On Sunday, April 22, 2018 at 2:37:55 AM UTC-6, Quadibloc wrote:

On Saturday, April 21, 2018 at 8:55:34 AM UTC-6, Gary Harnagel wrote:

There are many points about AGW that are
questionable to anyone with an open mind.

I'm sorry, but that is simply not true.

Hi John,

I think it is. I mentioned previously about cloud cover and cosmic rays.
That was certainly not in the climate models and we don't understand to
what extent that process affects GW (note: that would NOT be AGW). We're
going into a "quiet sun" period that may last decades and the solar wind
has allowed cosmic rays to increase by 15% over the past few years.

Another problem with the models is that they don't directly account for
the biggest greenhouse gas: water vapor. A multiplying factor is applied
to the CO2 content to account for water vapor indirectly, but such a
strategy reduces the accuracy of the model.

Third, the warming effect of CO2 concentration is not linear; i.e., it tends
to saturate. I don't know the details of this but it's my understanding
that the multiplier for CO2 used to be about six but it is presently around
two. Could it be that this reduction is because of a saturation factor?
How can one have any confidence in a model that has that kind of uncertainty
in it?

Using critical thinking before accepting a new idea is indeed a good thing.

But most people accept that the world is round and not flat, at bottom,
not because they've understood the science and figured it out for
themselves, but because they trust the official scientists who get to
write the textbooks more than Joe random guy who made a YouTube video.

I'm not "most people." I didn't accept the conclusions of special relativity
until I studied the assumptions and derived the equations myself. Actually,
I start out accepting what scientists say, then have second thoughts, then
dig through it myself and end up agreeing or disagreeing. You are talking
about the FIRST step, which is where "most people" are, and which step they
never graduate from.

Some people have brought forth superficially convincing arguments
that the Earth is flat, even though it isn't. The same can be done with
global warming - and here there's money involved.

Not the same thing at all. Flatness is a property of geometry, and geometry
is very simple. GW is not simple at all, let alone AGW. Comparing AGW
skepticism to an inability to do geometry is extremely offensive and serves
only to cause polarization. People who behave like Peterson are doing no
favor to the AGW believers.

Environmentalists certainly do deserve to be looked at with skepticism.
They've cried wolf before, and many of them don't seem to have come to grips
with what it takes to feed the world's existing population, or what it took
to keep from losing the Cold War.

Indeed.

But you don't seem to have noticed that the world's scientists, who look
at new theories skeptically for a living, and who are the experts on
this kind of stuff, have now accepted AGW as part of what science knows
about the world around us. Like the round Earth, like evolution by natural
selection, like the Special and General theories of Relativity.

Any science where one can't perform experiments should be viewed with a
healthy dose of skepticism. Relativity has been thoroughly tested in a
local framework, but cosmological models based on GR makes assumptions
which may not be correct.

And that fact means that one should direct a withering skepticism towards
Fox News rather than towards the scientific community.

John Savard

Sorry, John, but I believe the jury is still out. And "withering" responses
when one expresses some skepticism smacks of totalitarian tactics. How can
one have confidence in AGW when warm temperatures are claimed to support AGW
and cooler temperatures are also claimed to support AGW? That kind of
baloney makes the theory unfalsifiable. IOW, unscientific.

Gary