First, for the sake of context, I will present the exchange up through the comment to which I am responding. I will edit what was two posted comments into one (they were obviously split for reasons of length), and put the pseudonym of the commentator (reader #1482) up front, but make no other textual changes, in the exchange block-quoted, and after that I will be fisking the last comment (by reader #1482). I am copying from this post.
LBascom February 26, 2018 at 2:38 PM
One little quibble sir; I think the "biggest political hoax in the history of the Republic" still remains the whole global warming scam.
Other than that, spot on.
DiploMad February 26, 2018 at 5:33 PM
I stand corrected, shame-faced and glancing downward at my sneakers . . . .
One Brow February 26, 2018 at 6:14 PM
Why is conservatism so closely connected with hating science and distrusting expertise?
dearieme February 26, 2018 at 7:48 PM
In the case of global warming it's more a case of hating a junk science scam. As for expertise, so much stuff passed off as expertise is mere fraud. As Galbraith (was it?) said, economic forecasting was invented to give astrology a good name.
reader #1482 February 26, 2018 at 8:00 PM
There's nothing here about hating science. I'm not going to speculate on distrust of expertise.
At the heart of it, the global warming hypothesis is just that, a hypothesis. At this time, there is no scientifically valid way of testing this hypothesis. Without falsifiability, it's hard to consider it a scientific pursuit. This is as opposed to atmospheric science in general, which scientifically studies features and phenomena of the earth's atmosphere.
What global warming *is*, is a mathematical pursuit, much like the statistics of baseball or election forecasting like that done at the fairly-decent 'Fivethirtyeight' blog (while they threw pielke under the bus for financial expediency, they also were one of the few to admit that they and other journalism outlets have a clear liberal bias). But there is no prospective experimental validation in global warming, it is purely statistical fitting.
Can anybody here tell you with scientific certainty that global warming isn't happening? No. Can anybody here tell you with scientific certainty that mankind has had anything other than 'at least non-zero' impact on the global temperature of the earth? I don't think so either. There's simply a *very* complex system, not much evidence, and no mechanism of experimenting in a controlled fashion. I can say with some certainty that at least 95% of atmospheric science researchers are honest and dedicated scientists, I met quite a few in graduate school. But the biggest 'science activists' in global warming aren't atmospheric science researchers.
I've watched this change... I was first introduced to the greenhouse effect in 1991 in Kittel's Thermal Physics as an undergrad... and remarkably, physics college texts even as recently as 2012 (last time I taught a physics course at a university) showed remarkably appropriately couched remarks considering the scientific side of the question. But little has actually changed in twenty years in regards to global warming. We still have one planet under study, and only an additional 20 years of data, much of it having been constantly adjusted and re-adjusted. While I can find reasoning behind said adjustments, it's a warning sign that these adjustments were made because the measurements did not match expectations. In *any* scientific field, when that happens, everything is extensively redone to verify new assumptions. But with very limited data sets (satellites are expensive), it's pretty catastrophic to have to go back and rework your experimental data after the fact.
But compare it to LLNL's NIF. Huge laser, best laser and plasma physicists in the world, hands down, and it's a dud. I assume everybody knows this? Well lay people might not, because there is a stream of announcements coming out of it regarding 'energy gain' and 'neutron yields'. But it's a dud because the intent was 'ignition', the 'I' in the name, which never happened. And this is from an experiment with a testable hypothesis.
Billions of dollars and thousands of world class scientists can be wrong about an experiment that was actually be performed. How much veracity should I put into pronouncements from far less qualified scientists with no hope of producing an experiment in the next two hundred years?
Global warming cannot be experimentally verified, therefore it requires belief based upon faith, rather than experimental verification. It is a religion. Former IPCC head Pachouri's remarks were apropos when he stated that global warming was his religion in his leaving remarks.
There is pretty much *no* other discipline near the hard sciences in which I have a conflict with popular opinion.
We just don't know, and no amount of hyperventilation and alarm about the possible consequences of making the wrong prediction will change that. We're not comfortable with not *knowing* everything, because humanity has had a fantastic streak in pushing back the borders of the unknown. It certainly must seem unconscionable that there could still be something in this world that defies rigorous scientific study, so the answer has been to redefine rigorous scientific study to fit the desired answer.
So, let's look at individual pieces of this argument, and the various distortions it makes.
At the heart of it, the global warming hypothesis is just that, a hypothesis. At this time, there is no scientifically valid way of testing this hypothesis.
Actually, global warming is a measurement. It is a difference in calculated temperatures between time A and time B. That makes it a fact. Now, there are different ways of averaging temperatures, and when you do that, you can get different numbers for the amount of change. However, any analysis that takes in the globe as whole finds an increase in global temperatures over the last 100+ years.
However, perhaps reader #1482 was referring to the notion that human activities have contributed global warming. That is a hypothesis, but far from being untestable, it is one that has been tested and retested. The tests consist of looking at the individual effects of different atmospheric particulates, and making predictions based them of both what will see in the future and what we have seen in the past.
Not to mention you can conduct small-scale tests that verify how much light is reflected, heat is retained, etc., in a laboratory environment, using a few liters of atmosphere. So, there are laboratory experiments that can be and have been done.
But there is no prospective experimental validation in global warming, it is purely statistical fitting.
The validation is in the predictive ability of future events.
Can anybody here tell you with scientific certainty that global warming isn't happening?
This question contains an oxymoron. I am not referring to the joking oxymorons like 'military intelligence', but rather a contradiction of basic definitions, such as 'married bachelor'. In this case, the oxymoron is "scientific certainty". Certainty is anathema to the scientific process. Everything in science can be questioned, and anything can be cast into doubt with the right kind of evidence. Science can be reliable, demonstrated, validated, and explanatory, but it is never certain (nor proven).
However, as I pointed out above, in this case it is not a question of science, but of measurement. It's like asking about the "scientific" status of the temperature in a room, or the height of a person. Measurements do come with their own form of uncertainty, but that is not from some scientific status.
We still have one planet under study, and only an additional 20 years of data, much of it having been constantly adjusted and re-adjusted.
I might ask how many years would be required (the "additional 20" means something like 150 years), but the truth has often been 'more than we have', regardless of the number of years. As for the count of planets, I can't see how information from any other planet would be relevant to making predictions on this planet. That would just be meaningless noise. It would be nice to see a standard prescribed for the number of years, but usually the people who take this position are not interested in setting standards, but denying the findings regardless.
Also, this description in "years" obscures the number of data points. Temperatures are measured several times a day; a year's data represents thousands of individual measurements. By contrast, warming is something better measured in decades. A year is both too large and too small.
Further, the raw data is the raw data; it does not change. Adjustments can be made to determine a better average, but that is not changing the data, it is changing the process.
But the biggest 'science activists' in global warming aren't atmospheric science researchers.
If reader #1482 here refers to politicians, I agree, but so what? If not, I wish he could be more specific about who he means and why he thinks said person is not qualified. For example, while James Hansen has a Ph. D. in physics instead of atmospheric sciences, his first position seems to have been studying atmospheric conditions for NASA. You would certainly learn enough to be an atmospheric science researcher in that position, regardless of the title of your doctorate. After all, science is not some heavily slotted field where anything you learn in one discipline is completely useless in another. Chemistry uses physics (and vice-versa), biology uses both, etc. In addition, a doctorate in the physics of, say, the interaction of gasses would have considerable overlap with atmospheric sciences. Sans name and credentials, this is an empty criticism.
While I can find reasoning behind said adjustments, it's a warning sign that these adjustments were made because the measurements did not match expectations. In *any* scientific field, when that happens, everything is extensively redone to verify new assumptions. But with very limited data sets (satellites are expensive), it's pretty catastrophic to have to go back and rework your experimental data after the fact.
All you need to do is see if the new model is predictive of the past observations. Of course, this can have it's own pitfalls. One of the common issues in statistics is the inclusion of too many variables for the size of the data sets, which improves the matching of past performance while adding no predictive accuracy, so you do have to be careful there.
Global warming cannot be experimentally verified, therefore it requires belief based upon faith, rather than experimental verification. It is a religion. ... There is pretty much *no* other discipline near the hard sciences in which I have a conflict with popular opinion.
I have already pointed out that warming is verifiable. I find this an interesting standard, though. I have to wonder about experimentally verified hypotheses in the not-"near the hard" ('soft' ?) sciences; are these considered reliable or not? Does reader #1482 have a conflict with them? If so, why a difference?
Is evolutionary theory not "near the hard" sciences? Geology? Sociology? Epidemiology? All of them have theories that are not directly testable (geology even more so than climatology). All of them have models that are constantly being re-evaluated and improved. Are they all based on faith?
But compare it to LLNL's NIF. Huge laser, ... it's a dud because the intent was 'ignition', the 'I' in the name, which never happened. And this is from an experiment with a testable hypothesis.
That means new models will be created, and there will be new hypotheses to test. If this happens in a "hard" science, and you generally accept the results of this hard science, why doubt the results of climatology?
Billions of dollars and thousands of world class scientists can be wrong about ... pronouncements from far less qualified scientists ...
Again, why only apply this to climatology? Also, this is rank snobbery. Further, it's not as if there is some great divide of opinion between whoever you consider to the a genuine atmospheric science researcher and whoever you consider to be a science activist.
We just don't know, and no amount of hyperventilation and alarm about the possible consequences of making the wrong prediction will change that. We're not comfortable with not *knowing* everything, because humanity has had a fantastic streak in pushing back the borders of the unknown.
We will never know everything. If epidemiologists took that position, there would be no new vaccines. If geologists took that position, there would be no Theory of Plate Tectonics. If physicists took that position, there would be no Theory of Relativity. All of these theories have real-world consequences, and we act on these theories because they provide the best explanations we have for how the world works. Climatology should not be different; especially not when there are many other benefits of reducing emissions, and the harms of reduction have been greatly exaggerated by denialists.
It certainly must seem unconscionable that there could still be something in this world that defies rigorous scientific study, so the answer has been to redefine rigorous scientific study to fit the desired answer.
This has nothing to do with climatology, since the climate is subject to rigorous scientific study.
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