Global Warming & Climate Change Discussion

[the54thvoid]

This thread ceased to be relevant some while back. Those who deny climate change or man's part in it will never accept the huge majority view, no matter what evidence is shown. Time and time again the same voices shout down the bulk of evidence decrying some left wing liberal conspiracy. Ignoring all the while the conservative funded, normally fossil fuel interest lobby groups funding much research.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

I've posted this before and I'll post it again. Deniers love to poke holes at peer review, but they fail to put into scale just how 1 sided the research really is. He isn't wrong that peer review isn't a perfect system, but you can build confidence levels by taking into account multiple areas of research. The reason why deniers are not skeptics is because they don't use empirical evidence to support their position. Their strongest argument is and will always be the ever shrinking gap of the unknown.

One verified paper is worth more than 13,950 unverified papers combined. That chart means little more than there's a lot of interest in a topic.

 

[qubit]

The reason why deniers are not skeptics is because they don't use empirical evidence to support their position. Their strongest argument is and will always be the ever shrinking gap of the unknown.

Sounds like a religion. Don't need facts for that, just blind faith.

 

[magibeg]

One verified paper is worth more than 13,950 unverified papers combined. That chart means little more than there's a lot of interest in a topic.

Are you serious? If you have a paper that comes to a conclusion and the result turns out to be random, than a support study that verifies claims is also equally likely to be incorrect. That's why it takes hundreds of studies in supporting subjects in high confidence levels to support a theory to a high confidence level. This chart shows outcomes of studies. This should show that there is basically a 0 confidence level for denying climate change. How can you even possibly come to that conclusion that one verified paper is worth more than 13,950 unverified ones?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

We've been over that before. The metrics they used to classify articles as pro-/anti-anthropomorphic climate change was extremely biased in favor of pro-.

Because something that is verified can also be applied. The article gave a great example of a pharmaceutical company testing 53 cancer peer-review papers and only 6 could be verified: 89% is as good as toilet paper.

Can you be absolutely certain that similar numbers aren't reflected in that same chart you keep posting? IAC wasn't certain.

 

[magibeg]

We've been over that before. The metrics they used to classify articles as pro-/anti-anthropomorphic climate change was extremely biased in favor of pro-.

Because something that is verified can also be applied. The article gave a great example of a pharmaceutical company testing 53 cancer peer-review papers and only 6 could be verified: 89% is as good as toilet paper.

Can you be absolutely certain that similar numbers aren't reflected in that same chart you keep posting? IAC wasn't certain.

You miss the entire point of the chart. The point is that there is essentially NO EVIDENCE to support the denier position. Where is the research? There is barely any.

If you do a generic attack on peer review and research in general I have no idea how to help you because that means you're discounting scientific research for a biased for a biased article. Worse still is that the article linked doesn't even mention the fields that we're talking about.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

And what if those 24 alleged articles are verified? They are no less important.

Here's the relevant part of the Spectator article:

Which brings us back to the matter of public policy. We’ve long been assured that reports produced by the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) are authoritative because they rely entirely on peer-reviewed, scientific literature. A 2010 InterAcademy Council investigation found this claim to be false, but that’s another story. Even if all IPCC source material did meet this threshold, the fact that one out of an estimated 25,000 academic journals conducted an unspecified and unregulated peer review ritual is no warranty that a paper isn’t total nonsense.

If half of the scientific literature “may simply be untrue,” then half of the climate research cited by the IPCC may also be untrue. This appalling unreliability extends to work on dietary cholesterol, domestic violence, air pollution – in short, to all research currently being generated by the academy.

I quoted the IAC report earlier.

 

[magibeg]

And what if those 24 alleged articles are verified? They are no less important.

Here's the relevant part of the Spectator article:

I quoted the IAC report earlier.

You are coming off as someone who doesn't actually know how scientific research is done. The reason your article is written that way is because it's a scam. It's fake news that doesn't even apply to what the author is writing about. They took information that doesn't apply to the climate research field and applied it to it and literally made a hypothetical scenario of lies. Literally a situation that wouldn't pass peer review.

When you say verified, do you even know what you're talking about? When we talk about peer reviewed papers do you know what that is?

Lets take the chart I posted earlier. So you have those 24 papers that in some way refute global warming. You could have literally 1 paper that refutes it that past peer review. The other 23 papers could be papers that are also peer reviewed that verify the first paper, you don't know the distribution and you can't make a distinction in most cases.

Many papers rely on the validity of previous papers in order for their experiments to work. In fact that in itself improves the validity of the previous paper. Do you know what you're actually arguing here?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Lets take the chart I posted earlier. So you have those 24 papers that in some way refute global warming. You could have literally 1 paper that refutes it that past peer review. The other 23 papers could be papers that are also peer reviewed that verify the first paper, you don't know the distribution and you can't make a distinction in most cases.

Exactly my point. It works both ways.

Many papers rely on the validity of previous papers in order for their experiments to work. In fact that in itself improves the validity of the previous paper. Do you know what you're actually arguing here?

It does not. If that original paper was never verified/invalid, all subsequent papers that cite it lose one of their legs. What you're talking about is effectively gossip which is the inherent danger of peer-review and the focus of the Spectator article.

Again, that chart is pointless. It proves nothing other than there's a lot of interest in the subject.

 

[qubit]

@FordGT90Concept I haven't forgotten about your reply to me, buddy. Thing is I have to do a lot of careful reading to answer you properly which I can't do at the moment. On top of that, skim reading your conversation with magibeg, you both seem to be right, which is making my head spin a little.

 

[magibeg]

Exactly my point. It works both ways.


It does not. If that original paper was never verified/invalid, all subsequent papers that cite it lose one of their legs. What you're talking about is effectively gossip which is the inherent danger of peer-review and the focus of the Spectator article.

Again, that chart is pointless. It proves nothing other than there's a lot of interest in the subject.

Ok i'm going to have to try this again because there still seems to be some sort of gap of understanding going on. Ignoring the fact that your article is fake news attributing a study that has nothing to do with the topic we're talking about I listed an absolutely insane scenario where 1 paper is then verified by 23 other papers. That distribution will never happen, unfortunately that is also too small of a sample size to work with. When dealing with thousands of papers you will have situations where there are papers that indirectly validate other papers with similar results.

An example of building upon prior papers would be like the following scenario:

Someone tests the ballistics of a cannon ball to figure out how to calculate aim better and makes a prediction for where a cannon ball should land given an amount of force. A followup paper still using the previous paper as a basis uses the same ballistics calculation to figure out how a different object like a bullet behaves and correctly predicts where a bullet will land. The 2nd paper doesn't directly verify the original paper but it does still test some degree of validity of it by building upon it.

I would strongly encourage you to read more about this subject before you continue to argue.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Ignoring the fact that your article is fake news...

Proof? It cited lots of good sources and I easily pinpointed what it was referring to in the IAC report which directly ties to IPCC's report. The Spectator article does it in a casual way (the whole article is written that way), sure, but the IAC report speaks for itself.

 

[magibeg]

Proof? It cited lots of good sources and I easily pinpointed what it was referring to in the IAC report which directly ties to IPCC's report. The Spectator article does it in a casual way (the whole article is written that way), sure, but the IAC report speaks for itself.

You're right, the IAC report does speak for itself:

"“On behalf of the InterAcademy Council and the IAC committee that authored the report reviewing the processes and procedures of the IPCC, we are pleased that so many of our report’s recommendations were adopted today by the IPCC in Abu Dhabi. We are grateful to the U.N. and IPCC for seeking an independent review by the IAC and for acting on our report. We hope our report will continue to inform management of the IPCC as it carries out its Fifth Assessment Report on climate change science.”"

There is no scandal here. Your fake news site just makes it seem like there is.

 

[123zorn]

Global CO2 levels are one piece of data that is pretty indisputable, even amongst the deniers. What is the effect of global CO2 levels? When was the last time that there were global CO2 levels at the current one? What was the evidence of climate at the time that CO2 levels were at these numbers (oh gosh, it was warmer on a global scale the last time this happened, imagine that)? What is the effect of these CO2 levels upon people, plants, animals, oceans, etc.? Isn't this important? Isn't this worthwhile to determine these effects? Is the globe and its climate something of value to research?

The idea that man, while spewing enormous amounts of various gasses and particulates at rates that are far in excess of what has ever historically been produced into our common atmosphere, has no overall effect upon global climate is pretty far fetched at this point. Deniers for the most part are true believers and have little respect or understanding of science or the scientific method. While science is sometimes wrong, when there is sufficient research, it is usually right. Do we have enough research? Maybe, or maybe not. But deniers are often trying to cut or discredit research into global climate effects. This suggests that there are other reasons for such denier claims beyond any potential scientific dispute. An example of this is typically based upon financial reasons such as when Exxon (of which I am a stockholder) specifically funds 'directed research' to debunk and politically slander less directed research. Then hires political/infotainment groups to push its less than rigorous findings as an equal counterpoint (when in actuality it is far from equal) into the public discourse when the vast majority of the public has no clue or background (and why would they when its just a struggle to pay the mortgage). We have seen this behavior before, time and time again when findings and solutions may be in conflict with profit (the tobacco industry is the prototypical example).

Unfortunately we live in a era where public policy discourse is more a matter of who shouts the loudest, longest, and pays for the most airtime using the most convincing actors. Developing a body of evidence based upon rigorous scientific research and deriving findings (either positive or negative) based upon such evidence and then cooperatively developing policies that will address such findings is where we should be going vs developing belief/political systems to dispute science and research. It is ultimately destructive to ignore the power of science (the method is its most valuable contribution to society, even if most of society could not come close to articulating it).

There are global effects of human activity. Who really knows if there is a tipping point or not, until we have hindsight. The issue is certain human activity over the long term can be /has been affecting global climate, based upon the HUGE, VAST, OVERWHELMING SUPER-MAJORITY of scientific evidence. There is little credible scientific evidence showing that emissions has had no effect upon overall climate.

Given evidence, should we not have discourse on how to mitigate human impacts to minimize negative outcomes? Climate change is undeniably happening (not just supported by science, but also by the insurance industry), and it will have pretty far-reaching consequences (sea level rise is just one of the effects, and farcically stating that you live 50M over current sea level is just childish as a counterpoint).

Climate change is happening. Human activity is either a contributor or a significant factor (this is where deniers' belief system comes into conflict with evidence). We should be discussing how to minimize human effects, not the belief (against a preponderance of evidence) that humans have no effect.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

You're right, the IAC report does speak for itself:

"“On behalf of the InterAcademy Council and the IAC committee that authored the report reviewing the processes and procedures of the IPCC, we are pleased that so many of our report’s recommendations were adopted today by the IPCC in Abu Dhabi. We are grateful to the U.N. and IPCC for seeking an independent review by the IAC and for acting on our report. We hope our report will continue to inform management of the IPCC as it carries out its Fifth Assessment Report on climate change science.”"

There is no scandal here. Your fake news site just makes it seem like there is.

Never said they didn't fix it (I assumed they made some changes because this report was back in 2010). That doesn't invalidate the article saying peer-review has systemic weaknesses. And again, where's the proof it's "fake news?"

 

[R-T-B]

Never said they didn't fix it (I assumed they made some changes because this report was back in 2010). That doesn't invalidate the article saying peer-review has systemic weaknesses. And again, where's the proof it's "fake news?"

Semantics really. It's intentionally misleading news. Neither are worth defending and represent extremely poor journalism.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Article itself pays very little mind to the IPCC (two paragraphs), just used it as a reference.

The 2007 IPCC report did have serious problems which the IAC report covered (e.g. overemphasizing points which has very little empirical support for like worsening tropical storms). The 2014 IPCC report dialed the alarmism way back.

 

[R-T-B]

Article itself pays very little mind to the IPCC (two paragraphs), just used it as a reference.

Which is also frankly pretty bad journalism.

 

[magibeg]

Never said they didn't fix it. That doesn't invalidate the article saying peer-review has systemic weaknesses.

If you actually read through the report the IAC released it says nothing of systemic weakness. Your article took an issue with psychology papers, loosely quoted an IAC release and connected them. This is fake news. It's a tabloid that has misleading information at best and straight up lies at worst. Heck the IAC report was released 6 years ago, and it wasn't even a negative report.

http://reviewipcc.interacademycouncil.net/report/Chapter 5 - Conclusions.pdf

They made some suggestions to further improve their process. I have included a link to the conclusion. I'm not sure how many reports you have read but this one is relatively positive in tone.

It also says nothing of the weakness of the peer reviewed system.

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Which is also frankly pretty bad journalism.

In your opinion. I don't see a problem with it. The article is fundamentally about peer review and politics. IAC's report was specifically about that. It may be old but it is still relevant to the subject matter. That said, the Spectator piece references studies all the way back in 1982.

If you actually read through the report the IAC released it says nothing of systemic weakness.

Didn't say it did. IAC saw specific problems with the review process and offered specific recommendations to address them.


Hell if I know why this turned into a big debate because it frankly doesn't deserve it. Here's what happened:
1. qubit cite IflScience.com
2. IflScience.com was attacking Breitbart for publishing red meat. It's what they do, seriously. Why does that surprise anyone?
3. I looked past both of those at the original source: Spectator.co.uk The original source is the only one worth looking at any more. Everyone should realize that by now.

The original source has "quite a lot of merit," I said, and I'll continue to stand by those words. How does it relate to climate change? No clue because no one has really done a comprehensive study of all of these peer reviewed articles to separate the meaningful from the meaningless as well as weed out duplicates and articles that don't particularly present anything new. Do I care? Not at all other than scoffing at that picture @magibeg posted (again).

 

[magibeg]

Didn't say it did. IAC saw specific problems with the review process and offered specific recommendations to address them.

Indeed they did. However your statement says nothing about the severity or the reason for the recommendations. The way described in the article implies the IPCC was doing something either improper or incorrect. That is not the case. Instead due to the large scope they were recommending mostly organizational changes to cope with the many fields and research and large amount of organization required to generate a more effective report.

No where is it even hinted at that the conclusions for the report were improper or poorly done. Your article is fake news.

Edit - There is nothing wrong with the graph I posted. It shows that there is essentially no evidence against the general consensus of global warming. 24 Peer reviewed articles. That's it.

 

[R-T-B]

In your opinion.

It's pretty much a journalistic consenus that if you cite a source, it should be used to support your claim and not just for padding it's credibility.

I have not the time to read these documents right now, but it sounds to me from your description that what was done is a nearly universally condemned practice in journalism circles.

 

[AphexDreamer]

The original source has "quite a lot of merit," I said, and I'll continue to stand by those words. How does it relate to climate change? No clue because no one has really done a comprehensive study of all of these peer reviewed articles to separate the meaningful from the meaningless as well as weed out duplicates and articles that don't particularly present anything new. Do I care? Not at all other than scoffing at that picture @magibeg posted (again).

Don't they use multiple different methods and check the results?
And then those results all lead to the same conclusion right?

And then for the papers rejecting it only about 24 papers say it isn't happening?
While the vast majority of computer simulations, math, models, etc... say it is?

And the article is saying what? That peer reviewed papers are not perfect?
They say half of peer reviewed papers are untrue and then say half of the 13,000 papers saying climate change is real may be untrue, so then what? 6,500 papers are legit through their estimations? And what about the papers rejecting it? Does that leave 12 papers in favor of there being no climate change? Does this change anything?

Why do I feel like all we get from the other side is red herrings and nothing really notably substantial to the science behind there not being anthropogenic climate change?

 

[FordGT90Concept]

Don't they use multiple different methods and check the results?
And then those results all lead to the same conclusion right?

They should, yes, doesn't mean it happens though.

And then for the papers rejecting it only about 24 papers say it isn't happening?

The vast majority of articles don't state an opinion because that's not their objective. That graphic doesn't specify methodology so I can't say whether or not those that are in the affirmative column aren't just those that were neutral, for example. As I said before, I don't really care either way because the data itself is important, not this graphic claiming they are this or that.

While the vast majority of computer simulations, math, models, etc... say it is?

They also say there are a lot of unknowns. Computer simulations and models have to be continually updated as more information becomes available.

And the article is saying what? That peer reviewed papers are not perfect?

It doesn't talk about the papers themselves, more the process is inconsistent per publication and generally inadequate. Additionally, how people cite "# peer reviewed papers" as proof of something significant when, they mean nothing without verification.

They say half of peer reviewed papers are untrue and then say half of the 13,000 papers saying climate change is real may be untrue, so then what? 6,500 papers are legit through their estimations? And what about the papers rejecting it? Does that leave 12 papers in favor of there being no climate change? Does this change anything?

Perhaps, perhaps not. Point is, we don't really know. See the above statement (these numbers fundamentally mean nothing).

I haven't looked at any of these papers so I have no idea what they say. For all I know, those 12 papers may have just discovered that something else couldn't explain the change in observed temperature. In its own way, it could confirm the majority.

Why do I feel like all we get from the other side is red herrings and nothing really notably substantial to the science behind there not being anthropogenic climate change?

Because I don't think the sticking point is the science, it's the response. Assuming anthropomorphic climate change is occurring what do we do about it? If your answer is no more coal power, like Clinton said, you're talking about tens of thousands of jobs lost in Wyoming, Kentucky, and West Virginia. The politicians that represent those people have motivation to detest the claims because you're talking serious economic damage if anything drastic were to happen legislatively.

 

[f22a4bandit]

Climate change is a serious deal to the military. They're preparing for the effects of rising sea levels and mass migrations.

https://climateandsecurity.org/2016...y-thinks-climate-change-is-serious/#more-9182

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-climatechange-idUSKCN11K0BC

Coal power is an old technology. Funding it makes no sense. Those jobs are lost and gone, never to come back. This same issue is going to affect millions more across the globe thanks to the progression of automation and AI. However, that's an entire discussion all on its own.