I thought one of the fundamental aspects of modern empirical science is that, unlike a religion, it is ALWAYS open to revision and dispute. That's the whole point of the scientific method. Whether there is a significant modern consensus or not, I think it goes against the core spirit of scientific inquiry to EVER say "This matter is settled and no future scientist may ever question it." That's the very kind of anti-empirical position the Creationists themselves take in presenting their religious take on science.

And I'm certainly glad for Einstein's sake that no one ever thought this way about Newtonian physics. "Sorry little German, the matter is settled. Stop being a Newton denier."

Humanity is not going to give up modern convenience for something that will effect future generations.

Precisely! That is the problem. This particular science is being elevated to religious status by a chorus of 'true believers' and anybody who questions it is deemed a heretic.

Well it's a little bit of both actually. Personally speaking I don't believe that climate change deniers are doing so from a science standpoint but rather from an ideological standpoint. You have a vast majority of scientists providing data about climate change and some very vocal naysayers trying to disprove not the findings themselves but the methods by which the results are achieved or the time frame in which the results occurred. In other words climate deniers aren't challenging the data, they're challenging the data collection. Which seems a very left handed way to try and disprove something using a scientific method.

I'm all for gathering as much data as possible because it can only lead to more accurate models, but it seems that climate deniers are putting the cart before the horse.

Or even as well established as meteorology.

So - you do understand what a theory is, right?

And if they're teaching it right, then they're also teaching that if verifiable evidence arises that contradicts it, that the theory is modified or thrown away.

Let's keep in mind that the deniers don't even want mention of the possibility that we humans just might be making a real mess of the eco system that we rely upon to exist. That might cut into profits.

PS: No, not everyone agreed with Einstein all [datasync.com] the [wikipedia.org] time [kerryr.net].

Stop talking about issues as black and white and start talking about science.

Except that this isn't really about science. Much like the creationism debate, it's about people who are members of a crazed abrahamic cult that believe they have "dominion" over the earth, don't understand that the original wording was "stewardship" and that they're NOT supposed to fucking wreck the planet, and who refuse to acknowledge when a firm scientific consensus has been achieved because the recommendation of the consensus means they might have to change their lifestyles a bit.

So, 97% [cnn.com] of the world's scientists are religious zealots?

A massive MAJORITY of world governments, corporations, scientists, leaders, and intellectuals in the world recognize that man made climate change is the number one challenge the human species faces this century. Climate change affects TWO of the top Human requirements on this Earth, Food production, and access to drinking water. Without a constant supply of either of these, misery will prevail.

You may continue to call yourself a 'moderate skeptic', but don't fool your self into thinking it is by any measure an intelligent choice.

How about because your per capita CO2 emissions are at 19.18 tons, while China's are at 4.91, and India's are at 1.31.

In other words... you're the bigger problem, not them.

The climate science debate has two important components to it. This issue focuses on one component, and that is the anti-science attack on climate science. This has the same source of ignorance and zealotry that has challenged teaching evolution in the classroom. This is a stand of religious based ignorance against science. I have not met anyone who understands the scientific process who challenges the theory of evolution. I am using the scientific definition of theory, which is an operating model, and not the "theory is not a fact" arguement that my religious friends pick up.

The second component to climate science is that there are some great issues of modern science and society that can be taught here. To not teach this in the classroom is missing out on a real opportunity to teach critical thinking that children can get passionate about.

You can teach about data collection, and how this can be a source for controversy.
You can teach about computer modeling and statistical analysis. What these tools are great for, and where they fall short.
Plenty to teach about weather vs. climate, and what the climate means for other systems on the planet.
Lab experiements on basic components of the atmosphere, and why they don't always translate to the actual model of the world.
You can teach the ethics of how to prioritze science against society and economic concerns.

Lots more stuff that I am not getting in to.

My point being, this is another area where zealotry is screwing up a great opportunity to train the next generation of scientists.

Creationist beliefs are not scientific. They are religious. It's fine to put them in a history class or a religion class, but they don't belong in a science class.

The problem is that people seem to conflate the science, facts, and the politics of climate change. They think if you disagree with any part, you are a "denialist". So what do I mean?

Well first take the fact of climate change: That the average global temperature is changing outside of known cycles. Provided the data on which this is being based, this is true. It is a fact, a simple observation about the world.

Then there's the theory of climate change: That this change is being cause either primarily or exclusively by carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, as a result of human emissions. This is a theory, it provides a logical proposal to explain the facts. Like any theory it could be subject to revision or dismissal later should more information come to light. Doesn't mean it will be, but it can (if it isn't falsifiable, it isn't a scientific theory).

Now after that you get some additional theories like the theory that this will be a net bad thing for humanity. Remember that this is not a fact, it is a theory, and that the overall theory of CO2 causing climate change could be right, and this could be wrong. As such one could reasonably examine the evidence and accept the first theory and reject the second.

Then you get in to politics or policies: That the only thing to do about it is to massively reduce CO2 output, institute carbon taxes, etc, etc. That isn't a scientific theory there, it is politics. There are other solutions that would work. One example would simply be to prepare for the chance and deal with it. You could argue that even if this particular change is human caused, in the future a change will happen that isn't, so better to spend resources on becoming resilient to change than trying to avoid this one. Geoengineering would be another approach to dealing with it. Different policies can be debated, the costs, the benefits, and so on, there is no one right answer here, there are options.

However if you disagree with any part, you get labeled a denalist. So you can say "I think the Earth is getting warmer, and I think manmade CO2 is the cause. However my examination of the evidence leads me to believe it is not a bad thing, in fact it'll be just fine so we shouldn't do anything," and you get shouted down as "denying climate change." Or you can say "I think it is happening, manmade, and a bad thing. However I think reducing CO2 production is the wrong approach. I think we should do geoengineering because it is cheaper/more effective/etc," and you get shouted down as a "denialist."

That's my real problem, is people confuse the levels of it. There are facts (all scientific theories have to start with facts, observations), theories, and then policy suggestions as a result. Calling it all bullshit can be accurately called denying it. However being skeptical or disagreeing with parts cannot.

Also there's way too much stock put in computer models. Not that they are used, but that people think they "prove" something. No, a computer model proves nothing, it is a model. It makes predictions. If the predictions are repeatedly accurate, it is probably a good model of reality and can be counted on to produce accurate predictions in the future. If they are inaccurate, it needs to be revised. However it doesn't "prove" shit. It models.

So while models should (and must) be used in climate research, people need to stop saying things like "This model proves that X will happen in Y years!" No, it predicts it. Well and good, that's very different from proving it.

Oh, we're doing an experiment, all right. Unfortunately, if it pans out the way the vast majority of the scientific community [usatoday.com], the military [guardian.co.uk], the disease control folks [cdc.gov] and the insurance industry [marketwatch.com] thinks it will, we're all pretty much screwed.

In other words, all the folks whose job it is to make predictions about what could go wrong and prepare for those things think that we're running such an experiment, and that it won't end well.

are you just trying really hard to be illogical and stone headed, or what?

who cares what the rest of the world is doing? who cares what anyone else in our part of the world is doing either, for that matter. the basis of consideration for ecological impact should always start with yourself, not your neighbor, china, elephants, or whatever. how is what anyone else is doing even relevant? once you understand that basis - ie, your own net impact on the world, measured however - you can begin worrying about other people. and by other people I mean the communities you live in, and directly impact.

if the net ecological and economic impact of you and your communities is unsustainable, it's time to make adjustments - regardless of what is happening in new york or china or wherever. being like 'well new york isn't taking a look at its net ecological impact on the world' isn't a free ticket to be a dickhead and stick your face in the sand despite being aware of the unsustainability of your own existence.

That's not really the problem. The problem is that one side is claiming there's no data or no agreement, when the objective fact is that there is TONS of data and TONS of agreement.

The side that is on the side of science is tired of having last decades debates over and over and over again because the side against the side of science is just pushing an agenda (protecting the status quo).

Legitimate: Questioning and verifying the science, making sure results are duplicated, etc.

Legitimate: Questinging what policies or procedures should result from the scientific finding (aka "what do do about it" if anything)

Illegitimate: Smearing valid scientific results through ignorant half-understanding or misperceptions, simply because you're a paid lacky of an organization that feels "threatened" by the findings and is scared of what possible formt he solutions might take.

Recently one of the biggest climate-change skeptics, backed with massive funding from climate change denialsts with a huge investment in the status quo and a huge political agenda to push (aka The Koch Brothers) went over all the existing data, brought in new data, and put the entire thing through the scientific wringer (everything from the hockeystick graph, to "heat-island" theories, to solar influence, etc)... and this Climate Change Skeptic came out of it a convert, admitting that Climate Change is REAL.

We need to move beyond constantly questioning whether it's real or not, and get to the "okay, given the scientific findings in this area, what if anything should we do about it, and what are the consequences, pros-and-cons, of any given course of action, including complete inaction?"

There is a legitimate debate to be had there.

But to continue to question whether climate change is "real" is like those continuing to question whether "evolution" is real. Sure, some details almost certainly have yet to be discovered. But you know what? That's science.

Newtonion physics wasn't WRONG. Ensteinian/Relativistic theory just expands what was there and fleshes it out. It didn't throw it in the garbage. For many real-world approximations, Newtonian physics works just fine. For others, Relativity must be taken into account.

Similarly, I'm sure we'll continue to discover more and more about evolution and about climate change and humanity's influence on it. But it's not, at this point, going to completely invalidate all that has come before.

Would you agree or disagree that "there is no climate change" is a valid talking point? To "go after" people who say "there is no climate change" is valid because these people are morons. The geological record shows that climate changes constantly and to deny it without scientific reasoning is unscientific and backwards and should be assailed. Furthermore, to refute that humankind can cause climate change with an empty and baseless statement of religious conviction is not science, it's idiocy.

Long live the debate as to whether humans can cause climate change! Bring the facts! Leave the religious voodoo mumbo jumbo in church/synagogue/mosque/temple/whatever.

I thought one of the fundamental aspects of modern empirical science is that, unlike a religion, it is ALWAYS open to revision and dispute.

It is open to revision in response to, and dispute in the form of, results that contradict the existing explanations and more parsimonious explanations for the results which have been produced.

Defending against pressure to teach, as science, "controversy" which does not actually exist within the scope of the scientific work in a field is not anti-science.

Whether there is a significant modern consensus or not, I think it goes against the core spirit of scientific inquiry to EVER say "This matter is settled and no future scientist may ever question it."

Yes, it would be, but that's not what the National Center for Science Education is saying, so that's what's known as a strawman.

That's the very kind of anti-empirical position the Creationists themselves take in presenting their religious take on science.

And its the anti-empirical ideological-based approach, and the pressure to present the results of that approach as science, that the NCSE is opposing in the two areas in which it is taking stands.

And I'm certainly glad for Einstein's sake that no one ever thought this way about Newtonian physics. "Sorry little German, the matter is settled. Stop being a Newton denier."

Unlike the non-scientific work at issue, Einstein's work was scientific, and there wasn't an enormous amount of pressure to teach "the controversy" between Einstein's models and Newtonian physics in primary and secondary education when no such controversy actually existed in the scientific community, so the issue is in no way parallel.

You are wrong. Culpability for the problem of climate change admits of degrees. Outright denial of the problem without any proof or reason except some unsupportable personal conviction is particularly vile and selfish.

Of course they did that out of the limelight and glare of the media.

NOW that they - that is 98% of them- have checked, double checked, reaffirmed and reaffirmed their reaffirmation that the theory that carbon emitted by human activity is causing the temperature to rise faster and will reach a point where civilization cannot be sustained, NOW they are sounding the alarm.

What else did you want them to do?

And here comes FoxNews and the Koch brothers and the oil and coal industry and the whole gullible denier dittoheads , showing up to the party and saying "say... we need to prove these here theories!.. say I have an idea!!!"

You know what this boils down to? You chose the wrong career path to influence this discussion buddy. If you want to be an expert in something, then you have to pay the dues real scientists pay.

care about this topic? climate change denial is brought to your courtesy of the exact same people and PR firms and think tanks who brought you the smoking is not related to cancer meme 40-50 years ago.

And it's taken up by the same demographic who deny evolution, so yes, it is the present day evolution debate in another form.

The only difference between those earlier debates is not accepting Darwinism, while it's a scientific tragedy for anyone who takes it seriously is not going to destroy the habitability of earth.

And smoking kills you and maybe your family, but not everyone on earth.

But this time it's different. the propagation of Climate Change Denial is a Crime Against Humanity pure and simple.

The Nazis objected to their prosecution also. They said it was ex post facto lawmaking to try them for killing the Jews and homosexuals and Gypsies. They argued that they really believed their philosophical load of crap, and they were entitled to make their nation's laws.

And you know what? There was some truth to that argument. Until we decided there wasn't that is and went ahead and charged them for things which had not been crimes before- Crimes Against Humanity- which was just a free floating idea and no law anywhere , until we used it in Nuremberg.

The prosecutor there pointed out that probably the first person to be charged with murder had the same argument- you can't charge me because the law doesn't exist.

Some sociopath somewhere always thinks he's going to use the law to evade the law. I have a right to say whatever I believe!

Here's the bottom line. Criminals decide what laws there will be. If your "free speech and freedom of opinion" results in horrific death and disruption on a scale never imagined before then your "free speech and freedom of opinion" will be curtailed for the good of humanity and in fact its exercise under certain circumstances will be deemed criminal and it will be deemed criminal ex post facto and you won't like that any more than the Nazis liked it and you'll make the same arguments they made and you'll end up just like they ended up. Because criminals determine through their behavior what acts are criminal and society always acts to circumscribe that behavior, no matter what.

It's not that hard to put together a case right now. Essentially they're shouting "no fire" in a crowded theater on that is on fire. That's manslaughter already. And no,. no one cares if you *really* believe it because *you're not qualified to perform surgery and you're not qualified to adjudicate this scientific matter and you know it in both cases.*

No one cares if you think you are and in the future, when the ravages of climate change are actually playing out and the people who are young today are looking to assign culpability they're REALLY not going to give a shit what you *really believed*.

We're not all at fault. It isn't a s

Those are good things. However the action proposed by politicians hanging onto the coattails of science (not the actions proposed by scientists themselves) is to continue shifting wealth. And when government shifts wealth large chunks of that wealth tend to end up in the pockets of the politically connected.

So when you say "the same actions" are you referring to the fossil fuel usage reduction action or kneejerk political action?

It's not really "Is the climate changing." The climate changes all the time, from short to long term.
The question is - are WE causing the climate change?

Actually, I saw a debate between Dawkins and a Creationist once, where the Creationist brought up a very valid point that I had to agree with, and stated that evolution "will not work" because of this problem. Then Dawkins said, "Well, let's see if we can solve that problem, because look over here at this completely different thing that doesn't solve the problem at all, but seems tangentially related to the plebes, so it'll seem good enough to them."

It was nothing more than a Chewbacca defence, and he never did come up with anything to counter the issue raised by the Creationist. The problem with Dawkins et al, is that evolution, to them, has been raised in their mind to near iconic religious status, and nobody is allowed to question it. I've seen Dawkins get furious and start hurling insults when somebody raised a point he couldn't counter, too.

He claims to be open and unbiased, but he's most certainly not.

Oh, this is rich irony.

The deniers call those who accept the scientific consensus a chorus "true believers". I respond with multiple sources reporting on a poll of the scientific community - and it gets down-modded as flame bait.

Who, exactly, is the fanatic here who isn't operating in a reality based world?

It wasn't a settled matter. In fact, James Clerk Maxwell's equations from 1879 were already pointing towards a constant speed of light, and the Michelson-Morley-experiment in 1881 already questioned the ether theory, so Hendrik Antoon Lorentz with the help of Henri Poincaré had some equations ready which postulated a morphed timespace in 1892.

Albert Einstein's Special Relativity from 1905 thus wasn't so much about "shaking up the dogma of Newtonian physics" as more about "lets finally tackle those strange contradictions we get if we want to describe electromagnetism and astrophysics in the same physical environment".

If anyone has actual data to refute global warming, they are welcome to present it. If they have an alternative way to interpret other people's data, they are welcome to argue for it.

Demanding that schools not teach students about it is not an acceptable form of revision or dispute and never has been.

Your point 1 is denial.
Point 2 is blindingly obvious.
Your point 3 is a classic line from the Creationists, who with confronted with science, attempt to denigrate it by lowering it to their level.
Your point 4 is almost sociopathic in its selfishness.
Your point 5 is just moronic, as George Carlin can't even be considered an informed layman.

At the same time, even the majority of researchers in any given field say "x is true", just rejecting it because you don't like what you're hearing seems a tad premature. And yes, it is pertinent to say that the number of modern biologists who reject evolution can be counted on two hands, because it drives home the point that virtually no one, with only the most insignificant number of exceptions, who has any expertise on a field related to evolution rejects it.

And that's the real irony. Skeptics, whether evolution deniers or AGW deniers, will go to almost insane levels of skepticism about the theories they reject, and yet will show almost stunning gullibility when it comes to sources they agree with. In my years frequenting evolution debate forums, it was amazing to watch guys saying things in one breath about how we don't have video tape evidence of evolution of humans happening and then with the next breath proclaiming that Noah's Ark and Paluxy footprints were real.

It would be helpful when reporting a pertinent anecdote that you actually provide the problem. What problem is that that you heard that was so destructive to evolutionary theory?

It's school science education. Not university level study.

You teach the current ideas of science - you even teach the old stuff that we know is wrong but still works for the domains you are interested in.

For example, I was taught that F=ma in my high school science class, even though we've known for 90 years that that's simply not true.

High school science is not about doing cutting edge research, it's about learning the basics of science. Hence you teach what the scientific community as a whole currently accepts.

You teach that the sun is powered by fusion that occurs due gravity, you don't teach that the sun is an iron ball supernova remnant even though some people argue it is ( http://www.ballofiron.com/ [ballofiron.com] ), you don't teach that the sun is an externally powered anode in a galactic circuit even though some people argue it is ( http://www.electric-cosmos.org/sun.htm [electric-cosmos.org] ). You don't "teach the controversy" and leave it up to the students to decide which theory they like the best. Sure the widely accepted understanding could be wrong, but the place for arguing that is not the high school science class taught by a teacher almost certainly not specialized in that particular field.

Einstein didn't try to have his theory taught in high school science classes as a short cut instead of convincing other actual scientists to accept it.

I take it you didn't catch the episode of Penn & Teller's "Bulshit"...

Penn & Teller's "Bullshit" is an example of the emptiness of pop skepticism. It's not really skepticism at all. In fact, it's every bit as dogmatic as religious fanaticism.

Pop skeptics are only skeptical about the ideas that scare them. You won't hear them be skeptical about the idea that laissez-faire creates a better society, or about their own notions of "freedom". You won't hear them express skepticism about their own dogmatically held beliefs. And that makes them even more dangerous than the religious fanatic: that they will never examine their own prejudices with the same logical tools that they use to approach the low-hanging fruit that they go after. As the great Robert Anton Wilson said about pop skeptics, "They are dogmatically committed to what they were taught in college".

They never examine the border they have created between the things they will apply their "scientific" approach to and things they won't. Their personal agenda makes them very unreliable.

When shit goes sideways, we turn to the reality-based community. And like it or not, the reality-based community is increasingly convinced that certain human activities are having a disruptive effect on climate. It's not one guy who's saying this, it's a bunch of people, thousands of people, with PhDs in sciences actually related to climate all of whom would love to be able to blow holes in the other peoples' theory because that's one way you make a name in science. Not stage magicians. Not politicians or AM radio talk show hosts or TV weathermen with axes to grind, but people who've actually done enough in fields related to climate that their peers have recognized them.

You always have to keep questioning, but when the boat starts to fill with water, you might not want to spend too much time examining the possibility that you will grow gills. At some point, and hopefully before water is over the level of your eyebrows, you'll accept the advice of people who probably know better than you.

Wow. You must really be surrounded by a cluster fuck of people who think any conservative label (like "libertarian") automatically dismisses trumps every argument. The method that you accuse Penn and Teller of using would amount to slander. And they would have been sued for it numerous times (since they have deep pockets). This kind of method can only be used in a fiction setting (like "Borat") or in a setting where you don't intend to mock the person. But it can't be used in an interview setting. Once you start publicly mocking people for what they say, you better not slander, or you are might as well be writing them a check.

Oh, and comparing skepticism of highly-dubious, highly-politicized research to creationism may seem like you are attacking the same targets, but you are not. Libertarianism is neutral on the god debate. There is a cross-section between libertarians and creationists, but that cross-section is as large as the number of pro-choice libertarians. So it's a useless data point.

they are not 'arguing' that there are holes in the theory at all - first, they told it cannot exist. then, they blamed it on the sun. 4-5 years ago internet was flooded with articles from think thanks paid to spread that propaganda. then, when it came out that sun was in its most silent period since a decade, they resorted to 'these are climate cycles - they happen' without any evidence.

You can only get public funding if you presume the conculsion that humans cause climate change in your grant proposal. You can only get private funding if you presume the opposite. I've been hearing this since the 90s - little "real science" has been done on either side.

There's precious little understanding of how the CO2 levels "reset" every 100k years or so - not even any good hypotheses, really. There's a good theory on the order-100M year effects (and man-made CO2 is tiny on that scale). There's plenty of work being done on the very short term. But the really interesting mechanism - and why it hasn't already kicked in to return us to the norm of glaciers covering most the Earth this time around - no one has a clue.

But *plenty* of people are sure that some countries should give other countries money as a result. Oh, yes, the certainty about handouts is nearly absolute.

I'm not sure what you think my "side"'s view is (or even what "side" you think I'm on) but when it comes to Mann, Jones, Hansen, and co. those guys have repeatedly been shown to have used poor methodology. You don't need to come up with different facts and evidence to dispute a conclusion if you can show that the work done to reach the conclusion is effectively 1+1=3. That has happened several times to some of the primary proponents of AGW.

If you want information why don't you do your own research. You might try, for example, Anthony Watt's work in photographing the locations of the various weather stations used to create the temperature record and discovering them located in places like parking lots. Or Steve McIntyre's work showing that the statistical filter used by Michael Mann to create the hockey stick will create a hockey stick of any random data. Or Steve McIntyre's work showing Michael Mann based a paper on sedimentary data from Scandinavia, only problem is MM inverted the data. Or the dendrochronology paper with a data set consisting of a whole 20 trees, one of which was solely responsible for the entire increase in anomaly. Or the IPCC AR4 where they stated an 80% reduction in Himalayan glaciers by 2035, when in reality the source material said 2350 and wasn't an actual peer reviewed academic paper.

The only reason this stuff is known is because independent third parties are reviewing the work, certainly the peer review process is failing to catch these errors. And this is why I call for requirements that publicly funded research be published publicly.

I don't personally have a horse in this race, but I am astonished that more people aren't outraged at the behaviors exposed in the climategate emails and the various inquiries into practices at UAE CRU. What Jones, Mann and co. are engaged in isn't science. It's religion.

Of course there is climate change that is a constant. The original term was global warming and prior to that it was global cooling. Yes the climate scare mongers claim that that was a single article and not hype but I remember the hype as a small kid so it was not a single passing article. The difference is that time it did not work.

As to the 'science' I have an easy test. Have the models contain no data nor assumptions prior to 1990. Then predict the weather of the 2000-2010 time with accuracy. They are claiming they can do that for the future with their models so they ought able to pass such a simple validation. Now do it for 2 other 10 year periods in during the 1900's

No way they pass because the models are not as good as they claim

Where are you getting this? It's certainly not from the IPCC report. The way you're exaggerating the scale of the problem is a big part of why some people react negatively (and sometimes irrationally) to this issue. Changing our emissions NOW and RADICALLY may or may not have a minor impact on the problem but it's guaranteed to directly harm millions due to the damage to the economy.

What is *your* falsifiable hypothesis statement of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming?

Do you believe that the only way science gets done is via experiment?

What would you suggest as a control for Earth?

What is *your* falsifiable hypothesis statement of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming?

You're asking the wrong guy. Trying to make points by asking a non-scientist a scientific question. I don't do original research. I make decisions based on the work of those who do. Maybe you should ask These guys. [www.ipcc.ch]

Or these guys. [noaa.gov]

Or these. [rmets.org]

If they can't help you, get back to me, and I'll see if I can't put you in touch with some other climate scientists. Of course, I suppose your certainty that all those guys just "aren't doing science" would probably make you disregard their answer, so maybe I can't help you after all.

It is a valid point for introducing the concept - it would be a good way to introduce the evidence in a thought provoking way and get the students to think about whether there is a better explanation for the data than climate change. Of course to do this you need teachers capable of really understanding the observations so they can point out flaws in arguments.

However I've noted that the climate change proponents are just as guilty of anti-science rhetoric as their opponents. For example an A-level physics question in the UK once showed a plot of remaining fossil energy reserves (decreasing) and energy demand (increasing) and asked how this plot showed that the UK must develop renewable energy sources. Of course the graph did not show that - it just showed that eventually fossil energy sources would not be enough given current demand predictions. This is also solvable by developing other non-renewable sources (e.g. nuclear) or simply by being more energy efficient and reducing demand.

So opponents of climate change may be anti-science by denying evidence but the proponents are often just as anti-science by ignoring other solutions and just pushing the "green" political agenda they want to see enacted. Neither side seems to be actually interested in what science really has to say when it is not what they want to hear... which is precisely when you should listen to science because that is when you learn the most!

As I understand it, there's plenty of evidence for a warming trend. In that sense, climate change is a fact. The acrimonious debate (for people with enough mental capacity to get past a knee-jerk reaction) revolves around two questions 1) whether or not it is caused by human activity, and 2) whether it in fact represents a continuing trend and therefore a crisis for humanity. Neither point 1 nor point 2 has been proved definitively but many minds much more knowledgeable about the facts than I seem to think so. Unfortunately, this doesn't really seem like a provable proposition. Given the complexity of the environment, one might as well try to prove that String Theory is correct. I support and admire the scientists who struggle to understand/explain/prove either String Theory or climate science.

I also applaud people who argue in favor of Green technologies -- but not to the point of lying or distorting facts. Increased efficiency, energy alternatives, recycling -- these are all good things for humanity. Exploring the alternatives brings more bounty to humanity at large so that we can have a reasonable expectation of supporting all 7 billion people on the planet regardless of whether there is a looming climate crisis or not.

As to whether you believe in climate change being caused by humanity, what's the harm in believing it if it means we make less of an impact on the climate? A few bucks here and there? Cleaner air? Less of a dependence on the Middle East? If the climate hazard is real and we are causing it, denying it is absolutely, most definitely shooting ourselves right in the foot.

But yes let us get past denying that the climate is in fact warming and start figuring out why.

It was over-hyped because of the media and the media only. Like today, the vast majority of climate scientists were concerned with globally warming. Ironically, it was later determined that at least part of the slightly cooler temperatures experienced during that time was a result of human SO2 emissions, which have now been greatly reduced due to clean air regulations (and thus removed the cooling effect).

All models require initial conditions. You can't just put a model in some random state and run it forward. The results would be utterly meaningless. This applies to pretty much any complex scientific model you'd care to mention.

Climate models do not predict weather. The predict climate. There's a significant difference.

No scientist is claiming climate models can predict weather. You've made a false assumption and you're proceeding to argue from that false assumption.

Climate models never have, nor ever will, predict weather. Climate and weather, while related, are different phenomena.

It is also clear you have not done much, if any, real research on this topic. You also don't seem to understand what the climate models do, what they're used for, or how they operate.

Climate models are used as guidance. They're used for ensemble simulations to give scientists likely scenarios of the future. They are not the end all be all of climate science. They are a tool. Nothing more, nothing less.

Climate models must be validated before they can be deemed useful, and the validation tests are far more rigorous than your trivial example. A typical validation starts the model before the industrial revolution. Then it is run forward to present day or beyond (both with and without human contributions). As it turns out, the models do a pretty good job of predicting our current climate conditions, and have also done a good job of demonstrating the impact our contributions are having on the climate. For a better overview of the models, I suggest the IPCC report. It's a little outdated now, but the fundamentals are the same.

Its actually quite simple...follow the money. cap and trade will make certain insiders BILLIONS by basically taking a percentage of the wallets of every man, woman, and child in the west so naturally anything that threatens that paycheck like say debate isn't allowed. Before this turns into rep VS dem or oil VS whatever I'd point out this has NOTHING to do with parties and EVERYTHING to do with insiders. just as Cheney made out like a bandit with Halliburton and Iraq so to is friends of Obama making out like bandits on free money from Uncle Sam for dubious "green tech". Solydra was just the tip of a rotten iceberg, one of the Kennedy kids got over a billion interest free for the company he is on the board of and that company has NEVER made a single cent and in their last 2 years has lost 20 million on 10 million in sales. Nobody with a brain would ever give a company with that kind of record that kind of money but it didn't have squat to do with investment, it had to do with good old boys getting their kickbacks for supporting the POTUS. The green fund has so far shelled out nearly 20 billion dollars in US taxpayer money and 19 of the top 20 getting checks were...drumroll...big donors to the president's election campaign!

The sad part is science has gotten hijacked by big money on all sides. any researcher that comes up with a finding that threatens the big paydays these corps are looking at will see their funding dry up and blow away so its safer to stay with the bandwagon. Instead of science being used to find out the truth its being used to support an agenda and that goes for BOTH sides of the aisle. How anybody can sort truth from propaganda anymore is anyone's guess but frankly i wouldn't trust scientists on either side of this debate to tell me if it was raining outside, there is just too many checks being passed around. In a way it reminds me of how the politicians all jumped on the eugenics bandwagon in the early twentieth century so suddenly we had all these scientific papers "proving" that you could tell things like IQ simply by race or the shape of the nose. Now it seems total insanity but if you tried to go against it when its was accepted you were treated like a whacko.

TRUE science should welcome debates and studies as that is how we revise theories and find out new things, after all a closed mind simply can't learn new concepts. look at how Einstein wasted the last 20 years of his life trying to disprove quantum mechanics as it just didn't fit with his view of the universe, going so far as to make his "God doesn't play dice" remark trying to ridicule it. Now we have seen that with things like quantum entanglement things we take for granted in the macro universe simply don't play by the same rules at the quantum level. Would we have ever learned such things if they would have been called "Einstein deniers"? Who knows, but I REALLY don't like how much politics is getting entangled in science.

Do you believe that the only way science gets done is via experiment?

What would you suggest as a control for Earth?

We don't have a control for the pre-Cambrian era, but we know evolution would be falsified if we found a rabbit fossil there. What I'm asking for is a specific set of observations that would falsify your hypothesis, not just a specific tabletop experiment that can be reproduced in a high school lab. All kinds of sciences deal with time scales and space scales that defy our ability to setup a repeatable experiment, yet still remain science because they clearly state what observations (past, present or future) would definitively falsify their hypotheses.

You're asking the wrong guy. Trying to make points by asking a non-scientist a scientific question.

So neither the IPCC, nor NOAA, nor the Royal Meteorological society have made any clearly falsifiable hypothesis statement about Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming. Perhaps you have some other unnamed, unknown climate scientist out there who actually *has* bothered to specify an observation of say, global average temperature and CO2 levels (past, present or future) that would falsify the hypothesis of "humanity is changing CO2 levels in ways that will cause increases in average global temperature that will cause some specified amount of harm by 2100"?

If you cannot even *imagine*, as a "non-scientist", an observation that would shake your faith in your particular, belief, you're doing religion, not science.

I'd like to see an instance of an actual climate scientist saying something like that. Contrarian researchers such as Roy Spencer and Richard Lindzen get a serious response from other climate scientists. Why should they waste their time responding to people without the training to make a serious argument?

Correlation my ass. That statement just shows how little you know of the actual science. CO2 was first shown to absorb IR radiation in the 1820's by Fourier and the effect was quantified by Tyndall in the 1850's. In 1898 Arrhenius first stated that rising CO2 levels in the atmosphere would lead to global warming (he thought it would be a good thing). Since then more details have been fleshed out. That the rise in atmospheric CO2 is due to human emissions is shown by the change in the C12/C13 ratio in the atmosphere. Fossil fuels have a higher C12/C13 ratio than the atmosphere and the change of ratio in the atmosphere supports the fact that the increase is due to emissions from fossil fuels. Just the fact that the year to year rise in CO2 in the atmosphere is about 43% of human emissions is further evidence for a human cause. The fact that the stratosphere is cooling while the troposphere warms is evidence that the warming is due to greenhouse gas increases. If the warming was due to the Sun the stratosphere would warm along with the troposphere. Comparison of the spectrum of emitted IR radiation at the surface and from orbit clearly shows the signature of CO2 and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. I could go on but that is all hard evidence for anthropogenic global warming.

There are true skeptics like Richard Mueller who once they see the actual science are willing to be convinced otherwise. Then there are deniers whose objections are ideological in nature. They don't like the implications of the science so they attack it with pseudo-science and trying to tear down their opponents.

In In case you haven''t paid attention to the Republican Party over the last dozen years, they've got a lot of tightly organized talking points that the party leaders push out through all the different media and craziness groups - Anti-tax, pro-war, anti-gay, Obama's-a-socialist, anti-deficit if the Democrats are in office, don't-worry-about-deficits-we-have-higher-priorities if Republicans are in office, etc. Some of these are core values that the party leaders really care about, and others are tactical positions that are useful for getting different groups of voters involved. The finance folks don't really care about gay marriage, but they'll go along on that because it brings in religious conservative voters who show up at polls and rallies and donate money.

Anti-science is a tactical position; anti-climate change is a core message from their corporate sponsors. Bashing evolution makes it easier to bash climate change science, as well as bringing in religious conservative voters, and gets the rabble in the habit of believing talking points their leaders hand them, but the party leadership doesn't really care about evolution - they care very very much about not having Congress make laws about climate change that would affect Big Oil and Big Coal and Big Agribusiness. And they don't care if it means destroying science education in schools for a generation as long as their bottom line is protected for a while; the kids who are going to be scientists can learn evolution in college.

Funny you should mention. Some researchers recently published experimental results which, in spite of their best efforts to check and rerun the tests, still contradicts Einstein's theory. Instead of being "ignored" or "told they are wrong" this has sparkd a healthy debate in the community where people either need to determine why the experimental results are not as expected, perform their own experiments to provide meaningful and relevant data for comparison, or they need to accept that the current consensus is wrong (at least to a certain extent) and reflect on this new information we've just learned about the world. That's how science works.

Note that those researchers have received plenty of criticism for their findings but they have chosen to participate in the scientific process instead of doing something childish such as forming groups to lobby the government to prevent Einstein's theories from being taught in public schools. If someone has credible data to the contrary of the current findings and concensus they will get much further by presenting their own data than they will by trying to censor the data and conclusions of others.

BTW. The US Congress isn't exactly a credible authority on matters of science and technology. You would do a bit better to find sources from people who actually have some knowledge about the subject.

The "harm" is that the global warming alarmists are promoting a program of central planning of the world's economy to "combat global warming".Central planning of the economy has consistently been proven to result in poorer economic performance, increased human hunger, and damage to the environment. So, basically, we have people who, in the name of protecting the environment, are promoting a program that has been demonstrated repeatedly to cause harm to the environment.

Sounds like someone never had a philosophy of science course.

There are several ways to study in a manner that most scientists agree is scientific without using the controlled experiment(which is merely the best tool we have, not the only one.)

The underlying mechanic of science is hypothesis rejection by contrary empirical evidence. There are lots of less effective, but still functional, ways to approach this mechanic.

1. Empirical inductive testing: this is how planetary paths became understood. First you build a hypothesis like Newton's third law. Then you make a clear succinct prediction about what observations you could make in the future based on that law.(where you could see a given planet in the sky at a given time). If the data contradicts your prediction, then your hypothesis is rejected. Unless you honestly thing there were controlled experiments to establish the attraction of objects proportional to their mass in Newton's time.
and
2. Data reapplication: Sometimes a hypothesis can be validated merely by taking large quantities of data collected for other reasons and treating deviations from your hypothesis's predictions as invalidation. This is done all the time in early medical research to identify possible approaches to treating diseases without needing human experimentation.

Details, in your face. Go take a philosophy of science class. This stuff is interesting, and you're doing yourself a disservice by not learning it directly from an expert. I don't care that you're probably out of school already, go take some continuing education.

Wow. You must really be surrounded by a cluster fuck of people who think any conservative label (like "libertarian") automatically dismisses trumps every argument. The method that you accuse Penn and Teller of using would amount to slander. And they would have been sued for it numerous times (since they have deep pockets). This kind of method can only be used in a fiction setting (like "Borat") or in a setting where you don't intend to mock the person. But it can't be used in an interview setting. Once you start publicly mocking people for what they say, you better not slander, or you are might as well be writing them a check.

Oh, and comparing skepticism of highly-dubious, highly-politicized research to creationism may seem like you are attacking the same targets, but you are not. Libertarianism is neutral on the god debate. There is a cross-section between libertarians and creationists, but that cross-section is as large as the number of pro-choice libertarians. So it's a useless data point.

Except that libertarianism is for the most part economically incompetent randoid nonsense that tends to live in the same brain as people who think climate change isn't real and jesus lived at the same time as dinosaurs.

VOTE RON PAUL: BECAUSE SOME ME JUST WANT TO SEE THE WORLD BURN