Where should one look (climate)

[_Tarski]

It is pretty odd that Droopy keeps making claims about AGW that I can find no evidence for in the scientific literature or among any of the many scientists that I know.

He claims that the AGW is a dead hypothesis and that empirical evidence has proven the whole thing to be a hoax.
He gives the impression that only a fool would be unaware of the the collapse of AGW.
Well, I;m looking around and I don't see it.

Well, I can't find it anywhere except in nonscientific places like conservative blogs and various oddball sties totally analogous to the numerous creationist websites.

I can identify dozens and dozens of mainstream scientific societies that have made statements but none that say anything like what Droopy says.

For example, nothing on wikipedia has changed. The consensus exists just as before.

The following chart surely doesn't tell the story of the demise of a theory. Quite the contrary.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... inion2.png

Notice that plumbers, engineers, bloggers, or even local weathermen are not included (for good reason). Nevertheless several groups are included for perspective (such as simply climatologists, publishing climate scientists, top 100 climate scientists, etc.)
It takes a massively conspiratorial mind to imagine that this is all stunt or a case of herd mentality.

AGW is alive and well and continues to gather evidential support. It is the evidence that creates the consensus (a result of science not a method) amoung those with the presice training to evaluate the evidence (which doesn't not include random geologists or weathermen, aging inactive climatologist from a different era, and certainly not Droopy) Those are the facts folk. Plain and simple.

AGW denialism is just one among many similar social phenomena which include

1) creationism
2) UFOlogy
3) Alternaitve theories about AIDS
4) Moon landing deniers
5) Holocaust denialism
6) 911 conspiracy theory

My point is not so much that AGW is true (though this is indeed what the evidence to date is telling us) but rather how strange it is that Droppy et. al. don't even have a clear picture of the state of the science. They think they are winning the debate and that AGW is dying (they aren't and it isn't).



Individuals in each of these groups find each other on the internet and form a close system of mutually supported confirmation bias--a reality distortion bubble of like minded conspiracy paranoids. In each case, the evidence is against them but they believe incorrigably the very opposite. They are also a tiny minority amoung educated people despite thier own self perceptions. It is a psychosocial rather than scientific matter.
The only thing comparible to talking to Droopy is talking to the one and only schizophrenic that I know: Now amount of evidence and break his delusions and in fact contrary evidence somehow becomes evidence in some twisted way. Just watch how he reacts to the evidence of consensus in the chart I linked to or to the dominance of AGW supportive publications in top journals.

"A 2010 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States (PNAS) reviewed publication and citation data for 1,372 climate researchers and drew the following two conclusions:


(i) 97–98% of the climate researchers most actively publishing in the field support the tenets of ACC (Anthropogenic Climate Change) outlined by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and (ii) the relative climate expertise and scientific prominence of the researchers unconvinced of ACC are substantially below that of the convinced researchers.

"In an October 2011 paper published in the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, researchers from George Mason University analyzed the results of a survey of 489 scientists working in academia, government, and industry. The scientists polled were members of the American Geophysical Union or the American Meteorological Society and listed in the 23rd edition of American Men and Women of Science, a biographical reference work on leading American scientists. Of those surveyed, 97% agreed that that global temperatures have risen over the past century. Moreover, 84% agreed that "human-induced greenhouse warming" is now occurring. Only 5% disagreed with the idea that human activity is a significant cause of global warming"-wiki

[_Brackite]

It is pretty odd that Droopy keeps making claims about AGW that I can find no evidence for in the scientific literature or among any of the many scientists that I know.

He claims that the AGW is a dead hypothesis and that empirical evidence has proven the whole thing to be a hoax.
He gives the impression that only a fool would be unaware of the the collapse of AGW.
Well, I;m looking around and I don't see it.

Well, I can't find it anywhere except in nonscientific places like conservative blogs and various oddball sties totally analogous to the numerous creationist websites.

I can identify dozens and dozens of mainstream scientific societies that have made statements but none that say anything like what Droopy says.

For example, nothing on wikipedia has changed. The consensus exists just as before.

The following chart surely doesn't tell the story of the demise of a theory. Quite the contrary.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... inion2.png

Notice that plumbers, engineers, bloggers, or even local weathermen are not included (for good reason). Nevertheless several groups are included for perspective (such as simply climatologists, publishing climate scientists, top 100 climate scientists, etc.)
It takes a massively conspiratorial mind to imagine that this is all stunt or a case of herd mentality.

AGW is alive and well and continues to gather evidential support. It is the evidence that creates the consensus (a result of science not a method) amoung those with the presice training to evaluate the evidence (which doesn't not include random geologists or weathermen, aging inactive climatologist from a different era, and certainly not Droopy) Those are the facts folk. Plain and simple.

AGW denialism is just one among many similar social phenomena which include

1) creationism
2) UFOlogy
3) Alternaitve theories about AIDS
4) Moon landing deniers
5) Holocaust denialism
6) 911 conspiracy theory

My point is not so much that AGW is true (though this is indeed what the evidence to date is telling us) but rather how strange it is that Droppy et. al. don't even have a clear picture of the state of the science. They think they are winning the debate and that AGW is dying (they aren't and it isn't).

1. I believe that the Universe is about 13.8 billion years old, and I believe that the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old. I also believe in the theory of Evolution. However, I do believe in a God, and I also strongly believe in life after death.

2. I really don not have any opinions concerning UFOlogy since I haven't studied that topic that much yet.

3. I do not believe in any of the alternative theories about AIDS.

4. I did come across a woman on my mission who believed that the moon landings were faked by NASA. However, I definitely believe that the moon landings by the NASA Astronauts were real.

5. I do Not deny that the Holocaust happened.

6. I do not believe in any of the 911 conspiracy theories, however I do remember a Poll that came out in about 2007 that stated that about 33% of registered Democrats believed that 911 was a conspiracy.


Question For Tarski here: Do you believe that the science is as solid for AGW as is the science is for Evolution?

[_Tarski]

Question For Tarski here: Do you believe that the science is as solid for AGW as is the science is for Evolution?

No, not by a long shot.

My totally subjective confidence in a significant AGW (as opposed to GW) is roughly at 70% but my subjective attitude ought to be irrelevant for public policy. Apparently, people who are in the field are typically considerably more confident than that (maybe 85% and rising was what I last heard someone in the know estimate, or something like that--I don't recall). Such numbers can only be rough of course.

My personal confidence in evolution is at virtually 100%.

Just for fun, let me attach some personal subjective confidence numbers to some other things:

The moon landing really happened. 99%

The Holocaust happen substantially as historians think it did. 99.5%

String Theory is substantially on the right track. 75%

Metabolic theory behind the Atkins diet is roughly correct. 51%

My wife has never cheated on me. 95%

ESP is a real ultimately measurable phenomenon. 1% (ESP=bogus 99%)

Classical information and massive objects cannot travel faster than light in empty space relative to any Lorentz frame. 99%

Consciousness is explanable scientifically without radically nonphysical ontologies. 90%

Wave collapse in QM is real and connected with human consciousness. 5%

The internet will create dangerous and ultimately unmanagable social problems connected with false beliefs, misinformation and group think. 95%

Memory and consciousness are far more impoverished and full of gaps and errors than is generally recognized and far worse than intuition suggests. 100%

[_Res Ipsa]

Tarski, I was a little surprised at your overall confidence level. Maybe it's your definition of "significant" AGW. How would you explain the difference between the 85% and your 70%?

[_subgenius]

My personal confidence in evolution is at virtually 100%.

not to derail...but exactly what do you think evolution is?

Just for fun, let me attach some personal subjective confidence numbers to some other things:

The moon landing really happened. 99%

high level for only having anecdotal evidence and limited documentation (of which are not available for your verification)

The Holocaust happen substantially as historians think it did. 99.5%

see previous repsonse

String Theory is substantially on the right track. 75%

the right track to where?

Metabolic theory behind the Atkins diet is roughly correct. 51%

but the marketing theory?

My wife has never cheated on me. 95%

so approximately 18 complete days per year (+/- 430 hours) you are convinced she has cheated on you...is she aware of this calendar? Are these 18 days spread out through the year, like when she "works late"...or are they consecutive, like when she goes to Vegas for 2 weeks to "meet friends"?
Your confidence is interesting.

ESP is a real ultimately measurable phenomenon. 1% (ESP=bogus 99%)

yet it has the equal evidence as the moon landing or Holocaust....what exactly differs in your conclusion methodology between these topics?

Classical information and massive objects cannot travel faster than light in empty space relative to any Lorentz frame. 99%

yawn...see anecdotal evidence above

Consciousness is explanable scientifically without radically nonphysical ontologies. 90%

sounds like a Faith based statement

Wave collapse in QM is real and connected with human consciousness. 5%

The internet will create dangerous and ultimately unmanagable social problems connected with false beliefs, misinformation and group think. 95%

like quilting bee gossip, smoke signals, and newspapers did...only faster?

Memory and consciousness are far more impoverished and full of gaps and errors than is generally recognized and far worse than intuition suggests. 100%

gaps and errors? gaps and errors in what exactly?...are these gaps and errors in "something" that "Memory and consciousness" tells you is there?

[_subgenius]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlVNW-s7bvM

sums it up?

[_Tarski]

not to derail...but exactly what do you think evolution is?

Neodarwinism:
Evolution: change in the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive generations.
Mechanism: Mainly natural selection + genetic drift and possible abstract principles of self organization exhibited by far from equilibrium open systems (mathematics not magic)
Scope: Life evolved from a common ancestor approximately 3.5-4.0 billion years ago.

(re moon landing)
high level for only having anecdotal evidence and limited documentation (of which are not available for your verification)

There isn't any reason to doubt it. The science makes sense and it is extremely plausible---and there is plenty of evidence. Decades of using the laser ranging retro-reflectors placed on the moon and the fact that the mission was tracked by independent parties, even hostile parties, is only one of countless reasons.
Of course, it helps that I know more than one individuals directly involved in several of the missions as well as Buzz Aldrin himself. Hearing him describe the experience face to face leaves little room to doubt. Of course we have had several missions and I do not think it even remotely plausible that such an an elaborate conspiracy involving hundreds of people is even possible.
It is frankly nutty to doubt the moon missions (while having no problem with golden plates and Kolob etc.) Give me a break.

see previous repsonse

Holocaust denier are you?

the right track to where?

Do you know enough about physics and the goals and philosophy of science for it to be worth while to answer this?
The answer in a nutsell is whether the program is on track to arrive at a self consistent full quantum field theory that appropriately unifies the standard model of particle physics with general relativity.

so approximately 18 complete days per year (+/- 430 hours) you are convinced she has cheated on you...is she aware of this calendar? Are these 18 days spread out through the year, like when she "works late"...or are they consecutive, like when she goes to Vegas for 2 weeks to "meet friends"?

?? That is not how probability works. I gave my confidence that she never cheated on me. That being less than 100% doesn't translate into her having necessarily cheated some small fraction of the time.

I am also 99% certain that the bottle of coke they give me at the sushi bar hasn't been opened since it left the factory. That doesn't mean I believe it was open for 1% of the time while on the way from the bottling plant to my table.

yet it has the equal evidence as the moon landing or Holocaust....what exactly differs in your conclusion methodology between these topics?

Not even close. You are delusional.

yawn...see anecdotal evidence above

I am quite certain that you do not know what a Lorentz frame is nor do you understand the evidence for Lorentz covariance (every single particle accelerator experiment confirms it and our GPS systems have to take relativity into account or they would not work as they do.)

sounds like a Faith based statement

does it? LOL
Actually, it is based on considering both the arguments in the philosophical literature and the scientific literature. But I am only describing my subjective feeling about it so that isn't much of a claim anyway.

like quilting bee gossip, smoke signals, and newspapers did...only faster?

You just like to hear yourself talk don't you.

gaps and errors? gaps and errors in what exactly

Do you really want to understand or do you think you have just made some clever point?

[_subgenius]

...(snip)...Scope: Life evolved from a common ancestor approximately 3.5-4.0 billion years ago.

Interesting addendum to evolution....yet Common Descent is an aspect of Darwinism, which draws from evolution...you would try to cloak Darwinism behind the broader and more sensible science of evolution. Yes, Darwinism, and neo-Darwinism, have aspects of evolution but they are not synonymous with evolution. I believe the original statement was about Evolution not Darwinism...i was not interested in what cult you belonged to, but rather what you thought evolution was. Your superfluous hypothetical on mechanism and scope are irrelevant.
Common descent and single cell evolution is archaic, the majority of modern evolutionary thought has already increased that ancestor to likely being 3(three) cells....ironic...a sort of holy trinity.
http://news.illinois.edu/ii/02/0705/0617evoltion_P.html
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... ell-evolut

(re moon landing)

high level for only having anecdotal evidence and limited documentation (of which are not available for your verification)

There isn't any reason to doubt it. The science makes sense and it is extremely plausible---and there is plenty of evidence. Decades of using the laser ranging retro-reflectors placed on the moon and the fact that the mission was tracked by independent parties, even hostile parties, is only one of countless reasons.
Of course, it helps that I know more than one individuals directly involved in several of the missions as well as Buzz Aldrin himself. Hearing him describe the experience face to face leaves little room to doubt. Of course we have had several missions and I do not think it even remotely plausible that such an an elaborate conspiracy involving hundreds of people is even possible.
It is frankly nutty to doubt the moon missions (while having no problem with golden plates and Kolob etc.) Give me a break.
...(snip)...
Holocaust denier are you?

pay close attention...i never stated my belief in either the moon landing or the holocaust. I simply pointed out the measure by which you consider these events to be "true"...and how, when using that same measure, you can conclude other events to be "not true"...thus illuminating the fact that the measure is not at all how you are discerning what is true and what is not true...but rather something else...and in my opinion, based on modest experience, is that you discern by imagination on these subjects...you are not relying on empirical evidence (because of convenience and practicality) but rather you are just relying on anecdotal evidence and social influence and other psychological factors....not hatin'...jus sayin'

so approximately 18 complete days per year (+/- 430 hours) you are convinced she has cheated on you...is she aware of this calendar? Are these 18 days spread out through the year, like when she "works late"...or are they consecutive, like when she goes to Vegas for 2 weeks to "meet friends"?

?? That is not how probability works. I gave my confidence that she never cheated on me. That being less than 100% doesn't translate into her having necessarily cheated some small fraction of the time.

I am also 99% certain that the bottle of coke they give me at the sushi bar hasn't been opened since it left the factory. That doesn't mean I believe it was open for 1% of the time while on the way from the bottling plant to my table.

Pay attention...i did not claim that she was unfaithful at any time...i merely pointed out the practical application of your certainty on the subject. If you are not 100% certain of her fidelity then there are moments when you are uncertain. These moments are measurable by your own admission. And 5% of one year is approx 18 days..but perhaps the application is more frequent and you are just uncertain about 70 minutes a day. Otherwise how can justify your 95% measure?...unless, as noted above...it is not empirical...but rather of something else...by which case your use of percentages is rather ironic.

...(snip)...

gaps and errors? gaps and errors in what exactly

Do you really want to understand or do you think you have just made some clever point?

truly have a curiosity about how you can reasonably explain believing, what I consider as your notion, that one can not trust the mind because the mind says one can not trust the mind.

[_EAllusion]

Neodarwinism refers to the synthesis of Mendelian genetics with natural selection to understand evolution. It's classical population genetics, really. Even 7th graders are routinely taught Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium if they are fortunate enough to live outside of Bible-belt influenced curriculum. That's what Neodarwinism is. It's about a century old now. The 'neo' comes from it being new a long time ago, not now. Neodarwinism proper predates molecular genetics.

There's debates in biology about the relative role adaptation has played in particular features of organisms, with those thinking natural selection played a very large role being called the "Darwinists." But even the non-Darwinists in that sense don't disagree with common descent of biodiversity or natural selection being an important mechanism of the development of biodiversity. It's all about the relative role of selective effects.

This jargon in biology is used in a completely different way in creationist/fundamentalist evangelical circles, where subgenius appears to be drawing his rhetoric from. There "Darwinism" and "Neodarwinism" both mean something akin to the content of modern evolutionary biology. Even Motoo Kimura is a "Darwinist" in that sense.

[_Tarski]

Pay attention...i did not claim that she was unfaithful at any time...i merely pointed out the practical application of your certainty on the subject. If you are not 100% certain of her fidelity then there are moments when you are uncertain.

That does not follow.
I am 95% certain each and every moment of the day all year every year. How about that? More precisely, if asked at any time during a given year, I would give 20 to 1 odds that she has never cheated on me.

These moments are measurable by your own admission. And 5% of one year is approx 18 days..but perhaps the application is more frequent and you are just uncertain about 70 minutes a day.

No! (see above). Since the condition "My wife has never cheated" is either true or not there can be no repeated trials where on some occasions it is true and on other it is not. Because of this, I used the word subjective which was just my referencing the so called "subjectivist" interpretation of probability. There are several interpretations of probability and none seem to have been accepted as appropriate for every situation where we wish to use probabilistic language. The is also frequentism and another that relies on the notion of propensity. See section six of this page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Probabilit ... bjectivism

Otherwise how can justify your 95% measure?...unless, as noted above...it is not empirical...but rather of something else...by which case your use of percentages is rather ironic.

LOL Well, "something else" is the correct answer. You see, the other more prominent reason I used that word "subjective" is because I was just more or less speaking off the cuff. Notice that I said "just for fun". This was nothing but "light conversation". I think everyone saw that but you.
Nothing turns on the numbers I gave and I obviously did not present those as numbers I was prepared to "back up" (Though in a few of the cases I could do some very good empirical support. If I had to give numbers that reflect my degree of confidence, then those are the ones I felt like giving--that's it.

You seem to have just missed the following words I used:
fun
subjective
very rough

But thanks for going on about this and taking it too seriously. It gives me insight into how uncharitably and carelessly you read things and how simplistic is your grasp on probabilistic thinking.
It fits perfectly with your ability to label someone a pervert and a lecher for saying that someone is good looking.
To studiously avoid saying such things even as a bit of humor would be an extremely annoying level of political correctness.