Riverwind

The sound of settled science:

How? In the absence of an alternate hypothesis it is the only hypothesis and therefore no matter what evidence is found it will be still be presumed to be true and therefore unfalsifiable. The hypothesis I described would be falsified. Perhaps I could come up with another hypothesis involving a deity, perhaps not. But that would not alter the fact that the original hypothesis was falsified. It is meaningful if you clearly define the constraints as I did. I did not leave wiggle room that would have allowed me to move the goal posts. I stated an effect which I believe exists and described how it could be tested experimentally. God-in-the-gaps argument is no different from the a purely physical-explanation-will-eventually-be-found argument. They can be both invoked in a scientific or in a dogmatic way. The athetist position that only physical hypothesis can be considered is a dogmatic and non-scientific position.

Yet without evidence people were willing to accept that HIV was a plausible cause and make government policy decisions based on that. There are really only two explanations: a 'biochemical effect' or a 'supernatural effect'. In the experiment I described the control group would have been offered non-deity centered therapy which presumably should be able to invoke the same 'biochemical effect' if there was one. One could repeat the experiment many times with different therapies to see if the deity effect could be matched. If it could be then the deity hypothesis I described would be falsified. If it could not then the you would have evidence supporting a deity. It would not be enough to conclusively make that claim.My point is our knowledge of the physical world has advanced to the point where any deity that direct intervenes in the physical world can be reasonably ruled out. However, our knowledge of the human brain is not sufficient to explain all that we humans experience as consciousness/self-awareness. i.e. is this self-awareness nothing but the result of a biochemical machine or is there a non-physical element (i.e. a soul). Perhaps we will eventually be able to show that it is all a biochemical machine but until then a hypothesis that a diety can interact with our conciousnesses is as valid as the biochemical machine hypothesis.

Once again you are jumping in when you have no idea of the issues or the questions being asked or answers. In this case, Micheal Hardner expressed this view: I have shown that even James Hansen agrees that there is a positive correlation between solar radiance and the temperature record. Hansen also agreed with my characterization of the scientific debate of over solar effects when he said: Now Hansen does think that the solar amplification is small but that is a matter for scientific debate and it is definitely not settled no matter what the alarmists may say.

Everything depends on the circumstances at the time. Keep in mind the issue would be worse if the developed world did make huge sacrifices to reduce emissions which turned out to be not enough. It is quite likely that the public would say they have done enough and the developing world is on their own.

One would hope so. But if the poor coutries are still poor and unable to look after their own in 50 years there will be a lot of questions on why that happened and how much of the failure was actually the fault of developed world (i.e. as more and more non-western countries industrialize and become wealthy it will become much harder for the laggards to blame colonialism or any other externality for their own failures).

Obviously doing nothing today will be an argument used to justify foreign aid if/when specific problems can be linked to climate change. However, there is a tendency amound NGOs and activist scientists to try and link every human ill to climate change. This will ensure there will always be a rhetoric gap between what NGOs say should be paid and what governments actually offer.

The words of Jim Hansen, NASA Scientist: The science is not settled on solar effects.

Time for a Climate Change Plan B http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704107604574607793378860698.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_sections_opinion

Gavin Schmidt responds here. Ross McKitrick responds to Gavin here. The other responses to Ross are equally self-serving. It is clear the advocates of carbon mitigation want to have it both ways. i.e. they want the ability to explain away any results that don't fit the the models but they insist we should set policy based on the models.In the end such disussions are irrelevent because it is economically impossible to reduce CO2 emission to levels demanded within the time periods (e.g. 2050) specified.

You realize, of course, the theory of planetary motion was never peer reveiwed. The scientists involved simply published their ideas, experiments and results using the media of the time and others discussed their merit with worrying about whether they had been 'peer reveiwed'.Whether you want to admit or not peer review has been used as tool to suppress dissent in the field of climate science and, thanks to the CRU emails, there is concrete evidence to support these claims. Given that evidence the onus is now on the promoters of peer review to explain why it deserves the respect that they demand. i.e. if peer review works so wonderfully well then show some evidence. Before you answer here is some reading: http://www.newsweek.com/id/209100

Peer review in climate science is mainly a way to protect the established scientific orthodoxy. It is not a mechanism to determine the correctness of a scientific hypothesis.

There are two schools of thought on solar effect. One looks directly at the sun's intensity plugs those peak-to-trough changes into the climate models and out comes a number which is too small to matter. However, the climate models do assume that the sun's intensity did increase from 1900-1940 and the climate models need that increase to explain the rise in temps over the same period. It is worth noting that some solar scientists now say that rise in intensity never occurred and the climate models are wrong. The climate modellers ignore this because it is inconvenient.The second school of thought presumes that there are secondary effects amplify the solar effect and seek to determine the magnitude of the solar effects by extracting a signal from temperature record. These efforts suggest that the solar effect is as much as 10x larger than what would be expected given the simply radiation calculations used in the climate models. This is one of the reasons why some climate modellers are turning to the sun to explain the recent cooling. The trouble is if they accept it has a large cooling effect during solar minimums they have to assume that it has an equal warming effect during solar maximums. This would undermine their claim that the CO2 is major cause of the recent warming. In short, the solar science is not settled although if does have an effect it is via a mechanism that is currently unknown.

You don't need to lie. If asked directly - say I don't know if it is true but that is what the story says. When my kids got old enough to ask direct questions that could not be reflected I responded: 'do you really want to spoil the fun?'. For a couple years they went a long anyways.

Extremely responsible moves on the part of the government that will help avoid a housing bubble and collapse. Measures such as a low down payment serve to inflate housing prices which, in the end, leaves first time buyers worse off.

Part of the problem are the unreliable temperature records. There was a recent agreement that the sea surface temperature records from the 40s-70s were wrong because the adjustments for the change of measurement device were done incorrectly. The corrections favoured by the "team" assumed the problem was limited to the 40s and it explained a discrepancy with the CO2-centric climate models. Others looked at the issue and felt that the corrections should be applied until the 70s which would increase the correlation between the temperature record and the solar cycles but increase the discrepancy with the models.One should never underestimate how the preconceptions built into the climate models has affected the adjustments applied the real data.

Many medical discoveries are accepted long before any mechanism is found. HIV-AIDS is one that immediately comes to mind. Are you someone who rejected the idea that HIV could cause AIDS simply because the mechanism was unknown? You were asking for evidence - not proof. Coorelation is evidence.

There are many other factors which can explain the warming at least as well as CO2. The problem the science establishment has taken the position that any alternative to CO2 must be proven beyond all reasonable doubt before they accept it. It is a rediculous onus of proof. If we could go back and look at all of the evidence without preconceptions about what is important and what is not we would likely find that CO2 is not as important as currently thought.

The same logic would apply to all physical phenomena that cannot be directly observed such as those alternate universes I pointed to earlier. Your response was their existence could be inferred by looking at other phenomena. You seem to be willing to accept indirect evidence in one case but not others.In any case, if it could be demonstrated that believing in a diety has a beneficial effect does it really make a difference if it is real or not?

I strong recommend you take a look at these greenland temperatures over the last 10,000 years. Those numbers should make it clear that the arctic has warmed a lot more in the recent past and the ice sheets did not melt nor did the melting permafrost trigger run away warming by releasing methane.

Doing nothing [about CO2 emissions] implies we adapt.

Because loud mouth activists and carbon control rent seekers push politicians towards their preferred policy choices. There can be no meaningful political discussion on this topic until we start by accepting that doing nothing is a valid option and working to find some middle ground that includes some sensible mitigation policies. Policies discussions that start with 'the science says CO2 must be below X or temperatures must be below Y' are non-starters because they seek to exclude legitmate policy choices by exagerrating the certainty of the science.As for referendums: I am all for them as long as I get to write the question.

I have always agreed that CO2 is a GHG that will cause warming. The question is how much. The IPCC tries to infer the effect of CO2 from the historical record which they assume was driven almost entirely by CO2 emissions. If natural or other man made causes were more significant than assumed in the IPCC assessments then it would follow that the IPCC is overestimating the effect of CO2 and the benefit of CO2 regulation would be lower.

The fact is the science ia EXTREMELY uncertain. We really have no idea how much warming will occur nor what the consequences are likely to be. There are many different policy choices we could make including "do nothing - adapt". Unfortunately, a segment of the population who happens to like particular policy choices has tried to use "science" as a ramrod to force people to agree with their choices. This has resulted in a endless debate over the science in the political arena. This is wrong. The science has told us all it can and the remaining decisions are up to us and cannot be dictated by science.

Hypothesis: contact with a deity via prayer and meditation can resolve many psychological issues such as addiction.Test: take 1000 subjects suffering from addiction and teach 1/2 of them that believing and praying to a diety will help them resolve their issues. Use standard psychology with the others. Verfication: After 5 years see if the subjects who choose to believe in a diety showed a greater improvement than the control group who did not. The test I described would provide evidence for any conventional treatment. Why would it not be sufficient to provide evidence for a diety?