Story submitted by Eric Worrall
How do we prove climate alarmists are wrong? Let us count the ways
If the temperature goes up, this is just what the models predicted – watch out because …
…soon it will get a lot worse. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runaway_climate_change
If the temperature goes down, the deep ocean is swallowing the heat – even though the heat can’t be measured, we know it must be there, because that is what the climate models tell us. Global warming prevails! http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/pacific-ocean-and-climate-change-pause/
If the global temperature crashes, its because global warming induced melting of arctic ice shut down the ocean currents. http://science1.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2004/05mar_arctic/
If the snow disappears, this is just as models predicted – snowfall is a thing of the past. http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html
If there is an unusually heavy snowfall, this is just as models predicted – global warming is increasing the moisture content of the atmosphere, which results in increased snow cover. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/02/10/2010-snowmageddon-explained-sans-global-warmingclimate-change/
If there is a drought, that is because of global warming. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/21/causes-of-midwest-drought-2012_n_1690717.html
Except of course, when global warming causes heavy rainfall. http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/08/13/global-warming-the-incompetent-politicians-excuse/
No matter what the observation, no matter how the world changes, we can never falsify alarmist climate theories. Any possible change, any possible observation, can always be explained by anthropogenic global warming.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/03/22/occams-razor-and-climate-change/
Reblogged this on Public Secrets and commented:
An amusing example that any weather phenomenon at all proves the global warming models must be right.
Hrm. Anybody else flashing back on H.L. Mencken? Gathered into Minority Report (1956):
And mild winters and cool summers are “extreme” weather. I need the quotes because using extreme in that way is an extreme definition of extreme.
Jimbo says:
August 15, 2014 at 7:58 am
Jimbo, I’m going to disagree with you here, but that doesn’t make me a creationist. The problem with evolution is with macro-evolution. For example, how did dinosaurs evolve into birds? How did the small shrew-like mammals evolve into humans, horses, whales, etc.? The fossil record is incomplete and it is unclear how the intermediate stages would be advantageous.
Just so we’re clear, having legitimate questions regarding a theory doesn’t prove that creationism or intelligent design are true.
First off, the reason the models cannot be falsified is that they are not science in the first place. They are programmers’ wet dreams and do exactly what they are programmed to do, show global warming, as they are based on only CO2 in the atmosphere.
My problem with the argument about energy imbalance is conveniently illustrated by the side discussion on creation vs evolution. In the creation vs evolution discussion, we have boiled the question down to only two (widely accepted) alternatives:
– If life, then God (creator)
Or
– If life, then evolution (natural processes)
We observe life, so we can reasonably conclude one of the two options above. From this, we can have a meaningful discussion on the relative merits of the two. Note, since we only have the two options, we can generate a very sound and logical discourse. For example, since most reasonable people agree that the existence of God/creator is not falsifiable, we don’t bother trying to decide the argument from that angle. Rather, we approach it from the evolution/natural process side, that is, the side that is falsifiable.
Thus, the argument is further reduced to whether we can disprove the theory of evolution. In this case, looking for examples or observations that would seem to defy the theory of evolution becomes relevant and should produce meaningful conclusions. This is only possible because we’ve identified all reasonable possibilities.
This leads directly to my problem with the energy imbalance theory. The argument seems to be: If energy imbalance, then global warming. And the discussion that follows is mostly over whether or not we’ve observed an energy imbalance. Well, my problem is that the argument is not complete, in that we haven’t (to my knowledge) explored the alternatives. An energy imbalance could mean more than just GW, right? For example, all life on earth is fueled by solar energy, so energy imbalance might mean increase in life. Or maybe it means decrease in albedo. Or maybe it’s . The point is, in order to discuss the meaning of an energy imbalance, we first have to identify all the possible meanings.
The AGW theory may predict an energy imbalance, so it’s reasonable to look for one. However, upon detecting one, it’s not reasonable to hold it as “proof” of the theory without exploring the possible alternative explanations for it. Only after ruling out all possible alternative explanations, can it be used as evidence/proof.
rip
Follow up: basically what rud and alcheson said, only not as concise. 😛
rip
more soylent green! says:
August 15, 2014 at 9:51 am
…and to follow that thought further, and in consideration of the general condition that science is falsifiable, we should be looking at those questions the most. We can’t just rest on the observations that are in-line with the predictions. We have to look for the holes, the problems, the inconsistencies and then deal with them appropriately. This would also include devising experiments or tests to try to disprove the theory. Only by doing so can we satisfy the scientific standards required to hold up a theory as observably true.
To follow that to it’s logical conclusion, I suppose that if we can’t devise tests/experiments, if we can’t falsify the theory, we can’t call it a theory. It would be more of an untestable hypothesis. Furthermore, I’ve never really thought of it this way, but I guess we can also consider that “creationists” (or whatever the correct phrase is) are scientifically contributing when they present counter arguments, or examples where evolution fails to provide a satisfactory explanation. That actually leads us to the conclusion that, barring an alternative explanation for life (i.e. not created, or not evolution), the question of a creator could fairly be considered a scientific question.
[I’m basically “thinking out loud” here…noting that I may have a gazillion rhetorical fallacies included in the above. As context, I’m personally agnostic on the theory of evolution.]
rip
“ferdberple says:
August 15, 2014 at 6:24 am
How does one falsify the theory of evolution?
============
the theory of evolution predicts certain things that can be tested. For example, if we add a low level toxin to the environment, the theory predicts that over time the population under study will adapt to the toxin such that it is increasingly less harmful to the population. And that is in fact what is observed, which is evidence (not proof) that the theory might be correct.
however, if evolution predicted that the toxin might become more harmful or less harmful over time, the theory might well be correct, but it has no scientific value because a coin toss tells us the same thing.”
………………………
No, Fred, what you described is simply survival of the fittest. For any of the population to survive, some must have had a natural immunity to the toxin. Those that did survived passed their immunity on to their offspring. The population could rapidly grow since the smaller population would be less restrained in resources. In short, nothing evolved, a subset became extinct. There was no DNA change between the new population and the drug-resistant organisms of the old population. That’s far different from an organism evolving, with new characteristics or abilities, like fins evolving into legs.
Eric Worrall, I fear you missed the point. Since other theories, from God to little green men from Alph Centauri, could explain the flower and the moth, then that example “proves” no theory. It is simply consistent with various theories.
The flower and the moth example highlights what I think is a weakness in evolution. Which came first, the plant or the moth? I could see the advantage of the moth evolving to take advantage of the flower, but why would the flower evolve to suit the moth? If the flower was the result of a random mutation, how and why did it survive until the moth evolved? If it were a gradual process involving both, the question is why? What advantage did it provide? Clearly both organisms were surviving before, and during, those mutations.
I am sure you are familiar with a keystone arch – an arch that would collapse without a center top-stone, but that stone requires the others to support it. It requires exterior support while being constructed, and only after construction can those supports be removed. I have studied many biological processes that would require dozens of independent mutations to create, but there would be no benefit to the organism until a key mutation toward the end of the process. Why didn’t those mutations ‘collapse’, i.e. not be maintained since they provided nothing for the organism, before that ‘keystone’ mutation occurred? I won’t even pretend to know the answer.
I haven’t seen any theory that satisfies me, and likely won’t.
Nice post, but this could be greatly expanded to drive the point home. There are alarmist’s predictions of more El Ninos, less El Ninos, more mild winters on the east coast, more severe winters on the east coast, Antarctic sea ice will decrease, Antarctic sea ice will increase, deserts will expand, deserts will contract, there will be more tornadoes, there will be less tornadoes, monsoons will increase in intensity, monsoons will decrease in intensity, unprecedented record highs will be set due to global warming, record lows will become more common from climate disruption, the world will be doomed when Arctic methane in permafrost suddenly sublimes, the Arctic will become a net carbon sink, global warming will increase the number of hurricanes, global warming will decrease the number of hurricanes…and I’m sure there are more.
Met Office, Hadley no longer show temperature time series, preferring to show maps of last months “anomaly” against 1961-90/
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/crutem3/index.html
http://www.metoffice.gov.uk/hadobs/hadsst3/
The time series are now tucked away under a very discrete heading of “Other information” subheading: “Various diagnostics”
For years they have proudly displayed their monthly time series showing the “alarming” warming.
Now the lack of rise since around 1997 is a bit of drawback to “outreach” and “communicating”. So they’ve backed off to showing a graph that tells us no more than it is warmer ( on average ) now than it was 40 years ago
Good strategy, that approach should be good to potentially avoid showing what’s happening even if it cools for the next ten years.
Re Prof Ryan:
Heat loss of Earth interior is a subject of conjecture mainly because the heat model of earth is inconsistent with, you guessed it, observations. The quantity is an estimate from point measurements.
—
Global internal heat flow
Estimates of the total heat flow from Earth’s interior to surface span a range of 43 to 49 TW (TW = terawatt = 10^12 watts). The closest estimate is 47 TW, an average crust heat flow of 91.6 mW/m2, and is based on more than 38,000 measurements. The respective mean heat flows of continental and oceanic crust are 70.9 and 105.4 mW/m2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth%27s_internal_heat_budget
—
Thus Earth’s energy budget will remain an estimate for as long as the heat of earth can not be precisely nailed down. But Earth is a NET emitter. If it weren’t radioactive decay would increase heat until it melted crust and mantle. But it melts only a infinitesimal fraction of the upper mantle as magma each year which represents ~0.08% of Earth’s internal energy expenditure. Smaller than you’d think, right?
The bulk of earth’s energy is instead used to bending rock, which of course heats it up, but not to its melting point. By bending rock I mean continuous internal geodynamic ductile flow deformations of individual crystal lattice unit-cells within the mantle and crust.
As a result, the more deformation occurring below the surface, the higher the heat flow will be at the surface. So you have to measure many types of crust and terrains to arrive at an accurate estimate of the global heat energy escaping from the surface.
Naturally the faster the deformation of lattices, the more likely they are to heat to melting point, especially if molecular water is present, as it dramatically lowers the melting point of common mantle minerals. Earth’s mantle consists of about 5% water, and the mantle is thousands of kilometers thick, so there are many times more water molecules in the mantle and crust, than in all oceans.
So high deformation and high water content equates to higher heat flow, and volcanic extrusions. High deformation also means some energy is released as earthquakes. Naturally the slowest deforming areas have the coldest heat flow values. High mountains are young deformation terrains hence they are the hottest. Old low eroded mountains are colder. The same applies within the ocean basins, generally the higher the terrain the hotter and younger is the rock, thus deep ocean is colder crust, however the hottest crustal heat flow is above the deep trenches, because the deformation rate is the highest of all.
Well guess what? We have nowhere near enough measurements and observations within the deep oceans. We still don’t know what we’ll find there, but what we do know is that the geodynamic activity within the oceans is several times greater than we see on land.
So anyone pretending “the science is settled”, has not got one damned clue about what we don’t know! And the part that we don’t know the most about is the very part that’s most implicated in climate variability!
“Hey, no problem! Let’s just make sh_t up again!”
/this does not compute
Nobody questions the presence of variability in species and that that variability allows organisms to adapt to their environment. But that’s not evolution. That’s not the creation of new species and new genetic information. It’s one thing for a toad with longer legs to be able to move faster and it’s quite another thing for a toad to grow wings and learn how to fly in order to survive.
Will Nitschke says:
August 15, 2014 at 4:51 am
The theory of evolution could easily be falsified. To paraphrase Haldane, “Find a rabbit fossil in Precambrian rocks”.
The fact of evolution & theory as to how it works have always been confirmed & never shown false.
Richard Wright says:
August 15, 2014 at 2:01 pm
There is no governor on change within populations of organisms that stops adaptation from becoming evolution. It’s the same process.
Animals have developed wings repeatedly. Non-flying insects developed wings in the Carboniferous, about 350 million years ago. Non-flying archosaurs developed wings in the Late Triassic, about 228 Ma, to become pterosaurs. Non-flying dinosaurs developed wings in the Jurassic, about 150 Ma or earlier. Non-flying mammals developed wings in the Early Eocene, about 52 Ma, to become bats. Non-“flying” fish first developed wings during the Middle Triassic, about 235 to 242 Ma, to become “flying” or gliding fish, but that line went extinct. Modern “flying” fish evolved shortly after the K/T extinction event, about 66 Ma. No obvious reason why frogs could not evolve wings. Gliding flight has evolved independently among 3400 species of frogs in both the Old & New World families. Many other mammal & reptile groups have also evolved gliding.
New genetic information arises all the time, although evolution doesn’t always need new information. It often takes very little mutation to make big changes, as in the evolution of nylon-eating bacteria from a point mutation. New species also arise in a single generation from duplication of existing info, as has been common in the evolution of polyploid plants.
more soylent green! says:
August 15, 2014 at 9:51 am
Jimbo says:
August 15, 2014 at 7:58 am
Jimbo, I’m going to disagree with you here, but that doesn’t make me a creationist. The problem with evolution is with macro-evolution. For example, how did dinosaurs evolve into birds? How did the small shrew-like mammals evolve into humans, horses, whales, etc.? The fossil record is incomplete and it is unclear how the intermediate stages would be advantageous.
Just so we’re clear, having legitimate questions regarding a theory doesn’t prove that creationism or intelligent design are true.
——————————————–
Creationism & ID are readily shown false. The problem is that every time yet another of their predictions fails, they claim, “Aha! Now you have two gaps where before there was but one!” ID is just like CACA, ie antiscientific because they’re not falsifiable & their advocates aren’t interested in trying to find genuine explanations.
Micro-evolution is the same process as macro-evolution. The latter just usually takes more time, but not always. No boundary exists in genomes to keep them from changing a lot after changing a little.
Of course the fossil record is incomplete, but for the transitions you mention, it’s plenty good enough & always getting better. For horses, it has been good for a long time. For whales, it has gotten better more recently.
But understanding evolution doesn’t rely only on fossils. The genomes of related groups of organisms can show precisely which mutations occurred to produce observed evolutionary changes, & to work out the order of evolution & degree of relatedness of the studied groups.
@jim Clarke
“One can certainly be on the side of science, believe CO2 is a greenhouse gas and believe that, at the moment, the earth is not absorbing more energy than it is emitting. None of these statements are mutually exclusive. Suggesting that they are is illogical. Suggesting that someone is a ‘crank’ is an ad hominem attack.
You can do better.”
Jim there is nothing much in your post I disagree with. It’s basically the same thing I’m noting. But you missed the point of my criticism entirely, which is that a lot of commentators are attacking straw men by imagining what this fellow ‘must have’ meant, rather than what he wrote. Unfortunately, you fall into the same trap by distorting the simplest statements in order to make a false point. I’m not attacking anyone personally, but I would describe anyone who denies that GHG’s warm the atmosphere, as cranks. As I hope, would you. You can do better. 😉
@Gary Young Pearse
Me: “How does one falsify the theory of evolution?”
You: “Well the null hypothesis is it was the work of a creator,”
No, that’s not a null hypothesis. That’s just another hypothesis.
@richard Wright
“Falsifiability, the point of this article, is the key. Without experimentation there will always be a way to explain away any observation or to make any observation fit the “theory”.”
So you’re claiming evolutionary theory and much of cosmology, to use two examples, are not science? You’re welcome to that opinion, but it puts in you in a very tiny minority.
Will Nitschke says:
August 15, 2014 at 3:26 pm
Both evolution & cosmology make testable predictions, so are scientific. Evolution is as subject to test by experiment as any other science, & has always been confirmed when so tested, never falsified. Cosmology is currently in more need of further testing than evolution, but no theory is ever settled in all its details, except when finally directly observed, as in the case of the heliocentric theory of the solar system, as refined.
Evolution too of course has been directly observed repeatedly, but its details can always be clarified, as with the theory of gravitation.
Will Nitschke:
In your post at August 15, 2014 at 3:22 pm you have the gall to write Jim Clarke
Say what!? That takes some beating as an example of psychological projection!
YOU misrepresented what Ryan wrote by introducing YOUR assumption that he was talking about effects of CO2 which he did not mention.
In my reply to your post which is at August 15, 2014 at 3:06 am and can be read here I objected to your doing what you now have the ‘brass neck’ to wrongly assert others did!
Clearly, you are an egregious troll.
Richard
OK final comment for now. Too many replies to some of my points so I want to just reply with a general one to cover them all.
One can courteously read Professor Ryan’s post as pointing out that assuming all else being equal, GHG’s will warm the atmosphere, hence it will change the energy balance, eventually to a new equilibrium state. This is not controversial. Nothing here that any skeptic would or should disagree with. And yes, some of that extra energy will no doubt have to end up in the oceans. (Perhaps by an unmeasurably small amount, but there is no way you can shift the energy balance and not affect the oceans too.)
The relevant question is, is this something to be worried about? Is it actually a bad thing or something actually trivial given the size of the energy imbalance? Or perhaps this is actually a good thing. A slight gradual warming of the planet, based on the empirical evidence to date, has been positive.
Yes you can argue until you’re blue in the face as to what the current energy budget equations work out to, right now, but at the end of the day their accuracy is limited because our sampling is limited, and the energy balance changes over time. Looking at the big picture, the planet has warmed gradually for around 300 years now, so things are moving in one direction, but not always consistently. Nothing even slightly controversial here. More along now.
So the ‘correct’ approach to a criticism of Professor Ryan’s post would have been to point out all these things, and other things of like nature, in a calm, considered way. The feral attacks on the uncontroversial things that he did write, frankly, just makes those commentators look really dumb.
@milodonharlani
“Both evolution & cosmology make testable predictions, so are scientific. Evolution is as subject to test by experiment as any other science, & has always been confirmed when so tested, never falsified. Cosmology is currently in more need of further testing than evolution, but no theory is ever settled in all its details, except when finally directly observed, as in the case of the heliocentric theory of the solar system, as refined.”
What’s the test for the claim that a fish evolved into an amphibian?
What’s the test for the big bang theory?
Which laboratories ran those tests and which papers can the test results be found in?
I doubt it. The theory of Evolution does not predict the Cambrian explosion or when any type of species should occur. The fossil record simply shows what it shows. If a rabbit fossil were found in Precambrian rocks then it would be dismissed as an anomaly; the rock would probably be reclassified. But if many rabbit fossils were found then it would be proposed that a previously unknown parallel line of evolution took place.
Go for it. Prove ID false.
No, the mechanism of micoevolution (innate variability within the genome) is different than macroevolution (mutation of the genome). Mutations of any significance are almost always harmful. Death is the governor. Innumerable small probabilities multiplied together yield an impossibility.
That’s what you call reading your theory into the evidence.
Will Nitschke says:
August 15, 2014 at 3:46 pm
A recent one of the many tests of the hypothesis that fish evolved into amphibians is the discovery of fishapod Tiktaalik roseae. Based on the location of prior finds of fossils both more fish-like & more tetrapod-like, & with knowledge of the arrangements of land masses during the Late Devonian, Tiktaalik’s discoverers decided to look for intermediate fishapod fossils in the Canadian Arctic. Lo & behold, they found them.
Evolution makes the prediction that the genomes of lobe-finned fish like lungfish & coelacanths will be closer to those of amphibians than to those of ray-finned fish. Lo & behold, that’s exactly what a test of this predictions shows.
Cosmologists Ralph Alpher & Robert Herman predicted in 1948-50 the existence & temperature of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) discovered accidentally in 1964 by American radio astronomers Arno Penzias & Robert Wilson. Other predictions made on the basis of the BBT have since been confirmed observationally.