Burbage

Accurate language is vital in a scientific debate. It would be rather nice if someone who supports the IPCC's view would actually come up with some scientific arguments to refute perfectly good questions. Instead of haranguing anyone who is critical and branding them with names designed only to attempt to discredit them. Discredit us with scientific arguments, not name calling.

As for climatologists, their entire argument is based on a mathematical model, which they keep to themselves. Any scientist who has attempted to model a complex system is perfectly at liberty to question this because we all know how impossible it is.

As for vested interests, we are talking about something that essentially doesn't exist. God is a better example than a disease.

Burbage

Definitive demonstration of a causal relationship between atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and significant global warming.

iolande

Can you please give me an example of a definitive demonstration of a causal relationship so I know what you mean? It doesn't have to be climate, it can be in any field.

Burbage

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

slapphead_otool

In most cases we accept causality to be based upon statistical probabilities. Smoking and lung cancer is a good case in point – its evidence based.

We can look at the statistics – how many die of lung cancer, how many were smokers. We look for a relationship.

We can then validate – is there a link between how much someone smokes, and the incidence of lung cancer.

We can check for spurious results – do the ratios remain constant across all areas, or do people living within 10Km of nuclear power stations who also smoke have a greater chance of lung cancer.

What we are left with isn’t proof – some people smoke and don’t get lung cancer. Others don’t smoke and do. What we do have is a statistical probability of sufficient magnitude to warrant causality.

I am not sure how we approach AGW with the same degree of rigour.

Lord_Farquar

Do you mean natural global warming or human induced global warming?

Burbage

Perhaps we can do it by looking for a cause that we know produces heat first of all. If we can eliminate a source of global warming as being a heat source, then we can begin to suggest alternatives? Right?

So if we look at solar activity and see that it has remained flat, or has even decreased in the last part of the 20th century we might say that there may very well be another cause of the warming climate that we certainly observe. So, let us look at a graph of solar activity.



Right?

Now what we see is a pretty good correlation between solar activity and the temperature of the earth. We know the sun actually produces heat, so we have a mechanistic relationship between the sun and the warmth of the earth. If we are going to say that something else causes global warming then we need to eliminate the sun as the cause. Which we cannot do.

NedKelly

But we can't tax the sun.

Burbage

Which is, of course, why no one wants to develop solar power. You lose all the tax revenue from the fossil fuels industry.

Lord_Farquar

No one in Australia that is.

Burbage

Indeed. Obviously Spain, with no fossil fuel reserves, were keen.

Swerv-o

Yes. It's verging on criminal the way that there is no investment in solar infrastructure.


S

Lord_Farquar

And Germany.

Who also have large fossil fuel reserves.

Swerv-o

It's a ridiculous state of affairs. Solar furnaces could be used to provide an awful lot of power during the day, and then fall back to fossil fuels to supply the base load in the non-sunny hours.


S

slapphead_otool

I think it goes even further than solar furnaces.

Better designed dwellings to keep up cool in summer and warm in winter, rather than heating and air conditioning for instance.