Dr David Evans claims new climate change discovery

[Minimalist]

Dr Evans says his discovery “ought to change the world”.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

Meanwhile the world is already changing...for evidence consider the brand new Lake South Carolina.

[Pyrrho]

Oh look Chuck, anyone who challenges the established scientific theory is viewed as a crackpot - think Semmelweis for example. The interesting thing about Semmelweis that people often ignore is that he didn't instruct hist students to wash their hands - they already did that. He specifically said soap and water was not good enough to remove the (invisible) cadaverous particles that he hypothesised were poisoning patients in the maternity ward, and that the medical students needed to wash their hands with a chlorinated lime solution instead!! I'll bet you don't wash your hands in chlorinated-lime, Chuck. It was around 30 years until germ theory was developed and accepted, and even then I can point you to scientific peer-review papers that urge the need for caution when assuming generalisability (applying to other medical conditions what has been 'proven only of some'). We look back on them now - and most people see a one-sided point of view that shows the scientific establishment resisting change. OF COURSE THEY RESIST CHANGE! That's what they're supposed to do. But challengers are supposed to be able to present evidence that can advance science - science only advances through falsification.

While some visionaries have been mistakenly treated as crackpots, the world would grind to a complete stop and then go off the rails while reversing if every crackpot is accorded the consideration given to visionaries.

Indeed.  The vast majority of the people who have been regarded as crackpots by the scientific community have been crackpots.  It is a rare thing for a scientific genius to come along and be first thought of as a crackpot.  But nearly every crackpot likes to compare themselves with those rare exceptions rather than to acknowledge the fact that the vast majority of people who are regarded as crackpots are rightly regarded as crackpots.

[Angrboda]

"What a bunch of hooey."

[houseofcantor]

Dr Evans says his discovery “ought to change the world”.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.

The world does nothing but change. Hubris talks back, but fuck hubris. 

[Thumpalumpacus]

Dr Evans has a theory: solar activity. What he calls “albedo modulation”, the waxing and waning of reflected radiation from the Sun, is the likely cause of global warming.

If the warming is caused by reduced albedo, how does the process reverse itself? Albedo increases typically come from the expansion of the ice sheets, or increased cloudiness. While warmer temperatures should increase cloudiness, they will also decrease the ice sheets. Will there be enough clouds created to compensate for the loss of ice-sheet albedo?

Additionally, CO² is only one greenhouse gas amongst several present in our atmosphere. Most folks don't realize that water vapor is a GHG that is even more potent than CO² -- and methane more than that. Has he accounted for that at all, especially since his albedo-based model seems to rely on the increase of a potent GHG in the atmosphere?

[Aractus]

No one?

No one in this thread. Brining other people's arguments into a thread about someone's specific argument is just straw-manning.

[popeyespappy]

No one in this thread except your Dr. Evans.

[Aractus]

What he said in 2011 was accurate (even the graph you posted showed that), and he never said the temperature had peaked. It's now 2015 in case you hadn't noticed, and there is 4 more years of whether data.

"it is impossible to conclude from our analysis which of 2014, 2010, or 2005 was actually the warmest year… the Earth’s average temperature for the past decade has changed very little." - Gavin Schmidt of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. Schmidt admitted that the previous claim saying that 2014 was the hottest year on record (which he himself in his official capacity made) was inaccurate, saying that he is only "38% certain" that 2014 was the hottest year on record.

Everyone including major climate scientists is saying the global warming trend appears to have slowed dramatically in the last few years.

[TheRocketSurgeon]

When I see a "scientist" publish papers like that who is a known proponent of big business, I have to hesitate. There's a long and continuing history in this country of companies using their own scientists (or those allied with the aims of the corporation) to "muddy the waters" so that the profitable aspects of the company's operations can continue. This seems pretty clear to apply to Dr. Evans. That's not to say we should dismiss his claims, or that one man cannot be right when the majority are wrong, but it's far from likely. My guess is that he is trying to do anything he can to combat what most ultra-conservatives see as a pernicious attack on the United States, in promotion of anti-climate-change legislation and other regulations, and is profiting well from the forwarding of a good-sounding idea which they can wave in the face of environmentalists. Again, environmental regulators have faced this pattern of muddying-efforts-for-companies throughout the previous century.

If you want a clear-cut example of this history, Google "Dr. Clair Patterson" (also Robert Kehoe).

I found a good analysis of the problem we're looking at, here, with the "muddy the waters" tactic and the misuse of science, for those who don't want to Google it:

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2014/...ad-debate/

[Thumpalumpacus]

There's a long and continuing history in this country of companies using their own scientists (or those allied with the aims of the corporation) to "muddy the waters" so that the profitable aspects of the company's operations can continue.

*cough*big tobacco*cough*