if something new comes up it should be impossible to have a policy for twenty years
I 'spose if the Sun is going to explode next year we should probably act faster but in general that's right: we shouldn't enact policy whose cost has a dozen zeros behind it until the science has been generating reliable predictions for decades.
If there was a simulation that not only tested warming, but also provided accurate modelling about what exactly might be causing it, and most importantly, the outcomes of various policy decisions that could be taken to alleviate the issue, you might then be able to more closely compare an engineering task force with national and international politics.
Hear hear!
How does one determine when science has "fully resolved" a question ?
When the theory accounts for the evidence from all repeatable experiments and sufficient time has passed (typically a couple of decades) during which new experiments aggressively attempting to disprove the theory fail to turn up evidence which either contradicts the theory or requires the theory to be modified.
It's impossible to not have a policy while we wait.
We had no public policy on CO2 emissions for most of recorded history. The world has not ended.
Proposed policy on global warming is expensive. Too expensive to get a second chance if we get it wrong the first time. The smart money says: wait until the computer models become reliable enough to simulate exactly what will and won't work. God help us if we regulate CO2 and it turns out that global warming was real but carbon soot was the main problem.
None. When science hasn't fully resolved a question based on the evidence, none of the competing theories should be used as a basis for public policy.
Yes, it's called consensus and no, it isn't science. Not when politicians do it. Not when scientists do it.
1) They have a ton of integrity.
Scientists have as much (or as little) integrity as the next guy. Fortunately the scientific method yields tools for outing the ones who acted with little integrity. Unfortunately, scientists with little integrity tend to move the discussion into into politics before the integrity problem can catch up with them, after which science kinda goes out the window.
Manning stands accused of the latter. Some of his emails focused on how to discredit folks who dispute his findings suggest those accusations have some merit. If you want to keep politics out of science, you simply can't engage on a political level.
2) They're succeed by finding new things and changing the established thinking.
No. Just no. Finding a new way to confirm an old theory is just as successful science as testing a new theory. Finding a way to refute an established theory is highly successful science which rarely happens, and finding the new theory that fits all the data -and- whose predictions survive the test of time is rare genius.
Test of time is important. If you have to incrementally revise the theory as new data comes in, it's not a very solid theory.
3) They use the peer review system to enforce rigorous standards.
A theory which, sadly, has been discredited in the past decade or so.
Well, if it's goal was improved reliability or making the sysadmin's life easier it missed by quite a bit. If it's goal was something else, then it's moving in a direction other than the reason I wanted Debian for.
Red Hat uses upstart. It's as nasty if not nastier than systemd.
I think of it like passing programs between processes like bash now does in the environment variables.
DO. NOT. WANT.
I picked my two: reliable and simple. That's why I picked Debian. If my priority was "fast" I'd have picked Gentoo and suffered.
See init get complicated in the name of a faster boot gives me heartburn.
Thing is, I've been using it to build sheds and I'd like to keep using it to build sheds. Don't insist I use bridge-building techniques to build a shed.
Help me out here. My search for "Realclimate model data comparisons" doesn't include anything labelled as being from GISS model E.
You know what I'm looking for. Items 3, 4 and 5. I want to read something that's on point. Essentially, a "control" prediction that excludes human causes, an "experimental" prediction that includes human causes and a comparison of the two predictions against measurements in which the "experimental" prediction is within the measurement error and the "control" prediction is not.
Beat me to it. 535 more and they'd have a full 16 bits.
Emotionally charged labels tend to obstruct honest, factual debate.
Also I heard a neat saying once: "There are three kinds of mistruth: lies, damn lies and statistics." Statistics is an incredible valuable tool in the arsenal of science, but it's also one of the most commonly misused tools.
Here, let me ask you an honest question. Give me a name or a link to a climate change model which meets the following criteria:
1. The model was created at least 10 years ago.
2. The model can be fed data about suspected human and non-human causes for global warming.
3. When fed such data for the last 10 years twice, once including suspected human causes and once excluding them, it makes two predictions for world conditions today.
4. The difference between those two predictions is statistically significant versus measurement error.
5. World conditions today are consistent with the prediction made when including both suspected human and non-human causes for global warning and are not consistent with the prediction that excluded human causes.
I'm a skeptic. Not a denier, a skeptic. When I see a model that exhibits solid predictive value year over year, I'll be a believer. Until then, what I see is a lot of scientists taking sloppy shortcuts and then trying to cover the gap with dirty politics.
I know science. And I know politics. And the BS in TFA is pure politics.
This will backfire. The idiots driving this would associate dissent on climate change predictions with folks who reject the historical fact of the Holocaust, the only other place where the term "deniers" is routinely used.
You can't have a brain in your head and seriously think that the modern climate change predictions have a comparable level of certainty to the historical fact of the holocaust. This sort of gross overreach is obvious even to mere mortals who can't readily follow the scientific arguments for or against global warming. It makes the speaker, and every other claim he makes, suspect.
The media has done climate change scientists a great favor by labeling the folks who still challenge the predictions as "skeptics." That word carries connotations of government conspiracy and alien abductions. It's a gift.
Real Programmers don't eat quiche. They eat Twinkies and Szechwan food.
