Anthropogenic Climate Change

[lilphil1989]

Ever heard of the phrase "Correlation does not imply causation"? Statistics can be manipulated to emphasize any correlation between variables. You cannot argue within science and statistics that one causes the other, you're essentially making a cum hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy by claiming these events must have a cause and effect relationship without going for further investigation first.

I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not being completely disingenuous by deliberately misinterpreting what I said to score cheap points.

My point was, that there is no such thing as an absolute fact in science. All you can say is how likely something is to be true in probabilistic terms given the sum of the available data.

Statistics can be manipulated to emphasize any correlation between variables.

The only way you can manipulate statistics is by cherry-picking the data. That's known in science as research fraud. And it can be tested for using forensic statistics considering things such as Benford's Law.
If you have any evidence that these techniques have been applied to demonstrate that any of the data in support of the AGW theory has been manipulated in this way, please present that evidence.

As for the sun dictating weather, sure the sun dictates the energy flux the earth receives, but it has no control whatsoever over the earth's energy output.

The Sun is already halfway through its main-sequence stage, its gradually becoming more and more luminous. This is already explained in stellar evolution, its surface temperature is slowly rising in line with simulated computer models. This increase in solar temperatures means in another billion years the surface of the Earth will be too hot for liquid water to exist, all terrestrial life will end, long before our Sun ever becomes a Red Giant.

That's bordering on irrelevant. I accepted that the sun dictates the earth's received energy flux. I stated that directly in the quote.

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

Science thrives on skepticism, on open-mindedness, and searching for new ways of critical thinking, science stagnates in our convictions that it's infallible.

Please don't misuse the term open-mindedness. It doesn't mean being treating all ideas as equally likely to be true, it means being willing to alter one's beliefs upon the presentation of evidence contrary to a currently held belief.
You have been asked several times by myself and theVOID to present evidence; thus far you have not done so.

The arseholes in Climategate responded to critics of global warming theory that their skepticism wasn't "legitimate", and of course we all know about their infamous email controversy back in Nov '09.

The problem is that a lot of the criticsm comes from a basic misunderstanding of science. Take for example, the things you were saying a few posts back which were refuted. If you are ignorant of basic scientific principles, I'm afraid it is not the responsibility of climate scientists to personally educate you.

Another problem is obfuscation by the oil industry. What they tend to do is fund research which is then presented directly to the public via the media, completely bypassing the peer-review process.
And then of course your man in the street picks up his paper and sees simply "scientists say.....". If you're lucky, there might be a sentence at the end of the article stating that the research is not peer-reviewed, but that doesn't mean too much to people outside of the scientific community anyway.

Actually I think some responsibility for this must be accepted by the scientific communty, at present there's a real failure when it comes to communicating with the public.
There's something of a void where there should be a dialogue between scientists and the public, and unfortunately into that void is creeping nonsense and pseudoscience. Why do you think things like homeopathy are so popular? It's because scientists aren't interacting with the public, leaving homeopaths to peddle their nonsense pretty much without challenge.

I think this is what they were referring to when talking of "illegitimate" skepticism.

You missed the point again, they didn't forget to account for it, they opted instead to *completely ignore it*

That is simply not true.

You also haven't heard of the phrase "Correlation does not imply causation"?

Sure, but once again, you're misapplying the principle.
You seem to be under the impression that these guys are just taking 5 data points and drawing a line through them with a wax crayon.
You're right in that if I just measure two things to be correlated and do nothing further, I'm not in a position to make a claim about causality. But if I make a hypothesis, and the data support that hypothesis, them I am in a position to make such a claim, with some probabilistic degree of certainty.
You might be aware of something called statistical significance. This is essentially the answer to the question "given a hypothesis, how likely is the data?".
For publication in physics journals (in which a fair few AGW papers have been published), you generally need 3sigma significance, which essentially means you have to be 99.7% sure.

(Actually, I personally think the Bayesian approach is better, which answers the similar question "given the data, how likely is the hypothesis?". Although if you want to compare hypotheses, you can into a mess with things like prior probablilites, but that's not a discussion for here.)

Actually, it does. The industry, steam locomotives and coal mines in Wales are all long gone, yet they argue CO2 emissions have never been higher, and we need legislation to cut them, please explain that to me.

Burning fucktons of fossil fuels to generate electricity, and oil to move things around.



A lot of the AGW "skepticism" seems to go far beyond skepticism. The position seems to be "I wouldn't believe it, even if it were true".