Space, Climate Change, and the Real Meaning of Theory. Real Scientists and Empirical Evidence?

A haunting and poetic article by ex-astronaut about many things including space, climate change, and what theory is, but before this, who is Dr. Piers J Sellers, and why should we pay him any attention?

science.gsfc.nasa.gov...

Piers Sellers is currently Deputy Director of the Sciences and Exploration Directorate and Acting Director of the Earth Sciences Division at NASA/GSFC.

He was born and educated in the United Kingdom and moved to the U.S. in 1982 to carry out climate research at NASA/GSFC. From 1982 to 1996, he worked on global climate problems, particularly those involving interactions between the biosphere and the atmosphere, and was involved in constructing computer models of the global climate system, satellite data interpretation and conducting large-scale field experiments in the USA, Canada, Africa, and Brazil.

So a bona fide scientist and an astronaut to boot.

www.newyorker.com...

I used to be an astronaut, a spacewalker on the International Space Station. Naturally, most of my fifteen-year crew career was spent on the ground, working with engineers to get the Station built and fully crewed for scientific research, but the day-in, day-out flow of this ground work was punctuated by the occasional illuminating, even eye-shattering experience, when I was launched into orbit and saw Earth through my spacesuit visor.

Regarding anthropogenic climate climate change, Piers Sellers has uncompromising views on this, and the science to back it up. He also touches upon what consensus is.

Are we humans the cause of these changes? The answer is an emphatic yes. Many climate-research groups around the world have calculated the various contributions to climate change, including those not related to humans, like volcanic ash. It has been shown repeatedly that it is just not possible to explain the recent warming without factoring in the rise in anthropogenic greenhouse gases. If you left the increase in carbon dioxide out of your calculations, you would see a wobbly but, on average, level temperature trend from the eighteen-nineties to today. But the record—the reality—shows a steeply rising temperature curve which closely matches the observed rise in carbon dioxide. The global community of climate scientists, endorsed by their respective National Academies of Science or equivalents, is solid in attributing the warming to fossil-fuel emissions. Humans are the cause of the accelerating warming. You can bet your life—or, more accurately, your descendants’ lives—on it.

As a qualified scientist he is also able to speak with authority and rebut many of the arguments put forth by those who would deny anthropogenic climate change in a clear and concise fashion.

As a scientist, I would like to think that the political discussion of climate change and how to mitigate its worst effects would be sober and fact-based. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Climate-change deniers in the United States have done a first-class job in spreading confusion and misinformation. As a result, many prominent politicians insist, and get away with insisting, that climate change is a hoax, a mantra that has gained some credibility through sheer repetition.

So, about those models and theories.

The science behind the predictions made by these climate models is not always easy to explain, and this prompted me to think more about how scientists communicate what we know to the wider community. When we talk about why the climate has changed, and what the future climate is likely to be, scientists use analyses and predictions that rest heavily on results from computer models, which in turn rest on layers and layers of theory. And there’s the rub—a lot of the confusion about what is known and unknown about the changing climate can be traced to people’s understanding of the role of theory in science.

Fundamentally, a theory in science is not just a whim or an opinion; it is a logical construct of how we think something works, generally agreed upon by scientists and always in agreement with the available observations. A good example is Isaac Newton’s theory of gravitation, which says that every physical object in the universe exerts a gravity force field around itself, with the strength of that field depending on its mass.

Rather than quote from the article ad-infinitum, I recommend others read it in full. People are very quick to selectively pick and choose which science to believe, and what to disbelieve, but science doesn't work that way.

Observe here Brian Cox giving an Australian senator a smackdown on what constitutes empirical evidence.



And the records continue to tumble.

www.washingtonpost.com...

NOAA and NASA data reveal the Earth’s temperature reached its highest point in 136 years of record-keeping during July.

“July 2016 was absolutely the hottest month since the instrumental records began,” tweeted Gavin Schmidt, who directs NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, which is responsible for temperature measurements.

It was the 15th straight month of recording-breaking temperatures in NOAA’s analysis and 10th-straight in NASA’s, passing the previous hottest Julys by substantial margins.

I love watching Brian Cox destroy people with data.

The problem in the US with regard to ANY science is that people here think their opinion is more valid than the data.

You see it in all fields of science. Chemistry, Genetics, Climate, Medicine.

People who believe that research consists of google BS from places like Natural News, Mercola, and other sources of pseudoscience and snake oil.

The fact is, pseudoscience is an industry here. Everything from the anti-GMO people to anti-vaxxers(read pro-disease). There is HUGE amounts of money involved here to the point where homeopathic "medicine", and end of the world government conspiracy theorists make stupid money selling their bunker services filled with heirloom seeds and other hogwash.

Never mind that over 170 0 independent studies done over the last 30 years proving GM foods safe.

Never mind the over 1800 of studies done on naturopathic and homeopathic "medicine" have proven it to be nothing more than a placebo effect.

Never mind the thousands and thousands of data sets that have been accumulated through expensive technologies and countless hours of actual research that prove anthropogenic climate change is real.

Nope...Never mind any of that #. I googled stuff and Mercola told me all those scientists are "shills".

a reply to: cuckooold

It's a good op-ed, from a very accomplished person, but empirical evidence is a meaningless concept when dealing with ideologues posing as so-called skeptics.

Trying to appeal to reason with people who are fundamentally unreasonable is a sad waste of time. The video you posted gives a great example: At one point (around 5:20) this Australian Senator (God help us!) claimed that the 1930s and 40s were warmer than the current decade, all while pointing at a graph that clearly showed they were absolutely not.

After the panel stopped laughing at him, he began falling back on deranged conspiracy theories – questioning the data and referencing “Steven Goddard”. Goddard is a nutjob blogger whose real name is Tony Heller. This extremely confused politician is arguing with an actual physicist about climate change, by referencing an imaginary internet persona.

That's the state of the climate “debate”: one side has piles and piles of empirical evidence, the other has piles and piles of politically-motivated dementia.

The best thing to do is just not worry about useless deniers. As the empirical evidence continues to pile up, the sock puppet skeptics are increasingly marginalizing themselves into a fringe laughingstock. The audience lulz this Senator generated say it all, really.

I have to say that I am shocked, three logical, well supported, and informative posts in a row and not one single denier in here flapping their arms about and claiming hocus pocus. Must be in bed already or maybe they've been swayed.

It's the day and age of opinion over fact, because society has given people the idea that "your opinion matters, be sure to share it". Nobody's opinions matter. The same people who try to use logic to deny such things as climate change willingly, even happily, use science to support their claims. But they are the first people to claim science is bad, numbers can be manipulated. They never consider that it is a two way street, and that perhaps the baloney they're being fed might just be from a smarter person, with much more to lose than just face on a conspiracy message board. We are talking about people and families that have generationally relied on businesses or operations that are being attacked by cold hard facts backed up by quantifiable emperical evidence. Those are hard truths to face when you are trying to maintain status with the worlds elites.

a reply to: FightingBuddha

Well they are going to just say the same thing that guy from down under is saying.
One guy brings information, the other brings "Well I heard this and I heard that".

Where is the space part of this thread, did I miss something?

I wonder how many times the dinosaurs and all life on earth before modern man, dealt with the rising and falling of global temperatures.

Probably with carbon taxes and politics.

Warming and cooling of a planet is normal throughout its planetary life.

Change, is the only constant in nature.

a reply to: Elementalist

Warming and cooling of a planet is normal throughout its planetary life.

'
You are 100% right, no one is saying that change is not normal.

What people are worried about is the rate it is changing.

a reply to: Elementalist

Probably with carbon taxes and politics.

Isn't this the real problem?

I'm a pretty conservative dude. But I am also an advocate for sound science. The warming the planet is seeing is NOT normal. Not one climatologist has sad that the Earth does NOT go through natural warming and cooling cycles.

But one thing did change in all of that time. Humans began burning fuels. The evidence shown for the last 150 years demonstrates larger increases in both the release of greenhouse gases and increases in mean global temperature in tandem.

The political idiocy with regard to how to deal with it, to me, is the infuriating part. One side wants to set up an oppressive global tax scheme, and the other side wants to ignore the problem. Neither approach will have any impact at all.

This is a scientific problem with scientific solutions. Technological development, alternative energy sources, investment in advanced energy production and storage technology and techniques.

I live in Nevada. In this state the republican and democrat establishment worked together to basically kill solar energy on behalf of our state energy monopoly NVEnergy. They own the Public Utilities Commission, they own the legislature, and they managed to single handedly cripple solar power generation in the god damned desert. THE DESERT. With 360 days of sunshine on average.

Anthropogenic climate change is very real, all the evidence shows it, and to dismiss it as a warming cycle natural to the Earth is to ignore all of that evidence the proves we are contributing greatly. You're ignoring the fact that we know what the mechanism for the greenhouse effect is. You're ignoring the fact that there is a substantial evidence for CO2 released by us being the culprit, as we have observed on Venus. We also have a lot of water vapor and if Earth continues to warm more water vapor, underground and underwater methane will increase to contribute even more.

Something like this could make whole region of our planet uninhabitable. The only way to address this is to let our scientists and engineers do their jobs. About the only thing I want the government to do is substantially increase scientific research funding. That doesn't require more taxes. But it will require cuts. Gotta do that anyway since we're in debt up to our eyeballs. Restructure finances to increase funding for strategic scientific endeavors(which this is), cut government spending, and let science work to achieve some possible solutions.

One such possible solution is the use of certain kinds of aerosols to reduce the global mean temperature over a given period of time while humanity figures out its fossil fuel energy problem. There is no magic bullet to this. Burying our heads in the sand about it won't help. Science denialism will kill us if we continue to embrace it. Like I said in my last post, between climate change denialism, anti-vaccination/fake homeopathic medicine, and anti-GMOs, we are letting people die preventable deaths already. We can be doing better, but you want to stand with a crowd that has no evidence for their position. That is regressive.

originally posted by: projectvxn
a reply to: Elementalist

Probably with carbon taxes and politics.

Isn't this the real problem?

I'm a pretty conservative dude. But I am also an advocate for sound science. The warming the planet is seeing is NOT normal. Not one climatologist has sad that the Earth does NOT go through natural warming and cooling cycles.

But one thing did change in all of that time. Humans began burning fuels. The evidence shown for the last 150 years demonstrates larger increases in both the release of greenhouse gases and increases in mean global temperature in tandem.

The political idiocy with regard to how to deal with it, to me, is the infuriating part. One side wants to set up an oppressive global tax scheme, and the other side wants to ignore the problem. Neither approach will have any impact at all.

This is a scientific problem with scientific solutions. Technological development, alternative energy sources, investment in advanced energy production and storage technology and techniques.

I live in Nevada. In this state the republican and democrat establishment worked together to basically kill solar energy on behalf of our state energy monopoly NVEnergy. They own the Public Utilities Commission, they own the legislature, and they managed to single handedly cripple solar power generation in the god damned desert. THE DESERT. With 360 days of sunshine on average.

Anthropogenic climate change is very real, all the evidence shows it, and to dismiss it as a warming cycle natural to the Earth is to ignore all of that evidence the proves we are contributing greatly. You're ignoring the fact that we know what the mechanism for the greenhouse effect is. You're ignoring the fact that there is a substantial evidence for CO2 released by us being the culprit, as we have observed on Venus. We also have a lot of water vapor and if Earth continues to warm more water vapor, underground and underwater methane will increase to contribute even more.

Something like this could make whole region of our planet uninhabitable. The only way to address this is to let our scientists and engineers do their jobs. About the only thing I want the government to do is substantially increase scientific research funding. That doesn't require more taxes. But it will require cuts. Gotta do that anyway since we're in debt up to our eyeballs. Restructure finances to increase funding for strategic scientific endeavors(which this is), cut government spending, and let science work to achieve some possible solutions.

One such possible solution is the use of certain kinds of aerosols to reduce the global mean temperature over a given period of time while humanity figures out its fossil fuel energy problem. There is no magic bullet to this. Burying our heads in the sand about it won't help. Science denialism will kill us if we continue to embrace it. Like I said in my last post, between climate change denialism, anti-vaccination/fake homeopathic medicine, and anti-GMOs, we are letting people die preventable deaths already. We can be doing better, but you want to stand with a crowd that has no evidence for their position. That is regressive.

You nor modern science does not understand what is normal in cycles that have been Ongoing before your observations and measurements for millions and millions of years.

We have been observing fractions. That is no tell, that this -rate- is abnormal, it may just be normal. Unless you use tiny fractions as evidence.

For instance, the ice age happened pretty quickly, almost like a flash freeze. Look at Antarctica, it may of flash froze over in years for all we know.

We have excavated things out of ice that seem to have frozen just happened over night so to speak.

It's a panic because in our little lifetime, it seems like a large impact. Yet to the cycle of earth, it's just a pattern, or possibly natural clockwork.

The humans little life compared to the ongoing patterns of a planetary complex and all life it supports, is a tiny fraction.

That which has been observed and measured, hundreds of years, are nothing in comparison to thousands or millions.

Yet life is here, and still flourishes, man has "evolved".

All that other garble you threw in your post, I don't even know what your going on about. But don't be painting me with a brush....

a reply to: Elementalist

I can see you're a lost cause.

Apparently you think your opinion trumps years of scientific training and knowledge. You're exactly fitting of the description in my opening post. A poster child of scientific denialism.

Let me guess your google skills are more reliable than peer review scientific study..right?

a reply to: projectvxn

One side wants to set up an oppressive global tax scheme, and the other side wants to ignore the problem.

While I don't like the idea of a cap and trade or a carbon tax system, if one side wants to ignore the issue than that seems like the only way to possibly force their hand.
Sadly we all know they are able to pass those taxes to the consumer and nobody complains about it.

a reply to: Elementalist

Oh boy, lots of claims in that post and nothing to back any of it up!
Shocking.

DP

a reply to: Sremmos80


I did mention some solutions and strategies conservatives could get behind. The tax scheme hasn't served the purpose you mentioned. It just scares them away and it is not way to deal with the problem.

If carbon taxes wouldn't have been pushed hard denialism would not have had a chance. Pure Idiocy on part of the elite AGW pushers as they attempted to make themselves very powerful.

I only doubt the multiplier.

I'll throw my lot in with the deniers in order to prevent carbon taxes.

I'm waiting for the singularity to answer the question on what to do. hopefully in about 15 years.

Also: Another annoying push was for CFL bulbs. still irks me.

a reply to: jellyrev

I'll throw my lot in with the deniers in order to prevent carbon taxes.

This is actually a reasonable position to take considering the circumstances.

The carbon tax people have no incentive to actually listen to scientists on the issue of anthropogenic climate change. There is no evidence to support that a carbon tax has any impact on global CO2 emissions. This is why I am a huge proponent of increasing scientific funding and even creating labs specifically for the sole purpose of dealing with climate change problems.

Taxes cannot solve a scientific problem.

originally posted by: Elementalist
You nor modern science does not understand what is normal in cycles that have been Ongoing before your observations and measurements for millions and millions of years.

We have been observing fractions. That is no tell, that this -rate- is abnormal, it may just be normal. Unless you use tiny fractions as evidence.

For instance, the ice age happened pretty quickly, almost like a flash freeze. Look at Antarctica, it may of flash froze over in years for all we know.

We have excavated things out of ice that seem to have frozen just happened over night so to speak.

It's a panic because in our little lifetime, it seems like a large impact. Yet to the cycle of earth, it's just a pattern, or possibly natural clockwork.

The humans little life compared to the ongoing patterns of a planetary complex and all life it supports, is a tiny fraction.

That which has been observed and measured, hundreds of years, are nothing in comparison to thousands or millions.

Yet life is here, and still flourishes, man has "evolved".

All that other garble you threw in your post, I don't even know what your going on about. But don't be painting me with a brush....

I'm sorry, maybe I missed it. Your 'cycles' and 'little observation time' bull# are meaningless.

Where in this post is the proof that carbon dioxide isn't opaque to various bands of radiation?

a reply to: Greven

Where in this post is the proof that carbon dioxide isn't opaque to various bands of radiation?

I'm willing to bet he doesn't know what that means. I'm also willing to be he has no idea what infrared radiation is most commonly known as.

The notion these people peddle is that their opinion, no matter how ill-informed, is always going to be correct, and anything contrary to that is "garble" as the poster indicated.

They really think they know better because they can use Google.

Well guess what kids, so can monkeys.

a reply to: FightingBuddha

Thats because no-one can really be bothered repeating their comments thousands of times in ATS against the same old tired BS. No one denies climate change as it has clearly occurred since the earth was formed. But former astronauts have protested NASA's position of global warming activism. Today if you want ride in space you keep your mouth shut or ride the global warming gravy train.

Former Astronauts Protest NASA's Global Warming Activism.