What climate change is not

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by billvon, Jan 28, 2020.

  1. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    This is not how scientific discussion works. The person who makes a claim has to present evidence for the claim. If it is not an own argument, but reference to scientific source, this has to include a quote or some own verbal summary of some claim made in the literature, together with a reference to the particular paper.
    Postings in such forums are open to everybody, even to those who have not read any scientific literature.
    General accusations of type "read the literature" make no sense, except as a personal attack. If somebody shows some error, the appropriate reaction is to correct the error, and if necessary to refer to some source where one can read more details about the particular question where the error occurred. For elementary errors, even wikipedia may be sufficient, for more subtle things references to textbooks, reviews, or even original articles.
    Maybe, but once you give no quote and no reference, it counts only as your personal fantasy claim.
    Feel free to present what "volatility" refers to in the "research" you name "AGW research", by presenting a quote, with reference, of the correct definition, and showing that the differences are really relevant (that means not simply word games).
    That would mean that the areas where we have such climate now should be deserts, or at least not usable for any agriculture now. That means, your sources are simply alarmists.
    No. 20% more arid would be 80% less arid, that sounds plausible if the average is more precipitation. Ok, there may be some part which is neutral (not enough change to cross thresholds in whatever direction). What I expect is only that the areas which become more arid are smaller than those which become less arid. So 20% crossing some threshold toward more arid, and 40% crossing some threshold toward less arid would be also inside of what I expect.
     
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  3. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    Good thing I'm not having a scientific discussion with you.
    And it will remain such as long as you refuse to read the research and so forth - the entire real world will remain, for you, a "personal fantasy claim" and nothing more.
    That's not what the AGW researchers found most likely.
    I presented you an entire article, with graphs and the like - quote it yourself.
    The areas where we have such climate now are the ones the authors used to help them predict the consequences of AGW. You can find that information in the article I referenced, or any other of the dozens of similar reports in the rest of the literature you have not read.
    Your expectations conflict with the findings and expectations and most likely predictions of the AGW researchers.

    Why do you suppose that is?
     
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  5. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    It remains to stop your personal attacks and your posts will be empty.
    And I have seen nothing unexpected there. Thresholds are natural, I have known about them and seen many already during my childhood (you know, in the mountains there are several of them in quite short distances).
    Of course, if somewhere the climate becomes more arid, one can see in actual deserts what will happen in these parts. Which is what I have told you many times here. So, nothing unexpected.
    If you think so, refer to a particular paper, a vague reference to "thousands others" is empty nonsense, and the one you presented has not contained anything unexpected for me.
    Why I expect larger areas becoming less arid in comparison with becoming more arid? Because this is what one can plausibly expect if there will be, in the average, more precipitation. Of course, this is only a plausible expectation, in principle one can invent situations where we obtain more deserts even with more precipitation, but this would be quite implausible, thus, it would require strong explanation. This is what educated common sense tells me about what follows from more precipitation in the average.

    Why your "AGW researchers" think different? Because describing them as alarmists is more accurate.
     
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  7. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    hmmmm...
     
  8. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    As noted, you are incapable of handling statistical analysis at even an elementary level. That has been obvious for a long time, on this forum.

    But even more strikingly, your "expectation" conflicts with the recorded data, the research findings, the results of theoretical analysis, and the output of the best verified models when used for prediction - the entire body of AGW research and the related sciences in general - as exemplified in a peer reviewed and journal published scientific paper that's right in front of you.

    Where would anyone find such an "expectation"? It's not in the math, the theory, the models, or the recorded physical facts. It directly conflicts with the contents of every scientific paper you have ever seen on the subject, including the one directly in front of you here. It cannot be inductively reasoned from experience or deductively reasoned from basic principles.

    It is found in one place. There is one known source for that "expectation", and it matches not only your conclusion but your approach ("bothsides") and your reasoning (balancing assumed bias) and your specific vocabulary ("alarmist") and your specific errors (e.g. you distribute averages evenly over entire domains by assumption, an elementary error of reasoning normally corrected very early in someone's education but endemic to the point of characteristic in certain political factions and their media feeds).
    You can read that "strong explanation" in the paper I referenced here - or any of the hundreds of reports of similar findings by AGW researchers, at least three of which I have posted on this forum for you to check out.
    You've checked nothing out, of course. Like the rest of the wingnut feeders here and everywhere on the internet, you never factcheck anything you post.
    Why? A question of several levels.
    Lessee:
    >>Your opinions are downloaded from manipulated propaganda websites featuring corporate media feeds from US marketing professionals.

    >>Their opinions are their own, based on competent statistical analysis and recorded physical fact and painstakingly calibrated models and carefully vetted theory and years of research findings from their work in the real world.

    >>Of course they are different.

    That's one level of explanation. The question of "why" can be taken deeper than that, naturally. Probably in another thread.
     
  9. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    Except that you failed to show anything in this direction. The "this is obvious" trick may work for fools who, for whatever reason, think you have some statistical knowledge or so. And, no, there is no conflict between my expectations and the recorded data. I expect that the world becomes greener, and the world really became greener during the last decades. Instead, the paper in front of me contains some interesting data, but nothing in conflict with my expectations.
    It is elementary plausible reasoning. If we know nothing about a dice, plausible reasoning prescribed to use 1/6 as the probability. If nothing is known about a connection between A and B, plausible reasoning prescribes their independence P(AB)=P(A)P(B). Everything else requires explanation, nontrivial additional information. So, if precipitation is increasing, and nothing is known where it is increasing, plausible reasoning prescribes a homogeneous increase in the probability of precipitation everywhere.
    This is an example of discrediting of the logic of plausible reasoning. This is a problem, given that all what one learns in school is elementary Boolean logic, and how to handle probabilities (the logic of plausible reasoning) remains unknown. Moreover, even if it this sort of logic one needs in real life, it is often intentional discredited. Most of what is named "logical errors" by the half-educated is not an error at all but reasonable plausible reasoning, which works fine if handled appropriately. So, I distribute averages of the increase in precipitation evenly over the entire domain not by some assumption, but by absence of information which would justify the use of a different, more complicate distribution. This is the same thing known as "zero hypothesis". If I have no information, I assume statistical independence. If somebody claims statistical is wrong, he has to present nontrivial evidence. This may be an observation, but in this case one has a scientific problem to explain it.
    Once you don't even understand the basics of Bayesian probability and name it "elementary error of reasoning", you are obviously also unable to identify the information which would really contradict my expectations. Such information is not found in that paper. (And don't forget the basics: Even hundreds of alarmist reports prove nothing, while a single good paper can prove a lot.)
     
  10. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    As your first clue: the findings and analyses reported in that paper (and in all of AGW research to date) do in fact contradict your "expectations". If one were to treat your proposed expectations as hypotheses - the term used in science for a proposal that has nothing to recommend it except its "plausibility" in the eyes of its proponent - one would simply and immediately reject them and move on. They were tested, and found to be wrong.

    As your second: Typing the word "Bayesian" does not correct your elementary errors of reasoning above - which as I have pointed out are largely the result of your familiar inability to handle the concept of an "average", a gap in your education that has little to do with Bayes Theorem, and your likewise familiar ignorance of the physical reality involved - a matter you are on record defending, since it preserves your neutrality between the "sides" of such questions, and allows you to glean information by evaluating each "side's" claims and arguments and so forth as propaganda.

    In scientific matters such complete ignorance will lead even those making valid arguments into frequent error. In your situation, where you are also incapable of statistical reasoning, scientifically your situation is hopeless. You will fail to be wrong only by unlikely chance.
    Uh, no. It is not plausible, in the least. Not even close. It is not only invalid in its reasoning (at a schoolboy level) but flagrantly factually wrong in the assumptions employed by the invalid argument. That's about as far from plausibility as one can get.

    And those factual errors were made with many of their corrections - the established facts of the physical situation - right in front of you, plainly written by credentialed and peer-reviewed professional researchers in the very field. The net result is posts from you that are little short of bizarre.

    To repeat the summary: Your reasoning is invalid, your assumptions visibly falsehoods, and your conclusion contradicts the data, established physical facts, research findings, modeling predictions, and published peer-reviewed theoretical analysis, of the entire body of AGW research over the past fifty years - including the journal article I handed you specifically, so you could read up on the subject of AGW.

    That's not interesting any more.
    - - -
    But there is an interesting matter made visible - once again - by these posts. Consider:

    The typical poster of corporate rightwing bs is ignorant of the basic physical facts of the situation, as well as the means of analysis they themselves claim to employ. They often use big words with technical meanings, but they misuse them - they combine them in odd ways that do not quite mean anything, and do not apply to the matter at hand (e.g."Bayesian probability", whatever that means here, used despite having no idea what a priori probability distributions are involved, and in the middle of attempting to deny the very finding that an application of Bayes Theorem here would employ).

    They claim great interest in, and reliance on, "science" - but actual scientific papers they dismiss as works of political bias, describe in propaganda and political terms only ("alarmist"), and refuse to argue against or apparently even read. (In this case, for instance, the poster has apparently completely overlooked the entire content of the journal article they dismiss, as if they had read neither the article itself or the posted reference to it they pretended to be answering: note they have yet to mention "threshold", the central and emphasized and all-important concept in the article, the reason for posting the reference to it).

    Their posts containing reasoning are mistaken in their logic as well as assumptions, and come to conclusions directly in conflict with a physical reality anyone can verify at will. (In this example: They "conclude" that the 20% they have decided comprises all land becoming more arid - their misreading - coupled with average rainfall increasing, meant that the entire other 80% would "plausibly" be expected to become better suited for agriculture by becoming less arid - a "conclusion" the article itself explicitly showed via evidence and argument was physically, factually, not the case.)
    Instead of reacting to the factual conflict by revisiting their reasoning and discovering their several errors
    (their assumption that the average increase in rainfall would distribute itself among the 80%, when that was not only invalid logic but as a physical hypothesis had been explicitly dismissed; their odd obliviousness to the central importance of thresholds rather than trend alone, the major finding of the paper and the central matter of my referring post; their error of ignorance in thinking "aridity" referred to average absolute yearly rainfall rather than the average relationship between need and availability of water, a key factor in the assessment of the consequences of the expected volatility; and so forth. )
    they use the conflict - a conflict with reality itself - as a means of defining political identities.

    The net result is a propaganda tactic that uses ignorance in the disseminator - not the target, the propagandist - as a tool for identity creation and enforcement, as a means of promoting the desired illusion of group identity in the target population - advancing the goal of creating an identity group of the willfully and manipulably ignorant by forcing a choice between ignorant incomprehension and knowledgable comprehension - and then sealing the border, enforcing the choice by making public humiliation without access to public discussion the price of crossing it.

    In this case the entire body of AGW research has been labeled "alarmist", its findings buried by misrepresentation ("aridity") or omission ("threshold"), and everyone who can identify the flaws in Schmelzer's idiotic "argument" has been lumped with everyone who can comprehend what the crossing of even one of those thresholds - let alone two or all three - means for the human population in that region, everyone who knows what an increasingly hotter climate featuring months or years of drought followed by intervals of sporadic torrential storm followed by drought's return means for agriculture in that region, and so forth, into a labeled faction of inaudible minority political opinion.

    This is not an invention of Schmelzer's, or Seattle's, or Sculptor's, or the Captain's, or any of these guys's. Neither is it an accident, a Socially Darwinian behavioral trait that confers benefits. It has an origin, if not an originator.
     
  11. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    5,003
    Iceaura can obviously write a lot of text which contains only a single bit of information, namely that he thinks I'm stupid. The only thing I was able to find which is slightly beyond "you are stupid" was the following claim:
    That is at least a claim about something which has been found by scientists. Feel free to present the evidence for this. I have explained how to do this.

    Don't forget to name the particular hypothesis which was rejected, and a quote from me that I have really supported that hypothesis, with link. The important part would be the quote from the particular paper which shows that the hypothesis is rejected, and a reference to the paper itself.
    "The poster" seems to refer to me. Let's see if I have not yet mentioned "threshold":
    So, iceaura lies, as usual.

    By the way, in the last quote I have considered two possibilities for interpretation of the 20%. namely either simply "more arid" or "a lot more arid so that threshold is crossed", and then concentrated on the second one. What makes iceaura out of this? The following:
    That's another lie. It is also a dangerous one, because it can be applied against me quite universally. As a mathematician, I like to take into consideration all imaginable interpretations. So, all iceaura has to do is to use the worst one of those I have considered, and blaming me for being wrong about this.
    This is not an error, but another example of plausible reasoning. I do not think their notion of "aridity" refers to absolute yearly rainfall - a claim which is, as usual, iceaura's fantasy. But, however it is defined in detail, an increase in absolute yearly rainfall will, plausibly, decrease aridity. As usual for such plausible reasoning, there will be exceptions, but they will be unimportant in the average.

    The only factual error in the discussion of this paper was iceaura's. He thinks that those thresholds could be used for alarmist purposes: Up to now, no thresholds have yet been crossed, thus, up to now it looks harmless, but then the threshold comes, and then there will be the catastrophe. He ignores that this is the picture how it looks at a single fixed place. But over a large region, aridity is variable, not constant. So, the thresholds define borders between different regions, and in general these borders change continuously if the aridity changes continuously even if there are thresholds. So, the thresholds do not lead to discontinuities in time on the large scale, but to continuously shifting borders. But such a continuously shifting border means you can see even today both sides. The easiest place to see them are mountains, because with height the situation becomes less comfortable for plants. And you have thresholds there too. Below there is wood, then bushes, then grass and even higher nothing:

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    So we have several thresholds here. Between wood and bushes, between bushes and grass, and between grass and nothing. So what will happen if the weather becomes warmer (colder)? The borders between the different types of plants will move up (down). Continuously. (These borders here are defined mainly by temperature and wind, because this is what changes most with height, but conceptually this is the same thing.) Despite the thresholds, there will be continuity in the change.

    And this is dangerous for the alarmists, given that what actually happens is not horrible at all, the Earth becomes greener instead. But the alarmists need something horrible, so they have to invent some thresholds, and they have to be global thresholds and thresholds in time - the whole climate all over the Earth changes slowly, then comes the global threshold, and then we all die. So, naturally alarmist iceaura is very happy about at least some thresholds. But unfortunately those thresholds don't give what is required for alarmists.
    Another lie. What I have named "alarmist" is not real research, but iceaura's alarmist claims about its results. The only scientific paper he presented - the one with the thresholds - I have not named alarmist, but accepted without hesitation as it is. The link I have explicitly named alarmist was not at all a scientific article, but from the mass media, and I have given an explicit omission of something positive as the justification for this classification.

    Alarmism is something which can be easily identified, by the omission of all those facts which suggest either some positive outcomes of AGW, or suggest that the consequences will not be that horrible.
     
    Last edited: Mar 26, 2020
  12. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    All my claims regarding AGW here have been of findings by scientists.

    Contrary to my experience-informed custom in dealing with you, this one time I briefly returned to my old habits and handed you a perfectly adequate and thorough journal published peer reviewed paper, one that covered all the issues of the posts involved and well represented AGW research in general. You were unable to deal with it, as always before. So back to normal - you do your own homework, and run your own errands.
    Thresholds - the term and concept in the article - are not found in distances on mountains. The word would be literary, not scientific, in that context.

    Typing the word is not mentioning the concept. The ecosystem boundaries in space you apparently are referring to in mountains, for example, are not the same thing - apparently you have no idea what the article was about, which explains why you didn't "find" anything "unexpected" in it despite its direct contradiction of your posting here. Probably you haven't read it. ( As English is not your native language, your misuse of the word when cornered could be put down to benign error - in my opinion deliberate deflection, intentional avoidance of the matter at hand, is more likely).

    You have posted nothing that mentions the thresholds that are the major finding and central subject of the article. Nothing. You blew it off completely, and then went all Dunning-Kruger on reasoning from statistical averages, once again without bothering to learn what they are averages of.
    Nonsense. That would have required you to separate my claims from the research, which would have required not only reading and comprehending my claims but also reading and comprehending the research itself - you have never done that, and never will. (You needn't bother - it wouldn't work: my claims are not different from the content, methods, or findings, of the research).

    Meanwhile: You have labeled the entire body of AGW research, every AGW researcher, and all related science, "alarmist" - here, and in several previous threads. You even explained why they were "alarmist" - you posted about how you thought they were funded and what kinds of political pressure you thought they were responding to, and claiming that was why they did not (according to you) publish findings of benefits and good news about AGW. You weren't talking about my claims, when you posted that.
    Here you are again, posting that same stupidity from the same complete ignorance and basic incapability, as in so many other threads:
    It's not that you're stupid, necessarily - that's possible, since the post is so comically dumb and you've repeated it so many times, but other explanations are more likely in my opinion.

    And the main reason those other explanations are more likely is that you are typical of a faction - there are too many of you guys all posting the same idiotic bs from the same US corporate rightwing authoritarian Republican media feed. Even if you were all stupid (which is possible) you would not all be stupid the same way together by accident - some other explanation is in order.

    And that's where things get interesting. Your latest wack meandering around whatever you have mistaken or misrepresented some article you haven't read to be about is boring - the fact that you are acting in synchrony with a famous, familiar, and fascistic US based propaganda operation is worth tracking, imho.

    What does the American fascist movement gain from having its minions run around denying AGW?
     
    Last edited: Mar 27, 2020
  13. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    In theory, this is imaginable. But unfortunately you have not provided the evidence, by quotes and links to the scientific research which backs all your claims.
    Indeed, you have given one published peer-reviewed paper, and, as usual, failed to present something in contradiction with my claims.
    The borders between the different ecosystems you can see on the ground are, of course, not the same thing as the thresholds in the article. Because the thresholds in the article, combined with a continuous change of the climate on the ground, are the explanation for the borders you can see on the ground. Of course, the cause used in an explanation is different from what is explained.

    Beyond this trivial difference, there is also a difference in the parameters of the climate which are relevant for the particular differences. It is aridity in the context of the article, temperature and wind in the mountains. The climate factors which are decisive for this are different because aridity is nothing which differs in short ranges in the mountains. Changes in aridity also lead to borders on the ground between different ecosystems, it is just not as obvious for small distances as in the mountains, where you can see four different ecosystems - woods, bushes, grass, nothing - in a single picture. Moreover, the regular sequence of the different ecosystems in dependence of the height makes it quite obvious that the ecosystem depends on the local climate, in particular the temperature. That the local average temperature changes continuously with the height is obvious, that the response of the ecosystems is discontinuous is obvious too. So, what leads to the picture we see are several thresholds of temperature. (With the additional dependence on the stress created by winds, so that plants can survive lower temperature if they are protected, by rocks, from storms.)

    If there are other relevant differences, beyond these two points, feel free to explain them.
    A nice try to excuse your obvious lie. Because even if you were correct, and my understanding of the thresholds was wrong, this does not change the point that I have mentioned them.
    No. All what is necessary is the point that you have not given any support for your claims, even after my repeated requests. What you claim here are, obviously, your claims, but if they have some relation to actual research or not is something you have to prove by presenting the evidence, with reference to peer-reviewed published papers and quotes from these papers which show that these papers support your claims. And this has to be done for every of your claims. The burden of proof is on your side.
    Again in Goebbels mode of repeating lies often enough? I have accused you of naming "AGW research" what is in reality alarmist nonsense, that's all. This is certainly not a claim about AGW research itself.
    Another lie. I have studied the influence of political pressure on scientific research, and we have considered here a particular example of such pressure and how science responds to it, in the discussion about that child labor article. This was not about AGW. Instead, I have clarified many times that to make claims how climate research handles the existing political pressures one has to study climate research in detail, down to the footnotes in the articles. (This is because scientists can be much more open about politically unwanted truths inside the articles.) I have never claimed to have made such a research for climate science, thus, also not made claims about how political pressure has influenced scientific publications in climate science. I have restricted my claims to the presentation of the mass media, where it is quite obvious that benefits and good news about AGW are not presented.
    One ghost driver? Hundreds, hundreds ....
     
  14. iceaura Valued Senior Member

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    30,994
    You were dumb and wrong about that too - betraying incomprehension of "equilibrium" along with your standard rejection of all physical evidence and research findings.
    It is also temperature and wind in the context of the article, aridity in the mountains (those are all factors in the actual parameter of interest) - but the major finding of the research reported is the existence of thresholds (rather than concurrent steady change) in the ecological response to the expected evapotranspirative deficit trend.
    Put another way: It is sudden qualitative change over time of ecological boundaries in the article, stable quantitative persistence through time of ecological boundaries on a mountain.

    You are once again attempting to misuse a term ("threshold", this time) and then base some kind of personal accusation on your private usage - yet another characteristic tactic of the crowd I mentioned, your membership being the only feature of your posts here worth anyone's attention ( even your fantasy world is derivative, fed to you by pros, and familiar to any American ever trapped in a truck with a talk radio wingnut).
    You did that while having directly in front of you the most recent article I had named "AGW research".
    That's what you named "alarmist", "alarmist nonsense", and so forth - that's the article you accused me of naming "AGW research", that you knew to be "alarmist nonsense"; that journal published peer reviewed technical report of scientific field research and data analysis and theory application, written by people whose credentials, job titles, and daily routines are all those of professional scientists in hard science fields, is the most recent example of the "alarmist nonsense" you are "accusing" me of naming "AGW research".

    And you have made dozens of similar claims and accusations, about all kinds of scientific research reports dealing with AGW or its effects, likely consequences, etc. They were all "alarmist", according to you. My naming them "AGW research" was evidence that I was an "alarmist" myself.
    Those were standard, journal published, peer reviewed, reports of scientific research. You labeled them "alarmist", and even explained why they were so biased and alarmist (all those ignorant and silly claims about the pressure and funding - claims directed at the AGW research only.) You did that.

    Not only that: You lumped that AGW research in with my claims, without distinguishing between them.

    So in fact you have presented no evidence that you were ever talking about my claims - one can assume that, or take your word for it after you've been cornered in a stupidity and denied everything you just did, but one cannot verify the assertion by simply reading your posts. In your posts you refer to even quotes and direct repetitions of AGW research reports as "alarmist", and you never separate the scientific reports or their repeated and quoted contents from my claims.

    Briefly: If you haven't separated my claims from the AGW research reports, your claim to have separated them - referred to one without referring to the other - is a false claim.
    So research reports published in "Science" and similar journals don't count as support - in a science forum.

    That's unfair - you can't tell the difference between my claims and the AGW research reports, and I shouldn't pick on you for that, especially when I do not intend to provide such support in a format you can recognize frequently or at all -

    - but then you are certain that the labels and accusations you post are directed at my claims, not the AGW research. How does that work? Maybe like this: My claims are all "alarmist", I am biasing my claims to curry favor with liberal government grant sources and liberal professors with statist agendas and other forces of the necessarily neoliberal but not capitalist deep State, and you can tell I am posting "alarmist" stuff because I don't include in my research reports the proper amount of good news and benefits from AGW that you know exists in reality because it has to exist in reality according to your reasoning about propaganda.

    I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried. I can, however, recognize it when it keeps coming around - from my TV, from my newspaper, from the net, from every medium used by American fascist propaganda to target the ignorant and gullible.

    So to return to the interesting question of the thread: why is the American fascist propaganda operation sending its minions out to trash AGW science and climate change research, attack personally anyone who defends them or respects them, and attempt to deflect attention from the incoming consequences of the CO2 boost to various happy-talk images of a warmer, wetter, better, nicer climate soon to replace the less agreeable one we've been suffering under?
     
    Last edited: Mar 27, 2020
  15. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

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    As usual, a simple claim without any evidence or reference or quote.

    In https://ilja-schmelzer.de/papers/Basu.pdf I have written down my counterargument against the theoretical argument about multiple equilibria for child labor made by Kaushik Basu, Pham Hoang Van (1998). The Economics of Child Labor, Am. Econ. Rev. 88(3), 412-427. The paper itself is interesting also because its fine print acknowledges many politically incorrect arguments against forbidding child labor. In particular, the paper argues that "many of these well-meaning interventions [against child labor] can be counterproductive".
    Thus, it illustrates that scientific papers often contain in their texts admissions of politically incorrect facts - the way I predict science reacts to political pressures. The main contribution of this paper is, btw, theoretical, and not about physical evidence or empirical research findings, which are mentioned only in section I.
    As mentioned, I have known about those thresholds from my childhood time, and would have expected the existence of such thresholds regarding aridity too. You may be impressed by phrases like "evapotranspirative deficit", that's your problem. For the common sense, this is much simpler, if there is not enough water, certain ecosystems can no longer exist, and other ecosystems, better adapted to aridity, will take the place, until the only replacement is simply a lifeless desert.

    If you consider a fixed point through time, the change will be a sudden one, namely once the border between different ecosystems moves over this place. The border itself has no "quantitative persistence", but moves.

    The question remains what is the point of your claims.
    Which studied a triviality I have known already during my childhood (which does not make it worthless as a scientific article, such things have to be studied in detail much beyond the simple qualitative picture I have seen and learned in my childhood, but this simply explained why I have not found anything surprising in this paper), but proved none of the many alarmist claims you have made. Which remain unsupported alarmist claims until you present scientific evidence for them. Note, separate evidence for each particular claim.
    Stop lying. I have not named the Berdugo et al. 2020 paper alarmist. I attack only your empty claims, as long as they remain unsupported by any research, as alarmist if they are in conflict with common sense.
    I name you an alarmists given the alarmist claims you make all the time. I suspect that most of your sources are simply alarmist media, simply judging from the claims you make. Of course, these may be also misunderstood scientific papers. Alarmists like to misunderstand scientific papers and link sometimes such papers as if they support their alarmist claims. Following the links usually reveals that the alarmist claims are not supported. Or that the research itself is dubious. (Like the one which takes the results of agriculture today in dependence on actual weather conditions, where extreme weather events will naturally cause failure, and extrapolate this - which would be valid only if people would not adapt to climate change at all.)
    Prove these claims with links to my posts where I name a peer-reviewed paper alamist, liar. (Looks like the single Berdugo et al. 2020 paper has gained Pluralis Majestatis.)
    First, fantasy claims without any support presented are not worth to be commented much. One may point to the obvious conflicts with common sense, and the obvious alarmist prejudice, but even this is not necessary once the claim remains without support, The burden of proof is on your side.
    If you have copypasted some of your claims from some alarmist "research", or even from serious research, does not matter. It is nothing I have to check, once you don't mark your quotes as quotes and give the reference to the source, it is only your personal fantasy without any support.
    So. learn to support your claims with scientific evidence. Until you learn how to do this, your claims will be taken as your fantasies, and not as something serious. The separation of your fantasies from serious research is easy, trivial. You have not given any reference supporting your claim -> your fantasy.
    The scientific burden of proof may be considered by some people as unfair. That's their problem.
    No. I don't care about you support. Feel free to support fascism, communism, whatever, as long as you present evidence. So, your claims are alarmist if they are typical for alarmists (namely predict some horrible outcome of AGW) and are not supported by any explicit evidence, in particular by explicit references to the relevant scientific papers.
     
  16. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

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    One can only wonder how the Northern hemisphere summer is going to play out.
    The impact of COVID-19 and climate change events (heat, fires etc) together with economic collapse will be huge IMO.
    The ability to recover from all is going to be challenging.
    Keeping in mind that globally Summer is much longer than in the past...( extra 30 days in Australia is one figure researched here)
     
  17. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    I have never made an alarmist claim about AGW on this forum.
    Btw: you are labeling, not naming. (This continual problem you have with English terms and vocabulary may be your sole remaining excuse for the idiocy you post. I do play fair with you on that score - I keep reminding myself that's a possible good reason you don't know what people are talking about in these papers and so forth, namely that you aren't familiar with the English language).
    This thread right here, above.
    You "named" (labeled, if you care) the contents and findings of the peer reviewed paper I referred to "alarmist", in multiple posts on this thread.
    That's an obvious one.
    Moreover, you have labeled every single such paper - anything like it related to AGW research - you have ever been provided on this forum "alarmist", and referred to the findings of the entire field and all related fields as "alarmist".
    You have no idea what is typical for "alarmists", because you have no idea what the sober and conservative research findings are.

    My claims are simply references to the findings of the scientific researchers in the fields. Since you have not informed yourself about that research, refuse to learn from the information and references I have provided, and don't have the necessary knowledge or skills to reason for yourself in this matter, you think you can claim those findings don't exist without making a fool of yourself. You can't.
    Those ecological boundaries on the mountains are not thresholds in the scientific sense used by the AGW researchers. You are using the wrong word.
    And I read it, and responded to it - explaining to you exactly where you went haywire from ignorance.
    The kicker - and the relevance here - was that your "counterargument" was not only invalidly reasoned, but was contradicted by the physical facts as reported in the paper you were failing to comprehend -

    so that (giving you the benefit of what small doubt remains) your difficulties stemmed largely, it seems, from your failure to understand what the "equilibrium" at the center of the article (its major result or finding) was in physical reality. As with "threshold" here, and "aridity", and "volatility", and so forth, you are continually trying to argue using terms and concepts you don't understand over matters about which you lack physical knowledge. It's your pattern here - something like a dozen issues have been treated to this approach of yours.

    And that may explain why you didn't understand the paper here, or my posts - when you responded to the paper's reasoned expectation that 20% of the land surface of the planet would cross one or more of those thresholds in the near future by arguing that the remaining 80% would become less arid, it wasn't just a comically incompetent attempt at statistical reasoning from averages and a mistaken conception of volatility, or an attempt at deflection from the paper's major argument and conclusion,

    but quite possibly also an indication that you had mistaken "crossing a threshold" to be synonymous with "becoming more arid" - so you thought that the 20% expected to cross thresholds was the total land area that was expected to become more arid. Add in your ignorance of what "volatility" means in that paper, and even "aridity" itself (which you seem to have mistaken for a measure of total average yearly rainfall), and it's no wonder you can't post anything that makes sense about AGW.

    But the question remains: as a genuinely ignorant and sincerely believing minion is still a minion, especially if their ignorance is willful and their belief maintained by diligent denial as here;

    why is the US Republican rightwing corporate authoritarian propaganda operation, the media wing of American fascism, sending its minions out into the real world to disparage the findings of AGW research, attack all reports of those findings and related research, spread silly misconceptions and outright falsehoods all over the media?
     
  18. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    Of course, you call them "AGW research results". But, given that you don't give references to that research (with rare exceptions), and they fulfill the usual properties of alarmist claims, I call them alarmist claims.
    No. These are even several lies. Please give an explicit quotes, with links, to each of these claims.
    I have given a simple criterion, the absence of any positive consequences of AGW. Add the catastrophic character of the negative predictions. Feel free to support your various alarmist claims with explicit quotes and references to conservative research findings to show that they are, despite this, not alarmist.

    The single paper you have referenced does not support your claims. If you think otherwise, quote the relevant claims from the paper.
    I have already explained to you that there is a difference, in #310, namely "the thresholds in the article, combined with a continuous change of the climate on the ground, are the explanation for the borders you can see on the ground. Of course, the cause used in an explanation is different from what is explained". So, learn to read what you respond to. If you have in mind something different, explain it.

    As long as you don't, this remark does not count even as an argument. You seem to think that all you have to do is to name something false. As if you would be an acknowledged authority. You are not. You are just a pseudonymous poster who is famous for namecalling, lies about what other people have said, and other types of inadequate behavior, that's all. If such a person says "you are wrong", this is nothing taken seriously by anybody.
    That "equilibrium" at the center of the article interested me, given that the paper (Berdugo et al., Science 367, 787–790 (2020)) does not contain the word "equilibrium" at all. So, tell me more about this.
    Instead of speculating, try to read what I have actually written. Here a third time:
    So, you simply take one sentence, which would have been, taken alone, indeed wrong, and ignore that your objection has been already discussed immediately after this, so that what you do is a clear case of and out of context argumentation.
    Looks like one has to correct your lies minimum 20 times until you stop this. To quote #308, "I do not think their notion of "aridity" refers to absolute yearly rainfall - a claim which is, as usual, iceaura's fantasy".
     
  19. Quantum Quack Life's a tease... Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,328
    It's funny , you can have a very arid environment that can be flooded for a few days due to extreme weather events. ( Central Australia, Western Queensland/NSW are a classic case)
    A bit like the Sahara getting snowed in on a regular annual basis..
     
  20. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    For what species?

    Hey , insects don't care what climate or ecosystem you trow at them. They simply adapt and thrive.

    They are some of the oldest creatures on earth and have successfully withstood everything the universe has thrown at the earth.

    It is the newer, more complex organisms, like the dinosaurs used to be, which require specific conditions to thrive or they die.

    So, citing beneficial results of global warming and climate change is meaningless unless you can identify the species which will actually benefit.
     
  21. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    That would be "total average yearly rainfall", if you are responding to my post.
    You posted that exact claim - you claimed, directly and repeatedly, that increases in average rainfall meant decreases in aridity. The article found otherwise. (So has the rest of AGW research).
    That's because they are. I'm simply informing you about the AGW research - since you haven't read any of it, and keep making false claims about it, and keep labeling it "alarmist", I figured you might welcome some information before making an even bigger fool of yourself. (Ok, I knew better. But still - - )
    I even posted an example, one dense with information and citations and so forth about AGW - against my better judgment and declared rule. Never again.
    They don't.
    You don't know what "properties" an alarmist AGW claim would have, because you don't know anything about the physical reality involved.
    Every sentence in that paragraph is wrong, individually and collectively - starting with the most flagrant mistake, which I addressed first, which was your mistaking the article's findings about thresholds for findings about aridity.

    To repeat. There is no "20% more arid" involved - the article's findings are consistent with as much as 100% of the landscape becoming more arid; that number will prevent you from making mistakes. If you don't like it, maybe 60% more arid? 80% more arid?

    Better: quit trying to reason from "20% more arid", or even aridity at all - the word is confusing you. Read the article, instead.
    You used the word "threshold". It was the wrong word. It had to be the right word, because you were claiming familiarity with the concept. You are not familiar with the concept.
    How would you know?
    You haven't figured out what my claims are yet, and you have more or less completely failed to comprehend the article. You have posted no evidence of even having read it.

    Which brings up the question of why you guys are posting about AGW at all. What does American fascism gain by sending its minions out to trash AGW research?
     
    Last edited: Mar 29, 2020
  22. Schmelzer Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,003
    Does it matter? Let's use, for purely egocentric reasons, homo sapiens. But, given that the climate conditions which are optimal for human beings will be optimal for a large amount of other species too, it will not be a big difference.
    Funny or not, let's not forget that one of the first big empires, Ancient Egypt, has been existed in such an environment.
    It would be interesting if there will be at least once some accurate description of what I have written. Here is what I have written:
    So, not directly but plausibly, with exceptions. Lies, repeated lies, iceaura's posts.
    Nothing prevents you from proving this, it is simple, for every claim a quote from the research and the reference to the article containing it. Once you have read all this, this should be simple for you.
    In other words, you refuse to give any evidence. Thanks for clarifying this. The reason for this is obvious: You have no such research. Whenever you post some real research, you fail to prove your point, and it appears that you are the loser. As with these thresholds: You seem to think yet that these thresholds will result in some abrupt changes in time. some time everything remains almost unchanged, and then comes the threshold and everything changes. But this abrupt change is only a local effect, on the larger scale only borders between different ecosystems change continuously all the time. After such a defeat, your reaction is quite natural: Never again.
    First, at this point I was commenting your text, as quoted. Then, I have simply considered various possible interpretations. Of course, only one interpretation can be correct, so if one considers various interpretations, all except maybe one have to be wrong by default. To interpret this as an "attempt to change" is simply defamatory.
    Now read again what I have written. Have I questioned that the sentence you have written is compatible with 100% of the landscape becoming more arid in the second part, which takes into account that that you have mentioned the thresholds? Not. I have simply clarified, giving an example, what would falsify my expectations:
    Does your sentence exclude this particular example? No. Does the article exclude this particular example? No. If you think otherwise, quote the part which falsifies this particular case. Else, the claim that the article is in conflict with my expectations is wrong (or at least not supported by anything).
    You claim so, without presenting any evidence for this. And you obviously will not present any evidence for this, given your "never again" after suffering such a humilation.
    I simply go to the point where you have mentioned (in a quite unscientific way, I would guess to make it more difficult for me to find it), the Berdugo et al., Science 367, 787–790 (2020) article to see what you extract as the bad news from this article:
    The reality is that the process will be a continuous one, with the borders of the ecosystems changing continuously, and the sharpness of the threshold leads only to a sharp border on the ground between the different ecosystems. So, there will be a warning all the time, from the start, because these borders on the ground move in an unwanted direction.

    (The reality is different, the Earth became greener during the last decades, so it seems that actually those borders move, in the average, in the other, positive direction. But, of course, there are also some parts of the world where they move into the bad direction.)
    I'm posting because it seems to me that the actual climate panic is unjustified. I do not doubt (and care) that there is a warming and if humans are at least part of the cause of this warming. But I see no base for considering this as a catastrophe. I have now collected some of the arguments at https://ilja-schmelzer.de/climate/. Given that such panics are something very dangerous for the societies where they happen, I think it is important to present and distribute counterarguments. I'm in the fortunate situation that I don't have to fear a negative response by the panicking society, given that I'm independent as a researcher, don't depend on getting a job, and, moreover, live in a country where the climate panic actually plays no role. So, I can simply ignore the "AGW denier" label as well as the "minion of American fascism" label.

    I post in a forum full of alarmists to see what they can present to support the panic. As a scientist, I recognize that I may be wrong in my considerations, so that I would like to see reasonable objections to correct, if necessary, my argumentation. Up to now, they have failed to present something serious. The most interesting example was the study
    Burke, M., Hsiang, S.M., Miguel, E. (2015). Global non-linear effect of temperature on economic production. Nature 527, 235-239, where the following describes the method (emphasis mine):
     
  23. Write4U Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,069
    No, let's not use homo sapiens for purely egocentric reasons and use insects as I proposed. You are right, most all insects would thrive, but all larger mammals might well go extinct. It's not the first time that has happened.
    Well, a few degrees increase in mean temperature will make Egypt unlivable as with all countries with climates at the limits of habitability.
    Are you prepared to move to No.Canada, Alaska, Greenland or Siberia ?
     
    Last edited: Mar 29, 2020

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