CO2 - Dumb question

Does that just apply to Piers Corbyn, or can we now dismiss all climate scientist's credentials?

Martin.

That's what one side always says, If you do not support the argument you MUST be ignorant.

It is what the remoaners say aboiut those who voted for Brexit - they are all ignorant.

It has always been the same - what ever I say is the truth, everyone else is ignorant.

I could go on but as I stated, it is getting boring, spats will develop, people will start getting angry, the mods will have to step in.

Experience tells us that there is no such thing as black and white, everything is a shade of grey.

If you think your argument is the right one i.e White, then you have yet to grow up and see the world for what it is.

But experience does tell us that science is the best way we have of understanding the world around us and of predicting future events in it. And that science is very clear on this subject.

Anyhow, I'm off to bed. Big day tomorrow riding around on old motorbikes turning fossil fuel into CO2 emissions purely for the sake of entertainment. Yes, we are all doomed. Doomed I say.

Edited By Hopper on 18/08/2022 12:20:32

Hi Martin,

At no point was I dismissive of Mr Corbyns qualifications, nor any of the equally qualified scientists that happen to disagree with him. I just wanted to make the point that just because a person is well qualified, they may turn out to be wrong!

In 200 years time one of the two groups of scientists bickering over this can turn to the other group and say "see...told you so!". As for which group that is, probably none of us will know...unless things happen to turn much worse and quicker than we all thought/assumed.

Kind regards

Derek

Experience is telling me that you can't explain the science of how human contribution to CO2 affects the climate. If you can, it'd probably be quicker for you to post it here than keep replying to us need-to-be-convinced types.

And scrap your planet-destroying motorbike while you're at it.

Martin.

Sounds good, but read the account of Mr Corbyn's career on Wikipedia.

More to the point, science isn't based on playing Personality Top-Trumps. It's a group activity following a disciplined process designed to eliminate error. Scientific method goes through 3 basic stages each requiring more evidence. Hypothesis, Theory, and Scientific Law.

Scientists start with a Hypothesis to be analysed by others. It begins with a reasonable explanation of an observed phenomenon and can be light on evidence. Nothing is accepted simply just because it seems to fit or sounds good, and 'reasonable' means the Hypothesis either has to be consistent with Theory and Laws or addresses why not.

More work is always needed. The validity of a Hypothesis rises when evidence is found to support it and falls when evidence counters it. Weak evidence, such as statistical correlation has far less weight than a repeatable experiment, and one experiment has less weight than many different experiments, and new data found to fit. Negative evidence is as important as positive, perhaps more so, and is numerate except when words explain numbers. Words without numbers are not evidence, nor are assertions or alternatives. How strong a Hypothesis is depends on a consensus. This reduces the possibility of fans promoting nonsense and truths going down the drain because iindividuals don't understand it. Science is hard to understand!

Hypotheses often take decades to develop. They often start close but incomplete and have to be revised. Done in a highly disciplined way and the revision has to stay consistent with everything else. Other scientists check this is so.

When enough evidence has been accumulated, a Hypothesis is promoted to a Theory. Theories are backed by a overwhelming evidence, but, although no-one has been able to show it's wrong, no one has been able to prove it's right. Proof in the strict sense it's proven 1+1 always equals 2, not sloppy 'beyond reasonable doubt legal proof '.

Considering Global Warming as three Hypotheses, and something like them have:

1. Rising temperature is a natural phenomenon. Evidence: none. Temperature is rising, and no natural phenomenon such as volcanic activity or solar activity account for the extra heat.
2. Rising temperature is due to human activity. Evidence: considerable, increasing for about 30 years, and no new evidence has arisen to gainsay it. (Disbelief is not evidence.) Repeatable experiments: the amount of heat received from the sun is known and the green-house effect of CO2 and CH4 have both been measured in the lab. The amount of CO2 in the air is consistent with trade accounts showing the amount of fossil fuels burned annually. Temperature is rising consistent with theory - predictably.
3. Rising temperature are causing Climate Change. Evidence: considerable. Thermodynamics have been studied comprehensively since James Watt and the equations have reached Law status. The science predicting Climate Change due to extra heat is exactly the same as that used to design all heat-engines. Steam Engines, Steam Turbines, Gas Turbines, Jets, Rockets, Hot Air Balloons & Guns all follow the same Thermodynamic Laws, and so does weather. Extra heat changes weather, the average shifts, and average is climate. Left unmanaged it's easy enough to calculate climate change will be disruptive because of the huge amount of energy involved, but it's hard to show exactly where the whip will fall. Safe to predict turbulent weather with more severe extreme events, but no proof my house will be washed away. But the risk to my home and to food supply and other basic human needs rising. It's as serious as it gets.

Personal opinion has almost no role in science. Evidence please, man-in-pub arguments don't help. When a scientific consensus says something is probably true, they're almost certainly right, even if the news is bad.

Dave

Dave ,

You really can not have your cake and eat it. By all means take an absolutist view and ignore the historical record as a local inconvenience. That in fact is your personal opinion(though paradoxically you seek to portray yourself as above mere opinion). I have no issue with that position.

However, laying aside your virtue massaging of being above the man in the pub in your insight, you can not couch your final conclusions in terms of uncertainty. So scientific “ consensus”, “is probably true”, and “ almost certainly right”, do not concord with this admirable absolutism.

You started your peroration so well too.

Paul

As it happens I do have a degree from Imperial College, but as Piers is a few years older than me I doubt we were there at the same time. Despite this I acknowledge that I do from time to time make a mistake. Getting involved with a discussion with zealots was one such occasion.

I have very little idea about what is causing climate change. I do however remember my mother telling me the main reason why our family left London to live in the new town of Hemel Hempstead in the mid to late 50s. Smog. I have never seen smog, I have tasted the foul air in many cities over my working life. But to not be able to see more than several feet in front of you, to know that people are dying because of the polution. I don't know how much of the polution was caused by coal fires, but it seemed to be the main cause.

If we did that with coal, what are we doing with oil?

Another mistake you made is labeling people as "zealots" for having the temerity to question an unproven theory.

I don't claim to be a scientist or to have a level of knowledge and expertise even approaching that of a scientist.

Here is a link to what the science says, with a few footnotes etc linking to their sources. link

And here is another scientific explanation for laymen on how CO2 causes global warming LINK 2

If you have a level of knowledge of geochemistry and geophysics and climatology etc that gives you a better understanding of the issues than the world's climate scientists, you should write up your findings in a scientific article and submit it to one of the scientific journals for publication. Articles are published on merit of their data/evidence, analysis/reasoning and conclusions, not the qualifications of the author, or lack there-of, so there is nothing to stop you getting published along with all the other scientists who have expert level knowledge of the topic. If you can demonstrate nearly all the world's scientists are wrong and you are right, your published work could change the course of history.

Edited By Hopper on 19/08/2022 07:35:30

None? Seems a bit of a sweeping generalisation.

If you go back to 1970/80ish, whenever satellites started pointing thermometers down and we got real data to work with...

The temperature is rising. It goes up in fits and starts with flat plateaus between.

The rises coincide with el Nino events, warm water upwelling on the Pacific coastline of the Americas.

We are currently on a temperature plateau, the last el Nino temperature peak from 7 years ago has yet to be beaten.

Some think we are still climbing out of the Little Ice Age.

No climate scientist cares to explain how the heat gets into the Pacific depths to become an el Nino upwelling.

No climate scientist cares to explain why the CO2 warming, that must happen in the troposphere, has not been detected by weather balloons.

Another one that should publish his scientific findings in a scientific journal and take those silly scientists to taskt. Maybe even point out to NASA that their scientists' understanding of global warming is deeply flawed and show them your evidence and reasoning why. Who knows, they might even be impressed enough to offer you a job. You could end up on the design team of the next space shuttle or something like that. Sky is the limit when you have that kind of scientific expertise.

Edited By Hopper on 19/08/2022 09:17:31

I don't have to. The data is there for anyone who wants to see it.

There are beautiful colour images from the satellite data showing the el Nini Pacific lighting up as if a 3 bar electric fire had been switched on underneath it.

The warming is in the ocean when the theory says it should be in the atmosphere.

With no explanation, I remain unconvinced.

Eventually, some politician will need to disprove CAGW. The climate scientists will be asked to explain why the heat is in the wrong place and the whole, unscientific construction will collapse like the house of cards it is.

Nothing to do with me, you can think whatever you like that makes you happy.

I just had a 200mm, dial caliper in stainless steel, featuring a full 360 degree sweep for each millimeter of travel. Fifty quid delivered, seems to work a treat, that is my fun for today.

LINK The science says otherwise. Greenhouse gasses cause ocean warming according to those silly scientists.

I stand by what I said!

• Satellites are not the only way of determining temperature! More important, Satellite measurements do not support the Hypothesis that rising temperatures are natural - they haven't detected any heat sources originating on the planet big enough to explain what's happening.
• Temperatures are not expected to rise in a neat straight line - measurements rarely do, and temperatures bounce about considerably. The absence of a perfect straight line is not evidence that average temperature is rising is natural.
• El-Nino does not support the hypothesis that rising temperature is natural: it doesn't contain enough heat to explain rises across the planet, and - even if it did - where does the extra heat driving el-Nino come from?
• The possibility we're coming out of the Little Ice Age isn't evidence: it's another hypothesis, with nothing in support. If we are climbing out of the Little Ice Age, what's causing it? There's always a reason; things don't "just happen".
• True science can't predict el-Nino's exact behaviour, but the root cause is well understood. As explained. el-Nino is not evidence that temperature rise is natural.
• The suggestion that warming should occur in the troposphere isn't evidence that temperature rise is natural. It's another Hypothesis that needs to evidenced, and hasn't been. It goes against the known behaviour of gases, which diffuse and mix together, rather than form layers. The heating capture caused by green-house gases occurs throughout the atmosphere, not only in the troposphere. As a non-specialist, I'd expect heat captured near the surface to cause more trouble than heat high up. The temperature data collected by weather balloons does not identify a natural cause of rising temperatures.

Note that suggesting alternatives is not evidence a hypothesis is wrong. Alternatives are low-value in scientific method unless supported by facts, more the better, and they have to be relevant.

At the moment, I'm not aware of any evidence supporting the Hypothesis that temperature rise is natural. In contrast, there is a mass of evidence supporting the Hypothesis that the cause is Green-house gases in the atmosphere, and that the source of two of the most efficient is human activity.

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 19/08/2022 10:29:50

A link to show the oceans are warming. My point exactly, greenhouse warming should be in the troposphere not the oceans.

Is that the best you've got?

Now that is a very good question. Where does the el-Nino heat come from?

That is not what the science says. Read it and learn.