Science (ideally) try to prove stuff, because it’s often logically impossible to do so. Science (ideally) disproves stuff. The anthropogenic model was proposed decades ago, made some predictions, and is currently fitting the empirical evidence with a worry degree of accuracy. As theories go, it’s pretty solid, which means any competing hypothesis must be even more solid to displace it. Philosophically, I’m a fan of Popper and Polanyi, although I realise some scientists aren’t.
[quote]Of course it can be wrong. Scientists thought the sun revolved around the earth at one time, and it worked for them, but it was false, and it certainly wasn’t science, even though it was the best “science” they were capable of at the time of their sophistication. And even when Galilee and Kepler showed a better way, they didn’t want to believe it; they had their science.
[/quote]
Fair point. A theory can indeed be proven wrong, in the sense that it doesn’t work. But your example rather proves my point. Motion can only be described in relation to other things, so you can actually model the solar system with the sun revolving around the earth, and sort-of make it work. It’s not exactly wrong. It’s just horribly complicated and inelegant.
I was trying to point out that “The Truth”, in science, is often incomprehensible in human terms. What does an electron look like? The question has no meaning. We can’t grok electrons the way we can a hammer or a waterfall. We can only model things and ask, is this model useful? Can we use it to describe how the world works?
[quote=“yyy, post:60, topic:158975, full:true”]
Actually by “the poor” I meant most of us, the proverbial 99%.
You’re basically 歸責ing to the sociopolitical systems of less developed countries but still saying it’s because poor people are stupid.[/quote]
Nope. I’m saying the people are the system. The two are inseparable. The politicians are corrupt because the people accept corruption as a cultural norm.
As for “the poor”, speak for yourself. I’m not poor and never will be, even if (or when) I find myself living on the streets. If I do find myself living on the streets, it’ll be a conscious decision as part of a long-term plan to eventually not live on the streets. Poor is not the same thing as impecunious, although I realise you’ll never agree with that.
Well, this happens because some cultures accept murder as a standard way of resolving problems. You might find this hard to believe, but there are many that do. Those activists who end up murdered: it’s common to hear comments like, ‘well, he had it coming’, or ‘you shouldn’t upset the wrong people’, ‘better not to make trouble’. The implication is that doing the right thing is ‘making trouble’. There is strength in numbers, but that only works in cultures where throwing the outlier under the bus isn’t the preferred solution.
Of course nobody wants to wind up dead. But activists generally accept that they are protesting about wrongdoing within cultures that are highly tolerant of wrongdoing, and that merely being murdered is the best-case scenario.
I understand your logic and am more familiar with banana republican culture than you seem to think.
I could bore us both by mocking your logic (you would never be homeless by accident, even in an earthquake), but it would be even less fun than picking apart anarchism.
It does make me wonder though, using the same logic, what type of political entity you think Taiwan wants to be.
You may be. But you apparently can’t face the idea that it could be the primary reason banana republics remain banana republics.
I said ‘living on the streets’, not ‘homeless’. There are several possible choices that can be made upon becoming homeless. For example, I could hold a sign saying, ‘will work for accomodation’, assuming the lawyers haven’t forbidden me from doing so out of concern for my dignity
It wants to be what it is. If it didn’t, it would be something else.
[quote=“yyy, post:65, topic:158975, full:true”]
What is the meaning of “primary reason”?[/quote]
It’s the one which, if modified, will have the greatest impact on the original problem. Does that really need a long navel-gazing debate?
What ad hominem attacks, Comrade? I happen to find “navel gazing” a funny term because I never use it myself.
The repetition of the sleep emoji was to indicate that I had already answered your question (i.e. I was not seeking to debate the concept of “primary reason”).
[quote=“finley, post:59, topic:158975, full:true”] @jotham: urudacus is right. Unless you know the nature of the underlying process, you can’t make simplistic judgements about a trend. Just because you can overlay a linear or polynomial curve-fit doesn’t mean that curve-fit has any physical meaning; the process itself must be known to be linear (or whatever), otherwise you’ve just joined the dots like a kid with a colouring-book.
The climate scientists know that climate processes are non-linear and time-variant, which means any prediction about the future can only be in vague terms. This is the only plausible way of presenting their results: those who accuse them of being “inaccurate” or “dishonest” don’t understand what either of those words mean in the context of process modelling.
You are as bound by that limitation as they are. Just as they can’t possibly say, see, there’s a nice smooth exponential here and therefore there’s going to be a nice smooth exponential for all time (Al Gore style), you can’t possibly say, look at this flat bit here, it’s obviously bottomed out.
[/quote]Are you confusing me with another poster? I’m not talking about predicting the future climate or climate models. And I don’t get in the weeds analyzing that stuff. It was just a graph in real time of actually observed temperatures. And Brian had outliers of actual temperatures in the past as well.
Science (ideally) try to prove stuff, because it’s often logically impossible to do so. Science (ideally) disproves stuff. The anthropogenic model was proposed decades ago, made some predictions, and is currently fitting the empirical evidence with a worry degree of accuracy. As theories go, it’s pretty solid, which means any competing hypothesis must be even more solid to displace it. Philosophically, I’m a fan of Popper and Polanyi, although I realise some scientists aren’t.[/quote]
In Newton’s day, science was more pure and had rigid strictures on proof. As time went on, the restrictions were loosed to allow more “theories” that couldn’t pass the test in the old school. Global warming is exactly the kind of theory that doesn’t pass muster in classical science. And for good reason.
You cherry-picked 18 years, drew a straight line through the middle, and said, see, straight line, global warming has ceased. You didn’t understand my explanation of process modelling so you dismiss it as going off into the weeds. By drawing a smooth line through data points you’ve implicitly defined a model: the shape of your line describes the form of the underlying process. You have no justification for asserting (in this case) that the linear trend you observed over 18 years has any relevance to future observations.
What we call the scientific method didn’t really come of age until the 1960s, and you’re right that it’s still evolving. However, science is no less demanding. You’re conflating actual scientific output with what journalists write in newspapers.
You cherry-picked 18 years, drew a straight line through the middle, and said, see, straight line, global warming has ceased. You didn’t understand my explanation of process modelling so you dismiss it as going off into the weeds. By drawing a smooth line through data points you’ve implicitly defined a model: the shape of your line describes the form of the underlying process. You have no justification for asserting (in this case) that the linear trend you observed over 18 years has any relevance to future observations.[/quote]
Ahhh, now I get where you’re going with this. Underlying process, listen to you, ha. That translates into still keeping alive the dying embers of a defunct global warming for now.
Of course I cherry-picked 18 years, because that is when global warming has stopped. And 18 years is a significant “hiatus” they call it, ha.
And what good would it be to me or anyone if I cherry-picked 50 years? Everyone already knows that the previous 32 years had warming in it; there’s no debate about that at all, so it would be an exercise in futility to marginalize the 18 years of no warming in question, which I’m trying to point out, and flood it, average it out with 32 years of warming. Except that it makes you feel better because it “looks” like warming is still going on, because you’re essentially hiding and sweeping under the rug the crucial dataset in question.
Let’s put it in another light. Say I hate school and don’t try for 3 years in high school with straight F’s. Then as a senior, I have a life-changing moment, parents will take away my allowance, so I make A’s that year. What dataset am I going to use to convince my parents or others that I’ve made a clean break and changed my ways? I would use the grades as a senior showing that I made all A’s. I wouldn’t average all my grades together in 4 years which might average a D or C- at best, it’s useless, I already know I was a bad student then, and it doesn’t accurately reflect that I have a significant record of making A’s already for a year.
No, you clearly don’t get where I’m going with this. You’re using words like ‘significance’ without any understanding of their statistical meaning.
Let’s put it in another light.
Let’s say you have a known oscillation - sunspots, say - with a period of 11 years. You discard all known observations over the last 100 years and look at the last 18 months, which happens to be at a minimum of the cycle. Look: it’s practically a straight line. No more sunspots!
Or take the economic cycle. Let’s ignore all empirical data from 1800 onwards and look only at data from, say, 1985 from 1995. Look, no more recessions! Sound familiar?
You have to be aware of the underlying process before you draw lines through things. You’ve just proclaimed that you know way better than all the climate scientists on the planet, and that the ad hoc model of climate change in your head is better than theirs.
Ha, 18 years is much longer time period than 18 months, and sufficient to establish a reasonably significant trend and elicit doubts. The warmists are just kicking the can down the road using this kind of argument and others like it.
If it’s an obvious oscillation, like sunspots, out with it, tell us what it is and how long it is. Because to save the warmists hide, you’d have to fabricate an oscillation of 50 years at least, give them time to hide behind and think up another clever argument and hopefully die before they end up with egg on their face.
Climate scientists are just as political as any of us are. They put their pants on one leg at a time as all. You’re trying to insulate them from criticism by essentially saying, you can’t endeavor to understand them, you just have to believe they are experts and pure as the wind-driven snow.
But you can do this, why couldn’t you? If there was a different leadership and different way of handling economy, then of course you would measure that crucial dataset in question, and compare it with the record and other ways of handling the economy.
But I think you’re referring to Keynesian economics, which asserts a cycle of recessions, and which nothing can help; it must be a leftist thing. Interestingly, they also love to use complex math that few people can understand to make them seem experts and their methods unapproachable and unsearchable. The Austrians don’t believe in economic cycles and I don’t either.
Much longer with respect to what? You have no metric for “longer”.
It could well be that climate change has “paused”. Or even stopped. However, you’re like those guys who point at nonexistent features on stock charts and say, look at this here and here, this proves it’s about to go up, or down, or whatever. They’re completely oblivious to the fact that stock charts are basically a random walk. You have no idea whether the data from those 18 years is meaningful because you have no model that tells you what’s “meaningful” and what isn’t.
Nope, I’m saying that if you’ve developed a shiny new model of the climate that - as must surely be the case - incorporates extremely short time constants, you need to be able to show that your model is solid. Otherwise it’s not a criticism.
But again, there are short-term things on stocks that help investors know when to get in or out of a stock. And some people, some institutes who put out their proprietary charts are really good at spotting these red lights or green lights in their software. I’ve spent good money and used them, they can be cannily correct.
I happen to find “navel gazing” a funny term because I never use it myself.