 1950 through 1972 for the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) National Tornado Database…”
The Fujita scale is effectively a damage scale, and the wind speeds associated with the damage listed aren’t rigorously verified.
So, the F-rating of storms prior to ’73 were determined long after the storm, and probably long after the damage was repaired/removed. How accurate were the written reports and photographs?
Second, is the Enhanced scale (EF-ratings). The Fujita scale was superseded in 2007 by the Enhanced Fujita Scale in the United States (and is biased to US construction practices).
Once again, in order to match like-to-like, the historic records SHOULD be re-examined to re-rate them to the enhanced scale. Because as the US changed since 1950, so did their construction practices and construction codes.
A building constructed in the 1950’s, probably wood framed, may be no match for those built today (treated woods, braces, trusses, etc).
So damage to buildings may be a little off – a building may have been blown away by weaker winds because of it’s construction.
So to say this chart accurately reflects the number of EF-3, EF-4 and EF-5 tornadoes back to 1950 is, IMHO, just a LITTLE off.
Opinions?
c.s says: June 6, 2011 at 5:52 am
The video conflates “climate change denial” with smoking and weapons of mass destruction. Pathetic!
However, this is a science blog. A full discussion of the recent surfacestations paper would be helpful. I have not seen it on WUWT (I do not monitor every day), but I have seen criticism on other websites, with personal attacks on Anthony in particular, and “AGW deniers” in general. I think this debate needs to be met head-on.
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