So what’s your point? Are you merely pointing out that sometimes lightning bolts of inspiration strike a genius that at first bewilders the scientific community, and they might have trouble catching up? My impression is that these bold new paradigm shifts are received with differing reactions, not universal rejection. Sometimes they appear to sweep in because they make much better sense of the data and the theory just ‘fits’ more accurately. Sometimes they accompany increased debate in the scientific community at the time: what we called a ‘divided scientific opinion’… and further testing either verifies the findings, rejects them, or remains inconclusive, like String Theory. And other times they are just outright rejected by the ‘peer review process’ as flat out wrong. If I argue that the moon is made of cheese, sulking that “Science is not a democracy” or “I’m really an Einstein” is not going to help.
Your Einstein analogy analogy breaks down for a few reasons.
Firstly, there was only a handful of people in the world at his level of expertise in such a specific field, whereas climate science not only has hundreds of climatologists trained to a high level of expertise in scientific skepticism, climate history, and those pesky Spetrometers and Radiative Forcing Equations, but there are also literally dozens of independent institutes packed to the rafters with real climatologists (not IT wannabes).
Secondly, I’m not aware that Einstein was rejected by the majority of scientists world-wide. It was simply fairly new stuff that they still needed to test and evaluate. I’m not aware of much controversy… the world seemed to greet his pronouncements as gospel as his reputation grew. (Until he had trouble accepting chaos theory later in life, but that’s another story). If there was an area of great initial debate, please link to it and I’ll retract this.
Thirdly, even Einstein, in his unique position in scientific history, actually WAS subjected to peer review – of a sort. The best recognition Einstein received was the Nobel Prize, but he did not receive that for special relativity immediately. Note the reason for the delay! From the wiki:
Despite the greater fame achieved by his other works, such as that on special relativity, it was his work on the photoelectric effect which won him his Nobel Prize in 1921: “For services to theoretical physics and especially for the discovery of the law of the photoelectric effect.” The Nobel committee had waited patiently for experimental confirmation of special relativity; however none was forthcoming until the time dilation experiments of Ives and Stilwell (1938)[6], (1941)[7] and Rossi and Hall (1941).[8]
So I wouldn’t rush in to defending a sceptic with the “Einstein clause” too quickly if I were you. As I said before:
What’s my job as a Christian lay person approaching all this? To know — without any warning or prior indication — where scientific consensus could possibly head in distant future years, or to develop a Christian approach to what 99% of the professional climate scientists and 100% of the legitimate climate organisations are saying right now? (That’s the independent ones not funded by Exxon millions).
Hey Dave P — I just realised you got me to chase another ball! Where’s my “Good boy, goooooood boy,” and behind-the-ear scratch? ;-)
Look, if you don’t want to deal with spectrometers or the RFE (Radiative Forcing Equation) then what about sitting this short 15 question test to see how high up you are on the “Conspiracy Personality” score? It’s just a bit of fun, but as you seem to think Global Warming is one of the greatest frauds perpetrated on modern civilisation, you might do well! ;-)
I have to do one of my disappearing acts. However your answer on Einstein wasn’t too bad - I’d grade it a pass. The week is given over to the abortion issue in the Victorian Parliament plus a few other pressing concerns.
Besides it was you who sucked me in again you old indefatigible (but cuddly I’m told) scaremongerer.
Cool — and Godspeed on the parliament thing! When you’re ready for the next bout then…
PS: I am cuddly...even to a 9 year old boy. My son recently said, “Dad, you’re not like one of those action-hero dads, but at least you’re cuddly”. I wanted to know why I wasn’t considered both, but then saw my reflection in the mirror and remembered I am not now as I once was. (See my blogger profile shot!)
Sorry for double posting, but something else that came to light. While sceptics are busy congratulating themselves on their perceptions of ‘fraud’ in the climate community, one particular MOAB (Mother of All Bombs) started ‘ticking’ even louder.
The average daily ice loss rate for August 2008 was 78,000 square kilometers per day (30,000 square miles per day). This is the fastest rate of daily ice loss that scientists have ever observed during a single August.
This August’s rapid ice loss reflects a thin sea ice cover that needed very little additional energy to melt out.
I know you are a great one for Artic melting, BUT you’ve been holding out on us - the Antartic has been adding ice, if I’m reading this site correctly....
Phillip Stott, a truly loathsome, cringesome CO2 human induced climate change sceptic drew my attention to this site.
As he points out, while indeed the Northern Hemisphere sea ice is declining (your point), the Southern Hemisphere sea ice is clearly expanding.
He goes on to comment,
In the media, we hear a great deal about ‘global warming’, melting ice, and bereft polar bears and penguins. But, as you can guess, things are not quite so straightforward. Indeed, some scientists believe that the decline in the Arctic ice must be put down to regional and local events, and not to world average changes. Possible factors include warm water intrusions from the Pacific Ocean, and more recently from the Atlantic Ocean; undersea volcanic activity, particularly on the Gakkel Ridge, where a major eruption took place in 1999; and, albedo alterations brought about by soot pollution and the spread of tundra shrubs. Interestingly, similar Arctic ‘warmings’ have taken place before, and are recorded for the 1800s, for the 1930s, and for the 1950s. Current warming in Greenland does not appear to have reached the levels of these earlier events. Moreover, recent work has shown that particulate pollution from mid-latitudes can aggravate warming in the Arctic. This may have had a role to play in the 1800s because, during the so-called Industrial Revolution, technologies were dirtier than they are now.
I’m only raising this to say hello and keep you on your toes, if only because I was hearing a lot from you about loss of Artic sea ice.
I appreciate that you are obsessed with abortion (What is it about ‘Daves’ and obsessions?!*?!), a characteristic which many here commend, but could you please restrict your comments to the appropriate thread/s - or start a new one.
The derailing of the ‘USA Presidential Election’ thread, into this topic, effectively killed it.
I think many here would not like this to become common-place.
David: Please understand that I respect and admire your commitment, your intellect - and your passion.
But there is a time and place for everything.
I apologise to the moderators for speaking out of turn - but David is not the only one here who is passionate.
Personally, I greatly value the opportunity provided by the Sydney Anglican’s Forums to discuss a variety of topics with many wonderful people - But when I click on a topic dealing with climate change I dont expect…
Some Christian boards consider it necessary to nominate the topic of abortion a ‘dead horse’ - I sincerely hope that will not become the case here; but it is dependent upon the good will and co-operation of all members
Rob’s rebuke accepted - I was being lazy. Section on euthanasia and abortion shifted to pro life thread sparing Rob’s sensibilities.
And yes the doggies ceratainly had a good win over the Swans, go doggies go, clean up those pussy cats next Friday night else I cry.
And as for you Dave L, you can get back to the business and chase my latest ball because your reputation as CO2 human induced climate change buff is under threat!
To unpack the links above I’ve quoted from an online mate who has studied spectroscopy.
The whole ‘woof woof’ routine is of course my reminder that I’ve fetched enough sticks for now. You have repeatedly failed to deal with the fundamental basis of the climate discipline that you keep throwing red-herrings at. It’s simply your turn.
So this is the radiative forcing unpacked a little in English, not symbols as is the original equation...
If you understand that Temperature is some measure of the “collisions” of gas molecules in a system, then it should be easy.
Starting from the right, as mentioned above, C/Co is just a measure of the change in concentration of the gas being measured. ....As for example, 500ppm/250ppm would be 2.0, a doubling; with “C” being the current concentration, and “Co” was the original concentration.
Moving left....
Taking the natural logarithm of that ratio basically converts the scale used to measure concentration (which greatly influences collisions of the gas particles) ...converts the scale… over to the scale that measures temperature (also a function of the collisions of gas particles).
The constant, 5.35, indicates the strength of the effect that changing concentration has on the temperature. It takes into account some intrinsic characteristics of the particular gas molecule in question, as well as other extrinsic factors (positive and negative feedbacks in the environment).
So (again reading right to left) the change in concentration, converted to a temperature scale by using the log scale, and then multiplied by a fudge factor, equals the change in temperature.
This is probably oversimplified (to the point of being wrong) as really we’re talking about total energy (and not just collisions), but I think you’ll get the idea of how concentration relates to temperature (one side of the equation relates to the other).
The devil is in the details of those “intrinsic factors,” different for each gas; such as how easily a particle absorbs energy, and how it then responds, in both space and time.
Records of Arctic Sea ice from the United Kingdom’s Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research go back to the turn of the 20th century, although the quality of the data before 1950 is debatable. Still, these records show a persistent decline in Arctic Sea ice over the last 50 years.[2].....
2008 ice regrowth? 2 words help… La Nina. (I’m sure I’ve explained that El Nino pushed the temps UP in 1998, and La Nina pulled them down a little over 2008, and I’m sure I’ve said this repeatedly.)
But it’s all coming out in the wash anyway…
Summer 2008 Arctic ice shrinking
In the summer of 2008, Arctic sea ice shrank again to near-record-breaking lows. By August 26, the sea ice extent fell to 5.26 million square kilometers (2.03 million square miles), making 2008 the second ice-freeest year ever, after 2007.[21] On August 27, both the Northwest Passage and the Northeast Passage were ice-free. According to US scientist Mark Serreze, this was the first time in history that both passages have been open at the same time.[22] The North Pole can now be circumnavigated.[23] The Beluga group of Bremen, Germany, announced plans to send the first ship through the Northern Sea Route in 2009, thereby cutting 4,000 nautical miles off the voyage from Germany to Japan.[24]
Dave P, I expect the summer ice melts to increase in severity some more over the next 4 or 5 years, then regrow a bit in the next La Nina, then maybe melt even further for 3 or 4 years in a row, then regrow… but it’s about the long term trends.
The North Pole ice melt and regrowth issues could be seen as another “Exact Correlation Strawman”.
No climatologist says temperatures will rise in perfect correlation with Co2. Sceptics have got to stop cherry-picking the data and start to engage with a real dialogue with the real experts.
Anyway, while I hold global warming to be a real clear and present danger, I think we’ll get through it. The word on the street about Biochar is finally breaking. I’ve been banging on about it for 4 years now, but finally James Hansen, Tim Flannery, Time magazine and our own Federal government are all starting to acknowledge that Biochar could be HUGE… a complete revolution in agriculture and carbon sequestration. This is big.
On dead horsing this thread – I’m just wondering if SA really wants to set up a ‘censorship’ policy on an issue that many, many Christians want to discuss? The forum is constantly gaining new members, so it will keep coming up. It’s a democracy. If you don’t like the thread, just don’t watch it. :-)
“The 0.5-per-cent-of-GDP expense will reduce emissions ever so slightly (if everyone in the EU actually fulfills their requirements for the rest of the century, global emissions will fall by about 4 per cent). This would reduce the temperature increase expected by the end of the century by just 0.05C. Thus, the EU’s immensely ambitious program will not stop or even have a significant impact on global warming. ”
Bjorn’s whole argument rests on the ridiculous assumption in the paragraph above. The EU is aiming to hit 20% by 2020, and is a world leader on this issue. They are setting the example. Bjorn even admits that ‘spend now to save later’ is becoming a bit of a global mantra — yet his entire argument rests on the assumption that ONLY the EU will take action on climate change?
Where’s the logic in that? The momentum on climate change is only growing, despite this year’s La Nina cooling. People are ‘getting’ the science. Silly throwaway cliche’s about ice ages and the MWP are just not cutting it any more.
So Bjorn trots out his “4% by the end of the century” tripe as if the rest of the world are just going to stand by and do nothing. We are to just assume that Bjorn has some prescience that grants him this special knowledge of world inaction on climate change? He ‘just knows’ that he and his sceptic mates win out in the end, and the globe does nothing? Not just a tad arrogant? In a nutshell, his argument seems to be “nobody is going to do anything, therefore we shouldn’t either.” Talk about using your your presuppositions to confirm your conclusions!
Anyway, I thought Gordon was against claiming to know the future, yet now his scepticism seems to rely on it?
Bjorn Lomberg is an attention seeking “troll” only out to promote his own books. One quotes him at grave risk to one’s own credibility. Even Bjorn has come around to accepting that climate change is real now that the myths he used to push have been so thoroughly debunked. He’s one sad leader of an increasingly irrelevant and laughable lot.
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