Since this is a global warming related topic, we're seeing the very common global warming debate. I've a few points to make in defense of this ex-member of APS, and in response to the arguments that are so commonly presented for AGW.
Science does not operate by consensus. The consensus of scientists for many decades was that the earth was flat. as we well know, the earth is not flat. (But if you want to argue that the earth is, in fact flat, I'm willing to hear your arguments. What's the worst that could happen? I could be amused. But if I've been tricked by the Round Earth Scam then I'd want to know. It is silly to say it is beyond discussion simply because most people believe the earth is round.)
When I worked for a national lab I would, for amusements sake, take the position that Einstein was wrong, and I would argue against general relativity. I did this with Professors, Post Docs, both theoretical and empirical and a variety of people much smarter and better informed than me. This was educational and a good exercise. While I may have irritated them on occasions, and while general relativity is about as close as you get to "settled science", never once was the argument given to me that this was a correct theory based on the "consensus of scientists".
If you're arguing for a scientific position and you're using "preponderance of the evidence" in lawyer speak to make your position, you're not actually taking the scientific position, you are taking an anti-science position. The preponderance of the evidence will always fit a conventional view, and the advancement of science comes from finding something that does not fit the conventional view. This is what careers are (or were, apparently) made on.
So, the argument that this is "settled" and therefore is not worth debating and that anyone who doesn't subscribe to this theory is irrational, is a very profoundly anti-science perspective. It is also the defacto position and has been since I first heard of global warming. How can a scientific movement start out by presupposing its own conclusions as fact?
Further, if you do not wish to spend the time reading papers, or investigating the matter at a deep level, do not advocate for a position on the internet. This kind of advocation is the worst combination of politics and science. You're arguing for a scientific conclusion based on your political ideology, not based on science. (Which is why preponderance of evidence is convenient - it is an attempt to short circuit debate so you don't have to debate the scientific points.)
AGW is easily disproven with straightforward observations (not to mention a mountain of peer reviewed papers to the contrary, none of which can be effectively debated in this forum.) The easy disproof of AGW is:
1. The earth is getting colder, not warmer, while CO2 levels continue to rise.
2. Historically the earth has mostly been much colder and if you want to find a warming trend you will find the one since the last ice age, which has happened after every ice age.
3. During the period where the planet was getting warmer in the recent past, coinciding with the solar cycle, mars got warmer as well, yet mars has no humans on it.
4. The climate gate emails reveal deliberate distortion of the numbers by adding a "fudge factor" which accounts for essentially all the warming shown in that "baseline" data.
5. The only papers showing warming on a global scale are showing the results of computer models that do not have predictive value if you apply past data, thus they are predicated on the assumption that some major change in the global climate has been reached, with no historical precedent. EG: the models are not actually models.
6. The planet has experienced several periods that were much warmer and had much higher CO2. While CO2 and warming are correlated, the CO2 levels tend to come after the warming, not before. This whole thing could be called a correlation-causation error if it weren't being pushed so adamantly in the face of scientific disproof.
7. The AGW movement is a political movement, primarily centered around Al Gore and the IPCC Neither of which are scientific. The IPCC rewrote the statements of the scientists who contributed to the report because it felt they were not declarative enough. The motive here is pretty obvious, as if AGW were accepted, government would gain massive power to regulate the global economy and people everywhere, as has already been demonstrated by such travesties of economics and justice as "Cap and Trade".
8. When Al Gore started to harp on this issue it was a legitimate concern as he portrays in his movie, after meeting a UCSD professor who told him the theory. A decade later, in the 1980s the UCSD professor discovered his theory was wrong, and being a man of integrity, published his findings. Al Gore, being a man of no integrity continues to pretend like he didn't.
9. The IR absorption of CO2 in the atmosphere is not a significant impact on the planet and not able to cause a "Greenhouse" effect. CO2 in the atmosphere is a tiny fraction of a percent. IT is vastly outweighed by water vapor which has much more significant IR absorption and thus is the source of essentially all possible greenhouse effect. But Clouds are not something humans can control,and therefore, the AGW proponents focus on CO2.
10. AGW theory is based on the idea of some magical tipping point after which the effect will become run-away and beyond our control. The fear being spread is argued on this basis. However in the past, CO2 has been higher than it is today, and in fact has been dramatically higher than it is today, with no runaway effect. (Further, the planet has been much warmer than it is today, warmer than even the worst case scenarios being projected, and still went into subsequent ice ages.)
11. Numerous, possibly, every place where we should see this warming showing up, we are not. However, if you google for any of these you can find them used as evidence of warming, by either adding fudge factors or selectively citing data and ignoring the data that shows cooling. This shows a consistent and persistent fraud being perpetrated arguing for AGW, at least in the blogosphere. (Not going to make the allegation against scientists, I believe they are being honest, but they are working with fabricated baseline data that was at the center of climate-gate.)
I'm not going to cite any papers here because scientific reality does not come nicely summed up in a single paper making a specific point. Many of my claims are easily verifiable. eg: "As of April 2010, carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is at a concentration of 391 ppm by volume."
You can quibble with my words in the above statements and it is quite possible I spoke over broadly once or twice. But you can't change these basic facts about the situation. I know there are blog posts from non-scientists who "debunk" probably every thing stated above. If all you need to believe in something is for someone on the internet to have written a rationalization, no matter how ignorant or dishonest, then there is no convincing you against AGW.
But it really doesn't matter, even if you reject every one of my points. Science is not about consensus. Science is not about downvoting people who dare to point out facts not consistent with the popular theory.
Science is about applying the scientific method and following the data wherever it leads, not only if it follows a political agenda, or your source of fundings political agenda.
IF you downvote me, do so knowing that you cannot claim that I have not made an argument, have not contributed to this discussion, and have not presented evidence defending my position. I have done all three. Realize you are downvoting me because you do not like the conclusion I reached.
Science should not be about removing funding from people who discover inconvenient truths that go agains the political winds. Hacker news should not be about burying people who fail to march in lock step with popular opinion.
There was never a consensus of scientists that the earth was flat in any society within a hundred miles of the ocean, which incidentally is about all of them that can be said to have had scientists.
Biggest CO2 sink is the ocean. Increase CO2 content in ocean water and you produce carbonic acid. I'd assume that this is at least a contributor to ice melt.
However, you could contend that many of the northern waters are similarly contaminated by acid produced from volcanic gas, such as in the Icelandic area.
Either way, I can't source any documented evidence either way at the moment. The problem is that if you stipulate that scientists are colluding to produce evidence in support of a theory, all evidence supporting or denying said theory must be assumed contaminated unless proven otherwise. I have no access to the data, nor could I rule out scientific misconduct in the data collection even if I had access.
Mea culpa- I did not remember the document I read correctly. The carbonic acid references are usually a separate but related concern. As CO2 dissolves in water, it changes the pH balance, which is having a detrimental effect on sea life (esp. on the micro scale) in the area. This is more prevalent at the poles, due to CO2 more readily dissolving into cold water.
Science does not operate by consensus. The consensus of scientists for many decades was that the earth was flat. as we well know, the earth is not flat. (But if you want to argue that the earth is, in fact flat, I'm willing to hear your arguments. What's the worst that could happen? I could be amused. But if I've been tricked by the Round Earth Scam then I'd want to know. It is silly to say it is beyond discussion simply because most people believe the earth is round.)
When I worked for a national lab I would, for amusements sake, take the position that Einstein was wrong, and I would argue against general relativity. I did this with Professors, Post Docs, both theoretical and empirical and a variety of people much smarter and better informed than me. This was educational and a good exercise. While I may have irritated them on occasions, and while general relativity is about as close as you get to "settled science", never once was the argument given to me that this was a correct theory based on the "consensus of scientists".
If you're arguing for a scientific position and you're using "preponderance of the evidence" in lawyer speak to make your position, you're not actually taking the scientific position, you are taking an anti-science position. The preponderance of the evidence will always fit a conventional view, and the advancement of science comes from finding something that does not fit the conventional view. This is what careers are (or were, apparently) made on.
So, the argument that this is "settled" and therefore is not worth debating and that anyone who doesn't subscribe to this theory is irrational, is a very profoundly anti-science perspective. It is also the defacto position and has been since I first heard of global warming. How can a scientific movement start out by presupposing its own conclusions as fact?
Further, if you do not wish to spend the time reading papers, or investigating the matter at a deep level, do not advocate for a position on the internet. This kind of advocation is the worst combination of politics and science. You're arguing for a scientific conclusion based on your political ideology, not based on science. (Which is why preponderance of evidence is convenient - it is an attempt to short circuit debate so you don't have to debate the scientific points.)
AGW is easily disproven with straightforward observations (not to mention a mountain of peer reviewed papers to the contrary, none of which can be effectively debated in this forum.) The easy disproof of AGW is:
1. The earth is getting colder, not warmer, while CO2 levels continue to rise.
2. Historically the earth has mostly been much colder and if you want to find a warming trend you will find the one since the last ice age, which has happened after every ice age.
3. During the period where the planet was getting warmer in the recent past, coinciding with the solar cycle, mars got warmer as well, yet mars has no humans on it.
4. The climate gate emails reveal deliberate distortion of the numbers by adding a "fudge factor" which accounts for essentially all the warming shown in that "baseline" data.
5. The only papers showing warming on a global scale are showing the results of computer models that do not have predictive value if you apply past data, thus they are predicated on the assumption that some major change in the global climate has been reached, with no historical precedent. EG: the models are not actually models.
6. The planet has experienced several periods that were much warmer and had much higher CO2. While CO2 and warming are correlated, the CO2 levels tend to come after the warming, not before. This whole thing could be called a correlation-causation error if it weren't being pushed so adamantly in the face of scientific disproof.
7. The AGW movement is a political movement, primarily centered around Al Gore and the IPCC Neither of which are scientific. The IPCC rewrote the statements of the scientists who contributed to the report because it felt they were not declarative enough. The motive here is pretty obvious, as if AGW were accepted, government would gain massive power to regulate the global economy and people everywhere, as has already been demonstrated by such travesties of economics and justice as "Cap and Trade".
8. When Al Gore started to harp on this issue it was a legitimate concern as he portrays in his movie, after meeting a UCSD professor who told him the theory. A decade later, in the 1980s the UCSD professor discovered his theory was wrong, and being a man of integrity, published his findings. Al Gore, being a man of no integrity continues to pretend like he didn't.
9. The IR absorption of CO2 in the atmosphere is not a significant impact on the planet and not able to cause a "Greenhouse" effect. CO2 in the atmosphere is a tiny fraction of a percent. IT is vastly outweighed by water vapor which has much more significant IR absorption and thus is the source of essentially all possible greenhouse effect. But Clouds are not something humans can control,and therefore, the AGW proponents focus on CO2.
10. AGW theory is based on the idea of some magical tipping point after which the effect will become run-away and beyond our control. The fear being spread is argued on this basis. However in the past, CO2 has been higher than it is today, and in fact has been dramatically higher than it is today, with no runaway effect. (Further, the planet has been much warmer than it is today, warmer than even the worst case scenarios being projected, and still went into subsequent ice ages.)
11. Numerous, possibly, every place where we should see this warming showing up, we are not. However, if you google for any of these you can find them used as evidence of warming, by either adding fudge factors or selectively citing data and ignoring the data that shows cooling. This shows a consistent and persistent fraud being perpetrated arguing for AGW, at least in the blogosphere. (Not going to make the allegation against scientists, I believe they are being honest, but they are working with fabricated baseline data that was at the center of climate-gate.)
I'm not going to cite any papers here because scientific reality does not come nicely summed up in a single paper making a specific point. Many of my claims are easily verifiable. eg: "As of April 2010, carbon dioxide in the Earth's atmosphere is at a concentration of 391 ppm by volume."
You can quibble with my words in the above statements and it is quite possible I spoke over broadly once or twice. But you can't change these basic facts about the situation. I know there are blog posts from non-scientists who "debunk" probably every thing stated above. If all you need to believe in something is for someone on the internet to have written a rationalization, no matter how ignorant or dishonest, then there is no convincing you against AGW.
But it really doesn't matter, even if you reject every one of my points. Science is not about consensus. Science is not about downvoting people who dare to point out facts not consistent with the popular theory.
Science is about applying the scientific method and following the data wherever it leads, not only if it follows a political agenda, or your source of fundings political agenda.
IF you downvote me, do so knowing that you cannot claim that I have not made an argument, have not contributed to this discussion, and have not presented evidence defending my position. I have done all three. Realize you are downvoting me because you do not like the conclusion I reached.
Science should not be about removing funding from people who discover inconvenient truths that go agains the political winds. Hacker news should not be about burying people who fail to march in lock step with popular opinion.