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Physicist offers $10,000 for anyone to scientifically disprove climate change

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Re: Physicist offers $10,000 for anyone to scientifically disprove climate change

#51

Post by belovedeagle »

rossjudson wrote: post #13
hartator wrote: post #2

The article has a weird tone. Why is he being so agressive against people who think the opposite of him? I mean if you are tolerant against people whose religion place the women in a submission role and restrain to nothing individual rights, you can be also tolerant to people who think the earth is not warming up.

Because they don't just "think" the opposite of him; they claim that they have a scientific basis for their position. It's like the difference between hearing someone committed a crime, and watching them commit it (and testifying about it). We certainly tolerate people who think unicorns fly out of pots of gold at the ends of rainbows, but we don't let them make decisions that will affect the health and well-being of…

This is the very definition of dogmatism. You literally just claimed that thinking differently is okay, as long as it's not your sacred cow which is getting involved in the discussion.

Let me help you understand what this sounds like: "Because they don't just 'think' that evolution is real; they claim that the bible isn't the inspired Word of God!" That's absolutely no different than what you just wrote: science is your "inspired Word" about which no one can disagree, even if they're allowed to disagree about everything else.

Re: Physicist offers $10,000 for anyone to scientifically disprove climate change

#52

Post by asgard1024 »

unabridged wrote: post #18

This is why I'm a skeptic, change my mind: Let's say we have 150 years of accurate temperature data, and it shows an increase of a few degrees. What is the standard deviation in global temperature for 150 year periods for the last 100K or 1M years? How do we know what is significant change? Any data gathered from models (ice core, tree rings, ...) just doesn't have the resolution to answer these questions.

The problem is you're focusing only on one part of the evidence. The other part is the law of conservation of energy, the fact from which follows (after some modeling) that atmosphere will heat up when you add greenhouse gases.

And, quite interestingly, these two independent lines of evidence, match. (There are several others.)

In other words, you doubt the relevance of historical data. But the evidence is not just historical, it's also based on our understanding of the underlying physical mechanism.

Re: Physicist offers $10,000 for anyone to scientifically disprove climate change

#53

Post by rockstartower »

pizza234 wrote: post #8
facepalm wrote: post #3

Can you really prove something by the scientific method? Maybe it would be better to say "show a likelihood of at least x%"?

True. It's a kind of "intellectual" PR stunt. Hopefully, at least it will get rid of the cheap arguments on the opposite side.

my cheap argument: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uif1NwcUgMU

Re: Physicist offers $10,000 for anyone to scientifically disprove climate change

#54

Post by DCKing »

unabridged wrote: post #18

This is why I'm a skeptic, change my mind: Let's say we have 150 years of accurate temperature data, and it shows an increase of a few degrees. What is the standard deviation in global temperature for 150 year periods for the last 100K or 1M years? How do we know what is significant change? Any data gathered from models (ice core, tree rings, ...) just doesn't have the resolution to answer these questions.

You appear to be saying that you think this could be explained by some natural variation. That seems plausible, but is not supported by scientific evidence.

The term "man-made climate change" is a term for the truth of these three claims:

1. Human activity has increased the concentration of CO2 (and other green-house gases) in the atmosphere.

2. The global temperature has risen over the last 150 years.

3. An increase in the concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere is the cause of the rise in global temperature over the last 150 years.

Point 2 is simple scientific fact by now. Measurements show that this is the case, despite being critically revised and corrected for sampling biases over the years. Point 3 is also scientific fact; the theoretical effect has been shown to be true in simple laboratory expirements (it has been known for over 100 years) and the strong correlation of CO2 concentration and temperature over the last 150 years overwhelmingly implies that this laboratory effect applies for the atmosphere as well.

That could still mean that the source of all of this greenhouse gas is natural. Still seems plausible, but again scientific evidence shows that the large majority of this "new CO2" is sourced by human activity [1]. Various sources of evidence exist; the isotopic signature of CO2 in the atmosphere is atypical for natural sources, the concentration of CO2 in the oceans is rising fastest near the surface, and there are many more pieces of evidence.

It is true that there is still a large degree of ignorance on how global temperature varies "naturally" over long periods of time. However, we can show that this specific warming we're observing today is not just a natural variation. It is caused by humans.

[1] http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-increase-is-natural-not-...

Re: Physicist offers $10,000 for anyone to scientifically disprove climate change

#55

Post by stronglikedan »

asgard1024 wrote: post #45
crdoconnor wrote: post #9

Let's flip this: 1. I will award $10,000 of my own money to anyone that can demonstrate, via the scientific method, that man-made global climate change IS occurring; 2. There is no entry fee; 3. You must be 18 years old or older to enter; 4. Entries do not have to be original, they only need to be first; 5. I am the final judge of all entries but will provide my comments on why any entry fails to prove the point. Obv…

OK, challenge accepted. :-) I am submitting this: http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence Please provide the comments why the evidence failed to prove the point.

Correlation != Causation.* Maybe climate patterns are on a 650,001 year cycle?

* I make no claims as to my stance on the issue. I am simply playing devil's advocate.

Re: Physicist offers $10,000 for anyone to scientifically disprove climate change

#56

Post by DCKing »

msandford wrote: post #32
headShrinker wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of areas to pick apart this article and motivations behind it. 97% consensus isn't one of them. Denial, is old and dead amongst the well informed. Join us.

That kind of consensus is actually worrying to me. It makes it seem like there is very little effort going into ensuring that all the research the climate scientists are doing doesn't have errors. In other words, in the echo chamber there are no critics. Kinda like the dumb ideas that occasionally come out of SF because nobody there knows about the real problems that real people have, they just know about the trivial…

It's quite the same as the fact there are incredibly few biologists who think that evolution is false. The debate is simply not worth having, even though a large number of uninformed people still don't accept it.

Re: Physicist offers $10,000 for anyone to scientifically disprove climate change

#57

Post by refurb »

cushychicken wrote: post #6
hartator wrote: post #2

The article has a weird tone. Why is he being so agressive against people who think the opposite of him? I mean if you are tolerant against people whose religion place the women in a submission role and restrain to nothing individual rights, you can be also tolerant to people who think the earth is not warming up.

I'll wager a guess that it's because the stakes of being wrong on climate change are pretty high.

Isn't the stakes of being wrong in the other direction (that global warming isn't happening) just as high?

Imagine if we spend billions/trillions of dollars trying to capture CO2, reduce oil consumption, etc. and it turns out CO2 wasn't the cause of global warming. That money could have done a lot of good if spent in other ways (i.e. lift millions of people out of poverty).

Re: Physicist offers $10,000 for anyone to scientifically disprove climate change

#58

Post by talmand »

Iftheshoefits wrote: post #23
hartator wrote: post #2

The article has a weird tone. Why is he being so agressive against people who think the opposite of him? I mean if you are tolerant against people whose religion place the women in a submission role and restrain to nothing individual rights, you can be also tolerant to people who think the earth is not warming up.

"Being tolerant" of a person's views doesn't entail "being respectful of" them, nor does it imply one must simply abide their expression in silence. Here's a counter-question: why is it that when people who have extraordinary or extraordinarily extreme opinions are questioned or challenged there seems to almost always be an attempt to deflect the discussion toward one revolving around respect and tolerance instead of…

I usually see the opposite, the people with extreme opinions are often told their intolerance doesn't have to be tolerated.

Often times this bothers me because the people who choose not to tolerate the intolerable are the ones who seem not interested in honest dialogue.

My reasoning is because most often they are the people who also get to label what is considered intolerance and extreme opinions. Then, the use of such labels is the reason to dismiss the opposing viewpoint without honest dialogue. If you take an objective viewpoint of common debates on the news and whatnot, you'll see it.

Re: Physicist offers $10,000 for anyone to scientifically disprove climate change

#59

Post by Iftheshoefits »

waps wrote: post #10
hartator wrote: post #2

The article has a weird tone. Why is he being so agressive against people who think the opposite of him? I mean if you are tolerant against people whose religion place the women in a submission role and restrain to nothing individual rights, you can be also tolerant to people who think the earth is not warming up.

Somehow that doesn't seem to be possible. The entire question is a fraud of course : the argument for climate change is based on statistical likelihood of existing trends continuing based on past measurement. While that does satisfy some standards used in science, no scientist in his right mind would refer to that as "proven", because it isn't. So here's my version : 1) There is no argument from either maths, or even…

> the argument for climate change is based on statistical likelihood of existing trends continuing based on past measurement. That can easily be generalized to any scientific construct, since all predictions and theories based on experiment implicitly contain the assumption of their continued validity. Consequently what you're doing is conflating an argument against the metaphysical underpinnings of science (amusingly, by arguing from the assumptions of rationalism which are themselves subject to at least as much skepticism and scrutiny) with an argument against the products of scientific discovery.

Re: Physicist offers $10,000 for anyone to scientifically disprove climate change

#60

Post by tbrownaw »

bsbechtel wrote: post #43
waps wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Somehow that doesn't seem to be possible. The entire question is a fraud of course : the argument for climate change is based on statistical likelihood of existing trends continuing based on past measurement. While that does satisfy some standards used in science, no scientist in his right mind would refer to that as "proven", because it isn't. So here's my version : 1) There is no argument from either maths, or even…

I thought one of (not the only) the main aspects of the scientific method was that it could only be used to disprove a theory, but never to prove it 100% correct. For example, you cannot ever prove that Big Foot is a hoax, but you can disprove it by finding him. Or, the theory of gravity can never be proven, only disproven if an experiment showed it to be false. Isn't that all this scientist is asking for?

Consider relativity.

There were some interesting observations that didn't seem to make sense (the speed of light is constant, regardless of the motion of the observer). Then someone figured out how to modify Newton's equations for motion to make this possible. Then someone else took this seriously, and gave a comprehensive explanation of the implications. Then someone built the GPS system, which would not work if the clocks it uses didn't account for the time dilation that relativity predicts.

Or, consider quantum mechanics.

This follows much the same pattern. Someone made interesting observations about how light behaves (and other things). Someone worked out some math that would explain how it works. Someone else used that math to build useful things like computers (semiconductors work like they do because of QM).

You can be nitpicky and say that those theories aren't "proven", and that Newtonian mechanics is "wrong". Or you can say, they are all obviously true enough to be useful. Just because Newtonian mechanics is "disproven" for the inside of computer chips or for the precise motions of GPS satellites, does not stop it from being correct and useful for everyday life or even for serious engineering.

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