asims33

For someone who tries to sound so smart you are so wrong...

A hypothesis and a Theory are almost ALWAYS used synonymously, But since i hate to generalize and since i know you will argue i will lay them out for you.

Here is the definition of Theory:

1 : the analysis of a set of facts in their relation to one another
2 : abstract thought : speculation
3 : the general or abstract principles of a body of fact, a science, or an art <music theory>
4 a : a belief, policy, or procedure proposed or followed as the basis of action <her method is based on the theory that all children want to learn> b : an ideal or hypothetical set of facts, principles, or circumstances —often used in the phrase in theory <in theory, we have always advocated freedom for all>
5 : a plausible or scientifically acceptable general principle or body of principles offered to explain phenomena <the wave theory of light>
6 a : a hypothesis assumed for the sake of argument or investigation b : an unproved assumption : conjecture c : a body of theorems presenting a concise systematic view of a subject <theory of equations>
synonyms see hypothesis


Pay close attention to that last line.... Synonyms, Now incase you need help with that word too.

Synonym:
1 : one of two or more words or expressions of the same language that have the same or nearly the same meaning in some or all senses


Now for your word hypothesis:
1 a : an assumption or concession made for the sake of argument b : an interpretation of a practical situation or condition taken as the ground for action
2 : a tentative assumption made in order to draw out and test its logical or empirical consequences
3 : the antecedent clause of a conditional statement
synonyms hypothesis, theory, law


Now lets explain what is required when making a hypothesis. For a hypothesis to be put forward as a scientific hypothesis, the scientific method requires that one can test it. Needless to say Global warming is impossible to test...


So i stick with my first statement that it is a theory as this term fits global warming better...

You can be done if you like...i would prefer that as well


"Peace"

jungle

The primary problem is that even the most rabid supporters of the proposed measures of Copenhagen understand and admit that they will do almost nothing to solve the "problem".



From a recent WSJ article:

***
So what exactly is the point of Copenhagen? The question needs to be asked all the more insistently in the wake of last month's disclosure of thousands of documents and emails from the University of East Anglia's Climatic Research Unit (CRU), long considered an authoritative center of temperature data, modeling and forecasts.

At a minimum, the emails demonstrate the lengths some of the world's leading climate scientists were prepared to go to manufacture the "consensus" they used to demand drastic steps against global warming. The emails are replete with talk of blacklisting dissenting scientists and journals, manipulating peer review and avoiding freedom of information requests.

Nor can the emails be dismissed as a handful of scientists showing their petulant streak. Scientific research must be subject to testing, verification and, if necessary, disproof. Otherwise, its conclusions are worthless. That's especially true if the basic data on which the climate records are based are deleted, as seems to have been the case with the CRU, or if the elaborate computer models used to forecast climate turn out to be poorly designed, as also seems to be the case.

The core question raised by the emails is why their authors would behave this way if they are as privately convinced of the strength of their case as they claim in public. The Earth's climate is a profoundly complex system, sensitive, dynamic and subject to a dizzying range of variables interacting in ways that remain poorly understood. Carbon dioxide is only one of those variables. Climate scientists failed to anticipate the absence of warming in the last decade, a point that Kevin Trenberth, head of the Climate Analysis Section at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, privately conceded in one of the disclosed emails was a "travesty."


.Given this, the public is entitled to wonder how exactly climate scientists can state with such certainty that temperatures have never been higher, or that they are sure to rise in the coming decade, to say nothing of the rest of the century. The public is also entitled to know how the climatologists can suggest the precise degrees by which the Earth will warm, or why a warmer Earth is, on balance, worse than a colder one. Is there a "correct" global average temperature?


Full text:Copenhagen, Cap and Trade, and Political Hubris - WSJ.com

jungle

Nothing was stolen, evidence was made public. Evidence of fraud. The perpetrators of the fraud left the evidence in a place that was not secure.
It speaks volumes about the fraud that was and is being commited.

Slice

Not in the court of public opinion...and in your example, regardless of being admissible or not, would not relieve the fact of it being the murder weapon.

Winged Wheeler

Believe it or not, they are withholding the raw data. They provide results and homogenized "data" to the public--this would be similar to getting your paycheck and homogenized block hours.

I would never ask anyone to go get the data themselves, but there are statisticians and scientists who've been asking for it for years. McIntyre is one of these, he does all his work very publicly on climateaudit.org.

The emails certainly can be taken out of context. I don't put much stock in what they actually say (petty, empire-building, academic types), but I am glad that they have been released since this has stimulated actual debate on this issue. I'll add that one of the files has code that CRU used to assemble temperature sets. To my knowledge, no one has denied that this is what was used. If the code is flawed, that will be exposed in short order--and that is the way science should work.

We agree on one thing, I haven't changed my mind either.

WW

Winged Wheeler

A bit of clarification on theories, hypotheses, and laws. Review the "Scientific Method" (easily found on the internet). There is some variation, but it should look something like this: observation, hypothesis, prediction, test, theory. This is a cyclical and repetitive, not a linear procedure.

With enough valid testing, you construct a theory that attempts to describe some part of the natural world. A law is simply a theory that scientists have stopped attempting to disprove and accepted (for now) as valid.

Think of Lake Michigan filled with golf balls. All the balls on the surface and near the beaches are Titleists. An observer might hypothesize that all balls are Titleists and conduct experiments to verify this. Not finding any other brand of golf ball leads our observer to theorize that "all golf balls are Titleists".

Notice that this is not a statement that can ever be proved, but it can be disproved. This is exactly how science moves forward--it eliminates things we know not to be true and constructs theories based on what is not yet disproved.

So the Titleist golf ball theory is the operating theory because it works and it has not been invalidated. Now some guy comes along with a new hypothesis that Wilson and Nike balls will be out in the middle and deep in the Lake because they drive farther (or whatever). He makes a machine that can go out and retrieve balls deep in the middle of the lake. Sure enough, he finds all different brands and even some colored golf balls. The Titleist theory is disproved (or shown to be incomplete) and, armed with new information, golf ball scientists head back to construct new hypotheses.

Hopefully that wasn't too bizarre an example early on a Thur. morning.

WW

Winged Wheeler

Check out this link to an analysis of the raw and homgenized data of one surface weather station. It takes less than 10 minutes to go through the whole thing and is, I think, accessible to non-statisticians.

I don't expect anyone to change their minds about global warming but, I hope that those who disagree with me might understand why I am not ready to concede this point.

WW

The Smoking Gun At Darwin Zero Watts Up With That?

N2264J

I've never said the science was settled. That's not the nature of the scientific method. However, the debate among the peer reviewed scientific elite is over. But screw that, let's talk politics:

- At one time, there was no link between cigarette smoking and lung cancer.

- We had a problem with acid rain in the northeast. After government intervention, corporations were required to filter sulfides out of their factory emissions and we started using unleaded gas and catalytic converters in our vehicles. It was, in fact, a cap and trade system and today, the rain is no longer killing vast tracks of US forrests.

- Then, there was the environmental problem with the hole in the ozone layer over Antarctica. Government intervened again and we changed the types of aerosols and air conditioning agents we use. The hole now seems to be healing although there are still some annual fluctuations. But the threat of not having to spend all your time indoors and out of the sun's harmful UV is no longer as urgent as it once was.

In all three instances, corporate funded shills were screaming "junk science" because the "fix" was going to cost them a lot of money.

I'm not the only one who was struck by the false equivalency of attaching "gate" to "Climate" and the timing of this tempest in a teapot - two weeks before Copenhagen.

Forget the science for a minute and try to see the opportunity here. We don't manufacture much in this country anymore and our economy shows it. There's a large number of well paying jobs to be had building commercial windmills, solar panels, geothermal units, smartgrid etc. - not to mention the blood and treasure we can save by not stealing and guarding the oil spigot in some desert rathole.

Only a year ago, deniers were freting that addressing global climate destabilization was a fool's errand because China and India weren't going to participate. But while you were focused on cherry picked Emails lately, you may have missed that China is committed to manufacturing green technology to sell to the world and leapfrogging the US.

The longer we wait to do something about it, the more it's going to cost to fix it provided it's fixable at all at some future date. Addressing the problem now is a win-win both environmentally and economically.

Slice

It's junk science, follow the money...and China's full of crap, I see it everytime I fly there. The people are great, the gov't not so much.

Winged Wheeler

I had exceeded my self imposed thread limit on this one so I let it go. Thanks to N2264J for bringing it back to life. Watch this space for some great visuals later. As for now:

I'm not sold on that first part of your argument. So you dug up three cases where some people cried junk science on things that were later found to be generally true. Logically, that has no connection to the global warming discussion. I could pick something like Piltdown man or global cooling (ca.1975) to make the opposite point to yours, but I won't because it is a bad argument.

I think the timing of the release is great. While the world was paying attention climate science was shown to be, at least, fallible. You can blame the media for the timing--the emails were given to the BBC in OCT but they decided to sit on them, hence the late NOV release.

I'm not that crazy about the "gate" suffix either.

You are right that we don't manufacture much here any more. I think you could make a convincing argument that this was due, in no small part, to the influence of green regulation in the past 40 years. Those jobs you talked about are all in industries subsidized by the government--they are good jobs for the few that have them, they are a drag on taxpayers who support them. China wouldn't manufacture that green technology if our government wasn't artificially creating a market.

I wasn't fretting a year ago that China and India wouldn't participate--I was hoping they wouldn't. Check the news, developing countries have walked out--Christmas comes early this year for Winged Wheeler.

Your last paragraph contains the old "it'll be crisis in the future, so let's manufacture a crisis now"--I never understood why anyone thought that was a good argument.

Anyway, thanks for digging this corpse up. Cheers.

WW