MIT Scientist: 'Alarm over climate change is based on ignorance...

by Bryan 48 Replies latest jw friends

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  Brother Apostate

  It seems almost impossible to believe that you would not be mortified by these embarrassing threads you have participated in, let alone advertise them-- where in them do you feel you scored any advantage?

  I don't feel any need to "score an advantage", you obviously do, otherwise, why make the comment, right? You'd have to be very obtuse to think you are in a position to score any advantage by posting your opinions on a public forum.

  You might also have noticed a comment of my own in one of them, indicating my previous familiarity. ... might have been useful before deciding to issue your rebuke.

  Talk about advertising an embarrasment! That topic begins with the assumption that there are actually Global Warming "deniers", missing what the debate is about, and goes downhill from there.

  Of course, it is hard to "put your foot in your mouth" when it is engaged in emitting such shining beacons of knowledge and wisdom as "PS- We'll have to wait and see."

  It is knowledge and wisdom to understand what is actually causing a phenomenon, and then determining what can be done to combat its negative effects. Jumping to premature conclusions, doing "something" based on little more than a hunch, is immature at best, and often creates "solutions" that are more damaging than the "problem".

  BA- We'll have to wait and see.

  PS- Jumping to conclusions based on incomplete understanding of the forcings and how much each known forcing contributes to the models is mere fortunetelling.
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  TopHat

  Watching the news tonight...I heard that the Pine Forest up in the mountains are the cause of Global Warning because of the reflection of the Sun on the Snow atop the trees. Now they want to cut down all the Piney trees in Canada..... are they serious, GET OUTA TOWN!!!!
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  Brother Apostate

  TopHat,

  Are you talking about this?

  http://www.scrippsnews.com/node/16710

  BA- Who knew?
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  TopHat

  BA, I heard it on the 6 o'clock Nightly news and they mentioned it briefly...no details.
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  DanTheMan

  PS- Jumping to conclusions based on incomplete understanding of the forcings and how much each known forcing contributes to the models is mere fortunetelling.

  Just the other day you told me that today's computers have enough horsepower to calculate all this to a high degree of accuracy, but the scientists creating the models don't understand the data well enough to take perfect advantage of this precision.

  How many more years of research do you suppose needs to be done before the models are accurate to your liking? 30? 50?

  And how are you so certain that the models are inaccurate?
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  MinisterAmos

  Saw an interesting slide show on the regression of the glaciers in Glacier Natl Park over the last 80 years or so. Have to agree that there seems to be a major problem based on that and the rest of the evidence like hot-house gas build-up and pollution.

  One good thing is that the dead spots in the Gulf of Mexico seem to have been "knocked-out" by the last few hurricanes. I understand the last one was 500 square miles?
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  SixofNine

  Quote:
  
  "PS- Jumping to conclusions based on incomplete understanding of the forcings and how much each known forcing contributes to the models is mere fortunetelling."

  Wow. Two points come to mind upon reading that: A) to read his thoughts overall, it's amazing to realize that he does have some grasp of the concept of "forcings", and B) to read his thoughts now realizing that he does have some concept of "forcings", one has to assume that he believes said forcings will contribute exactly nothing to an accurate model of potential outcomes.
  
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  Brother Apostate

  Dan,

  Just the other day you told me that today's computers have enough horsepower to calculate all this to a high degree of accuracy, but the scientists creating the models don't understand the data well enough to take perfect advantage of this precision.

  Yes, the computer hardware has the horsepower, that is one issue. There are at least two others:

  1.- The modeling software is continually being improved, such that the previous generation of modeling software has been shown to have errors, and so this is also the case with the existing modeling software. Discrete event (you may think of these as micro models) are fairly robust and accurate when fed with (fairly small, well known) representative data sets. Analytical models (you may think of these as macro models) are at a stage of development that can be used, (if the assumptions and data sources are representative) to guide the modeler to likely conclusions, or results. On the other hand, if the data sets and assumptions fail to account for some forcings, or weights some forcings incorrectly, then the analytical model provides an incorrect result. If next week's forecast, based on the models is only right half of the time, it is also wrong half of the time. That is a well known example.

  2. It's all about understanding what the forcings are, how much each contributes, and accurately representing these in the models. How does one accurately represent the contribution or lack thereof of one known major forcing- deforestation and agricultural practices? Right now those forcings are assumptions at best.

  How many more years of research do you suppose needs to be done before the models are accurate to your liking? 30? 50?

  Who knows. Accurate to my liking isn't the issue. Accurate to something other than a vaguely held warm and fuzzy notion that we don't have to look at the man behind the curtain will do.

  And how are you so certain that the models are inaccurate?

  I've answered that above.

  BA- Not jumping to conclusions based on bad models.
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  DanTheMan

  Analytical models (you may think of these as macro models) are at a stage of development that can be used, (if the assumptions and data sources are representative) to guide the modeler to likely conclusions, or results. On the other hand, if the data sets and assumptions fail to account for some forcings, or weights some forcings incorrectly, then the analytical model provides an incorrect result. If next week's forecast, based on the models is only right half of the time, it is also wrong half of the time. That is a well known example.
  

  2. It's all about understanding what the forcings are, how much each contributes, and accurately representing these in the models. How does one accurately represent the contribution or lack thereof of one known major forcing- deforestation and agricultural practices? Right now those forcings are assumptions at best.

  I would concur without hesitation that today's models are better than yesterdays, and tomorrows models will be better than todays. Why does that mean that today's models are bad as you say? What makes you so sure?
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  dawg

  Who gives a rat's ass about global warming? pollution is a damn problem period, and as long a Bubba Joe in South Alabama continues to refuse wrapping his willy and keeps on having his trailer park kids by the damn thousands we will continue to have too many morons populating and polluting. So, if ther're wern't so many rednecks (and the like) making their mutant children we would'nt even be having this discussion-over population is the problem not global warming. Stick that in your crawls.