Dev.SN

Global Warming Finally Debunked </sarcasm>

posted by mattie_p on Sunday February 16 2014, @03:46AM   
from the conspiracy-or-consensus dept.

AudioGuy writes:

"You heard it here first. According to Natural News, a NASA report has verified that carbon dioxide actually cools the atmosphere.

Practically everything you have been told by the mainstream scientific community and the media about the alleged detriments of greenhouse gases, and particularly carbon dioxide, appears to be false, according to new data compiled by NASA's Langley Research Center. As it turns out, all those atmospheric greenhouse gases that Al Gore and all the other global warming hoaxers have long claimed are overheating and destroying our planet are actually cooling it, based on the latest evidence."

[Ed. note] I'm going to post this, because why not argue science that has been settled? Also, we needed to test the algorithm that generated mod points by sparking conversation. This was as good a way as any to get posts quickly. Sorry if you thought SoylentNews really endorsed this. ~Mattie_p

• Re:Complex systems are hard (Score: 1) by Maow on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:02AM

  by Maow (8) on Thursday February 20 2014, @08:02AM (#3368) Homepage

  The climate models are inaccurate because ...

  Put all the research completely into the public domain. All the code, all the methods, all the data, everything.

  So, you have determined that the models are inaccurate, but then you admit you haven't personally accessed the data nor the models? Are you psychic then?

  Ars Technica has covered climate models [arstechnica.com] quite thoroughly:

  Steve Easterbrook, a professor of computer science at the University of Toronto, has been studying climate models for several years. "I'd done a lot of research in the past studying the development of commercial and open source software systems, including four years with NASA studying the verification and validation processes used on their spacecraft flight control software," he told Ars.

  When Easterbrook started looking into the processes followed by climate modeling groups, he was surprised by what he found. "I expected to see a messy process, dominated by quick fixes and muddling through, as that's the typical practice in much small-scale scientific software. What I found instead was a community that takes very seriously the importance of rigorous testing, and which is already using most of the tools a modern software development company would use (version control, automated testing, bug tracking systems, a planned release cycle, etc.)."

  "I was blown away by the testing process that every proposed change to the model has to go through," Easterbrook wrote. "Basically, each change is set up like a scientific experiment, with a hypothesis describing the expected improvement in the simulation results. The old and new versions of the code are then treated as the two experimental conditions. They are run on the same simulations, and the results are compared in detail to see if the hypothesis was correct. Only after convincing each other that the change really does offer an improvement is it accepted into the model baseline."

  Apologies for the extensive quote, but I think it covers the climate model objections rather nicely.

  Also, "All models are wrong. Some models are useful."

  Finally,

  The truth is, our best effort to predict future climate indicate we should be concerned human activities are affecting global equilibrium.

  Ahem. The truth is, our best efforts are projections of future climate, and very thoroughly take into account various human activities as inputs. They do this by re-running different models with various CO2 outputs, forest coverages (and types and ages), and many, many other variables, then averaging the outputs and using statistics to assign confidence levels. Like one would expect actual scientists to do.

  Final finally: I get quite distrustful when Al Gore is mentioned in climate science discussions: he is not a scientist, he makes no claims of being a scientist, and "how fat" he is, or how his house is huge == no global warming are disingenuous, at best.

  Parent