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The Forum > Article Comments > A climate model for every season > Comments

A climate model for every season : Comments

By Mark S. Lawson, published 25/9/2009

Scientists really have no idea what drives climate.

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Matt, it's worth restating;

Anthony Watts is infamous too (not just his blog) ... he is most definitely NOT a climate scientist.

Watts is a former TV weather-man with NO recognised credentials in any of the climate sciences. His claim to infamy is that he has popularised the anti-global warming meme.

Watts has attained virtual messiah status with the likes of the Heartland Institute, culminating in "Dr Watts" himself giving presentations at Heartland's annual (I should say twice yearly) "climate conferences", usually coinciding with the genuine international conferences.
Posted by Q&A, Saturday, 26 September 2009 1:54:34 PM
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I thought for a while that OLO had been colonised by climate sceptics, but they must all be watching the AFL grand final judging on this thread to date.

Usual arguments from the AGW enthusiasts - references to papers are taken to "prove" something without once arguing the points logically, and plenty of ad hominem attacks on the other side, mixed with claims to scientific eminence by at least one of the posters.

Yet what Mark has pointed out ought to be uncontroversial. We know that other forcings are stronger than CO2, it's just that this has never publicly been accepted by the AGW enthusiasts before.

If citing papers is all the go, this one by Douglass and Christie ought to be published by now http://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0809/0809.0581.pdf and it purports to demonstrate that the forcing effect of CO2 is what you would expect on the radiative physics, but that there are no amplifications. In which case we're looking at a temperature increase that will max out at 2 degrees. No big problem there.

What those criticising Mark seem not to understand is that the argument is not about whether CO2 is a greenhouse gas or not, but what other greenhouse mechanisms do in reaction to a bit of warming. That's the bit that we don't understand and which is just represented in the models by a guess which is normally positive.

So how about engaging with the argument rather than just spraying irrelevant references and insults around?
Posted by GrahamY, Saturday, 26 September 2009 3:05:14 PM
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If I read you right Graham, are both you and Mark arguing that there is evidence for greenhouse mechanisms that we don't understand yet? One of the papers that Mark cited in his article certainly seems to think so, what's more they also seem to think that it would act in a feedback manner.

In light of this revelation, why is it that I don't think I have ever seen either of you argue for more research dollars to be put into climate science to find out what they are. These unknown mechanisms have the potential to be catastrophic, are they not?
Posted by Bugsy, Saturday, 26 September 2009 5:25:22 PM
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>>I thought for a while that OLO had been colonised by climate sceptics

it most definitely has. well done, mr. young. expertise garnered from your howard days?

>> Usual arguments from the AGW enthusiasts ...

well, i enthusiastically choose the word and the integrity of the climate science community over yours and lawson's.

>> without once arguing the points logically,

neither you nor lawson nor i have the expertise for "arguing the points logically". you want
debate over difficult scientific questions to be reduced to 300 word grabs by puffed-up amateurs?

what i do note is the sleazy manner in which lawson uses words such as "admitted", as if the dishonest scientists are being flushed out by the crusading lawsons.

>> That's the bit that we don't understand ...

nonsense. the suggestion that you or lawson are dispasssionate observers, merely evaluating the evidence, is self-evidently ludicrous. you're both quite literally in the business of denial.

>>So how about engaging with the argument rather than just spraying irrelevant references and insults around?

give me one reason why i should consider the cherry-picked arguments of partisan hacks, rather than the work of thousands of scientists.
Posted by bushbasher, Saturday, 26 September 2009 6:09:25 PM
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Strip away the personal argumentation; the arbitrary time-frames; the mistaken idea that science supplies values judgments; and the superstitious worship of omnipotent government, and there is nothing left of the AGW argument.

One reiterated argument is that no-one but climatologists are qualified to interpret the data. Any other scientific or educated view is dismissed as not ‘significant’, or even malicious. Like ancient seers versed in bird-lore, only climatologists can read the gizzards apparently.

This is then held out as ‘scientific’ justification for their conclusion - that there should be total world government control of all human economic activity.

They consult their oscillation index and it has become the index of everyone else’s liberties. It tells them – scientifically – how urgent it is for everyone else to obey big government intrusion into any and every area of life.

The one thing on which all parties are agreed, is that the significance of the data depends entirely on what time-frame you choose. But the appropriateness of the time-frame is not given by the data; it is entirely a matter of human values on which the climatologists are no more qualified to pronounce than anyone else.

Even if the globe is warming, so what? Isn’t the bloody temperature allowed to vary any more?

The climatologists can’t even predict the climate *today*. What makes you think they can predict the ecology and microclimate and ‘see which grain will grow, and which will not’?

They jump from their climatological premise, to the economic and ecological conclusion that central planning of all human economic activity is the unquestionable solution.

The profound intellectual and moral bankruptcy of this dopey illogic seems to escape them.

JulianC
Can you tell the difference between the transitions from timber to coal, canals to railroads, gas to electricity, etc.; and your proposed transition to non-carbon fuels?

If you can’t tell the difference, it means you are not qualified to comment, because the difference proves that, unlike those earlier transitions, this one would not be a suitable means to the ends its proposers intend *even in their own terms*.

What is it?
Posted by Peter Hume, Saturday, 26 September 2009 10:03:38 PM
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Peter Hume,
As much as you'd like them to be, physics and chemistry aren't political. There's no Big Brother scary "communist under the bed" conspiracy theory here. You don't need to come across all McCarthyist and put us on trial for even being *associated* with caring about the climate.

"climatologists can read the gizzards apparently. " Well, yeah, in this discipline anyway. Do you go to your dentist to service your car, or your interior decorator to do your brain surgery? If you go to a geologist like Plimer you'll get all sorts of half truths and downright lies. Stick with the peer-reviewed mob and you'll get some good intel.

Your rants about time frames are meaningless twaddle and semantics to ignore the fact that the "cooling since 1998" argument is cherrypicking idiocy on the grandest of scales. Instead of being embarrassed for your team, you're now getting petty and irrelevant.

When you write: "Even if the globe is warming, so what? Isn’t the bloody temperature allowed to vary any more?" I can only guess that you haven't bothered checking the actual peer reviewed climate data. You've made up your mind, and no science is going to determine otherwise. You will not investigate how many people depend on glacial melt-water, you will not admit to the possibility of various 'bad things' happening under BAU.

So say "central planning" all you like, you're only revealing how your political bias refuses to acknowledge any new scientific data in a massive display of cognitive dissonance. You're proving your own opinion invalid as you rant.

No new scientific data to evaluate. Nothing to see in that post. Just another paranoid conspiracy rant, move along, move along.
Posted by Eclipse Now, Saturday, 26 September 2009 10:47:52 PM
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