On Saturday, March 22, 2014 9:45:56 AM UTC, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > > On 22 Mar 2014, at 10:07, Telmo Menezes wrote: > > > > > On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 6:11 PM, Quentin Anciaux > <[email protected]<javascript:> > > wrote: > > > > > 2014-03-21 17:59 GMT+01:00 Telmo Menezes <[email protected]<javascript:> > >: > > > > > On Fri, Mar 21, 2014 at 5:24 PM, Quentin Anciaux > <[email protected]<javascript:> > > wrote: > > > > > 2014-03-21 17:19 GMT+01:00 John Clark <[email protected] <javascript:>>: > > > > > On Wed, Mar 19, 2014 at 10:50 AM, Quentin Anciaux > <[email protected]<javascript:> > > wrote: > > > > The thing I most want to know about RCP4.5 is what RCP stands for, Google > seems to think it's "Rich Client Platform" but that doesn't sound quite > right. It must be pretty obscure, Wikipedia has never heard of RCP either. > > > For your information, that means "Regional Climate Prediction" > > > I'm pretty sure it's not "Russian Communist Party" but are you sure it's > not "Representative Concentration Pathways"? > > > I'm pretty sure you must be dumb as dumb if you really think this... As I > see we are in a thread talking about climate... > > > This thread seems to be mostly about politics. To be fair, John seems to > be in the minority here in wanting to discuss this from a scientific and > technological perspective. > > He raises a number of points that I have raised myself in previous > discussions. Instead of focusing on such issues, pop culture distractions > (Fox News etc.) and political tribalism seem to get all of the attention. > > > The thing is that I don't know much in climate and I prefer to let persons > in the field handle that, by default I would believe them in these matters, > they have more knowledge than me on these. > > > I agree, and it would take years of study for a non-expert to be able to > have an informed opinion. > > But scientists are humans, and unfortunately we have seen over and over > again that they can fall prey to group think, confirmation bias and other > -- very human -- tendencies. One contemporary exemple is nutrition science > -- more and more, we are seeing that the consensus here was > pseudo-scientific and influenced by lobbies. The food pyramid probably > killed more than cigarettes. > > In the case of climate science, there are a number of red flags. For me, > the major ones are: > > - claims of 100% consensus: never a sign of serious, rigorous science; > > Any such claims are heavily contextualized. There is only an effectively 100% consensus through three basic points (a) Co2 is a greenhouse gas (b) Co2 is increasing in the atm (c) the world has warmed. All three are heavily empirical. The past 30 years science has focussed on the question of climate sensitivity and there is no consensus on that matter. On the question of whether the warming is human caused, this is given as a consensus probability. It was about 90% and I think it's about 95% at the moment.
> - claims of certainty over the behaviour of a highly complex system -> I > don't have to be a climatologist to raise my eyebrows at this; > > There aren't any such claims. There is on the other hand a large body of science now for co2 as a dominant greenhouse gas. As a scientist are you aware of the basics of why this is? > - scientists using emotional, loaded terms like "deniers"; > > There's a case for the existence of an organized campaign to disrupt the ability of science to inform the public, along the same lines as that which existed for 30 years regarding the evidence for links between smoking and cancer. Thinking about that tobacco campaign, would you agree that it existed? Was it a strategy to sow doubt in legitimate or illegitimate ways? If you do acknowledge such a campaign existed, then this should shed some light on basis for regarding one section of scepticism as denialism. > - so many models that any correct predictions don't appear to have > statistical significance > > This looks pretty uninformed on the nature of the models, in terms of which ways they are the same and which ways different. For example, models are almost the same, save for exploring different theories about the effects of clouds. The reason for doing it that way makes scientific sense as one way to resolve the matter based on which ones work better over time. > - retroactive cherry picking of models; > > Models differ in small ways regarding matters that are regarded as unresolved but likely influential in the question of sensitivity. It isn't clear what your allegations are or their basis in fact. > > > - there doesn't seem to be any amount of falsification that will lead the > mainstream of the field to reconsider their hypothesis; > > Which level of hypothesis? That Co2 is a greenhouse gas? That Co2 is rising? That industrial emissions since 1850 are roughly equivalent to co2 increases in the air and oceans allowing for other known factors? That the world has warmed since 1850? That the warming is tied to increased co2? Are you aware of the structure of this science at basic? > > > Again, I admit I may be completely wrong. But there are red flags.</di > > The red flags thrown up by what you are saying are largely in the category of what you are saying appears outrageously misinformed or uninformed to be passing such sweeping statements. For a scientist. There's a big difference between debating issues like comp, and debating issues that mankind may need to understand with a degree of unknown urgency. > ... -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
