Analyzing the Scientific Merits of a Sad Story

[Andre]

Please read this sad story.

How about analyzing it a little on scientific merit?

 

[Andre]

I start off

'My youngest grandson, Jonah, was born two years ago,' he said last week. 'He is a real delight but his future, in a world heading towards massive climatic change, I have become extremely worried about. In fact, I am terrified.'

Fallacy one is appeal to fear

For a senior government scientist, a man accustomed to caveats and qualifications,

Fallacy two is appeal for respect

He is only one member of a swelling band of scientists whose warnings about global warming have become more and more agitated.

Fallacy three (unless I missed one or two already) is authority of the many

Now we should be very convinced that everything that follows must be true.

Anybody want to give it a try?

 

[wolram]

I watched a program on tv that said our magnetic poles were
in the process of flipping. while this is happening the field gets
weaker, which will allow solar radiation to penetrate more easily,
surly this would have more effect on our weather than green house
gasses.
Global warming seems to be more a political campaign making
points from natural events, but i will certainly change my mind
when and if London is submerged under water.

 

[Andre]

Yes, I agree that it would be logical that the Earth magnetic field is related to climate. There is little litterature about that. This article however cannot confirm such a relationship.

Anyway, back to our article. Actually the title of the thread -sad story- is also a fallacy, Ambiguity. It looks like the sadness is about the lack of response to the horrible global warming but my intention of sadness was about how a big part of the world population can still be fooled into believing fairy tales. This has lead to world wars.

 

[Francis M]

I've think I've read some of the 900 some odd articles in Science that they (ambiguously) reference. I've also read articles in Discover, Popular Science and can happen to pick up global climate stories on numerous cable channels dedicated to science and education, and can say unequvocally that not all of the articles blame people solely for global warming.
As far as I can see any climatolagist who isn't on either extreme edge of the debate usually says that while we are probably contributing somewhat to global warming that there is no way to separate exactly and therefore tell exactly what is happening naturally and what is caused by man made pollutants. Iv'e also read that they can't predict what exactly the weather will become like if the trend continues i.e. we may see a rapid ice age develope after an undetermined length of global warming, or global warming may continue indefinatly or this may happen regardless of what we do.

THis entire article in my opinion seems to be nothing more than eco-fear mongering. It never definitavly references anything for hard data. It doesn't even tell you where you can look up some of the information.

 

[Phobos]

The article would be more worrying if it were in a scientific journal, but it seems par-for-the-course as a mass media article.

 

[Phobos]

... and can say unequvocally that not all of the articles blame people solely for global warming.
As far as I can see any climatolagist who isn't on either extreme edge of the debate usually says that while we are probably contributing somewhat to global warming that there is no way to separate exactly and therefore tell exactly what is happening naturally and what is caused by man made pollutants.

From what I've been reading, the majority of climatologists agree that the Earth's climate is warming (e.g., faster than normal for an interglacial period), and many agree that humans are contributing to this warming, but the degree to which humans are contributing is still a matter of great debate (e.g., ranges could be anywhere from 5% to 75% or something like that).

 

[Andre]

That would be a fair assesment I guess. But it's not only the contribution, but also how we contribute. Is it CO2 or haze / soot?

The CO2 allegations comes from the ice ages and the hockeystick. However, the hockeystick definitely seems to be broken. See that the article doesn't mention it anymore (no reference to the-last-decade-being-the-hottest-of-the-millenium). Now the ice age temperature - CO2 relationship is highly ambigious and more and more accurate studies falsify a high correlation between CO2 and temperatures.

All we have left is the hockeystick blade, temps go up, but so does the world population and so does soot and haze in the atmosphere. Soot absorbs light, heats up and decreases the albedo. There is no notion of catastrophic run away warming with some soot.

Moreover, controlling soot emission is something completely different than controlling CO2 emission. We must be sure what we must do and those scaremongering stories are very disturbing to objective research.