[Luis Dias]

What evidence would convince you of a human caused global climate change?

I said:

Plain data tells me that it is more likely than not that carbon dioxide does indeed play a big role in current global warming.

[Mars]

That is =/=

EDIT:

That just seems like a big about face for you, unless you're still saying that the impact will be minimal.

[Macfie]

Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.
Evan Esar (1899 - 1995)

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. (Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.)
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)

[redsniper]

Statistical analysis is also how science is done IRL, so...

[Luis Dias]

That is =/=

EDIT:

That just seems like a big about face for you, unless you're still saying that the impact will be minimal.

I was speaking of sea level rise.


I'm used to be painted as a completely ignorant asshole whenever I say something minimally off the official line, with the usual one-note-liner "so you don't believe in global warming huh", so I usually avoid these conversations.

[Mars]

Definitely my bad.

[General Battuta]

Statistics: The only science that enables different experts using the same figures to draw different conclusions.
Evan Esar (1899 - 1995)

Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please. (Facts are stubborn, but statistics are more pliable.)
Mark Twain (1835 - 1910)

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.
Benjamin Disraeli (1804 - 1881)

I can't figure out whether this post is meant at face value (in which case it's totally disingenuous) or whether it's poking fun at the fact that quotes can even more easily be made to serve any point you like.

[Al-Rik]

does this mean we can toss al gore in jail when the world isn't flooded out?

No, because he has invited the internet and gave us unlimited access to pr0n. That achievement is like a going out of jail card, or should we be ungrateful ?

Oh, and on the topic: global warming or not, the Dutch fight since 1000 years against the sea, the Egypt's fight since 4000 years against the dessert and most of the people who live in the mountains or at rivers have learned to live with floods and avalanches - and invited ways to counter such threads.
So the question is not the existence of global warming and who caused it, the question is the priority to fight it's causes or it's effects - and there is no alternative against fighting the effects:
Building dams against the see, create basins against floods,  planting forests in the mountains, make the deserts farmland...

Even without a thread of global warming the people living at the sea, at rivers, on mountains or in deserts will have a benefit from this measures.

[MP-Ryan]

I can't figure out whether this post is meant at face value (in which case it's totally disingenuous) or whether it's poking fun at the fact that quotes can even more easily be made to serve any point you like.

Not that disingenuous at face value:  http://www.amazon.ca/How-To-Lie-With-Statistics/dp/0393310728

You and I both know that statistics, while useful, can be used to show whatever you want with a little intellectual dishonesty in your methodology which can be very hard to detect after the fact.  Things like changing your statistical method halfway through an experiment to fit the results instead of selecting it in advance based on what your experiment is designed to measure, and then lying about it.  Not saying that's what's happening in climate science, but it does make one think its worth considering the statistician before accepting the statistics they produced.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, but that's...misusing statistics. The fact that you are looking at a statistic does not make it inherently trustworthy.

[MP-Ryan]

The fact that you are looking at a statistic does not make it inherently trustworthy.

Not sure if you forgot the "un" you meant to have in there, but I think you've just re-stated my point.

[General Battuta]

Yeah, I just forgot the 'un'.

[Klaustrophobia]

i'm slightly uncomfortable that i'm now the author of a "NO U" thread on global warming due to what was meant to be a joke supporting the original idea of the thread.  yeah, it was a bad idea, i know. but it's done now.  can't erase it.

[Luis Dias]

There's a lot to be said about statistics and a whole epistemic problem about bad science creeping in in science journals all over the place, something being accepted due to "statistically significant" finds with p values under 0.05.

This article is amazing and should be read by anyone minimally interested in science:

http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2010/11/lies-damned-lies-and-medical-science/308269/

That question has been central to Ioannidis’s career. He’s what’s known as a meta-researcher, and he’s become one of the world’s foremost experts on the credibility of medical research. He and his team have shown, again and again, and in many different ways, that much of what biomedical researchers conclude in published studies—conclusions that doctors keep in mind when they prescribe antibiotics or blood-pressure medication, or when they advise us to consume more fiber or less meat, or when they recommend surgery for heart disease or back pain—is misleading, exaggerated, and often flat-out wrong. He charges that as much as 90 percent of the published medical information that doctors rely on is flawed. His work has been widely accepted by the medical community; it has been published in the field’s top journals, where it is heavily cited; and he is a big draw at conferences. Given this exposure, and the fact that his work broadly targets everyone else’s work in medicine, as well as everything that physicians do and all the health advice we get, Ioannidis may be one of the most influential scientists alive. Yet for all his influence, he worries that the field of medical research is so pervasively flawed, and so riddled with conflicts of interest, that it might be chronically resistant to change—or even to publicly admitting that there’s a problem.

[karajorma]

Your every post drips with examples where you, someone who isn't a climate scientist, claims that people who are climate scientists are wrong based on your limited understanding of climate science.

How is this different from the judge in the Italian case ignoring all the seismologists who said you can't predict an earthquake and instead acting based on his limited understanding of seismology?

I did not say that "climate scientists are wrong". Will you stop putting words into my mouth please? I'm merely expressing my unimpressed stance on their sea level rise alarmism. Which is, if you check the actual data rather than witch hunt me, rather calm and unalarming (thank goodness).

So you're saying they're wrong about the rate. Something you keep saying despite watisname repeatedly pointing out why you are wrong. So yeah, you're saying the climate scientists are wrong.

The difference, even if I were saying nonsense, is that I'm doing so in a public forum where there is no practical consequence at all but a trivial informal conversation. I am not, due to my alledged ignorance, not putting someone to jail. If I were to do so, believe me I would read (at least skim!) every ****ing piece of scientific literature regarding the matter. To do otherwise would be utterly inhuman and barbaric.

You do of course realise that you're making a false distinction. You're basically saying that "It's okay for me to air my completely uninformed views in public because it's not important"

But when everyone does that, your uninformed ignorance becomes the uninformed ignorance of the general public which judges are affected by when they make rulings.

Or are you going to tell me that the earthquake case in Italy happened completely out of the blue with no public support for it?

Plain data tells me that it is more likely than not that carbon dioxide does indeed play a big role in current global warming.

Plain warnings of whether or not there will be an earthquake next week.

See? You're asking for a scientific impossibility and then refusing to believe anyone who won't give you that. You're doing the same thing the Italian judge you initially complained about did.

[watsisname]

Those silly "reports" make the stupid assumption that our lives depend too much from the natural world we inhabit. But this is not true, and definitely should not be true in the future.

Good ****ing grief, I'm just not going to bother.

[Luis Dias]

So you're saying they're wrong about the rate. Something you keep saying despite watisname repeatedly pointing out why you are wrong. So yeah, you're saying the climate scientists are wrong.

Nonsensical bull****. Please pay more attention to the literature. There's a whole wide range of views on sea level rise, and even the IPCC states that the sea level rise will be between 35cm and 60cm in a hundred years, with a lot of unknowns there discussed:

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch10s10-6-5.html

If some random scientist comes to the newspapers and says that he has made a model which states there will be a rise of 3 meters (or something), he is as much as an outlier as anyone who dismisses sea level rise altogether.

And then, some random folk comes in at the middle of the conversation and says "What, do ya doubt the alarm, you're such a stoopid deniar". Facepalm.

You do of course realise that you're making a false distinction. You're basically saying that "It's okay for me to air my completely uninformed views in public because it's not important"

Not because "it's not important", but because I am not important, and conversations are something that is good, not bad.

But when everyone does that, your uninformed ignorance becomes the uninformed ignorance of the general public which judges are affected by when they make rulings.

Everyone already does it. It's called talking. Something humans constantly do. Welcome to planet Earth.

Or are you going to tell me that the earthquake case in Italy happened completely out of the blue with no public support for it?

And since when should justice be polled? What you are saying basically sums up as: we should never discuss anything because somewhere anytime will do something really stupid based on our conversations and then it's all our fault. What nonsense, Karajorma. The judge should have known better. He is a judge, not a random person on the street. He is going to destroy people's lives, not talk about stuff he believes in a party. If you aren't able to see that obvious amazingly large distinction, well then I have nothing more to say.

Plain data tells me that it is more likely than not that carbon dioxide does indeed play a big role in current global warming.

Plain warnings of whether or not there will be an earthquake next week.

See? You're asking for a scientific impossibility and then refusing to believe anyone who won't give you that. You're doing the same thing the Italian judge you initially complained about did.

I only see some really bad equivocation going around, and I'm being generous here. I was referring to going back to empirical data and calmly check it without all the emotional despair that usually comes with the alarmism. And once you do that, you see a lot of things that do not subscribe to neither the alarmist narrative nor the "denier" narrative. The truth is, as it usually has been with all the controversial topics throughout history, somewhere in the middle.

Now, I really fail to see how looking at the data and calmly and rationally assessing it equals to demand the impossible from some random scientist. It's like a complete gap in the english there that I simply am unable to parse out. I may be wrong here, so help me out, since you stated something that I read as "A therefore Z". Where's B,C,D, etc.

[karajorma]

To be honest, I'm out for much the same reason watisname gave up.

[Luis Dias]

Your call pilot.