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/
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Sturgishooper says
Don’t praise me to much I didn’t say what education I received. It wasn’t what was intended. Any education has value though.
Sorry to let you down.
Thanks (I do mean that)
Bob Boder says:
August 15, 2014 at 7:08 pm
Life is education, if I can learn from it.
Some graffiti wag once painted, “Education is the destruction of innocence”.
See even when you [waste] your time debating with someone that has nothing worth saying there is always some else that does right around the corner. I have read many thing s you have wrote and they are always worth the time, just like RGB, DBstealey and Greg Goodman and others.
Bob Boder says:
August 15, 2014 at 7:20 pm
If referring to me, you do me undeserved honor. RGB is the real meal deal.
milodon: I agree with your position – with some variations. I can’t see how an “intelligent design” can be shown false; it is flexible enough to survive any attack by mere facts. So are climate models.
One more thing .. an immunity of facts comes at a price: these “theories” have to have a zero predictive power.
Sturgishooper says
Your arguments are always good and consistent and worth the read.
Agreed, RGB always brings something special.
Suppose I paint some boards and leave them outside for a few years and observe that the paint eventually peals, cracks and falls off. I create a theory about why, how and when this happens and continue to paint boards and make observations. For years, every observation confirms my theory. Then, after a few years I notice that the paint no longer behaves the way it used to yet everything that I know of has remained constant. Same paint, same wood, same environment etc. How do I explain this new behavior? Is my theory wrong or did something about the paint, wood or environment change? Maybe all of the above. At the very least my theory is incomplete but maybe it’s completely and utterly wrong. After a few more years I notice that the paint behaves the way it did originally. Experimentation is not allowed. We have only one can of paint, one brush and the only wood that exists came from one tree.
Nitschke says
Oh ya
I asked for a “mechanism” not a “method”. In fact “exactly what mechanism”.
You don’t have that answer clearly because you relied on an answer from someone who is only suggesting a possibility. Hopefully you are not building your understanding of how things work on such conjectures and expecting to get repeatable scientific conformation of its validity.
@sturgishooper
“Here’s a confirmation of a test of a prediction of the Big Bang Theory:”
You seem to be getting confused over the same point that milodonharlani is getting confused over. This is not a cause and effect experimental test. You posit a theory, you make predictions, that’s all fine. That’s science. But it’s not experimental science. You predict ripples in the cosmic neutrino background. You find it. But that’s a very very long way detached from ‘proving’ the big bang theory. It’s consistent with a particular model, though. Or many other theories might be compatible with those ripples too. This is no different from climate model X predicting increased rainfall over region Y. If that turns out to be true, how likely was that to happen by chance anyway?
And let’s say those ripples weren’t discovered. Would the big bang theory have been thrown out? Of course not. Some aspect of the theory would have been modified perhaps, or perhaps the results would just be yet another “anomaly” to be explained later. Either way, and here is the key point, using the kind of evidence both of you are presenting, the big bang theory is non falsifiable.
About the ‘record’ rainfall this year, it’s just what they didn’t predict but took credit for. ( warm air holds more moisture) Of course last year they were taking credit for the drought. They were showing a parched reservoir near Pueblo, CO as the downtown was flooded and water had to be released from 2 dams. Is there any weather that can’t be explained by global warming?
@Bob Boder
“I asked for a “mechanism” not a “method”. In fact “exactly what mechanism”.
I’m not sure my brain is subtle enough to distinguish between what you mean by “method” and what you mean by “mechanism”. But be that as it may, let’s persist. I put a big pot of water on the stove. I turn the gas on and the temperature of the burner is 250C. I don’t turn the temperature up or down. The temperature hasn’t increased in 17 minutes and 9 seconds. How is it possible that the water temperature hasn’t increased?
What I’m suggesting here is that at face value your original question makes no sense. Perhaps you can phrase it differently?
Nitschke says
However the Big Bang theory doesn’t postulate that every possible observable fact is validation of the theory. If it was determined that the universe is not expanding or contracting the theory would most certainly be thrown out.
However in AGW theory even if the earth cools this is proof it’s warming.
Curious George says:
August 15, 2014 at 7:51 pm
As you may have read, I agree with you that ID & CACA advocates both suffer from the same anti-scientific afflictions.
However, ID advocates, like other creationists, do make specific predictions which are subject to test. Perhaps chief among these are those associated with Behe’s concept, if it warrant such an exalted description, of “irreducible complexity”. His examples have been shown “reducible”, ie that they can be explained by natural evolutionary processes without resort to a supernatural Designer. Hence, falsified predictions. Among these are his Exhibit A, “the” bacterial flagellum. Actually, there are a number of different, separately evolved bacterial flagella, & that which he cited has been quite well explained as a result of real scientific work, rather than lazy, special pleading, false religion masquerading as pseudoscience.
Besides which, why does the Designer want to make pathogenic microbes more mobile & effective. Maybe it was the Fall.
Will Nitschke says:
August 15, 2014 at 8:20 pm
You are still confusing yourself.
It’s simple. The Big Bang Theory makes predictions. Tests of those predictions are confirmed rather than falsified, thus the theory is likewise supported. That it makes testable predictions means it is falsifiable.
You’re a hopeless case.
Nitschke says;
Try putting the pot over the burner that is on.
Or the water was already boiling when you put it on the burner.
Or your thermometer is broke.
Now try heating it in the pot with no burner and only an increasing in the co2 content in your room you can go to 100 percent co2 if you want. Heck I’ll let you turn on a light try that. See how long it takes to heat up and get back to me.
Richard Wright says:
August 15, 2014 at 8:16 pm
Experimentation is not only allowed in biology, but required. The results of all experiments show that evolution results from reproduction. As long as living things have reproduced, there has been evolution. And to be a living thing, you have to reproduce.
Milodonharlani says;
Ask Nitschke to make specific prediction based on The Climate Models that will happen in the future. Since he seems to think that they have predicted past events.
I will lay you an amount you want he will refuse.
The climate models can’t recreate what has already happened with the extensive data that AGW has on hand for the last 20 years. They can’t even cherry pick a beginning date to approximate a reasonable outcome.
That’s a novel definition of life.
Bob Boder says:
August 15, 2014 at 8:47 pm
OK. Mr. Nitschke, please make a specific prediction based on the GIGO, CACA GCMs, if you truly believe they have successfully predicted past events.
I’m on record with my prediction that the 30 years from 2009-2038 will be cooler than 1979-2008.
Richard Wright says:
August 15, 2014 at 9:08 pm
Why on earth would you imagine that the standard definition of life is novel? One of the two prerequisites for life is replication. The other is metabolism. Some forms, like viruses, are dubiously alive, but for everything from bacteria, archaea & single celled eukaryotes on up, those two requirements apply. Evolution is simply a consequence of reproduction.
I guess you do indeed have everything to learn about biology, which explains why your misguided religious beliefs have blinded you to objective, scientific reality. As the devout Orthodox Catholic geneticist Dobzhansky titled his famous 1973 essay, “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution”.
Really. If you were unable to reproduce but existed forever would that mean you were not living? (Waiting for the next ad hominem attack by “Mister Brilliant and anyone who disagrees with me is ignorant, blind, unobjective, an living in a fantasy world”.)
Richard Wright says:
August 15, 2014 at 10:05 pm
Why is this hard for you to understand? If you don’t replicate & don’t carry on metabolic functions, then you’re not a living thing. If you replicate but don’t have metabolism, you’re not a living thing. If you don’t replicate, but conduct metabolism, you’re not alive. There are grey areas, as I noted with viruses. Also prions, etc.
It’s not that you disagree but that you display such profound ignorance of the most elementary principles of biology, yet presume to comment upon biological issues. I don’t have to be Mr. Brilliant to have been educated in the scientific discipline in which I earned a degree from Stanford in 1973.
I’d be pleased if this discussion leads you to educate yourself on biology.
For instance, the “Cambrian Explosion” of larger, calcareous living things is now known to be a natural development from small, less mineralized Precambrian lifeforms, thanks to discoveries in recent decades.
@Bob Boder
“However the Big Bang theory doesn’t postulate that every possible observable fact is validation of the theory. If it was determined that the universe is not expanding or contracting the theory would most certainly be thrown out.
However in AGW theory even if the earth cools this is proof it’s warming.”
While you’ve made a key point here – about how one would go about falsifying the big bang theory – at least in principle – I think there is a second confusion here that needs to be unpacked. There is AGW theory as imagined by advocates, and AGW theory as promulgated by scientists. Of course there are scientists who are also advocates. (These are the particularly annoying ones such as Mann, Trenberth, Gavin Schmidt, et al.)
AGW theory as science can be disproven, Although this is not simple to do, just as big bang theory is not simple to disprove. AGW theory as ideology, of course, cannot be disproven, in the same sense that something like Freudian Psychoanalytics cannot be disproven.
@Bob Boder
“Now try heating it in the pot with no burner and only an increasing in the co2 content in your room you can go to 100 percent co2 if you want. Heck I’ll let you turn on a light try that. See how long it takes to heat up and get back to me.”
Unfortunately none of your examples make sense, because the sun doesn’t switch off, etc. The example I provided was at least analogous to something happening to the Earth.
Now, I’m happy to chat with you about this if you’re being genuine, but if you’re just going to throw out random thoughts for the sake of being argumentative, then the discussion ends here and I stop reading your posts, as I’ve done with a few others here. But I’m happy to keep chatting if you’re prepared to be serious.