A great question about climate change and a great response

[ati87]

I wish more people would realise this. Before you come up with your idea about what causes warming, think to your self "has this been increasing over the last 100 or so years?" If the answer is no, then it's probably not causing the current warming.

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So did you not actually read the rest of the article that explains it?

I wish people just tried to outsmart scientist in general.

We are all humans and we all make mistakes but the idea that you can outsmart a 97% of the scientist in their respective fields or in science in general is kind of mindbogglingly stupid.

[Garnier Fructis]

So did you not actually read the rest of the article that explains it?

The problem is that he seems to really dislike anything that can't be encoded in a simple formula.

[zhero]

I wish people just tried to outsmart scientist in general.

We are all humans and we all make mistakes but the idea that you can outsmart a 97% of the scientist in their respective fields or in science in general is kind of mindbogglingly stupid.

except most of the 97% probably aren't studying the global climate, or have done any kind of data gathering their selves, at all.

[Garnier Fructis]

except most of the 97% probably aren't studying the global climate, or have done any kind of data gathering their selves, at all.

It's 97% of climate scientists. And are you insinuating that scientists who don't do data collection aren't reliable or something? You're not going to get a coherent field of study unless you've got experimentalists and theorists working together on the same thing, because this isn't the 1700's, and nobody can carry out the scientific method on their own.

[Ryme]

"No issue is agreed upon by 97% of people"

I cringed so damn hard.

[Cuppy]

When a majority agree on something, it's more likely to be true if it's also scientifically proved.

Fix'd that for ya

[W1sp]

Totally agree with Mr Milo.. cannot do anything about Climate change until India & China pull in their carbon outputs as well.

Their carbon outputs are higher then the US but you have way more per capita. 1.35 billion people vs 300 million

[Spectral]

Most "great questions" about climate change contain about as much scientific literacy as that age old puzzler about why if humans evolved from monkeys, there are still monkeys around.

I'm glad there are still people patient enough to go through explanations on these sorts of things, but I mostly don't have it in me anymore.

[JohnBrown1917]

except most of the 97% probably aren't studying the global climate, or have done any kind of data gathering their selves, at all.

Its 97% of the climate scientist.

[Cyanu]

https://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpr...t_spring09.pdf

Report showing how bad a lot of of the temperature collection sites are. Over 600 were closed after this report.

https://wattsupwiththat.com/2017/01/...hange-skeptic/

This link shows not only how the estimates are noticeably wrong from observation, but how rest observation is significantly less variable than long term.

https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.word...ress-findings/

The point of the "it was warmer at some point in the past" is that man is being single out as the cause for glaciers melting and other such things, but the planet was a lot warmer, not that long ago, and it had nothing to do with us releasing CO2. How is it that there were recently much warmer periods when we weren't the cause, but you can be so certain that any change right now we are definitely the cause of? And where are the formulas that explain this? The fact is, there are no formulas, there are just models, whereby "scientists" constantly adjust variables to attempt to make their curves fit data points, yet as the second link shows, when those models are forced to predict the future, they continue to fail and need re-calibrated. They are always fixing to match the past, never understanding what the future will bring.

http://principia-scientific.org/the-...imate-science/

Oh, you have an opinion on the ideal gas law and thermodynamics? Good for you. Above will show you, and redirect you, to the NASA results very closely tracking exactly what the ideal gas law suggests the answer would be. No, atmospheric gas is not idea. The suggestion isn't that it is so simple a solution, but that such a simple solution does a better job of predicting surface temperatures than the hundreds of billions that have been wasted on the canard that is "Climate Science".

Then you break in with the ad hominem. My argument is incoherent because you say so, even though it tracks observation. Your argument is coherent even though it doesn't, and it isn't even close to verifiable in any sort of laboratory experiment. Below is a link to an experiment testing the theory behind why greenhouses "work". The results are clear that the theory is incorrect.

http://principia-scientific.org/publ...use_Effect.pdf

The difference between your position and my position is not that I outright reject your position, but that I do not find any of the logic, reasoning, observation, or experimentation that purports to support your position, as being reliable when compared to their counterpoints. If you position were so undeniably correct, you'd think you'd do a better job of presenting in a way that eve a fool such as myself could understand and verify, but you cannot. Until such time that your theory becomes more than conjecture and modeling, I will continue to refer you to the null hypothesis.

technically this is ad hominem but you don't even seem able to tell the difference between weather and climate and you want to have a 'scientific' debate? please, in the eyes of any reasonable poster you're just ranting BS while the other posters have provided scientific data to support their claims (you could google it yourself but whatever, as if there's any respectable scientist with no ridiculous conflict of interest that disputes climate change)

you realize that when someone's logic is as messed up as yours you could question whether planes can fly? the only reason you accept this is due to personal experience (which you can't have in the case of climate change even though you seem to think you do due to you being unable to tell the difference between climate and weather) and the fact that there are not powerful enough lobbies to make an arguement for that case, if those two factors were to change whether planes fly or not would be up for debate, we could find a bunch of anti science/anti expert/anti intellectual cave men to debate it

just because someone is eager to debate something does not mean that matter is debatable, in any other part of the world you'd be ridiculed for having such opinions, it's one step before you claim that earth is flat and simply does not belong in our age

[Nadiru]

Their carbon outputs are higher then the US but you have way more per capita. 1.35 billion people vs 300 million

That's not a rebuttal. That just means that India and China are potentially far, far worse than Europe's ever been.

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When a majority agree on something, it's more likely to be true.

That's not how the scientific process works. That's actually kind of the opposite of how it works.

[unbound]

rofl

How is that a great response? Because so many agree with that climate change is happening, it probably isn't right? WTF?

Did you know that an even greater percentage of scientists agree with the theory of Gravity? That probably isn't right either, amirite? Care to jump off a cliff to test the theory? /facepalm

[Nadiru]

rofl

How is that a great response? Because so many agree with that climate change is happening, it probably isn't right? WTF?

Did you know that an even greater percentage of scientists agree with the theory of Gravity? That probably isn't right either, amirite? Care to jump off a cliff to test the theory? /facepalm

Did you know we have no idea why gravity does what it does? Knowing that it works doesn't imply that we know why or how.

[Mekh]

Did you know we have no idea why gravity does what it does? Knowing that it works doesn't imply that we know why or how.

[Nadiru]

Tide goes in, tide goes out

Difference being that it's not O'Reilly but five generations of physicists, each with substantially better technology than their predecessors, saying that they can't explain it. If you guys are talking up the credentials of scientists as establishing their credibility, then you can take this one to the bank: Gravity is still mysterious as heck.

[Endus]

Difference being that it's not O'Reilly but five generations of physicists, each with substantially better technology than their predecessors, saying that they can't explain it. If you guys are talking up the credentials of scientists as establishing their credibility, then you can take this one to the bank: Gravity is still mysterious as heck.

This really overstates the issue. We haven't confirmed how gravity propagates, yet. Largely because it either involves incredibly low-energy particles (theoretical "gravitons") that, given gravity's weakness as a force, would be near-impossible to detect individually, or it's a distortion of space-time caused by mass, which is more of an observation than an explanation to begin with. Both explanations result in pretty much the same real-world effects, if gravitons can travel as particles or waves, as light does. So we just lack the technology to figure it out, at this point. The LHC isn't powerful enough to detect hypothetical gravitons, and we'd need something WAY bigger to do so.

Outside of that propagation method, the manner it propagates is well-known and understood, and the effects of gravity are incredibly reliable. The propagation method is an interesting question with little practical utility at this point; we simply don't have the technological capacity to have that understanding matter in any functional sense, even if we knew what the method was.

[Forogil]

After watching the video I wondered if anyone can shed some lights on some statements by Milo in the movie:

He claims to have worked for a climate-related NGO - which one?
Are the hyperbole of the climate-activists, and ridicule of anyone not being in line with the "consensus" really the major factor behind the rise of climate-change deniers?

As for the 97% consensus: to me it more indicates that people (both the ones that did that study and IPCC in general) are over-focused on "consensus" and trying to avoid any overt signs of disagreements. It's like having Einstein, Newton and Aristoteles on a panel on gravity and asking if they all agree that heavy objects fall to Earth.

Since some people want controversy - what if people instead of AGW or not had focused on how much CO2 oceans will absorb in the future (which isn't clear - it depends on processes with timescales of many years, and the effect of increased temperature) - or harmless "crackpot" theories like oil and coal not being fossil fuels (or abiogenic if you want to sound scientific).
Would that have avoided the current AGW-denials, or made it worse?

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The LHC isn't powerful enough to detect hypothetical gravitons, and we'd need something WAY bigger to do so.

Well, the size of Jupiter if I recall correctly, so we cannot build it here, - and it's also unclear if it would work.

[Garnier Fructis]

Did you know we have no idea why gravity does what it does? Knowing that it works doesn't imply that we know why or how.

This is sort of like saying that we don't know why current flows, because we don't know why the electromagnetic force is the way it is. We understand why gravity works the way it does in terms of the geometry of the universe and 'minimal paths.'

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That's not how the scientific process works. That's actually kind of the opposite of how it works.

Thankfully, we've already gone through what has essentially been 70 years of evidence and theory slowly convincing scientists that modern climate theory is correct, when they started out being very skeptical of it.

So in fact, the only reason the scientific community took this long to accept modern climate theory is because it went through this scientific process and convince people of its correctness.

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This really overstates the issue. We haven't confirmed how gravity propagates, yet. Largely because it either involves incredibly low-energy particles (theoretical "gravitons") that, given gravity's weakness as a force, would be near-impossible to detect individually, or it's a distortion of space-time caused by mass, which is more of an observation than an explanation to begin with.

The core issue is that you can simply ask 'why?' ad infinitum with basically anything in physics, and you'll very quickly reach unexplained things.

[kail]

That's not how the scientific process works. That's actually kind of the opposite of how it works.

Maybe I should have specified on majority of experts, people utilizing scientific methods and dedicating research in the field. Common citizens may agree on something that is actually false, otherwise known as urban myths.

I also don't denounce anyone when the contradict the majority, just make sure to bring supporting evidence to back the claim instead of stating "97% agree? Has to be fishy!". If you doubt climate change, support that claim.

[Endus]

The core issue is that you can simply ask 'why?' ad infinitum with basically anything in physics, and you'll very quickly reach unexplained things.

And the practical point is that those "why" questions don't really matter. Figuring out how gravity propagates MAY let us develop anti-gravity systems or artificial gravity for space travel, but more likely it wouldn't, or the power levels involved would be such that it would just be easier to cart a moon around anyway.

For anything involving gravitational effects, we know all we need to know in any practical sense. Same applies to climate change; there are almost certainly factors that haven't been quantified yet that contribute to the climate. The idea that those factors are significant, however, is pretty much without merit; the factors we HAVE quantified almost completely explain the effects we see. When we see a hiccup we didn't expect, we investigate, and find a new minor unforeseen factor, as occurred when there was a brief spike in arctic and antarctic ice coverage in terms of area (not volume, which is important). It wasn't due to any new concept, just something that was overlooked; as ice melts, it releases fresh water, which lowered the salinity in those regions, which raised the freezing temperature, which caused more ice to form. That was a temporary effect, though, since that salinity change would only last a year or two past the initial melting, and it only affected surface water and didn't actually contribute significantly to ice volume, which is the measure that matters the most. And now we've quantified that effect and understand it, and it didn't overthrow anything.