Anthropogenic Climate Change

[lilphil1989]

I'd probably start with the synthesis report from the IPCC's 4th Assesment.

IPCC don't carry out their own original research. You can discount them and anything they claim to "contribute" to AGW.

How does the conclusion that anything they say is discountable follow from the fact that they haven't produced the research under review?

I'm asking you to falsify AGW. If you can't then there's nothing to debate - climate change is dead.

Just because something can't be falsified given current evidence doesn't mean it's absolutely unfalsifiable.
Actually, not being falsified by current data is the bare minimum needed for a scientific explanation of anything.

Per person? How did they work that out? Aren't there more sheep than people in Wales?

hat does the number of sheep have to do with carbon emissions per person? :S

I said that the basic science is inarguable, not that AGW is indisputable.

No, what you said was:-

When it comes to the basic science of AGW, there's really nothing you can argue against.

Demonstrating that when I said

I said that the basic science is inarguable, not that AGW is indisputable.

I was telling the truth? I really don't see what the problem is here. So the phrasing is slightly different. They both mean the exact same thing.

So you're arguing correlation proves causation, in spite of the fact that you're committing a logical fallacy?

That depends what you mean by prove. Like I've said several times already, there is no absolute truth in science.
Does one correlation imply causation? No.
Do many independant correlations predicted by some hypothesis lend support to that hypothesis? Sure.

Would you care to offer an alternative way to determine causation that doesn't involve observing
correlations? If you have one, I'm sure the scientific community would very much like to hear from you.

No, "partially responsible" couldn't be further more the truth. What else is the driving force behind our weather climate if it's not our planet's own parent star?

Conditions on the earth. The amount and ratios of atmospheric gases and the reflection coefficient from cloud cover for example cannot be ignored.

Suppose we were to engage in a kind of "reverse cloud-seeding" experiment, making it impossible for clouds to form anywhere on earth. Obviously, this has no effect on solar output. But would the climate of earth remain the same?

As for evidence, you claimed that climate scientists ignore solar forcing. A few recent papers or reviews in the literature which (in context) fail to take into account or make reference to solar forcing would be adequate evidence for this claim.

I've yet to see any proponent of AGW here actually link me to one of these peer-reviewed papers or journals. Perhaps you will be the first?

You made the claim "climate scientists don't take solar output into account". The burden of proof for that claim is on you.

Nonetheless, Houghton's review in Reports on Progress in Physics is an example of a review article with a section discussing variations in solar output.
http://iopscience.iop.org/0034-4885/68/6..._6_R02.pdf

[EDIT: Apologies if you can't access this. For some reason I thought Institute of Physics publications were freely accessible, which isn't the case.]

And with all due respect the IPCC can take their tax-payers' millions and fuck off

Very respectful.

They don't carry out any original research. They don't help your argument in any way. They don't even monitor climate related data or parameters.

I don't see how the fact that they are not carrying out original research is a valid objection. The fact that a meta-analysis is performed by someone that wasn't involved in one of the research projects considered in the analysis, is irrelevant.

It seems like you're trying to say that individual results are fine, but as soon as anyone tries to compile them, they suddenly become invalid for some reason.

Yes but there's more than one type of empirical and scientific evidence that would satisfy my standards...

What are they?

...not just statistical analysis, because while providing some benefits in experiments how we interpret the data in the end, or lack of, may not actually be what is demonstrably occurring within reality.

I think you misunderstand the role of statistics in science.
MAybe you're arguing against what someone in the media or politics would call "statistics" as this

may not actually be what is demonstrably occurring within reality.

and your earlier comment about using statistics you show anything you want would imply. The media doesn't understand statistics (or pretends not to, to make overexaggerated claims to sell newspapers etc) and misuses the ideas without really caring about any kind of mathematical or scientific validity. (Incidentally, if you're interested in this I'd reccomend Ben Goldacre's book "Bad Science".)

Statisctical analyses are well-defined mathematical procedures for quantifying correlations in data, and judging the agreement or otherwise between data and a hypothesis.
Without scientific statistics, there's really no way to quantify how likely a scientific claim is to be true.