[Phys-L] Re: [Political Action] The nature of the lack of proof (climate warming)

[dtmarx at ILSTU.EDU (David T. Marx)]

Thanks, Brian.

The ozone hole is a separate issue.  We banned CFCs to help mitigate that problem.
We have seen the hole open and close.  From what I understand, it was first observed
in the mid-1980s when we began to have the capability to detect it.  It's not clear what
the situation was before that.

I do not want to make this a political issue, but rather a scientific one - based on
physical evidence.  I began looking into this being a believer - based mostly on what I
had been told in school and in the media.  I began to question it after articles appeared
in Physics Today and a statement by the American Meteorological Society several
years ago.  People were questioning whether warming is occurring.  I wanted then to
know what the evidence is.

It is in the noise.  That is my problem with it.  We have seen large increases in
"greenhouse gases," but no significant increases in accurately measured temperatures
beyond the noise.  As scientists, we are (ideally) obligated to examine data presented
by others objectively, but often times are own biases enter into this evaluation.

I will try and get a copy of the arctic report you mentioned.  Their summary appears to
contain politically motivated bias directed at policy makers, as does much of the
literature.

On more thing - just because these guys are on blue ribbon panels and from Ivy League
schools, it doesn't mean we just just accept everything they put forward.  No offense to
anyone on that, but people do have biases and agendas beyond finding scientific truth.

Cheers,
David Marx


On 15 Dec 2004 at 23:52, Brian Whatcott wrote:

> It's interesting -  the subject given  to this thread is quite apposite:
> the global warming advocates tend to be European, or Democrat or Socialist.
> The global warming debunkers tend to be American, or Republican
> or Conservatives.
>
> Evidence is not enough: I suppose if one is a part of that steeply
>   increasing population of skin cancer victims in Australia say,
>   or South America -  that is a kind of evidence to which one can relate,
> no matter what one's politics.  But that isn't about global warming,
>   specially - it's only about an ozone hole.
>
> And I sympathize with one who finds the objective evidence unconvincing:
> it's still barely above noise level: and physicists in general are just not
> good at
>   picking up signal under the noise level; they don't want statistics, and they
>   don't want signal-processing if they can avoid it: so it hardly matters that
> I pointed to papers from every ivy league college and blue-ribbon society
> in the
> science biz: you will not be convinced if your leitmotif is tree-huggers
> versus
> solid American business: chimney scrubbers cost an awful lot of money to bet
> on a hunch after all, to name one trivial manifestation....
>
> For this and other reasons, I deliberately erased any paper citing a model
> or its predictions from the list I offered.
> [I know of course, that to pick signal from deep under noise it is helpful
> to correlate a  putative model against raw data in noise - but models are
>   too easy targets for the incredulous]
>
> Brian W