paper-machine comments on [QUESTION]: What are your views on climate change, and how did you form them? - Less Wrong

5 Post author: VipulNaik 08 July 2014 02:52PM

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Comment author: [deleted] 08 July 2014 06:25:08PM *  6 points [-]

I'm skeptical of various parts of AGW (e.g., Climategate) but I believe the reaction to the field has become a hate death spiral. (Hence, considering it in its separate parts rather than a single phenomenon.)

Accordingly, I find some of your reasons unconvincing.

Building on the above point, if half of contemporary research results are wrong, then the likelihood that the complex multipart AGW argument is wrong is very high.

Fully general counterargument.

Climate scientists have never made a public falsifiable prediction.

IPCC Scientific Assessment

Regarding the confirmation of the second and third assessments (that is, they failed to be falsified, which implies that they were in fact falsifiable):

"Comparing climate projections to observations up to 2011"

In conclusion, the rise in CO2 concentration and global temperature has continued to closely match the projections over the past five years, while sea level continues to rise faster than anticipated.

You don't find any falsifiable predictions if you never look for them.

Comment author: Lumifer 08 July 2014 06:50:29PM 2 points [-]

"Comparing climate projections to observations up to 2011"

There seem to be problems with that paper.

Comment author: [deleted] 08 July 2014 06:54:07PM *  1 point [-]

I believe you'll find the peach line (the non-adjusted data) in figure one still tracks with the projections. As far as I can tell your link is only concerned with the adjustments, but feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

EDIT: At most, I believe we're reduced to debating the meaningfulness of the word "closely".

Comment author: Daniel_Burfoot 08 July 2014 09:16:14PM 1 point [-]

Sorry, I don't have time to dig through the mound of literature. Could you please just state what the falsifiable prediction is? Please be as precise as possible.