Lummox, this is silly. I mean you're trying to refute the life-time research by thousands of people who study this today and in the past from a single, fairly uninformed opinion. The bottom line is that a lot of science works.
Let's keep this straight: I'm refuting you, not them.
Furthermore I repeat that you're reasoning by bandwagon: Many of these "thousands" are simply working on the basis of other figures they've seen, whose accuracy is questionable. Which is why it's important to study this anew and from an unbiased perspective.
Much of what you've quoted falls under the heading of advocacy rather than science. This is junk science: Someone sets out to find data to prove their point, and what they don't find they extrapolate. It may be done with the best of motives and even with a sincere attempt at objectivity, but the methods employed are often not truly scientific.
Would you say it's a fad that chemists throughout the centuries have slowly come to conclude that the atom contains protons and electrons. Nuclear physics revolves around such things and has been for a long time. This is a fad? Chemistry has been around for hundreds of years. People have won nobel prizes on the stuff. This, is also a fad?
No. Because new and empirical data comes in all the time to confirm those theories, although theories have changed over time as to how exactly electrons orbit the nucleus of an atom.
You're comparing apples and oranges. This is the kind of empirical, hard science I'm saying should be applied to global climate, and largely hasn't.
What if, for example, a chemist observes that a given radioactive element has a half-life of 2,000 years, and based on an estimate that 3 million tons of it exist on Earth, that 2 million years ago the whole planet was made of the stuff? That's bad reasoning by extrapolation; and it's an exaggeration, to be sure, but it makes the point. Origin theory is not science; it relies on science to reach its conclusions, but itself collects no data about origins because doing so is impossible.
To say the atomsphere contained X percentage of Y 2,000 years ago is an extrapolation. It is not data. You have yet to acknowledge this fact. Every time I bring it up, you fall back on saying that thousands of scientists can't be wrong, as if that somehow kills the point.
Lummox, you say you'd love to see more study in this area. You don't go out and look for it!
I meant more study being done, that is--and as I said, valuing data over hypothesis or else it's worthless. Such studies aren't mine to do.
You get on here and make this ridiculous argument that these "shoddy statistics" and "overreliance on extrapolation" is coming from generations of work done by thousands of people. Saying that it is ALL a fad and that it has a very good possibility of it ALL being wrong is the most pessimistic attitude I've ever seen toward this field of study.
And yet you counter with an argument at least as ridiculous that the sheer number of people saying a thing make it true. Remember, at one time a host of eugenics "experts" would gladly tell you all Jews should be sterilized lest they pollute a self-proclaimed master race; science or the appearance thereof is very easily hijacked by people with an ax to grind. Numbers of supporters do not equal proof.
You give absolutely no credit to the people who study this and you're trying to convince me that we need to be skeptical about every single statistic coming from all science in existence.
All science is skeptical. Good science is skeptical of itself. That's why it relies on data and not assumptions.
Statistics is a deeply skeptical field of study. It has to be so, because when working with numbers on that level, one finds that the results become extremely sensitive to bad process. In particular this field is subject to a lot of fallacies that arise because the true results are counterintuitive, and we can easily jump to conclusions. Statisticians call each other on tiny mistakes all the time, in ways that you and I would find arcane.
You might as well assume every bit of science is a fad and that every statistic ever published has a very good chance of being incorrect. If the world was filled with skeptics like that, we wouldn't be here today.
I don't assume that everything is that way. Rather, I assume anything has the potential to be. Good science and good statistics are reproducable. If someone with an agenda comes up with a figure, then someone with the opposite agenda should be able to reach the same figure by following pure scientific (or statistical) method--or they can explain why such a method was not followed, invalidating the work. But that doesn't stop people, particularly advocacy groups, from quoting invalidated work.
You have absolutely no basis and no legitimate argument that these figures are incorrect.
Fact: We've both agreed that there is no temperature data from 2,000 years ago, or 125,000. What you haven't acknowledged is that an estimate is not just as good for the purposes of drawing a conclusion.
I've pulled up one textbook source verifying this change, I've seen many others over the years and many people talking about. Do you want me to go pull out my articles and look up internet sources too? Are they ALL wrong, Lummox? Is it all a statistical fad?
If many people quote the same source, and the source is wrong, then they're all wrong. If many more people quote several sources, and the sources are wrong, they're all wrong. You're still reasoning by numbers, insisting that if enough people say something is true, it simply is. You're making an assumption: That the sources all followed careful procedure and all came to their conclusion by the most accurate possible means.
It is entirely possible for all the sources you read to be wrong. It is also entirely possible for all the sources I read to be wrong. You're also entirely unwilling to accept that much of your source material may be based on older material from a shared pool.
Skepticism is a fine tool until it becomes prevalent to the point of being ridiculous, where the skeptic has hardly any background in what they're trying to talk about. You're trying to argue opinion against fact and you don't even realize that geography includes meteorology. Go do some reading, read some papers done by paleoclimatologists and related professionals.
Paleoclimatology, you must realize, is a field founded entirely on extrapolation. The entire thing is forensic. At best, paleontologists can estimate some climate conditions based on mineral content and the prevalence of various kinds of life. But given the poor adequacy of modern climatological models, paleoclimatology has very little chance of ever approaching experimental science.
Do some research yourself. Don't just take it from me. I'm not making these numbers up. If you're going to argue your point any further, go do some reading Lummox. The speculation-about-everything argument is getting old. Back it up.
Have I not said enough to show that at least further study is warranted? I'm not even trying to prove global warming is nothing, but I have in fact produced some data. I have done some research myself, and I'm particularly more knowledgeable than you in the matter of how science can be misapplied; I've yet to see you do more than simply dismiss those points as if they don't matter.
And I'm aware that you're not making numbers up, but a number doesn't have to be made-up to be wrong. You have to accept that just because a large body of researchers say something is so doesn't mean they're right; a growing body is coming to disagree with them.
Lummox JR
Feb 4 2003, 2:21 pm (Edited on Feb 4 2003, 2:26 pm)
Let's keep this straight: I'm refuting you, not them.
Furthermore I repeat that you're reasoning by bandwagon: Many of these "thousands" are simply working on the basis of other figures they've seen, whose accuracy is questionable. Which is why it's important to study this anew and from an unbiased perspective.
Much of what you've quoted falls under the heading of advocacy rather than science. This is junk science: Someone sets out to find data to prove their point, and what they don't find they extrapolate. It may be done with the best of motives and even with a sincere attempt at objectivity, but the methods employed are often not truly scientific.
No. Because new and empirical data comes in all the time to confirm those theories, although theories have changed over time as to how exactly electrons orbit the nucleus of an atom.
You're comparing apples and oranges. This is the kind of empirical, hard science I'm saying should be applied to global climate, and largely hasn't.
What if, for example, a chemist observes that a given radioactive element has a half-life of 2,000 years, and based on an estimate that 3 million tons of it exist on Earth, that 2 million years ago the whole planet was made of the stuff? That's bad reasoning by extrapolation; and it's an exaggeration, to be sure, but it makes the point. Origin theory is not science; it relies on science to reach its conclusions, but itself collects no data about origins because doing so is impossible.
To say the atomsphere contained X percentage of Y 2,000 years ago is an extrapolation. It is not data. You have yet to acknowledge this fact. Every time I bring it up, you fall back on saying that thousands of scientists can't be wrong, as if that somehow kills the point.
I meant more study being done, that is--and as I said, valuing data over hypothesis or else it's worthless. Such studies aren't mine to do.
And yet you counter with an argument at least as ridiculous that the sheer number of people saying a thing make it true. Remember, at one time a host of eugenics "experts" would gladly tell you all Jews should be sterilized lest they pollute a self-proclaimed master race; science or the appearance thereof is very easily hijacked by people with an ax to grind. Numbers of supporters do not equal proof.
All science is skeptical. Good science is skeptical of itself. That's why it relies on data and not assumptions.
Statistics is a deeply skeptical field of study. It has to be so, because when working with numbers on that level, one finds that the results become extremely sensitive to bad process. In particular this field is subject to a lot of fallacies that arise because the true results are counterintuitive, and we can easily jump to conclusions. Statisticians call each other on tiny mistakes all the time, in ways that you and I would find arcane.
I don't assume that everything is that way. Rather, I assume anything has the potential to be. Good science and good statistics are reproducable. If someone with an agenda comes up with a figure, then someone with the opposite agenda should be able to reach the same figure by following pure scientific (or statistical) method--or they can explain why such a method was not followed, invalidating the work. But that doesn't stop people, particularly advocacy groups, from quoting invalidated work.
Fact: We've both agreed that there is no temperature data from 2,000 years ago, or 125,000. What you haven't acknowledged is that an estimate is not just as good for the purposes of drawing a conclusion.
If many people quote the same source, and the source is wrong, then they're all wrong. If many more people quote several sources, and the sources are wrong, they're all wrong. You're still reasoning by numbers, insisting that if enough people say something is true, it simply is. You're making an assumption: That the sources all followed careful procedure and all came to their conclusion by the most accurate possible means.
It is entirely possible for all the sources you read to be wrong. It is also entirely possible for all the sources I read to be wrong. You're also entirely unwilling to accept that much of your source material may be based on older material from a shared pool.
Paleoclimatology, you must realize, is a field founded entirely on extrapolation. The entire thing is forensic. At best, paleontologists can estimate some climate conditions based on mineral content and the prevalence of various kinds of life. But given the poor adequacy of modern climatological models, paleoclimatology has very little chance of ever approaching experimental science.
Have I not said enough to show that at least further study is warranted? I'm not even trying to prove global warming is nothing, but I have in fact produced some data. I have done some research myself, and I'm particularly more knowledgeable than you in the matter of how science can be misapplied; I've yet to see you do more than simply dismiss those points as if they don't matter.
And I'm aware that you're not making numbers up, but a number doesn't have to be made-up to be wrong. You have to accept that just because a large body of researchers say something is so doesn't mean they're right; a growing body is coming to disagree with them.
Lummox JR