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Global Warming (Geophysics)
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Mick Harper
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Definitely not but this raises important points and I'm off to bed. I will state the position in the morning if you can bear the suspense and trust the oracle.
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Mick Harper
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Clearly if it is only 'slightly more likely' there can be no question of one of them being the Applied Epistemological solution as far you are concerned. By the same token overwhelming evidence cannot come into it. You may be wrong in thinking this -- there is no such thing as Applied Epistemology only Applied Epistemologists -- but there it is.

However Applied Epistemology does recognise default positions. By, I would think the nineteen nineties, it had become clear that climate-change had won the argument and that climate-change deniers were just people belonging to a particular club. They need not be engaged with further apart from their usefulness in the 'conspiracy theorist' role, as Grant has just illustrated. They might turn out to be correct but not because of any wisdom on their part.

Unfortunately the club the deniers belong to is a powerful one and climate-changers have had to form a club on their own account to combat it. As with all clubs this requires them to refuse to countenance any further exploration of (they perceive it as attacks on) the reasons for climate change. As we would say, the need to defend the paradigm has become an end in itself. In my view the chief one being that it is the greenhouse effect that is driving climate change. They refuse to re-examine this assumption even though, as the more thoughtful among them would acknowledge, it is merely a plausible model.

As we would say, they are suffering from careful ignoral big time and we are all doomed. Unless, which is also quite possible, their solution has the unintended consequence of saving the planet. That saves the planet, I mean. Not that...
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Mick Harper
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AE dictates that you should adopt the default position, i.e. that this episode of climate change is (as per previous episodes) natural.

I see in my rush to judgement that I have mischaracterised your position. It is true that climate change deniers have shifted their position as the evidence that the climate was changing became overwhelming. It is now 'natural' and (although it by no means follows) there is no need to bother about it.

This is not, as you suggest, an application of 'what is is what was'. In the first place the evidence of temperature change on a global scale in the past is not overwhelming -- though the evidence that temperatures changed in parts of the globe is overwhelming. In the second place, we have no evidence of a change in the time frame of the current one save when natural but temporary forces were present e.g. volcanic winters. It cannot be denied by the deniers that human activity is affecting global everything on a scale not felt since early man wiped out early ecospheres (maybe) and then started creating their own ecospheres (maybe).

But the climate-changers, for their part, should concede that they have not nailed down what that time-frame is. The scale of human activity has been going up a lot more gradually than global warming. The correlation is very weak unless you build theoretical tipping points and sudden exponential increases into your model. I myself toy with more specific actions eg the introduction of burnt kerosene into the upper atmosphere by passenger jet planes in the sixties.
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Chad


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So far then, we are broadly in agreement.

We agree the climate is in a state of change… there is overwhelming evidence that surface temperatures are rising and weather systems do appear to be becoming more chaotic. We both agree that the greenhouse effect is a genuine phenomenon… but this is where we part company for the time being.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you do seem to have accepted the hypothesis that the greenhouse effect is rising in intensity and that human activity is the driving force behind it.

So far I am underwhelmed by the evidence in support of this hypothesis.

As you say:
The scale of human activity has been going up a lot more gradually than global warming. The correlation is very weak unless you build theoretical tipping points and sudden exponential increases into your model.

This is precisely my problem. The accumulated data does not support the theoretical model without the application of hypothetical correction factors. This could be construed as ‘fudging the figures, to fit the desired outcome’.

Grant’s buckets are an example of such (but due to changes in methodology over a long time period, maybe not a valid one).

A better example is the temperature of the atmosphere, from one to five miles above the surface (i.e. below the metaphorical greenhouse roof).

Computer models, designed to predict the impact of human activity on climate change, all show temperature rises in this portion of the atmosphere, that are not supported by the data (accumulated over many decades) from weather balloons, with correlative data from satellites. (What sort of greenhouse raises the temperature of the floor but not the space above it?) Only when the algorithms are tweaked with correction factors, can they be made to fit.

Until the incoming data (in support of human causation) overwhelms me, I’ll continue to examine alternative, natural possibilities.
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Mick Harper
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I see in your rush to judgement that you have mischaracterised my position.

We both agree that the greenhouse effect is a genuine phenomenon…

No, we didn't. I specifically said it was a plausible hypothesis.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but you do seem to have accepted the hypothesis that the greenhouse effect is rising in intensity

No, I still regard it as a plausible hypothesis. If it is rising in intensity I would have to accept its reality. Is that what people are saying?

and that human activity is the driving force behind it.

I accept that human activity is the driving force behind climate change.

So far I am underwhelmed by the evidence in support of this hypothesis.

I would go further and say there is no evidence. Our understanding of atmospheric physics (chemistry? biochemistry?) is just too tenuous and of course only having the one world to play with we can't run any real time real life simulations. I agreed with, in so far as I understood it, the rest of your argument. Apart from the 'natural' bit. That seems to me to be a major cop-out. Though well worth exploring yourself on that score alone.
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Chad


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We both agree that the greenhouse effect is a genuine phenomenon…

No, we didn't. I specifically said it was a plausible hypothesis.

No, you were specifically referring to the greenhouse effect as agent of change

…that it is the greenhouse effect that is driving climate change… is merely a plausible model.

I for one, am happy to accept the overwhelming evidence, that the greenhouse effect is a genuine phenomenon (regardless of whether, or not, it has the ability to drive climate change)… aren’t you?
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Mick Harper
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Chad, I don't know how many times I have to say it but I do not believe in the greenhouse effect to do anything other than ripen tomatoes in greenhouses. I have no idea how it operates in greenhouses but I presume there is some sort of science attached to it. But there may not be because greenhouses are simple human experiments that turned out to have the strange property of raising the temperature rather more than is usual in human structures not made out of glass. Science played no part in their development.

I do know however, as an Applied Epistemologist in good standing, that there will be an explanation of why the effect works, it will be expressed in scientific language, it will be accepted as self-evidently true by everybody on earth except me. I cannot say for sure but I will probably say, "It's a plausible theory." On the other hand I might say, "Yup, that's good science insofar as I can judge. Case closed."

Now... when it comes to scaling this 'effect' up to a global level I will first look for giant glass panels just above the ionosphere and a man with a beard saying, "Time to do some dibbin' out, moy little darlin's." This is quite irrespective of whether I accept the basic science or not at the greenhouse level.
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Chad


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Ok, good. l’m glad we’ve sorted out that little misunderstanding on my part.

Could we possibly have a little clarity on this?

It cannot be denied by the deniers that human activity is affecting global everything on a scale not felt since early man wiped out early ecospheres (maybe) and then started creating their own ecospheres (maybe).

There are a lot of maybes there and ‘global everything’ is perhaps going a tad too far... but I, personally, wouldn’t deny human activity is causing pollution and habitat loss on a global scale.

But tag on climate change (as environmental activists do) simply diverts attention (and resources) away from what we undeniably are responsible for (and should be doing everything we can to correct) and towards reducing carbon emissions, which may not be having any discernible effect on climate.
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Mick Harper
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Ah, at last, an original idea of global significance. I've been waiting all day. So let's break it down.

There are a lot of maybes there and ‘global everything’ is perhaps going a tad too far... but I, personally, wouldn’t deny human activity is causing pollution and habitat loss on a global scale.

OK, but as you say, it's nothing new and it's nothing we can't handle. And even if we can't we can just pull up the drawbridge. It ain't the end of the world. The First World that is.

But tag on climate change (as environmental activists do)

T'other way round. The Greenies got big on population growth and general Malthusian hairshirtism which morphed into climate change and then burst out into the general population via pandas and stuff.

simply diverts attention away from what we undeniably are responsible for

Wait, you missed a step there.

(and should be doing everything we can to correct)

If you hadn't missed the step

and towards reducing carbon emissions, which may not be having any discernible effect on climate.

Yeah, that's the step. The interconnectedness of it all. And I think you slipped in a carbon assumption when I wasn't looking. Even so, I like it. But you haven't said how I can help.
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Mick Harper
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Well, I suppose you did literally, so I'd better oblige

Could we possibly have a little clarity on this?
It cannot be denied by the deniers that human activity is affecting global everything on a scale not felt since early man wiped out early ecospheres (maybe) and then started creating their own ecospheres (maybe).

All I meant to say is that the changes we have been making in the earth's various ecospheres in the last (say) two hundred years are of a scale (greater) and in a time frame (shorter) than the effects of a) wiping out top predators over large areas of the earth's surface in the palaeolithic era and b) creating monocultures over large areas of the earth's surface in the Neolithic and early-Civilisation eras. But you already knew that.
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Chad


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Isn’t this just a manifestation of ‘Sod the evidence, it’s them pikey bastards what dunnit. They’ve got form for this sort of stuff’ syndrome?
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Mick Harper
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Chad, I can only conclude that this subject has addled your brain. What evidence am I 'sodding'. Who are the pikeys in this argument? Who has got form for what? I cannot grapple with phantoms.
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Chad


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Who are the pikeys in this argument?

Homo Sapiens.

Who has got form for what?

The above, have form for undeniably affecting (non-specific) global everything.

What evidence am I 'sodding'.

Not you, but rather the ‘climate change is an artefact of human activity’ brigade... with regard to anything that casts doubt on their paradigm.
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Mick Harper
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Yes, I see, that's rather good. I can see some holes (mainly to do with consciousness) but the disconnect-and-blame idea is a good one. I suppose an example would be climate change people forever jetting off to faraway places to have their climate change conferences. But I don't think anyone is ignoring the evidence. There is far too much evidence in my opinion. Certainly enough to support everyone's position.

This might be the problem. After all the argument is always couched in terms of discovering new facts which in turn require new policies. This puts everyone on rails as they now know what kind of facts require discovering in order to prompt the policies they favour. As you know, since you have been doing it yourself, both sides assume the other is acting in bad faith so all new facts become the new arena as both sides career off in the same direction, firing at one another like Mexican bandits and federales, without worrying about whether it is the right direction.

It must be the right ball park if everyone is in it but that should not affect ourselves, the ballpark inspectors.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Have any of the big predictions, ie the Great Barrier Reef will be dead in 6 months (1971), been true? I mean eventually it might be true. But predicting every year is cheating a bit isn't it? Gordon Brown said we had 50 days to save the world, Prince Charles 100 months, we didn't do anything, so we are presumably doomed by now.

To meet Extinction Rebellion targets we need to remove 38 million cars from the world's roads. We won't so will become extinct. A bit of Antarctica is going to float off and signal our end. We are going to have a new Ice Age, or die by Fires, or flooding. These are signs of a dying paradigm, not world.
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