It is laughable that all this is based on imprecise models and simulations and not actual science. There is nothing provable with any of this or for that matter disprovable.
Alter the inputs and weighting in the models by merest fractions, or try take new factors into account and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down, yet on the basis of this Billions, if not Trillions of dollars are being moved around and new laws are being made, among many other side effects.
Who decided exactly what inputs are needed for calculations and which should be left out? Who decided their relative weightings? Who decided the exact nature of the interactions inside the models?
Is all science required to be "provable" now, then? Most science doesn't really work on proof, unfortunately; it's levels of certainty, not stamping something "proven" and being done with it. It's building models of reality and testing their accuracy as far as possible.
Public policy decisions cannot be based on "proof". There is never going to be proof positive of what the climate will do in the next 100 years until we arrive at 2113, and even then there will be aspects of the picture that will be unclear; not everything is easily measurable, and not everything you might like to know will be measured.
Actual science covers more ground than schoolwork where you have one variable and everything else is controlled. Climate change is a global-scale issues with innumerable variables that can not be controlled.
That's not the same as saying we can know nothing about it, or that we must make no decisions about what we can figure out with some reasonable level of certainty.
> Who decided exactly what inputs are needed for calculations and which should be left out? Who decided their relative weightings? Who decided the exact nature of the interactions inside the models?
Are you saying that because you don't know how to do this stuff, no one can make predictions with a reasonable margin of error?
That is the difficulty. When your conclusions are based on models which seem to be infinitely malleable or at least have many "estimated" parameters, the models become unfalsifiable.
If you've got a conclusion which is invariant under all possible evidence, it stops being science.
The same criticisms are leveled at the standard model of physics. You're right that it's hard for a theory to be falsified if it can be molded to fit any data. But it still does need to be consistent with past measurements and future measurements and what we know of the physical principles that drive the climate.
It also isn't that difficult to demonstrate the underlying principles that are in action. The greenhouse gas effect is fairly easy to measure experimentally (it was first experimentally measured in 1859).
Modelling the climate accurately is a very hard problem but we don't have an untouched completely controllable alternate climate on which to perform experiments. It's still better than throwing up our hands and declaring understanding impossible.
Climate change models must predict future climate-related stats to be falsifiable, and those that don't make accurate predictions must be rejected; that's science. The future continues to arrive, so climate change models continue to be falsified (or not).
It's certainly difficult to do; that is not the same as saying they are producing no valid & valuable information.
True scientific research is not meant to 'prove' a hypothesis, but disprove the null hypothesis 'that there is no relationship between two measured phenomena'. It is next to impossible to 'prove' a hypothesis under all conditions and circumstances. This isn't a mathematical proof.
Scientists? People who study the physics of the system in question by building models, simulating them and comparing to data? I'm not sure what else you expect. I'll take them for big policy decisions any day over some blogger cherry picking data.
Seems to me that everyone involved is cherry picking the data to support their own interpretation. There's even been accusations of cherry picking of how the data is collected in the first place.
If that's how it seems to you, you are not paying enough attention. Scientists are providing full data sets, and denialists are cherry-picking. I can't convince you just by saying so, but seriously, this is an important issue. Set aside some time (a day or two) and read some if the key papers characterising climate change. You will come away with a very different idea on where the truth lies in this "debate".
Scientists are most certainly not providing full data sets across the board. There's been a scandal or two of scientists withholding data, even committing criminal acts in some cases. I know it hasn't happened within the last few months so I'm sure it's easy to forget.
Oh wait, "denialists" made those accusations. We can ignore them right? After all, who cares about an opposing viewpoint when you can give them condescending names? Just mock them until they shut up. I mean, real science doesn't need people with different viewpoints duplicating the results, right? You display your bias like a badge of honor.
What good is a full data set if it was collected in a way to push an agenda in the first place? Which I notice you don't address at all in responding to my post. I can go out and get you data that says whatever you want it to say, provided I'm allowed to question the motives of anyone that says my data collection protocols might be faulty.
I'm sure you would like me to read just the "key" papers that support your contentions. Let's ignore "key" papers that might disagree or even agree with a slightly different viewpoint that doesn't present such a drastic outlook. Heck, we should even go out of our way to prevent opposing papers from being even considered in peer-reviewed journals, right? Sorry, that's old news not worth considering anymore I guess.
You seem to be an example (granted, I admit I could be wrong as I don't know you, just going off your condescending words) of what's wrong with this "debate" that has people already deciding what is truth or not. You have no freaking clue what my opinions on this matter are nor what I've read. You see that I might possibly disagree with you and therefore I must be spoken down to as someone who isn't paying enough attention nor is reading the correct materials.
But you are correct in one thing, this is an important issue that could heavily influence the future of people around the world. I, for one, want to at least attempt to get it right because if we're wrong then at best we waste resources and at worst we multiply the problems. To get it right definitely includes listening to people who may have different ideas or even opposing viewpoints.
But put that aside, let me give you a primer on climate change.
Here are some indisputable facts (well, to dispute them, you would need to overturn quantum physics, not impossible, but quite a hard task):
1) CO2 absorbs more infrared light than visible light. This can be demonstrated in a laboratory, and we even know why this is the case, thanks to quantum physics.
2) When sunlight hits the Earth, some is absorbed, and then re-emitted red-shifted. Again, we have direct satellite measurements of this, and we also have the theoretical explanation as to why, thanks you again quantum physics.
3) We know that we are increasing the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere. Again, direct measurements show this, plus we know that we are producing CO2 with our industrial processes.
Put those 3 facts together, and the baseline conclusion is that unless there is some unknown fourth factor, our planet is going to get hotter. Scientists noticed this back in the sixties, and started conducting experiments to see if this was indeed the case. All of our measurements since then show that global temperature is increasing, on average, which ties in nicely with what we expect from theory (points 1-3 above).
Anybody that wants to make a serious claim that climate change isn't happening needs to either demonstrate that one of points 1-3 is wrong, or that there is a fourth factor. A fourth factor would be something like "as the world's oceans become more acidic due to absorption of CO2, past a certain threshold value the surface becomes more mirror-like, increasing the albedo, and hence reducing the amount of red-shifting of light". A paper that demonstrated this, and demonstrated that the effect would be big enough to overcome the increased absorption caused by increased CO2 would indeed have demonstrated that climate change would indeed be limited by the threshold value. If such a paper were to come out, I personally would probably breath a deep sigh of relief and then throw a party.
If someone tries to claim that climate change isn't happening without demonstrating that points 1,2 or 3 are wrong, and without demonstrating an unknown factor that hadn't yet been taken into account can be safely dismissed. You can question the specifics of the models, like "is the Greenland ice sheet going to melt in 10 years? 100 years? 1000 years?" That's fair game, and if you go and read the papers, you will see scientists doing just that. But the overarching question of climate change? That's settled business already, and anyone claiming otherwise deserves the title of "denialist".
Oh yes, classic. Ignore what I said and continue with the condescending lessons you insist that I need to put me on your alleged superior level. I now have to question your ability to discuss these facts because your reading comprehension is really lackluster.
In no way have I stated that I disagree with the three facts that you stated. As I said before, which you chose to ignore; you have no clue as to what my opinion on this matter is. You are simply assuming things because I'm in a different section of the same ship. It's not my fault you decided to not get out of your cabin and meet other people.
Do I deny that changes in the climate exists, possibly producing negative results for the environment and/or human race? No.
Do I have a problem with the science that's been used to predict doomsday and to force the drastic measures that some say is necessary for the human race to survive? Yes.
Why do I have a problem with the science? Because it's been shoddy work, it's been corrupted, and people who support the science go out of their way to shut down those that may question the methods used. I have a third-grader that is currently learning that is not the way to do proper science, why can't the so-called adults understand this? You claim in your last paragraph that questioning the models involved is fair game. That's what I've been doing and yet you still have the condescending tone and name-calling. You are too quick to label people "denialist" without thinking and it makes you look petty.
I highly disagree that we know for a fact that the climate changes we've seen in the past few decades is solely the cause of human activity. There are numerous possibilities that must be explored before we can say we know for a fact of anything pertaining to this. Too many people do not want to do this and just move forward trying to fix something that we don't understand nor know how to fix. It's an effort "to do something" ignoring the fact that method of governing often doesn't turn out so well.
I grew up with this nonsense way of thinking. I remember as a kid the global cooling catastrophe we were heading for. I remember the urgency to do something about CFCs. I remember global warming being a problem until people realized the globe isn't really warming that much so it changed to climate change. This is not science, this is politics.
So, forgive me if I don't jump on the bandwagon of people doing half the work, declaring themselves the only source of the truth, demanding that people spend countless amounts of resources doing things their way, and subjecting anyone who dare question their data and methods to needless ridicule without actually bothering to answer the questions that they raise.
Yes, if by "appeal to authority" you mean "go read the best research available on the subject and make up your own mind". Oh wait, that's the opposite of appeal to authority...
That doesn't work because if someone reads the best research available on the subject and comes to a different conclusion then people with agendas start the mocking and name-calling in an effort to shut them up.
I have a feeling that "imprecise models and simulations" is exactly how actual science is done much of the time these days.
The trick is to answer those questions of what data is used and how things are weighted etc. well, and that's exactly what the scientists who work on these models do.
Difference is, most models can be validated against reality. I might model a car crash impact in LS-DYNA, then I eventually crash the real thing and compare. Unless you have a spare Earth lying around and a few centuries, then climate modellers can't do that. Instead they have maybe 80 years of reliable temperature data at best (which is just one variable), on a planet 4 billion years old.
The radiative physics can tell us a lot about basic climate sensitivity, but modelling the feedbacks inherent in such a complex system must be near impossible. Saying that climate change is "simple radiative physics" is very misleading, it is a little bit like saying that if I kick a ball it will accelerate away from me and that is "basic Newtonian physics". Well yes, but I may be standing at the bottom of a steep valley, in which case the larger system exerts a negative feedback, and the ball rolls back to my feet.
Yes, predictive modeling is easy when the you don't have to prove you're accurate.
They just keep building more models yielding new predictions to cover all the bases so, when the future does come, they can claim success and forget all the failures.
Alter the inputs and weighting in the models by merest fractions, or try take new factors into account and the whole house of cards comes tumbling down, yet on the basis of this Billions, if not Trillions of dollars are being moved around and new laws are being made, among many other side effects.
Who decided exactly what inputs are needed for calculations and which should be left out? Who decided their relative weightings? Who decided the exact nature of the interactions inside the models?
It is just crazy.