Re: OT IEEE Spectrum on Anthropogenic Global Warming

On Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:49:11 +0000, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

JosephKK wrote:
On Thu, 12 Feb 2009 08:24:17 +0000, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

JosephKK wrote:
On Wed, 11 Feb 2009 08:48:41 +0000, Martin Brown
<|||newspam|||@nezumi.demon.co.uk> wrote:

Just because all politicians are grasping liars all out for a quick buck
does not mean that scientists are the same way inclined. Most of the
scientists and mathematicians motivated by money were behind the recent
banking crash. Scientists are in science research to describe nature
accurately. Their salaries are nothing to write home about but it is a
fun job.

If you had followed through with the idea of politicians. They hold
the purse strings, and funding brought through getting grants (with
the nominal publishing that goes with it), is king of the department.
That isn't true. Or at least it certainly wasn't true in the UK when I
was in academic research. And I doubt it has changed much - academic
freedom is still highly prized.

There are serious and honest researchers, i never said that there
weren't.

And crucially there are enough of them that a small number of
prostitutes cannot influence the final decision. However, when well
funded by the likes of Exxon they can confuse the hell out of the
general public. FUD has always been their method of choice.

Wishful thinking that they are still the majority. Just as with
money, bad science drives out good science.


There were a couple of serious
researchers in our department in open warfare with the head of
department. The chemistry department was so fractured at the top level
(organic vs inorganic) that they had one large building with a gap in
the middle and separate tea rooms. Tenure means they have academic
freedom to do whatever line of research they think will lead to
interesting results and get their own grants to do it.

And then you blow your case by reinforcing the grant money boogie man
again. Moreover, many researchers have opinions on one side or
another of political controversies, and thus willfully do research to
support their position (especially if there is grant money to be had).

You ignore the fact that it is only in America that AGW splits cleanly
on political lines. Your right wing is dedicated to total environmental
vandalism for reasons that escape me. In the UK it was the right wing
conservative party that first put AGW on the global agenda.

And where there is money to be had, there will be degreed people that
will do anything to get it. Thus things like you accuse Exxon-Mobil
of, and the things like the politicians funding IPCC resulted in the
Michael Mann fraud.

There is no Michael Mann fraud. His statistics were not as robust as
they could have been and so were open to attack by malevolent forces.
That defect has since been rectified and the signal still remains. After
about 1970 you cannot balance the books without invoking GHG forcing -
even the scientific sceptics do not dispute this point.

It was never rectified.

It has been checked several ways the hockey stick isn't as cute looking
but it still has the same nasty upwards trend in the last few decades.

If it can happen on one side of the issue it can,
and invariably does, occur on both sites of the issue. Is it clear
enough to see some of what is wrong the system now?
It is your imagination that is wrong. Academics are for the most part
looking for lines of research that test to breaking point the current
theory of the day. That is how we make progress in science. And that is
precisely the reason that I like Lindzen even though he tends to be on
the other side of the argument he is still scientific about it.

I don't doubt there are a few dodgy ones in it purely for the money but
they are generally pretty obviously prostituting themselves as lobbyists
for big tobacco or big oil/coal. The scientists and mathematicians who
focussed on money mostly went off to do rocket science risk reward
analysis for bankers in the city (quite a few of my peers went into that
game). I decided making computers and electronics dance was more fun.

If there was a clear experiment to refute AGW then someone somewhere
would be doing it.

How can you refute something that is not testable in the first place?

It is prefectly testable. Why do you resort to wild assertions?

The models make predictions of the future and we will be able to tell
which ones most closely resemble reality by watching how nature unfolds.
It is in that sense no different to solar system or cosmological
modelling. Adding CO2 will make it warmer - how much warmer is the only
thing in dispute now.

Well, when i studied the graphs of temperature versus CO2 the
temperature climb was consistently before the CO2 rise. That is when
i became very suspicious that not all was honest. Then algor started
saying that CO2 peaks preceded the temperature peaks, with all the
available evidence saying the opposite. It was no longer suspicion at
that point. It looks to me that the current CO2 rise is the result of
the MWP.


However, all the experimental data so far supports
the hypothesis that we *are* changing the atmospheric composition at an
unprecedented rate and that it is having a global *warming* effect.

Not only is there plenty of data that defies the conclusions, there
are well publicized flaws in the models and methods of AGW proponents.
Such as even trivial use of variations of solar output. The AGWists
also blow off the rather visible correspondence with temperature and
the Milankovich cycles.

Where do you get these strange ideas from? The IPCC does *not* ignore
the Milankovitch cycles and indeed it is in the WG1 list of FAQs as 6.1

http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/FAQ/wg1_faq-6.1.html

These FAQs are written at about the level to be accessible to a well
educated layman with no scientific training.

I will get back to you when i have studied the models some more. I am
just starting to work them though. Wasn't it you that thoughtfully
gave me pointers on where to pick up the models? If so could you post
them again, i suspect that a few others might like to work through
them.


I honestly suggest that you actually read some of the IPCC WG1 science
case and look up some of the references instead of relying on half baked
right wing dittoheads for a dead planet websites for your information.

The evolution of planetary dynamics is actually very well understood
through historic eclipse observations and so it is possible to track the
Earths orbital elements forwards and backwards. The Earth's orbital
elements for th epresent epoch are extremely well understood.

Second order effects due to changes in tidal range are also a field of
active investigation now. A larger tidal range stirs up the deeper
oceans and has a net cooling effect whilst it lasts.

Regards,
Martin Brown

Mit der Dummheit kaempfen Goetter selbst vergebens.
--Schiller (from "Die Jungfrau von Orleans")
.

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