Comments solman has made

Smart Decisions

A good decision weighs the benefits against the costs.

Wisdom REQUIRES answers to the following questions before taking immediate action [answers including a reasonable range of uncertainty are entirely acceptable]:

1. What action do you propose?
   
2. What will it accomplish?
   
3. What will it cost?
   
4. How much more will it cost to accomplish the same thing if we wait?

Because they have not been answered, I suspect that people who want immediate action on global warming do not believe that the case for immediate action can be supported by facts.

That is to say, if the general public were given clear answers to these four questions, advocates of immediate action believe that they would decide to do nothing.

If Kyoto is not the action that you are proposing, then either say what that action is, or concede that given present technology, there is no available action that justifies the cost.
On 'Kyoto is a big effort for almost nothing'--Kyoto is only in its first phase posted 2 years, 8 months ago 16 Responses

Thi is the weakest link in the whole debate

This graph is the single most potent reason why I remain skeptical.

You have two signals A and B which are tightly and very consistently correlated over a very long period of time across a wide variety of conditions, with signal B always following signal A by a fixed interval of time.

This is a VERY powerful piece of evidence in favor of the hypothesis A causes B. In any other discipline, suggesting otherwise would get you stabbed in the heart with Occam's razor.

The alternative hypothesis:

First: C (which we can't identify or measure) caused a little A,
Later: C caused B
Finally: B caused a lot of A

is not impossible, but I am utterly unconvinced, and this is at the hear of my skepticism.

If historically CO2 was caused by some external cause other than temperature, what is it?

The rapid current rise in atmospheric CO2 is caused by a disruption in the equilibrium of the Carbon cycle. This disruption could be, in part or in majority, humans putting extra CO2 into the atmosphere.

But it also could be, in part or in majority, the same thing that caused the previous increases in CO2.

The speed of the CO2 increase suggests that whatever is breaking equilibrium began with the industrial age of man, but man has changed the environment in numerous ways.

The destruction of plant life, and the dimming of the sun from pollution have certainly reduced photosynthesis.

Perhaps our actions have somehow resulted in the destruction of vast numbers of microbial photosynthetic ocean dwelling creatures (well actually we know they have, but I mean that perhaps the die off had a orders of magnitude larger impact on CO2 than we thought).

Absent a debunking of the default hypothesis for this graph (that Temperature increases and decreases cause increased and decreased atmospheric CO2), its not reasonable to look at the data for the past century and say "CO2 causes temperature". CO2 and temperature have both risen, this graph says that causality goes the other way.
On 'CO2 doesn't lead, it lags'--Turns out CO2 rise is both a cause and an effect of warming posted 2 years, 8 months ago 43 Responses

This is very weak

I find this article very weak.

1. Matching historic data is a poor test of the computer models, because all of the computer models were tested against historic data and tweaked to match that data before they were published.

   If there were a published model of the climate system in which all the parameters were empirically measureable constants, the historic matching would be a useful form of verification. None of the IPCC models come even remotely close to this. Most have hundreds of parameters which were set PRIMARILLY based on their ability to match the historical data.

2. In 1890, and in every decade afterwards, there were thinkers who postulated that the earth would get warmer or colder. All of them, including Svante Arrhenius were off by a substantial margin. There is no virtually no global climate pattern that, if it occured in 2007, could not be "validated" by pointing to a scientist from before the computer era who predicted it.
3. The IPCC models invalidate each other. For most combinations of Model A, Model B and Scenario S, Model A predicts global temperatures in 2100 which are more than two standard deviations from what Model B predicts.

   The IPCC is not confident enough in its understanding of future climate to identify one model which will produce accurate results for the future. Why should we believe any one.

   I wish the IPCC would get behind one model. If the model successfully predicted the next 20, that would help validate or disprove the model. If you choose a handful of models, and one happens to be right, you've just proven that if you pick enough models, one of them would be right.

4. Models based on historical results have the following property:

   The continue to accurately predict the future until they stop predicting the future.

   A few decades ago, Economists believed the Philips curve with such fervor that (as now) skeptics could not get a tenured position or find a journal willing to publish their work (poor Milton Friedman).

   The fact of the matter is that for a very long time the Philips curve was an accurate model of the economy. Then one day, it wasn't.

5. Global warming models suffer from one disadvantage that Keynesian economics did not. While Keynesians were predicting an economy that continued to operate within a linear extrapolation of historic values, global warming models specifically predict a nonlinear acceleration in the rate at which the world is warming.

   In other words, models based on historical results tend to be more accurate when the future they predict is similar to the historical data they are based on. Global warming models predict a future that is DIFFERENT from the historical data that they are based on. It is therefore reasonable to assume that they will have problems predicting that different world.

In sum, Human kind has never succesfully modeled and verified a system even remotely as complicated as the climate system. It is good that we are attempting to verify the models, but we have yet to produce a single model which is generally believed to be an accurate representation of the world around us.

When such a model is produced, it may accurately model the Earth's climate for an extended period of time. If so, it would be an historic achievement.

Until then, it reasonable to assume that, like all other models for systems as complicated as the global climate and human behavior, it will remain accurate right up until it stops remaining accurate, and no longer.On 'Climate models are unproven'--Actually, GCM's have many confirmed successes under their belts posted 2 years, 8 months ago 13 Responses