Rick Monteverde wrote:
Are you missing my point entirely? On purpose? Both you and Ed essentially say that I refuse to look at melting ice, and you imply that I'm like the CF skeptic who lets papers placed in his hand fall to the floor.
I don't imply that: I assert it.
My argument is not that there is no such thing as climate change. The argument is whether there are anthropogenic causes to it.
I realize this is your argument. I also realize there are a small number of climate experts who agree with you. However the vast majority go along with the anthropogenic hypothesis. I myself am not qualified to judge the issue so I must go along with the majority opinion. A "vast majority" of scientists who have not read the literature would not count, just as it does not count in cold fusion. But when we are talking about people in the field who have done their homework then this is a valid way to judge the field from outside.
Ditto the 9/11 attacks -- obviously. I believe in experts. It is my default position to assume that experts are correct about the fundamentals because if they were not correct the world would stop dead. That is one of the reasons I believe cold fusion is real. It applies to aspects of cold fusion that I personally cannot understand or analyze, such as spectroscopy.
I say that the models are incapable of directing that conclusion because of their inherent shortcomings.
And I say physics is physics and if people can predict the weather tomorrow in six months or a year in advance they can darn well predict it 10 or 20 or even 50 years in advance, although obviously not for any particular spot on earth. If you understand how the atmosphere will work in the next 24 hours you can understand to some extent how it will work cumulatively for the next 20 years.
Scientists who are experts in the field also make this observation and have published it.
Yes, I realize that. For that matter, I know two or three actual electrochemists such as Britz who honestly believe cold fusion is not real, plus several others such as Steve Jones who will say and do anything to promote themselves and whatever twisted agenda they have latched onto at the moment.
I have personal exposure and experience in computer science and am capable, just as you claim Gore is, of reading and understanding the papers of scientists in the field.
I doubt that Gore is capable of reading and understanding the papers of scientists and climatology. I have read his books and I do not think he understands that level of detail. (Just as I certainly do not understand the nuclear theory or the details of mass spectroscopy in cold fusion studies.) He takes the conclusions of experts on faith. He assumes that the majority of scientists in the field are probably right about the causes of global warming. He does not have to take global warming itself on faith because as you and I agree it is happening. The cause is the only question.
If this were CF/LENR I'd be saying "sure I see all that excess energy from some obviously extraordinary and non-chemical source, but I think it's not caused by this particular mechanism you have proposed. Instead it is from some other for which there is better evidence." Not a great analogy . . .
In my opinion your analogy is equivalent to saying that it cannot be a nuclear effect despite the helium, tritium and other evidence that experts point to. The experts who believe that global warming is caused by carbon emissions have good reasons for believing this. They did not invent that yesterday. Their assertions have been challenged, peer-reviewed and carefully investigated, just as the tritium, helium and other nuclear evidence in cold fusion has been challenged, peer-reviewed and carefully investigated. That does not mean the hypothesis is definitely right, but it is ahead of whatever is in second place.
I would not mind if you were to express tentative doubt about some aspects of climatology. If you were saying perhaps they are wrong about this or that detail, or if if you were to point out that there are other viable hypotheses in second, third and fourth places. That's fine. It is like pointing out that perhaps Mills is correct and cold fusion is not nuclear despite the evidence. We all know there are alternative hypotheses. The nuclear hypothesis is number one but hey, no one -- least of all me -- minds when Mills or ZPE or what-have-you is introduced.
But when you dismiss the leading hypothesis and declare that no one can possibly predict the future of the climate because weather forecasts are probabilistic and degrade rapidly over time . . . That is amateur! Everyone with even a little knowledge of climatology (including me) knows that. Of course it is probabilistic and of course I am not saying that tomorrow's weather forecast is exactly like a 50 year projection and should be believed with the same degree of certainty. I am saying that both are based upon the same knowledge of atmospheric physics that knowledge is demonstrably impressive. When you say that the hypothesis cannot possibly be right and the experts ought to know better, I say that's chutzpah, it is insufferable, and it irks me!
Also, by the way, the notion that people who do not believe that CO2 causes climate change have been shut out or shunned by the academic establishment is ridiculous. Such people have been fêted and funded by the coal companies. They resemble researchers who claim that cigarettes do not cause cancer. Until recently such researchers could get unlimited funding from tobacco companies. Others in their profession probably looked down on them, but I expect they cried all the way to the bank.
Bear in mind that it is much easier to prove that a cell is producing excess heat at present, whereas it is very difficult to prove that in 50 years the world will be catastrophically hotter. An experiment that can be performed on the workbench and replicated thousands of times is inherently more believable and convincing than a climate model. You cannot blame the climatologists for that limitation.
- Jed
