In Case of Power Outage
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@PJH said:
It was the "I'm a scientist, and you will listen to me" attitude in the opening sentence that rankled and put me off. Especially when the science actually mentioned wasn't climatology (relevant to the subject) but physics (not terribly relevant. Not totally irrelevant I admit, but not for claiming to be an expert on a different field.)
I'm a college drop-out, and you will listen to me!
Of course, I really do put more faith in college drop-outs like, say, Bill Gates than anybody with a Doctorate who isn't doing jack in the world. Which is... most people with Doctorates.
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@Aaron said:
@amischiefr said:
The temperature 'does' spike, and it 'does' change every year. Saying that it has cooled over the last decade proves nothing.
It proves nothing except that the predictions of more warming were wrong. I wasn't using 10 years of data in an attempt to prove that global temperatures were permanently trending down. Pretty big difference there bucko.
ORLY
@Aaron said:
Satellite data from the last decade proved that global temperatures were actually getting colder, so the "climate scientists" just changed their model to say "oh yeah, we didn't mean it's going to constantly get warmer, it'll probably go up and down a lot in between."
No, there have 'always' been spikes in the data. I have never seen any scientific study that illustrates that the temperature will increase every single year. If you have, please provide some links to creditable scientific studies that illustrate such. It doesn't prove that scientists saying "the average global temperature is warming" as wrong, it indicates that there is a cooling trend over the past decade. Nobody creditable that I have ever seen has ever said that the temperature didn't rise and fall from year to year, and decade to decade.
You then go on to show the solar activity chart, and claim that the earth IS warming up due to solar activity.
@Aaron said:
The earth's been getting hotter because the sun's been getting really friggin' hot. Whodathunkit? Crazy eh!?
Which one is it? Are we cooling or warming? Make up your mind.
I agree with you that the environmentalweeniez and Al Gore need to suck a dick. I am not on their side argueing that your turbo deisel is goign to kill us. I was argueing your logical reasoning for saying that scientists were wrong in stating that the average temperature is rising, which for some reason you are also trying to prove them right with your last sentance there.
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@amischiefr said:
@Aaron said:
@amischiefr said:
The temperature 'does' spike, and it 'does' change every year. Saying that it has cooled over the last decade proves nothing.
It proves nothing except that the predictions of more warming were wrong. I wasn't using 10 years of data in an attempt to prove that global temperatures were permanently trending down. Pretty big difference there bucko.
ORLY
@Aaron said:
Satellite data from the last decade proved that global temperatures were actually getting colder, so the "climate scientists" just changed their model to say "oh yeah, we didn't mean it's going to constantly get warmer, it'll probably go up and down a lot in between."
There is a long-term cycle (solar - 1500 +/- 500 years) that is currently trending up. There is also a shorter-term cycle (a few hundred years) caused by the earth itself. And then there are random fluctuations. The temperature has gone down in the past 10 years. That does not mean it is on a long-term trend down.
The "AGW" "prediction" in the late 1990s was that we had created a feedback loop that would become unstoppable unless we cut emissions, and that the temperature was going to skyrocket in the next 50 years. We didn't cut them - not significantly - and yet the temperature went down. The activists (sorry, "scientists") were wrong, so they changed the model. Maybe CO2 has an effect, maybe it doesn't; the point is, the specific model that was (and still is!) being crammed down our throats predicted temperatures rising in the first decade of this millenium, and the model was clearly wrong.
Which one is it? Are we cooling or warming? Make up your mind.
We are in a long-term warming cycle and a short-term cooling cycle. It's really quite simple.
To be clear, I'm not even really saying that "scientists" were wrong, because most of the people at the IPCC and in the media claiming to be "scientists" are just quacks with an advanced degree. The vast majority of scientists are actually doing good research (such as satellite studies), but you don't hear about it because phrases like "we're still trying to perfect the model" or "status quo for now" don't make good headlines.
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@morbiuswilters said:
Obviously genetics is solid science, but eugenics is awful policy
Say what you want about National Socialism; at least it was an ethos!
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@PJH said:
Especially when the science actually mentioned wasn't climatology (relevant to the subject) but physics (not terribly relevant. Not totally irrelevant I admit, but not for claiming to be an expert on a different field.)
Okay, that's just fucking retarded. Climatology is almost exactly a subset of physics, genius. Whose fucking thermodynamics do you think they use in their models? Do they get their own personal laws of physics that are different from mine to apply to the climate? Apparently they do.
And if you get audited by the IRS, do you point out to the tax agents that it's an irritating logical fallacy for them to claim to be experts? I really hope you do. We have experts for reasons, you know. Especially in science. Science is hard.
@rad131304 said:
Who said the system had to be linear?
Thanks for reading my post, because, you know, the whole point of it is that the system ISN'T LINEAR. That's exactly what makes it hard. Linear systems are easy enough even high school kids and internet-experts can understand them.
@amischiefr said:
No, there have 'always' been spikes in the data. I have never seen any scientific study that illustrates that the temperature will increase every single year. If you have, please provide some links to creditable scientific studies that illustrate such. It doesn't prove that scientists saying "the average global temperature is warming" as wrong, it indicates that there is a cooling trend over the past decade. Nobody creditable that I have ever seen has ever said that the temperature didn't rise and fall from year to year, and decade to decade.
That's the meaning of the "temperature anomaly" that's claimed to be increasing. The idea is that the average temperature, on average, increases. The difficulty, as you're both seeing, is that that's very hard to make sense of that when there are so many effects which dominate the system you have to untangle. It's even hard to tell if what you're looking at is due to noise, systematic errors, or other kinds of environmental fluctuations. This is why having a good theoretical model is so important. Without one, all your careful measurements are is a pile of useless numbers. That's why some people claim overall warming is consistent with the past ~10 years of cooling, and some people claim it isn't--all they're arguing about is data in the absence of any good models. And with just data you can claim pretty much whatever you want.
@Aaron said:
There is a long-term cycle (solar - 1500 +/- 500 years) that is currently trending up. There is also a shorter-term cycle (a few hundred years) caused by the earth itself. And then there are random fluctuations. The temperature has gone down in the past 10 years. That does not mean it is on a long-term trend down.
But the point I've been trying to make is that, in the absence of a model, you don't know that. You don't know anything. Without a model, you don't know if it makes sense to go up, down, stay the same, or any number of complicated combination of those! We simply don't know the relative strength of these kinds of cycles because we really do not have a good handle on the strengths of almost any of the effects involved.
The "AGW" "prediction" in the late 1990s was that we had created a feedback loop that would become unstoppable unless we cut emissions, and that the temperature was going to skyrocket in the next 50 years. We didn't cut them - not significantly - and yet the temperature went down. The activists (sorry, "scientists") were wrong, so they changed the model. Maybe CO2 has an effect, maybe it doesn't; the point is, the specific model that was (and still is!) being crammed down our throats predicted temperatures rising in the first decade of this millenium, and the model was clearly wrong.
Yes, the models which predicted this were incomplete, but the point to make here is that the good scientists did not look at those models predictions and claim that they had anything to do with reality. Often instabilities like that in a model are taken as a sign that the model is deficient unless you have a good reason (and thus, a good thing to investigate). So many scientists were spending their time trying to understand why this occurs, if it's real, how much of it is caused by incomplete models, etc. Then the media and politicians picked up on this somehow and took it the totally wrong way and ran with it.
To be clear, I'm not even really saying that "scientists" were wrong, because most of the people at the IPCC and in the media claiming to be "scientists" are just quacks with an advanced degree. The vast majority of scientists are actually doing good research (such as satellite studies), but you don't hear about it because phrases like "we're still trying to perfect the model" or "status quo for now" don't make good headlines.
It's important to note that, for one, what you hear claimed in the media about what's in the (lengthy, laborious, technical, sometimes somewhat contradictory, and incomplete) IPCC reports is not actually what's in the IPCC reports. There are literally meetings where a scientist will explain to a group of politicians what's going on, then the democrats will come out and say "We knew it, we ARE destroying the earth!" and the republicans will come out and say "We knew it, the scientists agree those liberals are crazy!" and each side totally believes that's what the scientist told them. This is because, 1. science is hard, 2. they're fucking stupid, and 3. they've already made up their minds. Both groups obviously are totally wrong and will have missed every single thing the scientist told them.To summarize for the TLDR assholes:
- Politicians stupid
- Republicans stupid
- Democrats stupid
- Media stupid
- Science hard
- Science: TLDR
- Nobody listens to scientists
- cf,
@PJH said:
You lost me right there. Regardless of what you have to say (and it looked a bit tfl:dr.)[...] It was the "I'm a scientist, and you will listen to me" attitude in the opening sentence that rankled and put me off.
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@cfgauss said:
To summarize for the TLDR assholes:
tl;dr. But you forgot Nazis. Nazis are stupid too.
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A man who knows he knews nothing knows more than a man who doesn't know he knows nothing.
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@cfgauss said:
No it isn't.@PJH said:
Especially when the science actually mentioned wasn't climatology (relevant to the subject) but physics (not terribly relevant. Not totally irrelevant I admit, but not for claiming to be an expert on a different field.)
Okay, that's just fucking retarded.
@cfgauss said:
Climatology is almost exactly a subset of physics, genius
No it isn't. It's a subset of (abusing) statistics.@cfgauss said:
Whose fucking thermodynamics do you think they use in their models?
Um.. they don't use thermodynamics. Thermodynamics may play a part in weather, but it has bugger all to do with climate except as a consequence of long term weather patterns. Just to be clear here, you do realise there's a difference between "climate" and "weather"?@cfgauss said:
Do they get their own personal laws of physics that are different from mine to apply to the climate? Apparently they do.
No comment.@cfgauss said:
To summarize for the TLDR assholes:
Generally because the ones involved with climate change talk crap, fail to properly peer review their own papers, and then try to pass off said papers as gospel when they're anything but.
[...]
Nobody listens to scientists
Take the glaciers bollocks that's been pointed out recently:The report from working group two, on impacts, included a false claim that Himalayan glaciers would melt away by 2035, which was sourced to a report from campaign group WWF.
These scientists aren't even doing their own research - they're culling it from stuff produced from fakecharaties!
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TL;DR
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@PJH said:
@cfgauss said:
Climatology is almost exactly a subset of physics, genius
No it isn't. It's a subset of (abusing) statistics.No, I don't think that's quite right.
How about we agree that it sits on the touching surfaces of physics, geology, chemistry, biology, botany, ecology, oceanology, social studies, technology, politics, meteorology, and statistics. Lots and lots of statistics.
Kind of how rocket science sits on the touching surfaces of practically everything.
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@dhromed said:
How about we agree that it sits on the touching surfaces of physics, geology, chemistry, biology, botany, ecology, oceanology, social studies, technology, politics, meteorology, and statistics. Lots and lots of statistics.
Kind of how rocket science sits on the touching surfaces of practically everything.
Well, aside from the ridiculous insinuation that politics has anything to do with real science ;) I would say that the aspects of other sciences that are used are exactly their overlap areas with physics. In fact the past 10 or 15 or so years has seen a huge flood of physicists into biology in particular, but also into many of the other sciences you mentioned (that's why there are now such subjects as biophysics, geophysics, ocean physics, etc which are large enough that one can study apart from traditional biology, geology, etc).
Until fairly recently a lot of the physics applications in those subjects was "baby physics" like, basic E&M applied to cells, or basic solid state / statistical physics / thermodynamics applied to fluid / solids under pressure... But recently we're starting to see crazy shit like using quantum mechanics to design microscopic "lab on a chip" biological systems that use rather sophisticated microscopic physics and chemistry applied to biological systems to get them to behave essentially like a circuit, but run by microscopic amounts of fluids instead of electric current. This lets you (in principal) do amazing stuff like do blood tests for diseases on chips that need only a drop of blood to work and have results in seconds. At any rate, that kind of stuff requires a sophisticated understanding of biology from a physics point of view. Pretty soon it will be the case that these subjects are (at least morally) subsumed into physics, like chemistry was with the discovery of quantum mechanics (and even more so with fancy computer simulations of complicated quantum systems). Although chemistry is still a sepparate "field," that's due to a combonation of tradition, and it being too applied to be a part of the core subject (most of upper division physics does not really consist of any applications--they just give you tools to use to apply wherever you like). But many people choose to get their physics PhDs basically in chemistry (and biology, etc), because those tools are so useful to do it with!
Admittedly, this sophistication has not disseminated too far yet. Particularly into climate science, parts of which are still using, as their state-of-the-art, physics that was well known a century ago.
At any rate, the real reason that physics is so applicable in those situations is that part of being a good physicist is understanding how to do a good job modeling things, and how to apply laws (physical or otherwise) to complicated systems to understand their behavior, because in the end that is what physics was always about. Modern physics tends to look very cohesive, but 100 or more (or even ~50 in some cases) years ago, diverse things studied by physicists were not "obviously" seen as the same subject, and were not made obviously the same until much later with a cohesive theory was built to explain each of them, and found to be the same (and often the reason they were found to be the same was because they were all physicists and all were familiar with other physicists' work). We're all a big science family, damn it! It's just that parts of climate science are that drunken abusive distant uncle who you'd rather not admit you're related to... And all the interventions and AA meetings in the world won't make a difference...
But this is why most physicists aren't taking these peoples' predictions seriously. We talk to one of the climate scientists who wants to make predictions, and we have conversations like "what's your theoretical model backing these predictions" and they say "computer models." How do they predict temperature changes? "With equations! That involve temperature! And they're REALLY complicated!" And then they act like what we do is so easy compared to them, because, you know, we don't have massive billion dollar projects that require thousands of PhDs to make work, that produce so much data that the ~1% we keep is terabytes and sometimes needs neural networks to analyze properly... Because they have EQUATIONS! (Actual converstation I've had with a climate science grad student!) The ones, on the other hand, who don't make *predictions* and realize what they're doing, we do take more seriously.
On the other hand, I can talk to a biochemist and learn about how algebraic varieties are expected to allow protein folding to be better understood!
Although I do see your point! But my point is that the overlaps with physics are the areas where we can make the most trustworthy (semi-) quantitative predictions. The areas which do not overlap are not really used, because that's the subset that makes statements like "hey there are lots of trees here," or "these kinds of flowers all have five petals," which is nice, but not useful when you want to calculate dynamics.
Except of course for the overlaps with politics, etc, which have nothing to do with numbers, data, or real-life in general.
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@rad131304 said:
@renalexam said:
Global climate change? Since when is it abnormal for the northeast to get snow in February?
1) DC/VA are considered the mid-atlantic and not the northeast.
2) In recent years, almost 3 feet of snow (Regan National Airport recorded 32 inches of snowfall) in one winter is abnormal for DC/VA, let alone for the second time in one winter to have what the region would refer to as a "blizzard".
3) i guess i needed to end that post with </sarcasm> or some other reference to point out that I was mocking that, amidst "global warming", we experienced two of the largest snowstorms in DC in the past 100 years in the same winter? </devil's advocate>
I live in the Buffalo, NY area. This year we are having a very mild winter and we are 6 inches of snow behind the pace of an average winter. In comparison, Washington, DC has already seen twice their average annual snowfall. This isn't "climate change", this is simply a year where the snow fell further south than it usually does.
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@Jaime said:
@rad131304 said:
@renalexam said:
Global climate change? Since when is it abnormal for the northeast to get snow in February?
1) DC/VA are considered the mid-atlantic and not the northeast.
2) In recent years, almost 3 feet of snow (Regan National Airport recorded 32 inches of snowfall) in one winter is abnormal for DC/VA, let alone for the second time in one winter to have what the region would refer to as a "blizzard".
3) i guess i needed to end that post with </sarcasm> or some other reference to point out that I was mocking that, amidst "global warming", we experienced two of the largest snowstorms in DC in the past 100 years in the same winter? </devil's advocate>
I live in the Buffalo, NY area. This year we are having a very mild winter and we are 6 inches of snow behind the pace of an average winter. In comparison, Washington, DC has already seen twice their average annual snowfall. This isn't "climate change", this is simply a year where the snow fell further south than it usually does.
I live in Buffalo as well, and I've spent the last few days laughing at the snowfall numbers from DC and how much they're freaking out about it.
This winter has definitely been disappointing with regard to snowfall, but Buffalo's reputation for huge amounts of snow is already severely inflated. A couple of winters ago I was up in Anchorage for a week during a bad storm. Whenever I told someone up there that I'd come from Buffalo, they'd always say: "Buffalo! You guys get so much snow!" This was in the middle of a blizzard in Alaska.
