Quote:Your statement here is what is wrong with the debate. Your assumption is that AGW science is out of the mainstream, yet that very assumption is unscientific in nature.Hunh? My "assumption" is that AGW is a well-founded theory based not just in modelling, but in historical data, atmospheric physics and chemistry, and a whole host of other disciplines. There are still unanswered questions. But unless the answers to those questions are radically different than what they appear to be, the basic case of the role played by CO2 in warming the planet is settled science. You have a hypothesis to overturn it? Let's see the scientific fireworks. Let's see the theory that better explains the data.
Quote:Science is science and if done correctly proves or disproves a hypothesis.Disproves, yes. Proves, no. The hypothesis is global warming driven by human emissions of CO2. Got an effective disproof? I'm sure the climate science community would be all ears.
Quote:My background is computing, and I'm just saying that computers are very good at churning out unreal information. In my opinion, as someone who has built models, I see no feasible way to model the solar system, and Earth, with the atmosphere, with the clouds, with the GHG's, with the ocean, with evaporation, with the soil and vegetation and expect to have any level of realism or accuracy.Fine. Trash the models, ignore them entirely. They may be a suggestive part of the picture, but they're not necessary. Rely 100% on the paleoclimate data. Try to come up with a sensible attribution of past warming without CO2 as an important forcing. Go over the 20th century, figure out how we could be experiencing this kind of warming trend while keeping CO2 as only a small part of the picture. If you can manage it, it'd be one hell of a feat of climate science. But if you really have the explanation? It'd be fantastic. But as it stands, that isn't the state of the science, and until that changes, I feel pretty confident (not 100%, but more than enough) standing behind CO2-driven AGW without even considering the results of the modelling.
Quote:Dyson is right in my opinion, that we need to go out and start measuring a heck of a lot more data.We always want more data. More and more forever. We want more data about crime rates and carbon, cancer and the cosmos. But when the data we have points strongly to serious problems with how we're currently conducting our business, problems that might well haunt us for dozens of generations? We have to decide what we're going to do about it, because while the science can wait and wait, we're taking the action of emitting the CO2 as we speak. If that turns out to be a really bad idea, as the science suggests (does not prove, but strongly implies), then we don't get a second shot at it. Economies recover. Atmospheres are a lot less forgiving.
Quote:Perspective. Dr. Hansen is calling for the immediate shut down of all coal fired plants (50% of the electric generation in the US), and criminal charges against oil company executives. In fact, Dr. Hansen's radical opinions are resulting in his alienation from all but the extreme fringe of activists.Like I said. You want to throw Hansen overboard? Be my guest. Ignore everything he's ever said or done, assign him zero credibility. Doesn't make much sense to me, but if that's what you'd like, it doesn't make a whit of difference. He's one of thousands and thousands, a figurehead in front of a large body of science. Do you feel confident that they're all just crazy radicals? Because there are an awful lot of them.
Quote:Dr. Dyson is calling for more science and less modeling, becoming better stewards of our land, and if necessary, using our expertise in bioengineering to develop plants that absorb more CO2. Who seems more kooky?What expertise in bioengineering? Do you know how to make trees absorb and sequester carbon at significantly higher rates than they currently do? This is untested speculation, based on biological technology we do not yet have. However uncertain the models are, relying on guesses about our future capabilities in bioengineering is yet more uncertain. Or, alternately, we could take Dr. Dyson's suggestion about planting a trillion ordinary trees. Got an area the size of, say, Ontario that's currently unwooded that you can replace with never-burning forest? Dyson knows that getting carbon actually sequestered by vegetation, rather than just absorbed, is not a trivial problem, and will require technology well beyond what we have. It would also be a monumental effort (he talks about transforming 1/4th of the world's forests into carbon sequestering engineered trees, and this at a time when we can't even keep existing forests up!) He knows all this, being phenomenally brilliant.Yet he still seems to be willing to bet on that, rather than pay the expensive-but-reasonable price for mitigation today. That might be fine for a personal opinion, but seems very risky for a species.
-Jester