Climate Control.

I'm in the "undecided, but something must be done" group. The anti-climate change people seem over-confident to me, and there are vested interests there. It is reminiscent of the backlash against Darwin from religious vested interests. The predictions of how much warming might occur seem to vary wildly, and I am far from certain that anyone will guess the correct answer.

I also think it's scandalous how little use we make of solar, wind and tidal resources.

 

As a sceptic I'd like to see the billions invested in climate science redirected towards more pressing matters. Because the argument to consume substantially less doesn't need AGW to be compelling.

Paul

 

i would agree that the use of clean enregy etc is the way forward, but simply would consider it to play out in the natural course of progression, certainly shouldn't be seen as extraordinary, nothing radical, no need to be, just a part of the journey, though i guess the restriction/holding back of such by those with a vested interest elsewhere hasn't helped, those being the very same see through brownshirts that are now spouting hot on change coming hand in hand with fear of doom and tax. Its so deceitfully obvious.

 

i did mention on this thread about the tiltting of the earth poles, having looked at an aciant book on the astrology about the polar calander by a tribe of the maya, their calander stops on the 21'st december 2012, mith or fact? we can be sure of one thing the mith is the green factor making money brigade,
nando.

 

There is no more pressing matter

It is indeed uncertain how much warming will occur - its just too complex a system and forecasting is much harder than showing global warming exists. Advances in ensemble based modelling can improve the accuracy of the forecast by "blurring" out the uncertainties and obtaining a probability distribution of outcomes. We can also look at the shift of consensus over time to determine the likely bias of our forecasts. Currently this seems to indicate that we are underestimating the effects in the officially endorsed predictions (which are additionally watered down for political reasons). The social effects are often exaggerated by the greens however.

 

I thought you were a scientist.

Paul

 

I haven't read the thread, but try Durex Performa. They are supposed to help

 

I am - that was science. With a little coaching you might be able to spot it.

 

Connecting any such probability distribution to reality makes unwarranted assumptions about independence in the models.

Hunch based science?

Really, this is GCSE stuff.

Paul

 

I am afraid you haven't understood. Ensemble based forecasting is at the cutting edge of statistical research at post doc level and beyond in a variety of scientific contexts - it is about as far away from and opposed to gcse maths as you can get. The ensembles refer to a collection of artificially created models that are varied independently. Using this approach it is possible to deal with uncertainties, biases and incorrect knowledge and mitigate their effects by blurring them out. It is a technique that has been used successfully in weather forecasting behind the scenes for many years to improve forecasting and put bounds on uncertainty.

The trouble is the average guy on the street will never understand things like Bayesian statistics or probability distributions etc. For instance a forecast that says there is a 70% chance of 10 inches of snow and a 30% chance of 100 inches gets translated into public speak as "ten inches of snow" - and then the public gets annoyed when ten times as much snow arrived as they weren't told about it even though the forecast behind the scenes knew this was a very real possibility. I doubt the public would be happy with being given the probabilistic forecasts directly and this is but the simplest aspect of the kind of maths behind the science. And so it is with climate change itself - the public cant deal with the facts behind the matter. Far less than 1% of the population is capable of grasping the maths behind it, the same as they have no chance of grasping the maths behind the LHC. Its not elitist the facts are the facts. Thats what experts are for.

Existence at it heart is probabilistic starting at the quantum level. It is the nature of reality and science process is built upon it. To discredit climate change on the basis of "hunch based science" is to discredit the whole of science and is not a tenable position.

 

ALL OF YOU HAVE MISSED THE PLOT, not you simon or rob, please you so called scientits have a study on the earth's tilting angle over the last millium years, divide by 9 months per year and hence , here we are ,what was earth became ice and what is ice will be earth, global worming, yeah right, more money to suck,
nando.