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    excon's Avatar
    excon Posts: 21,482, Reputation: 2992
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    #21

    Feb 1, 2012, 11:11 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by tomder55 View Post
    didn't know carbon dioxide was "trash" .
    Hello again, tom:

    I'll be happy to explain... If converting carbon into CO2 is negatively affecting our atmosphere, in THAT context, I'm happy with calling it trash.

    In terms of semantics, if your house were full of CO2, you'd call it POISON. If a rose bush was killing your corn crop, you'd call it a WEED.

    I recollect that you too were happy with that term when you AGREED with me that we shouldn't throw our "trash" into the air... What kind of TRASH were YOU referring to?

    excon
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    #22

    Feb 1, 2012, 11:43 AM
    Sulfer dioxide that was contributing to acid rain . WE knew that was harmful and smokestack scrubbers were invented that would fix the problem without destroying the industry .
    paraclete's Avatar
    paraclete Posts: 2,706, Reputation: 173
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    #23

    Feb 2, 2012, 05:18 PM
    Ex is playing strawman again.
    speechlesstx's Avatar
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    #24

    Feb 3, 2012, 08:58 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by excon View Post
    In terms of semantics, if your house were full of CO2, you'd call it POISON.
    If you put CO2 in a cylinder with a horn and a handle you call it a fire extinguisher. If you breathe out you call exhalation. What's your point?
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    excon Posts: 21,482, Reputation: 2992
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    #25

    Feb 3, 2012, 09:03 AM
    Hello again, Steve:

    The point is, if throwing our trash/poison/fire extinguisher/exhalation, into the air is causing the climate to change, then you can call it monkey poop for all I care. I just want you to STOP it.

    I thought you agreed with me, but you just changed the meaning of few words, like any liberal PC junkie would do.

    excon
    speechlesstx's Avatar
    speechlesstx Posts: 1,111, Reputation: 284
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    #26

    Feb 3, 2012, 09:28 AM
    I knew it, you want us to stop breathing.
    excon's Avatar
    excon Posts: 21,482, Reputation: 2992
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    #27

    Feb 3, 2012, 09:36 AM
    Hello again, Steve:

    You either don't know that burning stuff puts CO2 into the air, or you do, and you just admitted I kicked your a$$. I'm satisfied with either one.

    You ARE in the fire business, right??

    excon
    speechlesstx's Avatar
    speechlesstx Posts: 1,111, Reputation: 284
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    #28

    Feb 3, 2012, 09:49 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by excon View Post
    Hello again, Steve:

    You either don't know that burning stuff puts CO2 into the air, or you do, and you just admitted I kicked your a$$. I'm satisfied with either one.
    Ex, of course I know what fire does - it keeps me warm in the winter, cooks my food and lights your joints. I only addressed the part where you said you want us to stop breathing, "if... exhalation... is causing the climate to change, then... I just want you to STOP it."

    Sorry, I enjoy breathing. Much like you enjoy lighting up a doobie.

    You ARE in the fire business, right??
    Yep, and I just threw 35 pounds of trash into the air so I could send a cylinder off to be refilled without paying hazmat fees.
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    tomder55 Posts: 1,742, Reputation: 346
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    #29

    Feb 3, 2012, 12:26 PM
    No Need to Panic About Global Warming

    There's no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to 'decarbonize' the world's economy
    A candidate for public office in any contemporary democracy may have to consider what, if anything, to do about "global warming." Candidates should understand that the oft-repeated claim that nearly all scientists demand that something dramatic be done to stop global warming is not true. In fact, a large and growing number of distinguished scientists and engineers do not agree that drastic actions on global warming are needed.

    In September, Nobel Prize-winning physicist Ivar Giaever, a supporter of President Obama in the last election, publicly resigned from the American Physical Society (APS) with a letter that begins: "I did not renew [my membership] because I cannot live with the [APS policy] statement: 'The evidence is incontrovertible: Global warming is occurring. If no mitigating actions are taken, significant disruptions in the Earth's physical and ecological systems, social systems, security and human health are likely to occur. We must reduce emissions of greenhouse gases beginning now.' In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"

    In spite of a multidecade international campaign to enforce the message that increasing amounts of the "pollutant" carbon dioxide will destroy civilization, large numbers of scientists, many very prominent, share the opinions of Dr. Giaever. And the number of scientific "heretics" is growing with each passing year. The reason is a collection of stubborn scientific facts.

    Perhaps the most inconvenient fact is the lack of global warming for well over 10 years now. This is known to the warming establishment, as one can see from the 2009 "Climategate" email of climate scientist Kevin Trenberth: "The fact is that we can't account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can't." But the warming is only missing if one believes computer models where so-called feedbacks involving water vapor and clouds greatly amplify the small effect of CO2.

    The lack of warming for more than a decade—indeed, the smaller-than-predicted warming over the 22 years since the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) began issuing projections—suggests that computer models have greatly exaggerated how much warming additional CO2 can cause. Faced with this embarrassment, those promoting alarm have shifted their drumbeat from warming to weather extremes, to enable anything unusual that happens in our chaotic climate to be ascribed to CO2.

    The fact is that CO2 is not a pollutant. CO2 is a colorless and odorless gas, exhaled at high concentrations by each of us, and a key component of the biosphere's life cycle. Plants do so much better with more CO2 that greenhouse operators often increase the CO2 concentrations by factors of three or four to get better growth. This is no surprise since plants and animals evolved when CO2 concentrations were about 10 times larger than they are today. Better plant varieties, chemical fertilizers and agricultural management contributed to the great increase in agricultural yields of the past century, but part of the increase almost certainly came from additional CO2 in the atmosphere.

    Although the number of publicly dissenting scientists is growing, many young scientists furtively say that while they also have serious doubts about the global-warming message, they are afraid to speak up for fear of not being promoted—or worse. They have good reason to worry. In 2003, Dr. Chris de Freitas, the editor of the journal Climate Research, dared to publish a peer-reviewed article with the politically incorrect (but factually correct) conclusion that the recent warming is not unusual in the context of climate changes over the past thousand years. The international warming establishment quickly mounted a determined campaign to have Dr. de Freitas removed from his editorial job and fired from his university position. Fortunately, Dr. de Freitas was able to keep his university job.

    This is not the way science is supposed to work, but we have seen it before—for example, in the frightening period when Trofim Lysenko hijacked biology in the Soviet Union. Soviet biologists who revealed that they believed in genes, which Lysenko maintained were a bourgeois fiction, were fired from their jobs. Many were sent to the gulag and some were condemned to death.

    Why is there so much passion about global warming, and why has the issue become so vexing that the American Physical Society, from which Dr. Giaever resigned a few months ago, refused the seemingly reasonable request by many of its members to remove the word "incontrovertible" from its description of a scientific issue? There are several reasons, but a good place to start is the old question "cui bono?" Or the modern update, "Follow the money."

    Alarmism over climate is of great benefit to many, providing government funding for academic research and a reason for government bureaucracies to grow. Alarmism also offers an excuse for governments to raise taxes, taxpayer-funded subsidies for businesses that understand how to work the political system, and a lure for big donations to charitable foundations promising to save the planet. Lysenko and his team lived very well, and they fiercely defended their dogma and the privileges it brought them.

    Speaking for many scientists and engineers who have looked carefully and independently at the science of climate, we have a message to any candidate for public office: There is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to "decarbonize" the world's economy. Even if one accepts the inflated climate forecasts of the IPCC, aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.

    A recent study of a wide variety of policy options by Yale economist William Nordhaus showed that nearly the highest benefit-to-cost ratio is achieved for a policy that allows 50 more years of economic growth unimpeded by greenhouse gas controls. This would be especially beneficial to the less-developed parts of the world that would like to share some of the same advantages of material well-being, health and life expectancy that the fully developed parts of the world enjoy now. Many other policy responses would have a negative return on investment. And it is likely that more CO2 and the modest warming that may come with it will be an overall benefit to the planet.

    If elected officials feel compelled to "do something" about climate, we recommend supporting the excellent scientists who are increasing our understanding of climate with well-designed instruments on satellites, in the oceans and on land, and in the analysis of observational data. The better we understand climate, the better we can cope with its ever-changing nature, which has complicated human life throughout history. However, much of the huge private and government investment in climate is badly in need of critical review.

    Every candidate should support rational measures to protect and improve our environment, but it makes no sense at all to back expensive programs that divert resources from real needs and are based on alarming but untenable claims of "incontrovertible" evidence.

    Claude Allegre, former director of the Institute for the Study of the Earth, University of Paris; J. Scott Armstrong, cofounder of the Journal of Forecasting and the International Journal of Forecasting; Jan Breslow, head of the Laboratory of Biochemical Genetics and Metabolism, Rockefeller University; Roger Cohen, fellow, American Physical Society; Edward David, member, National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Sciences; William Happer, professor of physics, Princeton; Michael Kelly, professor of technology, University of Cambridge, U.K.; William Kininmonth, former head of climate research at the Australian Bureau of Meteorology; Richard Lindzen, professor of atmospheric sciences, MIT; James McGrath, professor of chemistry, Virginia Technical University; Rodney Nichols, former president and CEO of the New York Academy of Sciences; Burt Rutan, aerospace engineer, designer of Voyager and SpaceShipOne; Harrison H. Schmitt, Apollo 17 astronaut and former U.S. senator; Nir Shaviv, professor of astrophysics, Hebrew University, Jerusalem; Henk Tennekes, former director, Royal Dutch Meteorological Service; Antonio Zichichi, president of the World Federation of Scientists, Geneva.
    Sixteen Concerned Scientists: No Need to Panic About Global Warming - WSJ.com
    paraclete's Avatar
    paraclete Posts: 2,706, Reputation: 173
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    #30

    Feb 3, 2012, 02:35 PM
    Well it seems someone has woken up
    speechlesstx's Avatar
    speechlesstx Posts: 1,111, Reputation: 284
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    #31

    Feb 3, 2012, 02:43 PM
    Excellent column, and excellent question:

    In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of the proton changes over time and how a multi-universe behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible?"[/B]
    Incontrovertible: not open to question : indisputable

    Hogwash. Since when did scientists refuse to question things?

    Science is facts; just as houses are made of stone, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house, and a collection of facts is not necessarily science. -Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) French mathematician.

    [Science is] a series of judgments, revised without ceasing. -Pierre Emile Duclaux (1840-1904) French biochemist, bacteriologist.

    [Science is] piecemeal revelation. -Oliver Wendell Holmes 1 (1809-94) U. S. poet, essayist, physician.

    [Those] who have an excessive faith in their theories or in their ideas are not only poorly disposed to make discoveries, but they also make very poor observations. -Claude Bernard (1813-78) French physiologist, 1865.

    True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain. -Claude Bernard (1813-78) French physiologist.

    [I]Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question. -Niels Henrik David Bohr (1885-1962) Danish physicist.

    Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue. -Robert K. Merton, Social Theory, 1957.

    Shame scientists no longer value skepticism.
    paraclete's Avatar
    paraclete Posts: 2,706, Reputation: 173
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    #32

    Feb 3, 2012, 02:46 PM
    Remember all this climate science hogwash is not science it is computer modelling or should we be more precise and say computer gaming
    TUT317's Avatar
    TUT317 Posts: 657, Reputation: 76
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    #33

    Feb 3, 2012, 06:53 PM
    Quote Originally Posted by speechlesstx View Post
    Excellent column, and excellent question:



    Incontrovertible: not open to question : indisputable

    Hogwash. Since when did scientists refuse to question things?

    Science is facts; just as houses are made of stone, so is science made of facts; but a pile of stones is not a house, and a collection of facts is not necessarily science. -Jules Henri Poincaré (1854-1912) French mathematician.

    [Science is] a series of judgments, revised without ceasing. -Pierre Emile Duclaux (1840-1904) French biochemist, bacteriologist.

    [Science is] piecemeal revelation. -Oliver Wendell Holmes 1 (1809-94) U. S. poet, essayist, physician.

    [Those] who have an excessive faith in their theories or in their ideas are not only poorly disposed to make discoveries, but they also make very poor observations. -Claude Bernard (1813-78) French physiologist, 1865.

    True science teaches us to doubt and, in ignorance, to refrain. -Claude Bernard (1813-78) French physiologist.

    [I]Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question. -Niels Henrik David Bohr (1885-1962) Danish physicist.

    Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue. -Robert K. Merton, Social Theory, 1957.

    Shame scientists no longer value skepticism.
    Science doesn't value skepticism because it never did.

    These are noble ideals but in the real world science does not progress by skepticism. Should science progress by skepticism? Probably not because it would make it unworkable.

    For better or worse science progresses by verification rather than skepticism. Science is rather loathed to try and falsify theories it would much rather try and prove a theory correct than prove it false.Popper versus Kuhn of much interest in this area.

    Kuhn's history/sociology of science tells us science progresses through verification 'normal science'. Popper on the other hand wanted science to progress by falsification/skepticism. A good idea, but science doesn't actually work that way.

    Tut
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    TUT317 Posts: 657, Reputation: 76
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    #34

    Feb 3, 2012, 07:37 PM

    A couple of Key statements need to be looked at.

    "In the APS it is OK to discuss whether the mass of a proton changes over time and how a multi-verse behaves, but the evidence of global warming is incontrovertible"

    All fields of science have their paradigm. Basically this means all fields of science have a certain set of 'givens' that are rarely questioned. The reason being is that the paradigm provides the basis for future research. This is what Thomas Kuhn in his "Structure of Scientific Revolutions" calls 'normal science'. Science, especially institutionalized science is concerned with verification. In other words trying to make the observations fit the prevailing orthodoxy. After all, this is where the money is.

    What makes it interesting is that not all branches of science share the same paradigm. This can make it very interesting when a physicist, chemist and a string theorist get together and try and talk about the nature of matter.

    What is not appreciated in the statement above is that physicists,multi-verse theorists and climate scientists have their own paradigms within their particular discipline. There are certain 'givens' that are not subject to serious questioning.

    The reality is these 'givens' cannot be constantly challenged because there would be no footing for future research.



    Dr. Giaever states, "And the number of scientific 'heretics' is growing with each passing year the reason is a collection of stubborn scientific"

    Again, this is no surprise.This process is covered very nicely in Kuhn's book. Science is not doing anything new when it comes to climate change. It is doing what it has always done.


    Tut
    paraclete's Avatar
    paraclete Posts: 2,706, Reputation: 173
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    #35

    Feb 3, 2012, 10:35 PM
    Tut

    You want verification here is some verification that AGW is not happening
    More than 220 dead as Europe freezes

    Now if you don't like this recent evidence we could ask what has happened to Summer closer to home and what happened to that dryer and hotter climate that was predicted for Australia
    Date Min Max Rainfall
    Sat Feb 4 17°C 26°C 6.0mm
    Fri Feb 3 16.7°C 21.0°C 49.8mm
    Thu Feb 2 18.5°C 20.2°C 5.4mm
    WedFeb 1 18.4°C 21.9°C 8.8mm
    Tue Jan 31 25.3°C 28.8°C 0.0mm
    TUT317's Avatar
    TUT317 Posts: 657, Reputation: 76
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    #36

    Feb 4, 2012, 02:48 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by paraclete View Post
    Tut

    you want verification here is some verification that AGW is not happening
    More than 220 dead as Europe freezes

    Now if you don't like this recent evidence we could ask what has happened to Summer closer to home and what happened to that dryer and hotter climate that was predicted for Australia
    Date Min Max Rainfall
    Sat Feb 4 17°C 26°C 6.0mm
    Fri Feb 3 16.7°C 21.0°C 49.8mm
    Thu Feb 2 18.5°C 20.2°C 5.4mm
    WedFeb 1 18.4°C 21.9°C 8.8mm
    Tue Jan 31 25.3°C 28.8°C 0.0mm
    Hi Clete,



    I am sorry that science doesn't fit some people's ideological perception.

    I am just the messenger.

    When Kuhn's book was first published it created a similar reaction to what's happening here. Science rarely questions things outside of its prevailing paradigm. Therefore, they don't tend to look for the anomalies you point out.

    Kuhn's book was written well before global warming became a hot topic. From my point of view Kuhn's explanation of science fits the current controversy like a glove.

    Tut

    P.S.
    I would imagine it will take a lot more than those figures to create a paradigm shift.
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    #37

    Feb 4, 2012, 06:23 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by TUT317 View Post
    Science doesn't value skepticism because it never did.

    These are noble ideals but in the real world science does not progress by skepticism. Should science progress by skepticism? Probably not because it would make it unworkable.

    For better or worse science progresses by verification rather than skepticism. Science is rather loathed to try and falsify theories it would much rather try and prove a theory correct than prove it false.Popper versus Kuhn of much interest in this area.

    Kuhn's history/sociology of science tells us science progresses through verification 'normal science'. Popper on the other hand wanted science to progress by falsification/skepticism. A good idea, but science doesn't actually work that way.

    Tut
    I disagree, science always questions itself, always investigates, always revises. I was taught that Pluto is a planet, science settled it. Or not?
    NeedKarma's Avatar
    NeedKarma Posts: 10,635, Reputation: 1706
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    #38

    Feb 4, 2012, 07:25 AM
    Quote Originally Posted by speechlesstx View Post
    I disagree, science always questions itself, always investigates, always revises. I was taught that Pluto is a planet, science settled it. Or not?
    Here, you can read up on why it was reclassified: HowStuffWorks "Why is Pluto no longer considered a planet?"

    Tut certainly did not say that science does not question itself so I'm not sure what you're disagreeing with.
    paraclete's Avatar
    paraclete Posts: 2,706, Reputation: 173
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    #39

    Feb 4, 2012, 01:02 PM
    Pluto is not a planet because someone changed the definition of a planet and AGW exists because someone changed the definition of normal and science.
    Observation proves nothing except something might be happening, for example here is an issue that was blamed on AGW which is apparently not happening
    http://www.abc.net.au/science/articl...03/3421788.htm
    TUT317's Avatar
    TUT317 Posts: 657, Reputation: 76
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    #40

    Feb 4, 2012, 02:16 PM
    Quote Originally Posted by speechlesstx View Post
    I disagree, science always questions itself, always investigates, always revises. I was taught that Pluto is a planet, science settled it. Or not?

    That's correct. I didn't say science doesn't disagree, questions itself and investigates.

    Scientists are rarely skeptical of themselves or the paradigm they are working in. If the facts and figures they are getting from a particular experiment don't actually match their hypothesis they are highly likely to modify their hypothesis rather than falsify their theory.

    Your example of Pluto is what Khan would call the 'puzzle solving' activity of science. Sure, science questions itself but the answers they come up with are found within the existing paradigm. The new definition of a planet fits well within the existing paradigm.

    Tut

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