Sunspot Minimum or "Is the sun going to sleep?"

[RMiller]

I don't think I will convince anyone of anything, but I want to point out a few things.

One, in both politics and science, follow the money. In politics, there are people to gain by trying to get the public to agree about global warming, on both sides, but much more so on the "there is global warming side" at the moment. Recent examples of politics being played here and here.

In science, it is similar. Just remember, if human caused global warming were to be proven false, lots of scientists lose their funding and their credibility. That is also true about many governmental organizations, like the IPPC.
Are there people (yes, even scientists in the field) who disagree with global warming being human caused? Yes, for instance see here (letter) and here (signatures).

Originally Posted by artdutra04

Yes, there is nothing wrong with people drawing their opinions from data. But there is a serious problem with spreading a belief that your amateur "conclusion" has as much weight as the conclusions of those which devote their lifetimes to it. No, you can have an opinion, but unless you actually go to graduate school, or law school, or med school and leave with a diploma, you are not qualified to form an equal conclusion to what they are.

If this was the case, why even bother going to college to become an engineer if Joe Sixpack can form a conclusion equal to a senior engineer on critical details of a nuclear reactor? Or why go to med school if Jane Doe is just as qualified to treat medical conditions as a practicing doctor because she reads WedMD? Or why go to grad school for meteorology if John Smith can form a conclusion equal to a scientist based solely upon reading Drudge Report?

We have institutions of higher learning for a reason! Like it or not, people with genuine diplomas (honorary ones don't count!) from these colleges and universities are more qualified than Joe Sixpack in their specific field. Period.

Have you heard about the object that recently hit Jupiter? Guess who discovered it? An amateur.

Take for example the main reason we post on this site, robotics. I know people who are not trained in any engineering who can design some extremely impressive robots.

I have worked with technicians who understand what is going on in a process much better than an engineer does.

In a company I worked for, after getting a bachelors and going into a research position for five years you were better off than the person who went to get their PhD in those five years. 1) You had experience the company valued. 2) Your five years were on-the-job like training. 3) You netted a whole lot more money than the student did.

How about Henry Ford? What education did he have?

Do you know why an "amateur" can sometimes be better than a "professional"? Because <i>if </i> they have worked with it, studied it, and come to an understanding of it from their own experiences outside of school, they can do just as well as others.

What is that to say? There are definitely some "amateurs" out there who have opinions that should be valued. In addition, if you are reading about a subject over a period of time, you can rightfully draw conclusions when considering the debate. Are you going to be able to write a paper on it in a published journal, unlikely, though there are exceptions, particularly if there is a great insight or discovery.

Originally Posted by artdutra04

The only way this argument would hold merit is if technology did not advance. If the technology available now was identical to that 30 years ago, then it would be hard to draw new conclusions from data, and anything new could more easily be construed as running on nothing but hot air. But because technology advances, especially in the computing department, we can now process data trillions of times faster than 30 years ago. The enormous amount of computer data processing alone can analyze data much more thoroughly than can be done by hand, and ascertain subtle causation and correlation patterns in existing data. This data can then be used to create more accurate simulations which better reflect reality.

Engineering is a prime example of this. 100 years ago they had no such thing as CAD, computer simulations, or even a sort of mechanical calculators. Back then math was done by hand, and if they wanted a really precise answer, then that took loads of math. The more accurate they wanted, the more math. So they approximated a lot more back then. The Brooklyn Bridge was over-engineered by many orders of magnitude because the designers of the late 1800s did not possess a means of efficiently processing the vast amounts of equations necessary to build it just right. So they wasted a lot of money in extra materials as they erred on the safe side. Nowadays we have the computing power to do full bridge simulations on a computer, and engineers use that data to design a bridge that meets the safety requirements without being over-engineered. This saves time, money, and resources.

Just remember, "garbage in, garbage out." If I do not give all the data or I give a wrong set of equations or I don't give the right units, I can get something that looks great on paper, but will fail miserably. In the case of human caused global warming, I think an emphasis has been put on the last 25 years, particularly to the public. As IndySam noted, in the 60s and 70s, it was global cooling that was the "problem."

Originally Posted by Adam Y.

Then it wouldn't be science. Scientists at one point knew there was a problem with Newton's laws of gravity and Maxwell's equations. They didn't just think that there was a problem with those laws they knew there was a problem. They both worked and neither law could be fudged to solve the problem until Einstein.

One thing that frustrates me is that sometimes the evidence is not brought to the table when it doesn't fit with a "scientific theory." For instance, how widely reported is it that since 2001, the average global temperature has remained steady, not an exponential growth.

Is the earth gradually warming? Yes, but it has for the last 150-200 years since the Little Ice Age. Yes, 200 years at the rate of about a degree F every century. The real question is: is it human caused? If it is, then all of the equations to predict global warming by IPPC are off since none of their predictions line up with reality (oh, you didn't know that? ). This is one of the things that bothers me when science, money, and politics collide (and not just in regards to global warming, but other issues as well that are not on topic). The scientific method goes out the window. One piece of evidence should be enough to cause a significant reworking of the theory at the least, but when money and politics is involved, it becomes more of a tangled web.

See here, here, and here (two pdfs links are linked from first link) for evidence.

Originally Posted by Don Rotolo

That's funny.

I think your estimates of the amount of hydrocarbons on the planet is off by an order of magnitude.

Oil will never run out, but it will eventually become too expensive to use it as we do today. I expect that to happen in your lifetime.

Let's see, current "proven" reserves of crude oil are around 50 years worth. That doesn't include shale oil (estimated 2x proven reserves), oil that is not economically/technically feasible at the moment, and crude oil that is unproven. Suffice to say, I think we have enough for a while. Your statement about it becoming too expensive might be true, but I think that will be more because a cheaper (that oil today even) technology comes along.