Three Questions for Denuding Complexity, story submitted by Megg
The first paper I ever wrote was titled: Three Questions for Denuding Complexity. How to determine your own basis for thought, your own way of thinking? How do you approach a problem? Are you aware of how you do it?
If you ponder these questions, which seldom happens, you will find yourself in obscure territories walking in a sucking slough of your super-ego. Your, mine, everybody’s thinking is a cocktail of upbringing and genes. Neither all the ingredients, nor their side effects, are evident.
Let us assume you have been brought up in a confessional (Christian) milieu. Your deity, whom you honour and respect, is a creator and rule setter. You will use concepts like ‘systems’ and ‘natural laws’. Your role as a scientist is to discover these laws: laws you know exist but are still unknown. You know there exist explanatory-descriptive models. If you are successful you will find good models, if not you will find not so good ones. “There is no other explanation but X”, is a valid argument in your reasoning.
Today X can stand for say a miracle or a CO2 hazard. There is a Vatican-appointed Miracle Commission composed of theologians and scientific experts. For a healing event to be graded as a (medical) miracle, it has to be spontaneous, instantaneous and complete. Doctors have to be able to say, “We don’t have any natural explanation for what happened.”
“There is no other explanation for global warming than carbon dioxide” said Professor Erland Källén (International Panel of Climate Change; IPCC) when he spoke for the Swedish Statistical Society in Stockholm 2007. I know, because I was there.
What about these Xs, and how do we counter them? All we have to do is to scrutinize extremely rare events around the world. If we consider all the UN member states and in each of them observe climate related events like droughts, hurricanes, early spring, lack of ice, lack of snow, snow in extremes, severe storms, floods, heat waves, peak temperatures, precipitation, forest fires, early and late migrating bird patterns, first occurrence of national plants, sea level rise, hottest month(s), number of sand-flies, and, furthermore, define an extremely rare event as one which happens once per generation, the probability that there wouldn’t be an X in your country is 50%. (Generation = 50 years, probability of rare event = constant.) The probability that an X wouldn’t occur in any of the UN member states is 0%. (There are 193 UN member states). In other words there is no chance that there wouldn’t be many X events every year.
Yet the UN-appointed IPCC, whose aim is to assess scientific information relevant to human-induced climate change, will take the opportunity to claim that this very X event is an indication/proof of climate change. At least the mainstream media will! An Airbus passenger plane had to make an emergency landing on the Hudson River. Soon after take-off both its engines died after it flew into a flock of birds. Global warming had disrupted the birds’ migratory patterns increasing the likelihood of such incidents, it was claimed. Yet another example: wild mountain goats in the Italian Alps have become significantly smaller over the past few decades in response to a warming climate, scientists reported recently.
John Paul II earned his sainthood this year. The first miracle, which paved the way for his sainthood, happened in France. The recovery in 2005 from Parkinson’s disease by a nun, Sister Marie Simon-Pierre, after praying for the late Pope’s “intercession” , had no medical explanation, the Catholic Church maintains. The second miracle took place in Costa Rica. (You need two miracles to become a saint.)
These examples are so called evidence-based conclusions. Billions of people consider The Catholic Church and UN/IPCC as the highest authorities in Morality and Science. Yet their conclusions and evidence are (mostly) nonsense. But who wants to stand up and point out facts when Heaven and Grants are at stake?
You have just finished reading ‘Three Questions for Denuding Complexity’, a Standpoint on Science and Climate Change.
Two more Standpoints on Science will follow.
‘Validity, Reliability and Orwell 1992’
‘Models and the Complexity Paradox’
Meanwhile, some suggested Google Search studies: epistemology, methodology, ontology, paradigm, positivism, combinatorics, independent events, IPCC aims, Church Miracles.
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“There is no other explanation for global warming than carbon dioxide” said Professor Erland Källén (International Panel of Climate Change; IPCC)
Ah, the slightly veiled argument from ignorance.
I’ve noticed that many CAGW alarmists use just about every logical fallacy.
The argument from authority is a favorite.
LOL
“Billions of people consider The Catholic Church and UN/IPCC as the highest authorities in Morality and Science”
LOL
The U.N is nothing but a congregation of franchises of the Rothchild and Vatican web of corporate demon-cratic tyrannical administrations.
But then again, maybe its all in my head right?
btw: What happened to Joseph Ratzinger? they sure made him disappear real quick.
Yallop has quite a bit to say about Ratzinger in his book, ‘In The Name Of God’.
On May 7th there is going to be an election in the UK
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/green-party/11456572/Rodents-to-be-given-human-rights-under-Green-Party-plans.html
This is not a joke, they’re deadly serious
Remember this?
I was raised Roman Catholic. Nuns in grade school. Jesuits in high school. I am not a Roman Catholic now. But I am most definitely a Christian. I say this because I do get a bit tired of people implying that Rome and the Pope speak for or represent all of Christianity or what a Christian believes. They don’t. Just some.
So was I. In fact, I believe The Pope/Vatican are the antithesis of Christ. Trust me….The Vatican doesn’t speak for anyone but themselves.
In my experience, people who equate the Vatican with Christianity were raised outside of Christianity.
The question remains, how probable is the existence of an “almighty” (or even moderately influential) Christian God if He allows a Pope and a CC to exist and speak in His name? The holocaust taught every sane person that the Jewish God cannot logically exist, or the Jews are at least nobody’s “chosen people” in any meaningful sense. The Pope continually disproves Christ and Christianity in a similar way. Either God and Christ are non-existent or feeble (in which case we can make better use of our limited time on Earth than worship them and obey their laws), or they are evil and enjoy the Pope’s performance now as He did the Fuehrer’s then (in which case anybody should be ashamed who does not fight Him and His followers relentlessly).
cz, there is such a thing as freedom of will. People, Man, tends to blame God for what they perceive as injustice. That injustice usually involves something men did to other men and the thought “God should have stopped it!”
In other words, people blame God for the outcome of something they never let Him have a say in. They didn’t know or actually believe what He said.
He’s been on a rescue mission for quite some time.
(Sorry, Caleb. I’m going to link again.)
I’m a slow typist. That’s one reason many of my comments here tend to be short. But I took the time and thought to make this long comment on Caleb’s blog. I ask that you don’t respond there. Caleb has been gracious enough to allow my comments to remain but it is his “living room”. I regret I wasn’t clearer on some points. And being a slow typist, I likely wouldn’t have the time to respond in any depth there or here. I offer it as “food for thought”.
(You may have to scroll down a bit to get to all my comments.)
https://sunriseswansong.wordpress.com/2013/07/11/attention-surplus-disorder-part-two/
Now I can answer those three (3) questions because my “methods” for doing said have not changed in many, many years, ….. the nurturing of which I will attribute to my Father’s unbiased “common sense” reasoning of most life experiences.
IMHO, …. “a sucking slough of a super-ego” …. is usually always the result of a nurtured personal bias that one refuses to address the truth, falsity or practicality of.
Cheers
The statement “a sucking slough of your super-ego” reminds me of a statement in a reference from long ago, describing the process as wallowing in “the quagmire of marginal statistics.”
Separately, William Feller touched on some of these points: “. . .an enormous price to pay for the fancied advantage that his final conclusions might be sustained by some mystical statistical court of appeals.”
“Are life sciences overawed by statistics?” Scientific Research, February 3, 1969
“wallowing in “the quagmire of marginal statistics.””
I liked that ……. and will save it for someone special.
That is the definition of a miracle. If it obeys the natural laws of the universe then there is no evidence of the lawmaker making an exception.
That is not the same. That is arguing for the ultimate truth not being the lawmaker – rather the ultimate truth being CO2 rules, OK!/
The two cases are not the same.
The first case is coherent as the lawmaker is intelligent and able to intervene. (If the lawmaker exists). It does not overrule the way the world works usually – it just accepts that our understanding of the world is less than the ultimate truth.
The second case allows an inanimate object (the spectroscopic properties of CO2) to be the ultimate cause of all and any observed changes. It’s just old-fashioned idolatry.
Too simplistic to be true. And the first crime against morality because it allows all others. It demands all others.
@Warrenlb
The carrying capacity of the ocean is not a proof of it actually carrying additional heat. I am still looking for the 90% stat you quoted. How did you quantify that heat percentage? How did you measure the energy coming into the atmosphere and then how did you measure it moving out of the atmosphere to anywhere? I am not saying that it might not have happened, just that you haven’t proven either the fact or the magnitude.
As you note, Trenebreth says 30% of Ocean heating. Source of the heating is not proven, nor (if we accept the existence of this deep heat) do Trenebreth, et al. explain how, if the heat were from the atmosphere, the heat was translocated to the depths without heating the layers above. One article does not prove a fact. There must be replication in science for us to say a study is true. Furthermore, the data has to be sufficient for the proof. We don’t have nearly that data set to cover the World Ocean at all depths.
You conveniently ignored the full sentence in my post, which goes on to say: “….and the oceans net heat
uptake since 1960 is around 20 times greater than that of the atmosphere (Levitus et al., 2005a). This large amount of heat, which has been mainly stored in the upper layers of the ocean, plays a crucial role in climate change, in particular variations on seasonal to decadal time scales.”
If y =20 X, then the ratio of y to (y+x) = 20/21 ~ 95%.
10-4, I’ll have to get back to you around the peak of solar cycle 25 and see how that’s workin’ for you.
Every living and not living thing plays a role in climate. You have only identified one factor with scant if any evidence of it’s having a “crucial” role. The “crucial” stuff is rhetoric, hyperbole, of zero scientific value.
Whats clownish is even idiots would be aware oceans covering most of the earth is a factor in climate. However for climate experts (aka dummies) the “crucial” ocean warming was only “discovered” when continually increasing CO2 apparently caused temperatures to flatten requiring another “crucial” theory to be formulated from the posterior of climate science.
except if we are accurate about sea level rise, rate of ice melt, and the already measured warming of the oceans thermal expansion then there isn’t room for more heat to be found in the ocean, and what is there isn’t enough to account for the fact it isn’t warming at expected rates.
“To arrive at their conclusion, the JPL scientists did a straightforward subtraction calculation, using data for 2005-2013 from the Argo buoys, NASA’s Jason-1 and Jason-2 satellites, and the agency’s Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) satellites. From the total amount of sea level rise, they subtracted the amount of rise from the expansion in the upper ocean, and the amount of rise that came from added meltwater. The remainder represented the amount of sea level rise caused by warming in the deep ocean.
The remainder was essentially zero. Deep ocean warming contributed virtually nothing to sea level rise during this period. ”
also
“The temperature of the top half of the world’s oceans — above the 1.24-mile mark — is still climbing, but not fast enough to account for the stalled air temperatures. ”
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2014/06oct_abyss/
At the risk of rotten tomatoes, I want to wade in here on the issue of faith and science – where they join and where they dispute one another. First of all, I was raised Catholic and am now a Presbyterian (the people of the middle way). With this background and a bit of an engineering temperament, I can jump from one to another.
Here it is in general – Bentley’s way. I accept God and Jesus Christ on faith. I believe there is a God who put things together. I also believe he placed humankind as stewards on Earth. OK so far? Science to me is our search for how He did that. Skeptical thinking in science is the close examination of pronouncements of other human beings. For example the hypothesis that “The sky is blue because God colored it that way” quickly falls from the simple to the complex – light being reflected and absorbed. Mom’s bedtime story becomes a captivating field of study.
Yes, my faith colors my thinking – and my interaction with others. Even so I can be comfortable in both worlds because at the same time I’m learning about this wonderfully complex world we live on, I’m also coming to appreciate the complex being who set it in motion.
If I’m wrong, and there is no such being as a god and this is all a marvelous coincidence then I’ve probably not lost a lot and have even provided some employment for persons who couldn’t get a real job. If God does exist, then I’ve come to know Him (Her – It) more completely.
By the way in the ancient languages God is neuter as a spirit – the use of He and Him is just a linguistic tool.
“At my age, I’m willing to accept some things on faith” – Marcus Brody – Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade”.
Mike
Thanks for that comment.
Wrong. In the ancient languages God was, at various points in the old testament, an “Us”, a female, and/or a male. But the words that referred to aspects of God were not at all, not ever, genderless. Indeed, God did not have a name. Only his/her/their attributes had names.
I am not schooled in ancient languages, but in English it should not be a She God. There is already a word for this, “Goddess”. Or try a gender-neutral laguage, Hungarian for example.
Pamela:
God most certainly does have a name (or names) in the OT. Since Hebrew was written only with consonants, it’s YHWH. Its vowels are conjectural. The chief and later only God of the Hebrews could also be called Elohim, but that’s a plural form used as a singular. El could be considered another His names. When Moses asked His name, God replied, “I am that I am.”
Judaism recognizes seven names:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Names_of_God_in_Judaism#Seven_names_of_God
He can be referred to as Adonai, ie Lord, but that’s not His name. Other of His epithets are Elyon (Most High) and Shaddai.
There is not a single instance in the OT of YHWH’s being referred to as “she”. Hebrew doesn’t have a neuter grammatical gender, so the only pronoun choices on offer are he or she.
Regarding plurality. “El” is singular, “Elohim” is plural. Yahweh (minus vowels of course) is from a later language and interprets the older “Elohim” (which itself comes from an even earlier word from the Anunnaki language referring to plural gods) in a singular sense. This change likely was made as the earliest forms of Hebrew religious beliefs turned from the notion of “Gods” to “God”. It represents two phases of belief and practice within early Hebrew peoples. Echoes are still in the original old testament languages and especially in the dichotomous (and even more than “di”) nature of old testament writings. There are many scholarly articles on this issue that rarely see the light of day among Christian churches or Hebrew synagogues. The debate rages today.
Pamela I lived for 25 years with the Swazi people. All their pronouns are gender-less. That includes the proper name for God, ‘Mvelincanthi’ which means literally ‘the One who came first’ but translates as ‘The Pre-Existent’ or perhaps the One who was, before all that is.
Western Sociologists have tried to make much of the ‘maleness’ of God for agenda-driven reasons inspired by the historical inequality of men and women in religious teaching up to the 1850’s. It’s over. They can relax. Get on with being equal. (The Swazis are matriarchal).
The Western preoccupation with removing the letters ‘man’ from titles is based on ignorance. ‘Man’ means ‘person’ and comes from ‘manus’ (hand) not ‘male’. Farmhand, deckhand, ‘Bring a couple of hands to help with the horses’. That doesn’t mean ‘bring a couple of males’.
The idea of “genderless” is a later development. The earliest mentions of god-like beings had gender. Some were both male and female. Many were female. But none were genderless. My opinion is that great effort is made to scrub gender from deity. Just to keep feathers from being ruffled. And mostly to scrub out the idea of a powerful deity having a female gender.
I believe in God.
I doubt ALL the religion I’ve been taught.
What entity would be alone, always without the company if Its own kind.
That situation is un-natural.
So I deduce God is a Them, not a He or a She.
An interesting deduction Rob. However, the “Other Them” would, in my mind, have both male and femaleness. Heck, there is even a fish species that yearly has one of its very female fish, turn male, fertilize fish eggs, and then turn back into a female fish.
Crispin,
The etymology of ‘man’ has nothing to do with the Latin ‘manus’.
Man hasn’t always been the word to denote a male human but the Germanic languages all had such a word and ‘man’ has been that for 1,000 years.
I don’t know why so many are keen to suggest that men have not been pushing women around for centuries.
It’s getting harder to do that nowadays. I know. I’ve tried!
mebbe
You no doubt have heard of manual labour. It means ‘by hand’ not ‘by male’. The root is ‘manus’. Hand. Manufacture, manipulate, manifest (v), manoeuvre…
Chairman is gender neutral. It means the guiding/controlling hand, not the guiding/controlling male. The correct appellations are Mr Chairman and Madame Chairman. Not the PC ‘Madame Chair’.
People have a hand in things not a male in things.
A bizarre issue is that of ‘woman’ which was decried as ‘sexist’ because there was ‘man and woman’ as if a woman was a sub-man. How woefully wrong. The correct word for a single male is weaman and a single female is woman. Man is gender neutral. There are many, many examples of this in English. A seaman can be female.
The prefix ‘wea’ meaning ‘male’ survives in ‘weapon’ where ‘pon’ means ‘tool’.
[Thank you. .mod]
Crispin,
I’m having a little trouble following you here.
Yes, ‘manual’ comes from Latin ‘manus’ and so does manipulate, but that doesn’t mean that every English word that starts with ‘man…’ derives from ‘manus’.
‘Mandible’ comes from Latin ‘mandere’, to chew; the Romans did not chew with their hands.
‘Mantle’ was a Latin coat, not a glove for the hand.
The Sanskrit ‘manuh’ is a cognate of our modern word ‘man’. It pre-dates Latin by a good bit.
No doubt, ‘man’ was, and continues to be, used for men and women in English. As with all language, context is crucial to meaning implied and inferred and those two are often not the same animal.
Initially, my quarrel was with your assertion that ‘man’ derives from ‘manus’. It doesn’t, and drawing lines to connect words based on the letters they contain is akin to AGW wizardry.
An example of this is your “prefix” ‘wea-‘.
‘Wea’ isn’t a prefix. It’s not a morpheme, either. It’s three letters in a row.
Weather is not ‘wea’-‘ther’.
‘Wealth’ is not ‘wea’-lth.
As for ‘weapon’, it’s not composed of two distinct morphemes, either. Its origin is Germanic. There’s nothing to suggest that the old word ‘wer’ had anything to do with it.
I’m curious to know what language has ‘pon’ for a tool.
Look, we haven’t even got close to the gender of deities!
mebbe
Regarding the word Weapon and weaman, these are not very disputable as they are English words and that is what they mean. The fact that ‘woman’ has been retained is I suppose an accident of linguistic history.
You are of course quite right about all words beginning with ‘man’ not descending from ‘manus (hand).
However making the case to showing that ‘man’ is generic, not ‘male’, I think there is enough evidence (and lots of people have written about it) that we can accept the fundamental difference between ‘male’ and let’s say, chessmen, or farmhand which are decidedly neutral.
The old English word ‘mann’ means ‘adult human’.
http://www.englandandenglishhistory.com/english-social-history/anglo-saxon-england-449-ad-to-1066-ad
They distinguished between weapon men and wife men, i./e weamen and women. Their substantial ancient equality was crushed by the Normans who brought Catholicism and enforced, once again, a Roman view on England (‘Ing-land’).
Fortunately here at WUWT these matters are not important.
Something to keep in mind is that in many languages a noun being “masculine” or “feminine” does not mean it’s “male” or “female”. In Spanish a toaster is feminine. (I seriously doubt that is referring to old toasters having hot flashes.8-)
For those that speak English such rules are difficult to grasp but that is the rule of those languages.
Greek, Hebrew and Aramaic followed those rules.
God is spirit. (John 4:24) Spirit has no form to actually be a “male” or a “female”.
So…if the person who delivers my mail is a girl, would she be a Femailman? 😎
(Sorry!)
“I’ve probably not lost a lot and have even provided some employment for persons who couldn’t get a real job.”
You’re presumably talking about some priests and the vast majority of climate scientists.
Modern, idiosyncratic versions of Christianity are, indeed, a far cry from the orthodoxies of previous times.
Thank goodness!
They’re also very different from all the other religions that we’re aware of, which do not seem to allow for a similar evolution of interpretation.
It is always surprising to me that both Christians and a good number of non-religious people offer ‘science’ as an alternative to religion.
Rejecting the bizarre representations of the creation of the universe that are found in religious texts does not automatically come with an embracing of some other explanation.
I can safely say that I have not the foggiest clue how everything comes to be and I’m pretty sure that nobody else does, either.
It’s also true that there’s nothing appealing about a deity that insists on grovelling gratitude from his creations at the risk of spending eternity in misery. It’s not attractive and it’s not likely; in fact, it seems quite disrespectful to the grand master to impute such petty human attributes to its being.
If I took Pascal’s wager seriously for one nanosecond, I’d be converting to Islam, ‘cos that’s one creator you really don’t want to get on the bad side of.
mebbe, my brother used to teach a course titled ‘The history of Heaven and Hell’. The burning hell of contemporary Christianity is quite a recent invention.
A friend once pointed out to me that in cold places hell is cold, in hot places hell is hot. In short, the grass is always greener…
Crispin,
There are numerous references to eternal punishment in the New Testament that involve fire and torment.
The Koran is completely unambiguous; infidels will be cast into the fire in most chapters of that esteemed book.
And it is fire they talk about, not ice.
The non-Abrahamic religions are a completely different kettle of fish. The cycle of rebirth in Hinduism is not portrayed as desirable.
mebbe, perhaps you would enjoy the course on the history of hell through the ages. I found it most enlightening. Fire, as you point out, is popular in the Middle East. Not so much in the far north.
Hades was the smouldering garbage dump 2000 years ago. Popular imagery changes with time. Paradise Lost cast the current image in stone, it seems.
Good questions to ponder, but how much can we expect to uncover given the fish doesn’t know it’s in water.
Of course he could have said we just don’t know.
Fat chance of that.
Yet another post that fails to make a damn point as it meanders randomly from here to there. If there were such an award for posts like this one given by our host once a year for the most awful, odiferous, offering, my vote would be this odd piece.
To be clear, the post was not written by our host, but I sure would like to see that bottom of the barrel post award to be given by our host. It might make people think twice before hitting the submit button.
Oh come on.
It’s not like it’s claiming CO2 condenses out in Antarctica. We’ve had bad posts in the past.
This is just unscientific… that’s fine for some. Not everything that is interesting is “science”.
Engage with it on its own terms or ignore it.
Hard times everywhere.
But it is still Saturday night !!
Slow nudes day, you think?
I’ll get excited about that when I see a post about how fire doesn’t melt steel, and therefore Halliburton did it on the grassy knoll. Barring that, meh.
Granted, it ‘s not about ‘some specific issue du jour’. I think it addresses something important: how we think and how we come to conclusions based on our thought processes.
Take, for example, confirmation bias. At best, it is the result of not realizing you’re looking for a predetermined result. At worse, it is purposely selecting and skewing data to support your predetermined result. But in both cases, the person exhibiting confirmation bias is ‘sure’ his methods are justified and beyond reproach. He’s ‘sure’ his results are beyond question and represent unassailable TRUTH. He’s ‘sure’ contrary and/or skeptical responses are baseless and even contemptible. Yet, he’s only fooling himself and it’s soon obvious to anyone who does not share the bias.
Whether or not this discussion belongs here is up to Anthony. There seem to be lots of specific technical issues discussed on WUWT. I see no downside to the occasional epistemological discussion like this.
Michael Wassil,
I think the worst is getting an answer and not trusting it because it’s exactly the answer you want, then spending an inordinate amount of time hunting for a mistake which isn’t there.
Brandon
Thats why your not a scientist
bob boder,
lol. Awareness of my own confirmation bias and diligence to the point of fault in rooting it out precludes that in your eyes? I think that says more of you, not me. But then, my prejudices are speaking to me quite loudly at the moment.
Pamela,
I agree. can’t figure out how this post fits in.
yup
[chortle]
There are many many christian prayer healing miracles that doctors can’t explain well documented over time, I have seen some myself. Your comparison is very poor and totally wrong. Praise the Good Lord that you are incorrect.
I’m not disagreeing with you, but I prefer my science in one place and religion in a completely separate place. We’re certainly in need of a miracle if we aren’t to be eventually ground under the bottomless-pit-funded AGW Bewegung. So whose intercession do we pray for, that’s the question. My candidate? Nikolai Vavilov.
As we look to the future over the next few decades, we will see some warming, or some cooling, or a continuation of the present flat line condition. Knowing for sure what will happen is beyond us at this time since we don’t really know exactly what makes the earth’s climate change.
What I can tell you is that CO2 has no warming effect at all. Its net effect is cooling. Further, the effect of CO2 is so darn small that it will be darn hard to prove it to be a warming agent or a cooling agent by observation and measurement. All belief in Jim Hansen’s model of the magic molecule driving earth’s climate is as bad as a cargo plane cult belief. Heck, even worse.
Pamela, I think that’s a bit harsh.
For me, it raised a very interesting question – how do you approach problem solving, and have you ever thought about it? True, it then meandered off into religiosity and such. But, it’s a very good question.
Having worked in high-pressure environments where I had to make quick decisions about things that I knew very little about (policy advice to senior politicians), I have pondered on this question.
It seems to me that there are three levels of understanding for making decisions.
The first is the quick scan, underpinned by past experience and knowledge. That is how we make most of our decisions. Nobody has the time or energy to research whether or not it is safe to cross the road right now.
The second is the informed decision, based on research (which might include asking friends and relatives). This encompasses decisions about what school you choose for your children, which insurer you patronise, and so on. But it is no help when you just want or need to cross the road.
The third is the deep research option, which hardly ever applies in real life. It is physically impossible to deeply research more than a very few topics, if that.
When I had to provide advice to a Minister, Premier or Prime Minister with a three hour deadline (for the boss to stake his/her reputation on in Parliament), one of the things I did was to start with the known. Write down the known, get it out of the way. The doubtful and unknown things could then be ranked and dealt with accordingly. I would work my way down the list in a hierarchy of reliability until time ran out. It worked pretty well.
In short, the best strategy (unless you have unlimited time and resources) is to start with the simple, and move towards the more complex if you can and want to. Mind you, as things get more complex, they raise more questions, so it soon becomes a bit of a quagmire. PhD territory. Interesting for specialists, but not very useful for decisionmaking in the real world.
It is even better when you can change past history, so that it agrees better with your predictions going forward.
It might even lead you to believe, that you can predict the future.
Now I don’t want to burst any bubbles (yes I do), but I imagine the variables in a horse race might be less than those She presents us with in the weather, yet nobody has figured out the ponies.
First things first.
It’s killing me.
I think one only needs one process and question to determine what, at the most fundamental level, one’s intellectual content is based on.
Just repeatedly apply the process of checking one’s premises and keep asking “What are my premises?” at level after deeper level of one’s intellectual content.
There will come, after numerous iterations, a point at which one must face the nature of one’s mind and of reality.
I leave you with a funny. Premises do tend to wander, though, if not critically viewed, as depicted here:
John
My way of thinking goes something like this:
1. I was told the way I ought to think as a child but found that it wasn’t very helpful: I was told to respect seniors but when I asked them questions they couldn’t answer them. Not wouldn’t, couldn’t. I didn’t find that something very worth respecting. But being in an extended family of teachers who treated everyone on earth as if they were in a classroom, I found it wise to tread a diplomatic line, in effect not thinking too much because the only result of thinking then was frustration, causing trouble and ‘breaking the rules’.
2. When I was 17 I went abroad for a year. For the first time, I had a teacher who DID answer questions, solve problems and help me to solve my own. I became able to detach my fears and misplaced emotions from problems, finding ways to break problems down and then to add back spirit and emotions when a certain level of mastery was achieved. I learned that, with this approach, you learned more in one year than you had done in a decade in the old school approach of trotting out things from books. Mistakenly, though, I wanted to believe that other people would be as good a teacher as the one I had found. So I avoided signals too often which would tell me that they were not.
3. When I was 24 I achieved intellectual mastery of academic biomedical literature despite not having had suitable teaching for 7 years. It was associated with fleeing from pain rather than joy at having achieved things. I found that it didn’t satisfy and the momentary feeling of transient satisfaction disappeared instantly, hardly worthy of the 7 years of suffering to get there. So deep down I realised there had to more to it than that.
4. When I was 25, I spent 4 months experiencing non-familial emotional nurturing. It provided the ability to absorb information in a closed system (how a ski resort ran, how its weather patterns presented themselves and how a tourist or ski operator could take advantage of them). I didn’t write anything down for 4 months, I simply absorbed everything, living day to day. Upon returning back to the UK, I wrote a document on a primitive Macintosh (the ones where you still used floppy disks!) which was a comprehensive treatise. I learned for the first time a new mode of learning: the Mozartian one of ‘writing a perfect synthesis straight off’. It wasn’t the first time and nor was it the only subject. The only rule I found was that it was something that you couldn’t do to order: when you were ready, you were ready and it just happened. You will have to have done some struggling at some stage in your life for you to be able to do that ever, but if you’ve done the work, then sooner or later, you can experience that ‘brain-dump’ approach to thinking.
5. In my late 20s and early 30s, I also learned that some folks respond to strong discipline, whereas I simply didn’t. I had challenges supervising someone who had played in the front row of a rugby scrum, because I wasn’t a natural sergeant major, which they would respond to. I realised this when I had supervised someone like me who I found easy to supervise. My natural supervision approach assumed people were hard working, intellectual, but maybe had fears about breaking problems down. Learning how to break problems down was one of my own great challenges, so teaching it was pretty easy once I’d solved it. For those who liked to break problems down themselves, perhaps in different ways to me, I wasn’t the right guy.
6. In my mid to late 30s, I realised that others wanted me to make deep recommendations in arenas where I had no knowledge. I thought that rather stupid, but life is sometimes bigger than you. I realised that I didn’t have methods to do that properly, so made sure I documented accurately what ‘experts’ said, knowing that I didn’t have the time to evaluate whether they were being truthful or not (I was a bioscientist, they were all metallurgists). It took me the best part of a decade to realise how to use the internet to achieve this, where I used WUWT as a proving ground to trigger those more expert than me to produce articles on subjects I wanted answers about. Sometimes, the questions a non-specialist ask can get to the heart of the matter, even if they themselves know that they can’t answer the question themselves. You learn that sometimes you will know better what isn’t true rather that what is true.
7. When I was 40, I realised that my approach to thinking assumed that everyone was as honorable as I was. I assumed that people wouldn’t live their lives hacking computers and seeing others as a free lunch, because to me that is anathema. I learned the hard way that that simply ain’t so. The CIA, MI6, many senior HEI officials, politicians, bankers, football clubs, the media etc do behave that way. Oh you won’t get them admitting it too easily, but you learn how they react to you writing nasty things about them on your PC but not sharing with anyone. If they weren’t reading it, they wouldn’t know you had written it. When they show that they do, you know they are hacking. Oh, maybe it won’t stand up in court, but it stands up in the court of truth, as opposed to the court of evidentiary proof. Your thinking mode changes again when you know that no privacy exists on this earth, certainly not in the virtual world of the internet.
8. Now I’m asking whether every chip produced by AMD, Intel and others has security-style bugs in them to allow owners to monitor everything going on on every computer in the world to order. I”m asking whether Microsoft/Apple inserts malware routines to hack computers and to cause everything to slow down ridiculously after two years. I’m asking why we create societies run by psychopaths. And I’m asking more than ever why Americans can’t be happy just living in the huge continent they already live in. I’m asking what it will take to make humankind see through the 20th century war propaganda approaches publicised by Goebbels but used, unfortunately, far too often, by ‘The West’.
Unlike most people I ‘knew’ aged 9 that there really wasn’t any difference at the most fundamental level about different ‘belief systems’ aka religions. It’s one reason why maybe my mind isn’t that of a scientist, since it’s better to be free of thoughts early on to allow testing of hypotheses without prejudice and I was apparently ‘knowing’ that which the great spiritual travellers of the 20th century had taken decades to achieve.
So my feeling is that I have the temperament of an engineer, spent years trying to acquire the mindset of a scientist and learned what religions were about as an adult without needing to believe in any of them per se. I have never been a member of the Freemasons!
There’s a hell of lot of other types of thinking vis a vis power, organisational structures, politics, motivational theory and military attitudes.
But as this is a science blog, I’ve shown one journey of how a thinking suite can evolve over 50 years. I’m sure it’s not the only one, the best one or even one to be called a model. It’s simply a data point……
@Glassman You said: “But the Book is God’s word. And as Wayne teaches, what isn’t there can’t be understood by man anyway.” What?! Let’s not put your ideas (or stereotypes) in my mouth. Lots of stuff is not in the Bible and not everything is explained there. Yes, there is a First Cause given and the cascade effects from that First Cause are NOT given or explained.
Nothing can be comprehensively understood. Therefore, especially in science, we make approximations and metaphors.
“The Book recounts everything knowable by its readers.” No, there are plenty of things knowable by the first and subsequent readers that are not covered in the Old/New Testaments. One of these is logic, such deducing from someone’s actual statements true conclusions. Christians (among religious people) simply state the obvious — to know a radically Other Being necessitates metaphors. To know the creation made by that Being means humility to know our finite limits of understanding and therefore recognizing that anything we say about complex systems is fallible, contingent and an incomplete model.
Inevitable: Al Gore lands on presidential radar following Hillary Clinton’s political woes
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/5/inside-the-beltway-al-gore-on-presidential-radar/
Just call it Goretopia: While Hillary Rodham Clinton addresses multiple political challenges, the press continues to spiral off into speculation. Who is the Democratic standard bearer should she decide against running for president?
In the last 24 hours, Al Gore has made the list. Now 66, the former vice president remains stubbornly active in global warming issues; he is, in fact, going to Iowa — but not for campaign reasons. He’s teaching a climate “leadership” workshop in Cedar Rapids. All that aside, there is momentum building here as Mrs. Clinton’s complications increase. More succinct are these headlines: “With Hillary imploding, could Al Gore ride to the rescue?” (HotAir); “As Hillary Clinton wallows in scandal, desperate eyes turn to — Al Gore?” (Examiner.com); Rush Limbaugh even warned his listeners that Mr. Gore could now be “the Democratic savior of 2016.”
Yes, well. Mr. Gore has done many things since he left the White House. He’s been the climate alarmist for better or worse, a now and then media mogul, and lately, a music producer. He became a vegan. He’s been out of office longer than Jeb Bush, though he has remained in the public eye, authoring a new book and making multiple, cause-driven appearances. Yes, the hashtag #RunAlRun has now appeared on Twitter.
Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/mar/5/inside-the-beltway-al-gore-on-presidential-radar/#ixzz3TkIlGaML
Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter
Leadership workshop?
Gore is always figuring out new ways to make a buck on climate.
Got to give it to him, morality and ethics aside he is a creative business man.
@george e. smith
I agree with your understanding of the workings of Science and the mathematical models and theories employed. You seem to have misread my comment.
I didn’t saying anything about “common sense”. Nor did I place upon you a religious encumbrance. I was responding to the myth that religious people are inherently simplistic and biblicistic in their approach to science. If you hold to a belief of the stability and predicability of the universe being self-evident, I accept your faith-statement without calling it a “religious encumbrance”.
Every person doing science begins with pre-suppositions (aka faith-statements) [see Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Herman Dooyeweerd]. If I defend my pre-suppositions from being derided by simplistic and simpletonian myth-making about my religion I do not see how I am encumbering you in any way.
Many Christians practice science on the basis of a biblically informed understanding of knowledge and the universe. This does not make them less “scientific”. If you need to peruse a list of such scientists please see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Christian_thinkers_in_science. However, just to save some time, suggest meditating on the euphoniously named Joseph Priestly (1733–1804) or perhaps Freeman Dyson http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson#Science_and_religion.
warrenlb
March 7, 2015 at 12:50 pm
@Aphan
You said: “The planet exists in an open system, not a greenhouse”.
All true for a glass enclosed greenhouse structure used for growing plants, but has nothing to do with the very different Greenhouse Effect operating in Earth’s upper troposphere:
========================
Where did that dumb idea come from, warren?
“Already the changes in the atmosphere are thought to have changed the balance of incoming and outgoing energy, holding in infrared radiation the way the glass of a greenhouse does.”
– James Gleick
http://www.nytimes.com/1985/05/12/weekinreview/ideas-trends-continued-a-dire-long-range-forecast.html
Your reference doesn’t go to my point, obvious to anyone with an iota of comprehension of Physics, that the absorption and reradiation of IR back to Earth by GHGs is an entirely different phenomenon than the trapping of heated air in an earth-bound Greenhouse.
For anyone to claim they are the same phenomenon of Physics is as Gates puts it, Willful ignorance.
As someone else has put it, when the hole gets to be over the top of your head, you need to stop digging.
warrenlb,
What’s … somewhat … amusing is how not much has changed since 1985 on that score, despite the fact that since then the so-called “greenhouse” effect has delivered as predicted 100 years earlier in 1896.
Alx,
I keep a shovel handy if you’d like to borrow it, but your hands appear to be doing a find job of it as is.
Gates says:
…since then the so-called “greenhouse” effect has delivered as predicted 100 years earlier in 1896.
Which ‘prediction’ would that be? Arrhenius’ 6º+ prediction, which is the one alarmists always hang their hats on?
Or his later, drastically revised prediction of ≈1+º?
The alarmist contingent always ignores his revised prediction. That’s because they cherry-pick only those things that support their confirmation bias.
…18 years and counting. You’re gonna need that shovel.
warrenlb spouts:
…anyone with an iota of comprehension of Physics…
Well, that certainly eliminates warrenlb.
dbstealey,
I’m not sure which part of 1896 you didn’t understand: http://www.globalwarmingart.com/images/1/18/Arrhenius.pdf
From Table VII, his estimate was 4.96 K/2xCO2 at low latitudes, 6.1 K/2xCO2 at high latitudes.
I guess that makes the IPCC not alarmist then, because their low-end estimate is 1.5 K/2xCO2 and their high end is 4.5 K/2xCO2. By the way, your “drastically revised prediction” is laughably misquoted, something that “skeptics” like you are “always” doing: http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/Arrhenius%201906,%20final.pdf
Irony. Come back when you’ve actually read Arrhenius (1906) and can quote his proper revised ECS estimate for a doubling of CO2.
To help you dig your head out of that hole you’ve got your head stuck in, ostrich-boi. Funny how you “always forget” the two previous 40-ish year “pauses” …
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MW_NJp28Udc/VNS3EAEqpOI/AAAAAAAAAUs/hjhuLZFkdoM/s1600/hadcrut4%2Bhiatuses.png
… followed by periods of warming such that the subsequent pause ends higher than the previous one began.
Yes, Gates, there are prior pauses — and there are prior step changes showing repeated warming episodes, too. But none of them can be shown to be caused by human emissions. So rather than your chart supporting your argument, the charts you posted debunk your argument. This debate began regarding causation. But as usual, it has strayed far afield. That’s not surprising, since there is no solid evidence showing that CO2 is the cause of ∆T.
Next, the IPCC most certainly is alarmist! It’s right there in their remit: they were told to go and find that human activity causes global warming, so everything is geared toward that. Everything they ‘find’ seems to show AGW. Too bad they can’t measure it.
I really don’t know why you’re always arguing. It’s so easy to run circles around your fake ‘logic’, that I would guess you’d be too embarrassed to continue.
But then, we know you argue from ego and vanity; not from logic, or the Scientific Method, or the Null Hypothesis. Because if you did, you would have given up a long time ago. The best that can be said of your attempts to convince skeptics is that warrenlb makes you look good. But then, warrenlb makes everyone look good by comparison.
So… Eighteen years, two months, twenty-three days, and counting… But still no global warming. Watts Up With That?
dbstealey,
Do you even read this blog?
There are probably many intelligent people in religion and in AGW movement who understand you cannot prove a negative and the burden of proof is on the the person making a claim. Regardless they still use this dishonest line of reasoning to sway the many who do not understand. In other words the “proving a negative” trick for time immemorial has been an effective propaganda tool. ~ Alx, http://wattsupwiththat.com/2015/03/07/three-questions-for-denuding-complexity-a-standpoint-on-science-and-climate-change/#comment-1878061
Notice also how you failed to address this falsehood of yours: Which ‘prediction’ would that be? Arrhenius’ 6º+ prediction, which is the one alarmists always hang their hats on? Or his later, drastically revised prediction of ≈1+º?
Let’s see what Arrhenius really said, shall we? http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/Arrhenius%201906,%20final.pdf
In a similar way, I calculate that a reduction in the amount of CO2 by half, or a gain to twice the amount, would cause a temperature change of –1.5 degrees C, or + 1.6 degrees C, respectively.
So that’s whence the “drastically revised prediction of ≈1+º” I suppose, eh? Didn’t bother to read any further, eh?
In these calculations, I completely neglected the presence of water vapour emitted into the atmosphere. This acts in two ways: In part, the water vapour reduces the radiation in the same way as does the CO2, whereby the absorption of CO2 comprises a larger fraction of the earth’s radiation than if the water vapour would be removed from the atmosphere. In part, the temperature causes an increase in water vapour emit ted into the atmosphere, on account of an increase in the quantity of CO2, with the subsequent rise in temperature.
I’ll be damned, Al Gore didn’t invent water vapor feedback just so he and George Soros could make a lot of moooooolah! Let’s skip ahead to the good part:
For this disclosure, one could calculate that the corresponding secondary temperature change, on a 50% fluctuation of CO2 in the air, is approximately 1.8 degrees C, such that the total temperature change induced by a decrease in CO2 in the air by 50% is 3.9 degrees (rounded to 4 degrees C).
Or, conversely, a 100% increase of CO2 in the air is (drumroll) 3.9 degrees (rounded to 4 degrees C). So from 6 to 4 is the number you’re looking for, and I’ll be darned if 4 degrees isn’t right there in the presently published range, albeit still on the highish side, as 3 degrees per doubling is more or less canonical.
Ergo, Arrhenius is more “warmist” than present day “alarmists” and you have been caught out spreading false information but not copping to it when called on it.
Gates,
Your rhetorical tap-dancing got old a long time ago. You throw out something written by another reader, then ask if I read this site. Double Strawman.
Actually, I do read comments, and I can do the same thing if I want to post lame arguments. You wrote:
I’m just about done for the day
But not really, eh? You’re never done, and you make Sisyphus look like an amateur. With your incessant nitpicking comments here, and on other blogs, do you have any kind of a life? Doesn’t look like it.
The basic argument over MMGW was resolved years ago. If global warming was still rising, you might have an argument. But global warming stopped many years ago.
So you’ve got nothin’. Except your mental fixation.
dbstealey,
I’ve told you before, this here is a tango, darlin’.
When you’re not lying through your teeth you mean:
Which ‘prediction’ would that be? Arrhenius’ 6º+ prediction, which is the one alarmists always hang their hats on?
Or his later, drastically revised prediction of ≈1+º?
When what the man actually wrote is: http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/Arrhenius%201906,%20final.pdf
For this disclosure, one could calculate that the corresponding secondary temperature change, on a 50% fluctuation of CO2 in the air, is approximately 1.8 degrees C, such that the total temperature change induced by a decrease in CO2 in the air by 50% is 3.9 degrees (rounded to 4 degrees C).
4 – 1 = 3, which is a pretty “drastic” prevarication in my book. Any time you want to stop dancing around like a june bug on a hot skillet and own up to spreading misinformation would be a good one.
Why do people think glass holds in infrared radiation? Glass is a pretty good conductor of heat and has a very high emissivity, above 0.9. Even shiny glass is a powerful emitter of IR. People should look stuff up more.
Even ‘low E glass’ is a poor retainer of heat. A double paned low E glass window has an insulation value of about R4.
One of the great failings within the skeptical community is the lack of the ability to easily investigate claims made about evidence of climate change. For example the claim made about the goats getting smaller. What is needed is for example an application on ones computer that can be used to visualize all environmental considerations of such a claim. What would that look like? It shouldn’t look like the following:
See a claim. Maybe it scrolled by on a news header on a news channel or it’s a headline in a newspaper. Or maybe its a claim from the top scientists of Environment Canada while being interviewed from the top news caster in the billion dollar per year tax funded CBC while sitting in front of millions of dollars worth of computers in the offices of Environment Canada with meteorological employees staring at monitors full of graphics. And what does the scientist have to say? He waves his hands and declares climate change is real. No utilization of all the computing power and expertise of presenting data is used, just a few words and relying on claims to “authority”.
Try to research a claim. Google it. Wade through hundreds of pages of hits.
What I usually do is just wait till something shows up on WUWT or one of the other few sites I regularly visit. Then I read through the posted article. And if it doesn’t show up on a skeptical blog? I don’t follow up on a claim.
What I am hoping to be able to do in the near future: Simple version: Use an application specifically designed to run natively on my computer and specifically for climate science related research. And so, that is what I am working on.
Back to the goats. Using the climate app, you can browser through a geographical representation of where the goats live, view data in eloquent ways, of temperature and other environmental conditions throughout time.
I have just completed over 5 years of thinking about the climate question on a daily basis. I have recently finished some statistical courses and have resumed a multi-year study of computer modeling, essentially “The Finite Element Method”. I have decades of experience in the computer sciences, 10 years full time drawing electrical schematics for high tech industries. I am going to make the app happen. I am going to make it freely available. And we are going to win, with data and facts; and better presentation of these.
Next time it will be a claim of something else getting bigger – weeds, for example. Good luck with your encyclopedic application of all living things.
It is easy to come with a claim based on a small sample. Or not a small sample. Look at what is happening to salt or cholesterol dietary recommendations. Or a power line scare, or a cellphone radiation. It ia a duty of a claimant to prove their case; it is not my duty to disprove it. The rule is CONSIDERED UNPROVEN UNTIL PROVEN BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT.
Religion and AGW both have dimwits who actually believe the rule is CONSIDERED PROVEN UNTIL UNPROVEN.
There are probably many intelligent people in religion and in AGW movement who understand you cannot prove a negative and the burden of proof is on the the person making a claim. Regardless theystill use this dishonest line of reasoning to sway the many who do not understand.
In other words the “proving a negative” trick for time immemorial has been an effective propaganda tool.
garymount,
There are so many specious, false claims, that skeptics get overwhelmed. It’s a giant pile of horse manure, so all we can do is counter the most egregious examples of their nonsense.
dbstealey,
Quite possibly the truest thing I’ve ever seen you write.
Quite possibly the truest thing I’ve ever seen you write.
Everything I write is true. And as everyone knows, I was referring to the repeated, incessant, and often overwhelming false claims that the climate alarmist crowd dumps here…
…well, maybe everyone except Gates — unless he’s had a long overdue epiphany.
dbstealey,
Here’s what you say about Svante Arrhenius (1906):
Which ‘prediction’ would that be? Arrhenius’ 6º+ prediction, which is the one alarmists always hang their hats on? Or his later, drastically revised prediction of ≈1+º?
What Arrhenius actually wrote in 1906: http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/Arrhenius%201906,%20final.pdf
For this disclosure, one could calculate that the corresponding secondary temperature change, on a 50% fluctuation of CO2 in the air, is approximately 1.8 degrees C, such that the total temperature change induced by a decrease in CO2 in the air by 50% is 3.9 degrees (rounded to 4 degrees C).
… you’re highly unlikely to admit that you lied. Heck, I’d settle for, “whoops, I was mistaken”, but then that would falsify “Everything I write is true”. Are you sure you don’t want to borrow my shovel?
Gates,
There’s nothing to ‘admit’ to.
I said 1+º. You said 1.8º. You are so desperate to quibble that you cherry-pick whatever comment you Believe will support your True Belief, that you latch on to any factoid you believe will make your case. But you are only quibbling.
So quibble away, Gates, and ignore all the comments in your link, like: I calculate that a reduction in the amount of CO2 by half, or a gain to twice the amount, would cause a temperature change of – 1.5 degrees C, or + 1.6 degrees C, respectively, and the fact that water vapor is still an unknown, even as it was a century ago. And: Reference is made… regarding the possibility of combining the carbon dioxide theory with geological facts. And so on. There was nothing conclusive then, and there is nothing conclusive now. Why do you think people are still arguing about Arrhenius? After more than a century, you would think the science would be settled. It isn’t.
And as usual, you are the King of the Nitpickers, with an Honorary Degree as Mr. Quibbler. But none of it matters, becaus as I keep reminding you: either you are correct, or Planet Earth is correct. But you can’t both be correct. My vote is with the planet.
And hey, how ’bout them *measurements* of AGW?
…Oh. Right. There aren’t any. A few months ago you made a lame attempt to claim [lie?] that there are empirical measurements acceptable to all sides in the debate, quantifying AGW. But after I set you straight several times, you ducked your head below the parapet and haven’t made that bogus claim [lie?] since.
You are right about one thing: I can make a misteak. I have before, and when I do I admit it — unlike the alarmist crowd. But those mistakes are not common, and in the end it always comes down to this: Planet Earth is busy debunking your belief system. Global warming has stopped. For how long, no one knows. Whether it will resume, no one knows. Or if it will decline into another great stadial… no one knows.
What we do know is that global warming has stopped, whether you are willing to admit it or not. But so far, your usual response isn’t promising.
dbstealey,
Read it again: http://www.friendsofscience.org/assets/documents/Arrhenius%201906,%20final.pdf
For this disclosure, one could calculate that the corresponding secondary temperature change, on a 50% fluctuation of CO2 in the air, is approximately 1.8 degrees C, such that the total temperature change induced by a decrease in CO2 in the air by 50% is 3.9 degrees (rounded to 4 degrees C).
“Read it again”?
When you start acknowledging the points I make repeatedly, you can give me homework assignments. Until then I have more important things to do. Like making a fool out of the clueless warrenlb.☺
I often wonder how many scientist types have ever cracked a philosophy or theology book. They should if they really want to develop their critical thinking skills. Philosophy and theology are all about trying to answer questions like, “why are we here”, “what is our purpose?”, and “why should I strive to do good?”. These are questions that science never tries to answer yet are fundamental questions. Until, when and if science answers these questions, seeking the answers can only be found in philosophy and theology. Are the philosophers and theologians right? Who knows? They all recognize that life is a mystery which they try to explain within our limited knowledge. Science still has a gazillion more mysteries to solve as to how life works. If anyone thinks our scientific knowledge is at a pinnacle, they are a fool. The one thing that philosophy and theology provides far better than science is a peace of mind and a comfort to the implacable questions. Having a belief and faith in something is not limited to religion. I have never seen a quark, yet I have a belief and faith that they exist. Both science and philosophy/theology are trying to solve mysteries. Where the mysteries overlap, sometimes they disagree and sometimes they agree. It is all a process in which we have a long, long ways to go and won’t be solved in your lifetime. There are many who need to suck it up and learn to enjoy the process instead of thinking that their belief system is right.
I wonder how many theology or philosophy types have ever cracked Feynman’s Lectures on Physics.
CG: good question. My experience is that all of my HS science teachers and about a quarter of my college science professors were Jesuits, who are required to attain a theology degree before getting a Masters or Ph.D. in some other field. So there is that group of theologians out there, but they may be a relatively small group compared to the entire theology/philosophy fields.
Well, the Father of the Big Bang was a Belgium French Jesuit priest who came to MIT to get his Ph.D.
After you get his name, Lemaitre (or Le Maitre), translated to English = The Master. Beats Feynman.
warrenlb, you said up thread
“The evidence for AGW is not extreme weather events, but rather the warming of the earth”
I asked you:
What warmed the earth from 1900 to 1940 ?
Did your cognitive dissonance get a bit scorched when you went near the question ?
Anyway, here it is again, for viewers to see that neither you nor your fellow cognitive dissonenti tag teamer will address it:
What warmed the earth from 1900 to 1940 ?
…. and when you’ve failed to answer that, could you please also fail to answer John Who’s question:
Or 1850 to 1900?
tick tock, tick tock
It seems you are focusing on variations of a few decades, meaningless to underlying climate forcing, vs the long term indisputable trend since 1880, overall the fastest rate of rise in millennia.
Tick tock…RING. (The alarm bells should be going off in your mind by now)
Warren pound
The IPCC disagrees with you. It limits possible AGW to post 1950. Previous warming trends are not attributed to AGW.
You need to get up to speed if you are going to blog here. Best go back to HotWhopper.
PhilinCA,
warrenlb doesn’t have a clue. Global T has been recovering since the LIA — and the step trends are all the same, whether CO2 was low, or high — as even über-warminst Phil Jones admits:
http://jonova.s3.amazonaws.com/graphs/hadley/Hadley-global-temps-1850-2010-web.jpg
So it is nonsense to believe that human emissions control global warming. Empirical evidence shows that is not the case.
But of course, warrenlb has his usual reaction to real world evidence.
Thanks db, as ever, you (and Jimbo, other times) saved me having to bother replying to the idiot.
… but I will anyway.
Is that some kind of bafflegab squared or did he actually say anything ?
The fact that he can’t cut and paste anything from scumbagscience.com is not good news for whoever Sessions or Inhofe have next in the crosshairs …..
…… prove me wrong Warren
Same old nonsense from dbs, which no scientist concludes.
@mpainter. IPCC does not LIMIT AGW to 1950 and later, it states that man is 95% likely to be the cause after 1950. Understand the difference?
warrenlb says:
Same old nonsense from dbs, which no scientist concludes.
So, Dr. Phil Jones, climatologist, is “no scientist”? Got it.
That’s what a clueless site pest says. warrenlb avoids the fact that the chart he’s referring to was based on data by Dr. Phil Jones, a noted climate alarmist.
philincalifornia is right, and warrenlb has no business commenting here. warrenlb is only trolling this thread because he has no credible facts to support his Religion. For warrenlb, his faith is enough.
But the rest of us require facts, and evidence. Dr. Jones has provided that evidence, which debunks warrenlb’s religious pseudo-science.
Well, dbstealey –
“warrenlb is only trolling this thread because he has no credible facts to support his Religion. For warrenlb, his faith is enough.”
he does provide a great example showing that CAGW is faith-based.
JohnWho,
Correctomundo, John. ‘warrenlb’ is motivated by his religion.
And warrenlb can’t think straight. He says:
IPCC does not LIMIT AGW to 1950 and later, it states that man is 95% likely to be the cause after 1950. Understand the difference?
No. Wrong. It is warrenlb who doesn’t understand: AGW = 100% man-made, no more and no less. It refers to anthropogenic.
Now, now db. Be precise.
Man-made global warming is just that. When the earth warmed (for 22 of the 65 years between 1950 and 2015 while man released ever-larger amounts of beneficial CO2 to the atmosphere between 1950 and 2015), it was entirely man’s fault due to man’s release of CO2.
When the earth did NOT warm (was steady or cooling for 43 of the 65 years between 1950 and 2015) it was nature’s cause, and man should not have been interfering while Mother Nature – obviously an Intelligent Designer! – was making it cool.
When the earth warmed (between 1650 and 1950) it was not man’s fault due to CO2 (because man released no CO2 between 1650 and 1850), except when it was man’s fault (due to man’s far smaller release of CO2) between 1850 and 1950 – which DID warm the planet, although Man’s far greater release of CO2 between 1996 and 2015 over a much shorter period of time did NOT warm the planet.
Very selective gas, this CO2. Very Intelligently Designed.
Now let’s see. The IPCC sez “that man is 95% likely to be the cause of AGW”.
Hmmmm. Warrenpound, you are trying to be funny. I think.
As I noted above, the IPCC has cogent reasons for limiting their AGW claims to post 1950. They know that 20 ppm CO2 too slight to support any claims of AGW. Do you disagree with their stance?
Warran
After that you can explain the sea level rise over the same period
Quote Hansen 1988 Congressional tesitimony “My principal conclusions are: (1) the earth is warmer in 1988 than at any time in the history of instrumental measurements, (2) the global warming is now sufficiently large that we can ascribe with a high degree of confidence a cause and effect relationship to the greenhouse effect…….
An astounding statement, based on warming of +.15degC from 1975! His likeliest estimate is presently off by 150%. His best estimate, which assumed zero increase in GHG is now only slightly higher than the actual temperature record.
He, and other climate modelers would have done well to take his own advice: “We note that the correlations between climate models and observed temperatures are often very poor at subcontinental scales, particularly during Northern Hemisphere summer.”
This article by Megg started by looking promising and refreshing, a rare intemplative look at our worldview, mindset and our knowledge structure or epistemology.
It went on by introducing a Protestant Christian world view – fair enough. But then it just .. Stopped. What about all the other dozens of world views accounting for >90% of the human race? Or was Megg” disguising a BBC-esque obsessive phobia of Christianity as a faux interest in epistemology and knowledge structure?
The article needs to continue with additional world views, something like this:
Let us assume you have been brought up in a humanistic (nihilistic) milieu. Your deity, whom you honour and respect, is you yourself. You will use concepts like ‘narrative’ and ‘construct’. Your role as a scientist is utilitarian: it is simply to employ a disguise as a member of a fictitious technological priesthood seeking after truth, to manipulate and intimidate society and politicians into adopting certain policies which are in tune with your own interests and are weapons against your class enemies. ….
Phlog: well said. Instead of opening a fun and fruitful discussion of each other’s belief systems, Megg’s article mocks the belief systems of many which only leads to divide. When discussing epistemology, I like to emphasize the part of its definition that says,” Study of… limits of knowledge.” Your last paragraph is a hoot. I plan to steal it for arguing with humanists of a scientific bent.
Wow. Well said. It was an utterly discontinuous and abrupt ejaculation.