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New ice age? Don't count on it

newscientist.com

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Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#41

Post by rimantas »

ars wrote: post #22
jessedhillon wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Consensus, although comforting, is irrelevant in hard science. Particularly so when uncertainty is high, as in climate change modelling. When you say "irrelevant," do you mean to say that the attempts of thousands of scientists to use the scientific method to repeat findings which constitute the body of research -- and consequently fail to falsify the theory of anthropogenic global warming -- do you mean to say tha…

He's probably getting downmodded, which isn't right. Don't downmod someone just because you disagree. Upmod what you agree with, and leave what you disagree with alone. Reserve downmods for stupid comments.

There is "flag" for stupid comments. If I turn the steering wheel to the right to make the right turn I'd expect to make the left turn when turning it to the left, not stopping the car. Symmetrical controls imply symmetrical actions.

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#42

Post by ars »

rimantas wrote: post #41
ars wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He's probably getting downmodded, which isn't right. Don't downmod someone just because you disagree. Upmod what you agree with, and leave what you disagree with alone. Reserve downmods for stupid comments.

There is "flag" for stupid comments. If I turn the steering wheel to the right to make the right turn I'd expect to make the left turn when turning it to the left, not stopping the car. Symmetrical controls imply symmetrical actions.

No, flag is for spam.

The moderation is not symmetrical - it only goes to -4, but has no limit in the other direction.

And it doesn't matter what you think it implies. The reality is that the custom here is not to downmod comments you disagree with. It wasn't always so, even pg at one time thought differently. But experience shows that the discussion is much better when this custom is followed.

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#43

Post by nagrom »

Tichy wrote: post #27
nagrom wrote: post #24

I'd love to see more engineering efforts going towards improving our standard of living regardless of what the climate does. By all means, worry about whether the planet is getting warmer or cooler or a bit of both dependent on the place...but let's find a way to live regardless of CO2-induced warming, sunspot rarity or some other, unforeseen dramatic change. A lot of the political and societal measures are aimed at…

I don't think the aim of politics is to make people's live more miserable. Energy is being made more expensive to account for the externalities . The markets can then figure out how to make us live well with the proper energy costs. What kind of tech promotion do you imagine, other than more efficient energy production and consumption?

I do genuinely believe that a lot of the reporting and comment on climate-related issues is a form of frenzy by the people involved - not rationally thought-out but a tendency on one side to claim that nothing's wrong and everything's fine (for optimists) and on the other to claim that everyone's going to die and terrible things will happen (for pessimists). The debate is too polarised to be useful, or even interesting, any more. Mixed-in with that, there are politicians, corporations and pressure groups seeking to distort the issue so as to create more power or profit.

I'd love to see more promotion given to sustainable agriculture that's tolerant of temperature drops or rises, city-structures that re-use the heat that they give off for something productive, research into how to build and live effectively in regions subject to hurricanes or earthquakes that don't come down to rebuild-everything-every-30-years, flood defences that are something more than 'build-a-wall', etc. I'm not saying that these things don't exist, but we spend so much time talking about how to change societies (unfeasibly, in my opinion) so as to mitigate climate change and not very much on what to do to mitigate that change into sustainable habitats.

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#44

Post by arethuza »

Typhon wrote: post #34
ugh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, how exactly couldn’t it be a political issue?

By focusing public attention on something else. It's not as if we had a shortage of problems. Then, the matter of climate change could be settled in a scientific manner, as opposed to a religious debate involving legions of people who don't know what they're talking about. Obviously, i'm being unrealistic. Once it's become politicized, it's already too late.

Deciding whether or not there is climate change and what is causing it is a scientific question.

What do to about it is a political decision.

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#46

Post by pygy_ »

ecaradec wrote: post #35
ugh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, how exactly couldn’t it be a political issue?

The issue is that it has become a political issue before we were sure what the issue was. Now we don't know whether or not we should act, instead of deciding what we should do.

Well, it was a plausible scenario, if not definitely certain. It would have been wise to reduce the worldwide emission of greenhouse gases while the science was being done, but were in a typical prisoner dilemma situation here, and convincing everyone has proven impossible (notoriously because of the USA, China, India and probably others).

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#47

Post by arethuza »

PakG1 wrote: post #39
jessedhillon wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't say anything about popularity mattering. In the absence of any better way of ascertaining objective truth about the world than the scientific method, I choose to accept the fact of consensus -- that a large number of scientists have failed to falsify the theory -- as being a meaningful indication about the truth of global warming. EDIT -- I assume with your reference to Einstein, you mean that the whole worl…

Just curious, how is climate change falsifiable? What we have is a lot of data and a lot of models. We don't have any way to test this data and models, no? Furthermore, we don't know if we know everything about the subject, although we would appear to know a lot. So the only way to falsify it is if new data comes out? But for something so complicated, future data is likely a crapshoot? We can only estimate future dat…

The only way I could see it being falsified is if we got access to a new source of historical data that somehow was more accurate than all existing sources (which seems unlikely) or by waiting to see what happens and obtaining new data that way (which might give an unpleasant answer).

I'm not sure how the concept of a theory being falsifiable applies when you can't really run repeated controlled experiments.

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#48

Post by majmun »

pedalpete wrote: post #11
muppetman wrote: post #2

With these sorts of articles now I'm never quite sure what to believe. Now before you jump in to mock me, it's just that I don't have time to keep really up-to-date with climate change anymore. Are we really getting warmer? Are we cooling? What's causing it? For each article I read that tells me one thing, a few days later another comes out and tells me the previous one was wrong and here's why. I hope that this arti…

As guelo points out, this is part of the propaganda campaigns,but who's propaganda. I say go with your gut and do what's right. We know that burning gasoline and coal releases carbon and are dirty. We know we should be clean. Strip mining, not clean. Recycling, clean. Wind looks cleaner than a smokestack, go wind. Solar, well, if the panels are made from plastics are they really cleaner than gas? I think so, go solar…

if this is propaganda then this reporter that wrote this: (Michael Marshall, environment reporter) and newscientist works for whoever pay the propaganda. make mental note. (for future reference)

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#49

Post by ugh »

arethuza wrote: post #47
PakG1 wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just curious, how is climate change falsifiable? What we have is a lot of data and a lot of models. We don't have any way to test this data and models, no? Furthermore, we don't know if we know everything about the subject, although we would appear to know a lot. So the only way to falsify it is if new data comes out? But for something so complicated, future data is likely a crapshoot? We can only estimate future dat…

The only way I could see it being falsified is if we got access to a new source of historical data that somehow was more accurate than all existing sources (which seems unlikely) or by waiting to see what happens and obtaining new data that way (which might give an unpleasant answer). I'm not sure how the concept of a theory being falsifiable applies when you can't really run repeated controlled experiments.

Specific predictions and assumptions of the models can most certainly be falsified.

Re: New ice age? Don't count on it

#50

Post by rimantas »

ars wrote: post #42
rimantas wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is "flag" for stupid comments. If I turn the steering wheel to the right to make the right turn I'd expect to make the left turn when turning it to the left, not stopping the car. Symmetrical controls imply symmetrical actions.

No, flag is for spam. The moderation is not symmetrical - it only goes to -4, but has no limit in the other direction. And it doesn't matter what you think it implies. The reality is that the custom here is not to downmod comments you disagree with. It wasn't always so, even pg at one time thought differently. But experience shows that the discussion is much better when this custom is followed.

Symmetry is symmetry, no matter what I do think of it. If you make symmetrical actions for asymmetrical intents, that is just bad UI. I've had enough comments downvoted purely on disagreement (including the one above. Or was it "stupid"?) to not to buy your "custom" argument.
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