So, you've been called out on a premiere study by NOAA 2008 that failed predictions, you've been unable to come up with a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement, and your response is that the data is wrong or irrelevant?

My problem, dear boy, is that your response to *any* actual refutation of prediction by observation is simply the blanket statement that "the data is wrong or irrelevant", without any sort of rationale as to *why* we should believe it to be so.

Again, this is the typical astrologist act - any failed prediction is irrelevant, but the mass of "consistent with" predictions is crowed about. "Heads I win, tails you lose" is a clever way to frame an argument, but it's not science. :)

Do you *deny* that there has been statistically insignificant warming for periods of at least 15 years if not more for multiple land/ocean datasets?

Do you *deny* that NOAA 2008 models excluded the possibility of such observations at the 95% confidence level?

Do you *deny* that you don't have a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement for AGW, from any source?

Your quote:

"But the quote is: "The simulations rule out (at the 95% level) zero trends for intervals of 15 yr or more, suggesting that an observed absence of warming of this duration is needed to create a discrepancy with the expected present-day warming rate.""

Multiple temperature datasets, as provided to you, have examples of zero trends for intervals of 15yr or more...some over 20yr

The simulations were 95% sure that such a thing could not happen - leaving our confidence in these simulations as being accurate at 5%, or worse, depending on how much longer than 15 years you get.

You can deny the data all you want, but NOAA made a prediction, failed that prediction, and you are now throwing NOAA 2008 under the bus, playing the same game astrologists use of ignoring failed predictions.

You're now trying to support a hypothesis of AGW that apparently doesn't even require statistically significant warming for it to be true. Prima facie, that's an illogical assertion.

No such assurance has been made. Except by you.

NOAA 2008 - not me :)

Look, you got caught drinking more than 5 glasses of wine an hour (more than 15 years of statistically insignificant warming during a period of increasing CO2), by *EVERY* temperature data set quoted. Multiple witnesses, and you're still hoping the public defender can get you off on a technicality :)

Are you really going to try to argue with the data?

So now you're demanding that we use a different period for different data sets. It gets worse!

The falsification criteria simply demands that a 15+ year period of no statistically significant warming exists *anywhere* in the record during a period of ever increasing CO2.

It's like if I bet that you're an alcoholic if you drink more than 5 glasses of wine in an hour, but you say I'm cherry picking the time you're in the bar, and claim you spend most of your days sleeping and not drinking :)

You've been drinking, you've been caught, by every possible measure, and you *still* deny it :)

Look, you want to claim that NOAA 2008 is bogus, and not representative of the true hypothesis of AGW, fine - but realize that this kind of ad hoc special pleading, and dismissing of failed predictions is *exactly* the kind of thing astrologists do.

At the very least, given the evidence in all the temperature sets demonstrated, you have to admit that your mythical, as of yet unstated necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement for AGW, cannot exclude arbitrarily long periods of no statistically significant warming with ever increasing CO2. And prima facie, the fact that you're now asserting that AGW can be true *without* statistically significant warming, makes your premise incredibly unlikely :)

OK, so you really don't know what carbon neutral means.

"Carbon neutral" is a mythical term. You're assuming that you understand sources and sinks at a level of detail that isn't possible.

The fact of the matter is that butterflies, like humans, are CO2 *sources*. As such, all other things held the same, their contribution will cause some (possibly and probably insignificant) warming due to the spectral properties of CO2.

Oh, it's MSU.RSS now is it? Funny how every data series on that page shows warming from 1998 to the latest data, except MSU.RSS.

Look again. *Every* data set there contains at least one 15 year instance that has no statistically significant warming.

http://moyhu.blogspot.com.au/p...

Click on "trend+significance" and notice what greys out. *Every* data set there has example 15 year periods with no statistically significant warming during periods of ever increasing CO2 levels.

Q.E.D. :)

You haven't thought it through. Where does the carbon in a butterfly come from? Nectar. From a plant. Where does a plant's carbon come from? CO2 in the atmosphere. It's carbon neutral.

You haven't thought it through - CO2 doesn't care *where* it comes from - it's spectral properties exist regardless if it came from a burning plant, outgassed from the ocean, or from the exhalation of respiration.

At the very least, the extraction of nectar, by butterflies, and turning it into CO2, delays sequestration of CO2 in plant matter - so while *everything* is "carbon neutral" at an arbitrary time scale, it is obviously a CO2 *source* for at least some period of time - upwards of many decades if you're to believe the warmist assertions of the cycle time for atmospheric CO2.

Says the man who can't even work out that a butterfly is carbon neutral.

Your definition of "carbon neutral" is cute, but unconvincing, and certainly doesn't put you off the hook for quoting a necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement of AGW :)

Because there has been warming over the last 15 years. So it's still in the 95%, not outside it.

Look at the data - http://moyhu.blogspot.com.au/p...

By any number of temperature sets, there has been no *statistically significant warming* (which is what NOAA 2008 referenced) for periods up to 20+ years. You're *way* outside of the 95% :)

Simply observing warming doesn't mean you've proven that your pet cause for the warming is *the* cause - certainly warming is *necessary* for AGW to be true, but it isn't nearly *sufficient* to exclude all other possibilities of natural warming.

Furthermore, you've had ever increasing CO2 for the past 20 years, and by various temperature sets, up to 20 years or more of no statistically significant warming...would you consider that a falsification?

Consensus is not science.

Vaccination science includes the possibility of falsification. AGW does not. Therefore, vaccination science is true not because there is a consensus, but because there is a falsifiable hypothesis statement that has been ruthlessly attacked, even by its proponents, and it has survived.

Global warming nazis seem to have lots of mod points today :)

  1. The use of psychobabble – words that sound scientific and professional but are used incorrectly, or in a misleading manner.

"consistent with"

2. A substantial reliance on anecdotal evidence.

computer models

3. Extraordinary claims in the absence of extraordinary evidence.

poor proxies taken as irrefutable, designed with algorithms that generate hockey sticks out of red noise.

4. Claims which cannot be proven false.

the worst part of the AGW trope - no necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement. Every observation is considered "consistent with".

5. Claims that counter established scientific fact.

AGW doesn't hit this so much, since it's mostly a "heads I win, tails you lose" assertion.

6. Absence of adequate peer review.

AGW is notorious for "pal review"

7. Claims that are repeated despite being refuted.

Ah, the "97% of scientists" claim :)

No. Butterflies are carbon neutral.

Balderdash. Every creature that respirates and exhales CO2 is by definition not carbon neutral.

Yes. The scientists have helpfully collected all the evidence in the IPCC AR5.

Evidence? They've *asserted* that they've detected AGW of significant magnitude, but provide no necessary and sufficient falsifiable hypothesis statement to that effect. They make a claim, but it's not a scientific one.

I'm beginning to worry that you really think that's what the 95% confidence interval we mentioned means.

You seem to think that it means that you've got a 1 in 20 chance of being right. More specifically, NOAA 2008 is asserting that given an observation of 15+ years of no statistically significant warming, but rising CO2, it only has a 1 in 20 chance of being right. If you believe NOAA 2008 is indeed an exemplar of AGW science, then there's only a 5% chance you're right. If you believe that you can preserve the central conceit of AGW by simply making wildly varying predictions, and ignoring the ones that fail, then you're playing "heads I win, tails you lose" :)

Of course AGW happens in the trivial sense - BGW (butterfly global warming), caused by CO2 emissions from butterflies also happens in the trivial sense.

The question is, do we have any reason to believe that AGW (or BGW) is of any significant magnitude that can be detected within natural climate change?

Since we've only got one world, I'd rather bet on the 19 in 20 chance and not destroy our economy and drive the world into abject poverty, than bet on the 1 in 20 chance :)

What is simple is that fact that CO2 absorbs infra-red light.

So does H2O. Should we be worried about our emissions of water vapor? :)

What you've identified there is something that is *necessary* for AGW to be true, but not *sufficient*. You cannot go from the spectral absorption spectrum of a molecule, skip all the bits in between, and then declare that it is that molecule, and furthermore human emissions of that molecule, that overwhelm natural variation of the concentration of that molecule in the atmosphere.

You're going to need more.

Yes, but there were giant fucking lizards back then, not people.

Please don't tell me you think a warming world is going to cause the dinosaurs to rise up again :)

Not in a way that will let us stay alive.

And there we have it - you've got blinders on. A lack of imagination, a hubris of place, insisting that there is no way that a large, complex, multivariate and stochastic self-regulating system like the earth can survive humanity's emissions of a trace gas measured in parts per million :)

If you're honest with yourself, you'll realize that there is no combination of CO2 and temperature variation over any time scale that would cause you to challenge your deeply held beliefs.

"death with higher temperatures" == "dealt with higher temperatures"

Damn spell check can't figure out context :)

There are people making stupid arguments on your side of the debate too.

Agreed. The primary reason, though, is that we're arguing before agreeing on the basic premises of the scientific method - is falsifiability required, or not? When it's not, arguments range all over the place.

You conveniently left out the part where I acknowledged that CO2 isn't the only driver of temperature.

Okay, so now you've got an open ended ad hoc special pleading - whenever observations don't match your predictions, you simply invoke "other drivers" and retain your central conceit.

What if the observations of warming were driven by something else besides CO2 that you didn't look at? Say, a naturally occurring warming trend in PDO/ADO?

The temperatures are determined by the crystal size, which don't tend to move very much.

Which are also of a much lower resolution than our instrumental data, even if they don't move much. You can't get a daily, or even a monthly temperature out of an ice core.

That's one of the reasons that the currently high levels of CO2 are so alarming: we're way beyond what the planet has dealt with before, so we've used up all of the buffer and we're on the way up even faster now.

That's an assertion, not a fact. The planet has *obviously* dealt with higher levels of CO2 in the past, and will obviously deal with higher levels of CO2 in the future. We've also death with higher temperatures in the past, and we will obviously deal with higher temperatures in the future.

Is it even possible for you to conceive of a buffer that could completely negate the minor human contribution of CO2 emissions?

Who said that we approach truth through statistics?

The folks who defend the lack of falsifiability in AGW by promoting the masses of "evidence" that are "consistent with" their hypothesis. The argument goes something like this:

* we've got all this evidence
* most of this evidence (call it a vast majority) is "consistent" with our hypothesis
* therefore even if there is contradictory evidence, we can ignore it because it's outweighed by the rest of the mass of evidence.

So, you find a Cancer who doesn't fit their astrological profile, and you dismiss them because *most* Cancers do fit their astrological profile.

Temperature increases lead to an increase in CO2 and increases in CO2 lead to increases in temperature.

That's not necessarily true - we have temperature increases independent of CO2 changes, and CO2 increases independent of temperature changes at times.

The part you missed was "all things being equal", which, of course, is never true of our climate system :) It *never* stays still and lets only one variable change.

seeing higher rates of change of temperature than are seen in the ice cores.

You'll note that rates of change detected in ice cores are dampened by the nature of air flow through ice, as well as the poor resolution. Can't compare apples and oranges here :)

Thought experiment for you:

Imagine a chemical buffer (a solution which when acid is added, it's neutralized, and when base is added, it's neutralized). It seems miraculous that it can in fact, react to both acids and bases in the *opposite* way (it will make acids more basic, but make bases more acidic). What if this is the way CO2 in the atmosphere works?

What if, the CO2 levels in the atmosphere are actually *buffered*, and "excess" CO2 emissions are removed (neutralized), while any "excess" CO2 sinks generate a reaction of *more* CO2 (neutralized)? Can you imagine the possibility that CO2 levels in the atmosphere could be independent of various emissions/sinks, and are instead buffered towards a set point primarily driven by something else? Say, for example, the temperature of the oceans (driven by all kinds of thermodynamic currents and albedo controlled not by CO2, but by clouds), driving the sourcing and sinking of CO2 as a matter of partial pressure...