the-science-of-why-comment-trolls-suck

[wayno]

cold fusion wasnt fusion, but it was a discovery of a different state that an element could exist in
what happened wen they applied electricity to hydrogen infused into metal was the electrons would go into a closer orbit around the nucleus and it did give off more energy than they put in, but it also put hydrogen into a more unstable state,, one scientist dropped a piece of metal infused with hydrogen and blew his lab to pieces.... the principle was used in a car engine but if you had an accident the consequences could be appaling damage

[maddog]

there is a consensus amongst climate scientists on the anthropogenic cause of climate change (97-98%) and I have never met a single scientist who thinks otherwise

Here are a small handful that do not lose sleep over the threat of anthropogenic influence on climate change:

A geologist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Plimer)

A theoretical physicist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freeman_Dyson

A atmospheric physicist http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garth_Paltridge

I'm sure you would also enjoy this:

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/dysonf0 ... index.html

Consensus is not evidence. A few examples to help you along:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trofim_Lysenko

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phrenology

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continental_drift

Furthermore, you clearly have little to no experience with the peer review process and science in general. Otherwise you would not be saying this. It's not like they publish any ramblings or opinion.

I thought you had read this one?

http://www.nature.com/news/we-must-be-o ... es-1.11353

This might amuse you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAlMomLvu_4

...highlights the issue of the danger when anybody who wants to say their piece against established theories or research, even though the person in question more often than not has little technical knowledge of a topic

Employing the same thinking we could say only a lawyer should have a say in regards to issues such as republic, a geneticist on issues surrounding race, a doctor on abortion, a churchman on morality, a mining engineer on hydraulic fracturing of CSG deposits, a policeman on law and order, a forester on logging, a soldier on war, or a chemist on DDT. One might well listen to what experts have to say, but the free-thinker is happy to make up their own mind based on their assessment of the evidence. Denying the standing of critics, rather than addressing the criticism itself, is not science. It is a mere tactic to shut down debate, much like equating scepticism with denial, and the declaration of infallibility by consensus.

BTW, how are you going with Gammage?

Cheers

[Pteropus]

Haha thanks for sharing that. Now we all know that Plimer is a mining geologist, who is also the director of "multiple mineral exploration and mining companies", and he is most definitely not a climate scientist! So it goes to show that anyone can publish a book to push their agenda. Very few people have the honour of the Australian Federal Government thinking that one of their books as so dangerous that they provide a web page to respond to the book with peer reviewed science, so the public is not misinformed!

Nice use of Wikipedia by the way. Look hard enough and you will find a list of scientists who do not think global warming is anthropogenic in origin...it’s a short list really.... There will always be a few people who do not necessarily agree or accept...and that doesn’t mean there isn’t a consensus, because a huge majority of scientists do agree. Especially the ones publishing actual research on CC and AWG. Where are the publications against AGW though?

Your post shows the danger of picking and choosing your information sources. This is what leads to bias. Especially when you use wikipedia or blogs or youtube etc. Sure, you claim to be a “free thinker” but where is your critical thinking? Just because you oppose the views of experts, doesn’t make you right...actually, it more likely makes you wrong.

But whatever...I have a tent to seam seal, and that is more important to me than this thread right now..

[maddog]

Haha thanks for sharing that. Now we all know that Plimer is a mining geologist, who is also the director of "multiple mineral exploration and mining companies", and he is most definitely not a climate scientist! So it goes to show that anyone can publish a book to push their agenda.

My pleasure Pteropus. Though I am surprised that you were unaware of a man of Plimer's standing, given your vocation. Yes Plimer is a geologist with extensive field experience, and a very distinguished one at that. In regards to his mining interests, it is something he has in common with many other geologists, as that industry employs many fine practising geologists. He does not hide his interests, and there is no reason to believe that his opinions on subjects such as AGW or creationism has been influenced by financial gain. In his battle with the creationists, Plimer demonstrated integrity and courage rarely seen by his peers in academia, a fight that led to his bankruptcy.

Also, geologists are very well placed to discuss the credibility of AWG - a history of climate is found in rocks.

Very few people have the honour of the Australian Federal Government thinking that one of their books as so dangerous that they provide a web page to respond to the book with peer reviewed science, so the public is not misinformed!

Do you think the Commonwealth Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency will be around after the next election? I think Professor Plimer will be, as will his books and other works. I recommend them to you, though I am genuinely surprised that you have not read them.

Freeman Dyson, is also good value. The great thing about Dyson is that he is a man of considerable standing in the scientific community, and he communicates very well. Though critics like to paint him as “a pompous twit,” “a blowhard,” “a cesspool of misinformation,” “an old coot riding into the sunset”, etc, the suggestion that he has been diminished by senility has been refuted by no less a witness than Oliver Sacks, who maintains “his mind is still so open and flexible.” Undermining his reputation with the usual angry ad hom that we have come to expect from the climate change crowd has thus not been easy. Nor is dismissing his opinions. For example (just in case you missed it):

As a scientist I do not have much faith in predictions. Science is organized unpredictability. The best scientists like to arrange things in an experiment to be as unpredictable as possible, and then they do the experiment to see what will happen. You might say that if something is predictable then it is not science. When I make predictions, I am not speaking as a scientist. I am speaking as a story-teller, and my predictions are science-fiction rather than science. The predictions of science-fiction writers are notoriously inaccurate. Their purpose is to imagine what might happen rather than to describe what will happen. I will be telling stories that challenge the prevailing dogmas of today. The prevailing dogmas may be right, but they still need to be challenged. I am proud to be a heretic. The world always needs heretics to challenge the prevailing orthodoxies. Since I am heretic, I am accustomed to being in the minority. If I could persuade everyone to agree with me, I would not be a heretic.

And just for a little more fun:

My first heresy says that all the fuss about global warming is grossly exaggerated. Here I am opposing the holy brotherhood of climate model experts and the crowd of deluded citizens who believe the numbers predicted by the computer models. Of course, they say, I have no degree in meteorology and I am therefore not qualified to speak. But I have studied the climate models and I know what they can do. The models solve the equations of fluid dynamics, and they do a very good job of describing the fluid motions of the atmosphere and the oceans. They do a very poor job of describing the clouds, the dust, the chemistry and the biology of fields and farms and forests. They do not begin to describe the real world that we live in. The real world is muddy and messy and full of things that we do not yet understand. It is much easier for a scientist to sit in an air-conditioned building and run computer models, than to put on winter clothes and measure what is really happening outside in the swamps and the clouds. That is why the climate model experts end up believing their own models.

Cheers

[Pteropus]

Though I am surprised that you were unaware of a man of Plimer's standing, given your vocation. Yes Plimer is a geologist with extensive field experience, and a very distinguished one at that. In regards to his mining interests, it is something he has in common with many other geologists, as that industry employs many fine practising geologists. He does not hide his interests, and there is no reason to believe that his opinions on subjects such as AGW or creationism has been influenced by financial gain. In his battle with the creationists, Plimer demonstrated integrity and courage rarely seen by his peers in academia, a fight that led to his bankruptcy.

I know who Plimer is and what his views on CC and AWG are, so your surprise is not needed. And there we have it. Here you are defending someone who has vested interest in making money by making false claims against robust science. Not only are you defending him, but you show admiration and claim that "...there is no reason to believe that his opinions on subjects such as AGW or creationism has been influenced by financial gain". Of course his opinions are influenced by financial gain, since he has business interests that would suffer if he had other views (on AGW). It would be silly to think otherwise. At least he has an excuse to attack science that could make his personal interest suffer, coz he would lose investment into his companies from which he profits. But what about you? Why do you champion these lone voices? What is your motivation for not believing the thousands of scientists who publish their work in peer reviewed journals, and on the other hand deciding to follow the small few who write whole books or blogs on topics that are not their area of expertise, and rarely, if ever, publish anything in the scientific literature to back up their claims? Why do you read people like Gammage, and push their views as gospel, without critically appraising their work, and yet think that other research that suggests otherwise is not relevant? Picking and choosing your sources is not particularly helpful for making a robust argument and does not help your cause.

[maddog]

I know who Plimer is...Here you are defending someone who has vested interest in making money by making false claims...

Are you making the claim that Plimer's motivation for publication is to benefit his mining investments? Perhaps you could give a specific example of how his books have directly benefited those interests? By questioning a man's professional integrity, is the aim to diminish his reputation because you do not like what he has to say?

When applied to the book ‘Telling Lies for God’, this reasoning is nothing short of remarkable. Creationists dispute the validity of the theory of evolution, and insist that all biology texts devote an equal attention to ‘creation science’. Plimer concerned by the spread of what he viewed as a dangerous anti-science religious movement popular in the United States, took them on.

He wrote his book, took the creationists to Court on a point of law, and mortgaged his house. He lost. Plimer was bankrupted defending biological science, not his business interests. To this day equal coverage for creation science remains a requirement for biology texts in some States of the USA, but thankfully not in Australia. Nevertheless, this is the same man some suggest puts financial gain before science. Defending science against superstition is it seems, a thankless task.

And what of Dyson? 'Old Coot' perhaps, 'lost his marbles'?

...false claims against robust science.

In 'Heaven and Earth: Global Warming - the missing science', Plimer sites many examples of conclusions that have been drawn by the AWG crowd that do not fit with what he sees as the geological record. One such claim is that due to AGW, floods of a biblical scale threaten civilization. Plimer does not view this as likely. He points to geological evidence that independent of human activity sea levels and continents ‘rise and fall like a bride’s nighty’. That is, often and quite rapidly. Plimer can see this in the rocks (e.g. sandstone, mudstone, limestone), and the soil (e.g. acid-sulphate). Can you?

Plimer does not doubt that climate changes, he knows it does. He doubts however, on the evidence, that current climatic changes are unprecedented, that they are necessarily primarily anthropogenic in origin, or that changes of the future are likely to be catastrophic. He comes to these conclusions on the basis of his understanding of geological science, rejecting the speculations of climate modellers, and meeting the cat-calls of gullible believers with humour.

But what about you? Why do you champion these lone voices?...Why do you read people like Gammage, and push their views as gospel, without critically appraising their work…

I have read, amongst other things, works by Dyson, Plimer, Gammage, and a of variety scientific papers in areas of interest. Lucky for me, I have the freedom to spend a lot of time in the field making observations. Where ideas fit I adopt them, where they do not I reject them.

What is your motivation for not believing the thousands of scientists who publish their work in peer reviewed journals

Science is not democracy, so numbers are irrelevant. Argumentum ad verecundiam is no argument at all. And science is not about belief, belief belongs in religion.

Picking and choosing your sources is not particularly helpful for making a robust argument and does not help your cause.

And what cause, other the satisfaction gained from playing with ideas, is that?

Cheers

[photohiker]

In 'Heaven and Earth: Global Warming - the missing science', Plimer sites many examples of conclusions that have been drawn by the AWG crowd that do not fit with what he sees as the geological record. One such claim is that due to AGW, floods of a biblical scale threaten civilization. Plimer does not view this as likely.

With all due respect to Plimer, he seems to be out of step with his previous self, and regularly contradicts himself in the same book.

Cherry-picking contrarian geologists tend to obscure scientific truth (Mike Sandiford is professor of geology at the University of Melbourne)

Plimer vs Plimer - One man contradiction

He might be a real nice guy and all, but surely there is someone sharper and closer to the game to shine the bright lights on?

The ultimate takedown of Climate Science would come from science. I'm sure we'd all be wrapped to see that happen. One can only wonder why all these skeptics have not done so, I mean it must be easy if they already know the answers and all.

I agree that science is not a democracy and is not about belief. The point about AGW is that so many scientists have come to the same conclusion through their research that they have better things to do than go over old ground. A recent analysis of the state of disagreement by scientists publishing in the field came to this conclusion:

Polls show that many members of the public believe that scientists substantially disagree about human-caused global warming. If they do, articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, the gold standard of science, will reveal the disagreement.

I searched the Web of Science for peer-reviewed scientific articles published between 1 January 1991 and 9 November 2012 that have the keyword phrases "global warming" or "global climate change." The search produced 13,950 articles. See methodology.

[...]

By my definition, 24 of the 13,950 articles, 0.17% or 1 in 581, clearly reject global warming or endorse a cause other than CO2 emissions for observed warming. The list of articles that reject global warming is here. The 24 articles have been cited a total of 113 times over the nearly 21-year period, for an average of close to 5 citations each. That compares to an average of about 19 citations for articles answering to "global warming," for example. Four of the rejecting articles have never been cited; four have citations in the double-digits. The most-cited has 17. For an analysis of the 113 citations, see here. Only 50 of the citing articles are truly independent and peer-reviewed.

Of one thing we can be certain: had any of the 24 articles presented the magic bullet that falsifies human-caused global warming, that article would be on its way to becoming one of the most-cited in the history of science. If there were such an article, one would not have to hunt for it.

James Powell "The Inquisition of Climate Science"

[Pteropus]

Hi maddog, I was not referring to Plimer’s book about creation science, but about the one called How to get expelled from school: a guide to climate change for pupils, parents and punters. You know, the one that the Government responded to by posting a full rebuttal by scientists in the link I posted above because it is full of non-science. Also, I have already stated in a previous post that science and religion should not be considered together, so I am sure that your dig at my use of the word “believing” is to distract. How about the word “accepting”? One doesn't have to believe it, or accept it, but at least respect it. Getting published is no easy feat and the peer review process is not a kind one. It might not be perfect but it is not the same as writing a book and just getting a publisher to publish it.

Are you making the claim that Plimer's motivation for publication is to benefit his mining investments?

It certainly looks like he has motivation and if he says he isn't I am sceptical. After all, he is working with Gina Rinehart on the board of two of her companies, including Queensland Coal Investments. That earns him a bit that he wouldn’t get if he his views were otherwise. He also has strong ties with the Institute of Public Affairs, who are a free-market policy think-tank that actively pushes climate change scepticism, which is hardly surprising when their donors include oil and coal mining companies. It is difficult to accept that money is not part of his motivation. And as Photohiker's post tends to show, he can be contradictory with his reporting, which doesn't help his cause.

Interesting you keep mentioning Freeman Dyson. A quick scan of his Wikipedia page says that “Dyson agrees that anthropogenic global warming exists, and has written that "[o]ne of the main causes of warming is the increase of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere resulting from our burning of fossil fuels such as oil and coal and natural gas.” However, he has pointed out that existing simulation models of climate fail to account for some important factors, and hence the results will contain too much error to reliably predict future trends.” So his criticism is of the modelling process. Anyone who works with a mathematical model understands they are not reality, but a tool to quantify process from observed pattern. They can be used to predict, but there are always errors, which are accounted for. Yet, as computer power increases, so does the capacity to model processes, whether in the natural world or the engineering world or space. But as they say, a model is as only as good as the data. Fortunately there is plenty of good data in many areas of science from a multitude of sources. And of course people are always attempting to improve on their own, or other peoples work. People also try to debunk other peoples work. It’s part of the process. And that way we get a better understanding. Some theories get modified, or replaced, others, like evolution, get more robust. That is how it goes...

[wayno]

guys,,,, get a room.....

[maddog]

With all due respect to Plimer, he seems to be out of step with his previous self, and regularly contradicts himself in the same book.

Plimer vs Plimer - One man contradiction

He might be a real nice guy and all, but surely there is someone sharper and closer to the game to shine the bright lights on?

So it's not just Dyson then. Plimer's lost his marbles too it seems. But before burning his books I thought it might be best to check a few of these quotes. The first one:

Together with water vapour, CO2 keeps our planet warm so that it is not covered in ice, too hot or devoid of liquid water. H&E, 411

vs

Temperature and CO2 are not connected. H&E, 278

Plimer appears to say that CO2 is a greenhouse gas and then say that it is not. But the second is a very short quote. What would happen if we placed it in its original context?

At 800,000 and 650,000 years ago, atmospheric CO2 dropped below 180 ppmv yet temperature was unchanged. Temperature and CO2 are not connected. Furthermore, there was a long term trend in CO2 which rose by 25 ppmv from 800,000 to 400,000 years ago and then fell by 15 ppmv thereafter. Again a disconnection between temperature and CO2. Even more intriguing was that methane levels in trapped air changed from 100,000 to 20,000 year cycles. By contrast, temperature and CO2 showed 100,000 year cycles.

What a difference context makes.

So what does Plimer have to say regarding sea levels. From the provided quotes, he seems a little confused:

During the last interglacial (130,000-116,000 years ago), global mean surface sea temperature was at least 2°C warmer than at present and mean sea level was 4 to 6 metres higher than at present.H&E, 316

vs

The most alarmist predictions of sea level rise from ice sheet melting caused by global warming need to be substantially scaled back. Ice persisted for much longer on Earth when the Earth was much hotter than today. H&E, 312.

Now, to replace the context:

During the last interglacial (130,000-116,000 years ago), global mean surface sea temperature was at least 2°C warmer than at present and mean sea level was 4 to 6 metres higher than at present. At 123,500 years ago, the rate of sea level rise was 1.5m to 2.5 meters per century…Over the current interglacial, the average sea level rise over the last 14,000 years has been 1.0 metre per century. This is slightly more than the worst-case scenario predicted by the IPCC. If sea level did rise by 1 metre by 2100 AD, then this is exactly what would be expected at the current post-glacial sea-level rise. The IPCC’s own computer models show that their predicted sea level rise…is due to the continuing post-glacial sea level rise.

vs

The most alarmist predictions of sea level rise from ice sheet melting caused by global warming need to be substantially scaled back. Ice persisted for much longer on Earth when the Earth was much hotter than today. Al Gore’s Oscar-winning movie predicted that sea level would increase by 6 metres in the near future, while other predictions are that the rise would be 2 to 4 metres…Sea level changes over the last 20 years are not particularly unusual…Sea level change was larger in the early part of the century…in comparison to the latter part.

And time for just one more:

The global warmth of the Cretaceous has been attributed to elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere H&E, 186

vs

The proof that CO2 does not drive climate is shown by previous glaciations. H&E, 165

Replacing the missing context:

During the Mesozoic, and especially the Cretaceous, global temperatures were considerably warmer than they are now. This was not a time for extinction. There was a great flourishing of life. The global warmth of the Cretaceous has been attributed to elevated levels of CO2 in the atmosphere. The CO2 derived from continental fragmentation, rifting and associated sea floor basalt volcanism. The rifting eventually formed the Atlantic Ocean. However, there are some suggestions that the Cretaceous Climate was decoupled from the CO2 content in the atmosphere.

vs

The proof that CO2 does not drive climate is shown by previous glaciations. The Ordovician-Silurian (450-420 Ma) and Jurassic-Cretatious (151-132 Ma) glaciations occurred when atmospheric CO2 content was more than 4000 ppvv and about 2000…ppmv. The Carboniferous-Permian glaciation (360-260 Ma) had a CO2 content of about 400 ppmv, at least 15 ppmv higher than present. If the popular catastrophist view is accepted, then there should have been a runaway greenhouse…Instead there was glaciation.

This is a pretty shoddy critique from Skepticalscience.com, Photohiker. If Plimer's book is so bad, and the science is so settled, why is it necessary to resort to such a deceptive conduct to 'debunk' him?

Cheers

[Nuts]

guys,,,, get a room.....

I agree, sorry if this comes to a lop-sided end but it's gone beyond the intention of the OP and likely general interest of the forum, locked for now (before it gets nasty)