1veedo

Do you have any mechanism for climate change bassed of these variables? If not then you're not going to get anywhere. In science we need what's known as a model for a hypothesis. If this model proves accurate it becomes a theory, if inaccurate then it simply fails. The magnetic filed switches all the time in geological history and I don't believe there is any correlation with a rise in CO2 and temperature. Gravity also varies across the planet and is perfectly normal. Just a little not-so-known fact -- everyone seems to think gravity is the same everywhere. One way you can detect an oil field for example is a change in the local gravitational field (not sure if it goes up or down though). And of course the North Sea flooded? I don't see any reason why that would cause global warming, either. If you have a mechanism for any of these factors causing global warming AND an explanation for why an increase in greenhouse gasses does not itself affect global temperatures, you might be in business. Btw we had a discussion about statistics not too long ago. http://scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=25328&page=2&highlight=statistics I'm not sure why so many people "off the street" don't like statistics. I have a friend who always says "90% of statistics are made up on the spot" and you'd be surprised at how many people would agree with the statement "you can bend statistics to say anything." Maybe it's a bad experience in school or the misuse of statistics by politicians but statistical analysis is a very good way to be "90% sure."

I'm assuming that we cant prove the existence or nonexistence of God.

Because they're addresses two separate questions here. One is about the paleoclimatic records and the other is about whether current warming is caused by humans. No. In rearguards to #4 Al Gore is not a scientist so what he does is of little significance, except in politics. Well scientists are already certain of the first part that global warming is caused by humans but the IPCC is actually trying to understand "the human and natural drivers of climate change" not just human drivers. But in a broader sense by understanding both you can better understanding how human drivers interact with the climate. And if we werent effecting the climate then that would have been the answer of the IPCC. No/0 is a perfectly good answer. Nobody says they have to come out positive. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1656640542976216573&q=%22global+warming+swindle%22&total=263&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=1

And these 900 year olds actually lived 900s of really long periods. Adam and Eve sense they were made in the middle would be "ages" old. Everything in psychology is at the same physical. To quote Myers, one of the largest authority in psychology, in regards to sexual orientation being physical and thus not a choice, (original emphasis) "It should not surprise us that brains differe with sexual orientation. Remember our maxim: Everything psychological is simultaneously biological." And you learn why this is true if you take psychology*. Mental disorders are rarely "something in your head." Depression even has real, physical roots that you can identify on a cat scan. Of course in this case I do understand what you mean, just pointing out that there isn't a distinction here. *Psychology is heavily rooted in biology; it's not Freudian like most people assume. But I just thought I'd show the "physics is at the root of all science" ladder 1) Psychology is based on biology 2) Biology is based on chemistry 3) Chemistry is based on physics So everything leads to physics. And on each step you get a fairly large increase in complexity from very basic physical laws interacting together to create chemical reactions, DNA reproduction, and high-level consciousness It's just a bunch of neurons firing off with chemical reactions who's processes are determined by physics.

Well we certainly think we have free will. If you take psychology however you'll find out that a lot of what we consider our choices are actually caused by operant conditioning and other learning that takes place. This in itself doesn't mean that we cant consider this free will though. We, our brain, and inherently our "mind" are all physical. Emotions and all cognitive processes are nothing more than chemical reactions obeying the laws of physics so you'd think we don't have "free will." But in reality the distinction isn't clear enough that our inherently physical decision making is part of what you'd consider "you" even if on a physical level. Determinism in other words doesn't necessarily have to imped on free will depending on how you treat free will and your "mind" (which is animism talk) as being in and of itself physical. A different conclusion to the same premise.

Exactly so they're an atheist. If you ask the question "does God exist" or "do they believe in God" and the answer is no then they're an atheist. No, you're missinterpreting my post with an equivocation. I said strong/gnostic atheism has an element of faith. As John Cuthber said, Sooner or later you realise that everything is "faith" I'm only pointing out that there are a couple different kinds of faith. Sounds like you're a weak atheist. IMO this IS the only conclusion supported by logic, although like I said on most days I'm a strong atheist but I'll admit to this. And for those of you who don't like the fact that science is technically in the "weak atheism" position you can replace this with any word you like, including agnosticism seeing as how agnosticism (or what agnostics will tell is weak agnosticism lol) is commonly confused for this position. It's the lack of belief in God but the acknowledgment that it is possible that God exists. There's no evidence to believe or disbelieve in God. Call it whatever you like. This isn't what anyone is saying though.

Well quite to the contrary this is the popular definition of agnosticism. It was you earlier who was talking about agnosticism was it not? Saying you don't know really isn't a position of faith. If you have a propositions, * God exists, I can tell you that I simply don't think it really has merit but I wouldn't go so far as to say that it's impossible that the proposition be true. It could be true, I just don't happen to believe that it is. Just like there could be an elephant in my back yard but you probably wouldn't believe me if I told you there was. Or you could say positively "no, you're lying to me. There's no way there's an elephant in your yard." I mean, I hope this makes sense to you.

This particular parasite doesn't actually live in your eye (I don't know the name of it). There are parasites that do this but there's a myth that a certain parasite which usually lives in other animals finds your eye thinking it's the gut of the other animals because of similar temperature and stuff.

This depends on what you mean by "agnostic." In this case you're confusing agnosticism with weak atheism. See my above post, So many people missunderstand what atheism is. I'm working on a post right now at bodybuilding.com for theists -- maybe I'll link to it latter. But I think you should read this in the meantime. Nobody likes to address a straw man so you should educate yourself about what, exactly, atheism is before you start talking about it. http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/mathew/intro.html

I have a question. How come I see the same dots at night in pitch black? It's really in the dark that I first noticed it. It changes slightly -- there's more white and less black whereas I usually see black and less white but I figure it's just the background -- the black dots blend in.

Technically speaking people who call themselves agnostics are usually atheists (weak/agnositc atheists). There's this meme going around that agnosticism is sort of the middle between theism / atheism. But you can be an agnostic and a theist or atheist -- it really doesn't answer the question "do you believe in God." If you cant make up your mind whether you're an atheist or a theist then you're technically not an agnostic. I think it's called like noncognitivist ignosticism or something. But so many people misunderstand what agnosticism really is that it's hard to argue this point. http://www.update.uu.se/~fbendz/atheism/definitions.html Another point to illustrate is that the term "athiesm" is really unnecessary except when a large portion of the population are theists. [Weak] atheism is a default position. You only become a theist when you're indoctrinated as a child but when you're born you're actually an atheist. It's not like people go around calling themselves "a-astrologists" for lack of belief in astrology because astrology is a minority position. Not believing in astrology is a fairly normal thing. This is why science is technically "weak atheistic" towards the notion of gods instead of the popular definition of "agnostic" as some people erroneously think, the popular definition of course that is confused with weak atheism. --Oops, doG got there first

Floaters do.

It might be blue filed entoptic phenomenon. There's a whole range of these sorts of things, including floaters which I always wondered about: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entoptic_phenomenon Blue field is probably what we're talking about but I don't have a blue sky right now to test it.

The fact that it's more noticeable depending on light conditions (which I've noticed too), and for me at least seems to be effected somewhat by what I'm looking at hints that there may be a psychological aspect to it as well. But the idea of a blood vessel or some sort of biological explanation makes a lot of sense. Maybe the cause is biological but just like anything else in your vision it gets processed in your brain through perception (if you've had psychology you know there's sensation which is like the raw input to your brain and then perception which is where it gets processed).

This is kind of hard to explain, I'm just curious if there's any information or like a name for this. Have you ever noticed in your field of vision dots, and occasional shapes/lines that sort of fuzz/bounce overtop what's actually in front of you? If you defocues you can notice it better -- just like moving dots and things. It kind of has a rhythm like it bounces and it changes depending on what you're looking at -- like patterns. Am I the only person who sees this or does anyone else? It's not like you notice it all the time but I'm sure if you stare blankly at something you'll see what I'm talking about. I think it might be related to schizotypy, though I wouldn't think it's actually a type of hallucination -- just some basic side-effect of your brain.

Technically speaking there are actually arguments from science that prove God (or certain interpretations like the God of the Bible) doesn't exist. I know everyone likes to be modest to avoid confrontation but if you assume God is the literal God described in the Bible he cannot possibly exist simply because it contradicts known historical and scientific facts that we know to be true. I'm no particular expert on this though. Even loose interpretations of God can somewhat be addressed by science but you leave the more concrete world of facts into abstract concepts and the like. And then you run into the same tautological problems associated with proving a negative, which outside of mathematics and strict logic is impossible. It's really the contradictions between a literal interpretation of the Bible and science that got me doubting my religion in the first place. The way I see it anything you can show me in "this world" necessarily outrules any sort of faith from "other worlds" cause I can see it, it's real, and there's no way that it's not real. It's really annoying when people will refuse to accept something that's right in front of their face because of their religious beliefs.

theCPE you may not have meant what you said exactly as I interpreted it but if you read your statement again you can see what I'm talking about. "Both [creationists and atheists] think they KNOW the what, why, and how of origin of life and existence when in fact there is zero evidence to support either side." I wont claim that atheists per say know the what, why, and how of the origin of life / existence but an atheistic explanation is through evolution, ambiogenesis and the big bang, which DO have supporting evidence but which Creationism has none. And hence I gave you a link to talk.origins thinking that would straiten up your misconception. Just a note on ambiogenesis though I do not claim that proves life arose from a purely natural process, though it does show how that could have happened (especially with some really interesting research that just came out -- check out either last month's or this month's edition of scientific american). However I'm fairly happy not "knowing" how life originally arose, and partially because I'm not a chemist nor a biologist so can't really understand it in the first place! This logic of course assumes the Bible must somehow be correct in the first place, but fair enough. Yes but I still don't like that the actual events of creation are out of place. Just out of curiosity, if I remember correctly, 1) The sun / dark and night (which is correct, though the stars really should have came before this) 2) Then Haven and Earth (still good) 3) Here he creates land but in reality land came first, then water. I guess this is still ok if we're talking about the Bible and metaphors. Then he creates plants, but life first evolved in the sea. 4) God created the firmament, a mythical support layer above our atmosphere. In this firmament he puts the stars / planet. The firmament of course doesn't exist because we've been to the moon. Furthermore, assuming the firmament is a metaphor it still does not follow that the stars come this late, when in reality other stars existed before the sun. 5) Fish and birds. 6) Animals on the land (again out of order -- birds came latter). Then he creates man 7) Rests The day-age theory still seems like creationism, with God personally creating each and every living thing.

There are really two issues here. 1) What does the actual Hebrew translate to. 2) Do you believe it is metaphorical. It could literally mean 24 hour days but as a personal belief you think the authors wrote it metaphorically. From what I've found Hebrew scholars seem to insist that it's clearly not metaphorical (eg http://reformationinprogress.blogspot.com/2007/07/what-does-word-day-mean-in-genesis.html), but this can be an issue about what you believe. I started a thread though on a hebrew forum so we can see what they think -- http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?p=3282730#post3282730. I'm afraid some of them might post just from religious belief but hopefully they'll understand what I mean about the difference from the translation and whether it's metaphorical. I wish I would have put "both" as an option but I'm sure if someone thinks it can be both they'll say so in the thread. Of course neither day-age creationism nor young earth creationism have any scientific basis; both of course contradict what we know to be true on a factual level so I'd say the distinction is rather unimportant. The only Christian or religious person who "doesn't have a mental disorder" would be the "liberal" interpreters in which case it isn't technically creationism where God created each and every single life form, instead they accept that humans and all other life on this planet evolved. Or in the worlds of Charles Darwin, "I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists until recently entertained, and which I formerly entertained -- namely, that each species has been independently created -- is erroneous. I am fully convinced that species are not immutable; but that those belonging to what are called the same genera are lineal descendants of some other and generally extinct spaces..."

I was referring to cloud albedo. That would be an issue comparable in evolution of less significance then punctuated vs gradual evolution. Older thought in climate science was that the direct aerosol effect was much greater and models simply didn't include could albedo. Today we know particulates also cause clouds to reflect light back into space and the direct influence is much less. Scienitsts also don't deny that the reason the Earth is warming right now is because of humans. They also don't deny that this is a bad thing on several different levels, though the exact extent and how quickly warming will start effecting ecosystems is still being researched (although recent research indicates local ecosystems have already changed due to global warming). Current warming is about .2C (.19 on the surface, .24 in the troposphere)* per decade. The fasted warming event within the previous 65 million years is known as the Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximum. During this time temperatures rose between 5 and 8C within the period of a couple thousand years. So we're talking about a range that is an entire 2 orders of magnitude slower than current warming. This event nevertheless caused massive extinctions and changes in ecosystems across the planet, including deep water fish [click]. I'm not sure what kind of relation you could draw -- be it linear or positive/negatively exponential to PETM but today we're talking about a shift in climate 100 times greater. So we know that if this continues another thousand or so years we'll see another episode that is at the very least comparable to PETM, if not 100 times worse. This does not spell doomsday to the human race but I do not think anybody in their right mind can claim that it is necessarily a good thing. Along with extinctions and changes in ecosystems, which would directly effect the global economy, we're also talking about increased precipitation in some areas, droughts in others, increased hurricane activity, and of course a rise in sea levels [Climate Change 2007: The Scientific Basis]. None of this is inherently spelling doomsday, however -- you're just putting words into the mouths of climate scientists. It's the media that's making a big deal about all of this. *Jones and Moberg. (2003). "Hemispheric and large-scale surface air temperature variations: An extensive revision and an update to 2001." Journal of Climate 16: 206-223. This is how all of science is. Read up on your basic science 101 material. General endorsement statements of the IPCC:http://www.royalsociety.org/displaypagedoc.asp?id=13619 http://nationalacademies.org/onpi/06072005.pdf Further organizations unaffiliated with the IPCC, but yet have indipendently came to the same conclusions. http://www.nap.edu/collections/global_warming/index.html http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/2005/ http://eo.ucar.edu/ http://epa.gov/climatechange/index.html http://www.ametsoc.org/POLICY/climatechangeresearch_2003.html And there's more where that came from. (btw please take a look at each of these, if briefly. I know there's like 10 links but at least read the first two) In 2001 Donald Kennedy, editor-in-cheif of Science said "Consensus as strong as the one that has developed around this topic is rare in science." [Kennedy, Donald. (2001). An unfortunate U-turn on carbon. Science, 291, 2515.] I don't think you realize how huge of a consensus we're talking about here. There is not only a consensus, but this consensus happens to be one of the strongest scientific positions that has ever been taken. We know more about climate change then we do many other areas of science.

You're trying to cover old ground again. Climate models have had the big things factored in for a very long time. Sense greenhouse gases at the moment have the overwhelmingly largest effect on the climate, modeling the increase in ghgs in and of itself yeilds very accurate models. Now we're dealing with smaller things like cloud albedo, contrails (which recent research seems to indicate have a warming effect of +.1W/m^2, instead of what was once believed to be slightly negative), etc, which combined have a close to 0 net influence on the temperature. This doesn't mean previous models are inherently inaccurate because we're talking about minute changes here. The first computer climate model in 1988 only factored CO2 increase, a steady irradiance from the sun, and predicted one volcanic eruption around 1990 but 20 years latter, according to NASA, the model is "right on the money." This model then only measured CO2, solar irradiance, and particulates/sulfurs. Today we're accounting for a whole range of factors, all of which are orders of magnitude less important then the above three. What we're talking about here are specifics in climate science. In much the same way there are debates within evolution, there are debates in climate science. But just like evolution you can't say "see, scientists aren't sure that evolution/global warming is real" because we're talking about specific debates in the science, not debates over whether or not it's real.

Well to prevent another pointless who's religion is better discussion I'm just going to ignore theCPE up there. I thought he was talking about evolution or ambiogenesis, not atheism, but he apparently believes evolution and atheism go together. Well I don't see what the problem is. christianansweres isn't the only place that claims that. I think it's funny cause I actually met someone who knows Hebrew at my old church maybe two or three years ago. He was like an exchange student from Russia except through the Catholic church (something about a nuclear power plant meltdown). But I remember asking him and in his words he said the "stupid Americans" should learn Hebrew before speculating that the English word day meant ages in the Bible. There is no possible way in the Hebrew language to make it any clearer that the authors really did mean 24 hour days. That's just one guys interpretation but he tried to make it very clear that they didn't mean "periods of time" in the Bible. If you look on google I'm sure you'll find some fairly strait forward reasons for this. Eg "and there was evening and morning, one day." Even in English this seems pretty strait forward a 24 hour day. And then there's the qualifiers or context -- "King Solomon's day" means the age of King solomon but day 1, day 2 means 24 hour days etc.

Most of us are. Do a pool (edit your above post) -- Do you believe in a god? Yes or no.

A theory -- eg climate change -- is nothing but a model. That's all a theory ever is. A climate model then is just an interpretation of how different factors in the climate interact with each other. Climate models are proven accurate in this regard because we can take known data and predict output, which is in line with observations (read: the scientific method). This is usually done with historical data and has nothing to do with predicting the future. Projecting future climate change should be as simple as taking the same models and feeding them new data but the problem here is predicting what humans are going to do in the future. Nobody is saying that climate models know for a fact temperatures are going to rise 4C this century. What we do know, however, is that if we keep doing what we're doing, temperatures will rise 4C. The models (and hence the theory of anthropogenic global warming) in and of themselves are accurate (+/- a couple tenths of a degree, of course). But nobody ever said we could predict the future -- this is just a misinterpretation of the science involved. http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11643 And if SkepticLance wants to feel special here's another link: http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11649

This is actually a fairly popular myth. The Hebrew really does mean, quite literally, 6 24-hour days, and not an "indeterminate amount of time." http://www.christiananswers.net/q-eden/edn-c002.html This is known as day-age creationism and is probably one of the funniest types of creationism. The order of how things happened in the Bible is out of order with what we know happened in the first place so these people look completely over this and try to account for an old earth. Just further illustration for how creationists delude themselves. I don't think it counts as a mental disorder though. It's probably more along the lines of wishful thinking. You're on scienceforums.net theCPE, not christianforums, so please dont boor us with this stuff. http://www.talkorigins.org/

Well please stop the logical fallacies. Depending on what model you use it could be as much as -1.5W/m^2 or as little as -.5. So we're getting roughly a +/- 1 error margin compared to other smaller factors in the positive range. This factor is also an anthropogenic one caused by industry aerosols so whether or not cloud albedo proves to have a large effect or a smaller effect depends on what we as humans do in the future. We have the same problem with ghg emissions as well -- temperatures could rise anywhere between 1.8 to 4C this century depending on which path society decides to take. The 1.8 to 4C range is any combination of high aerosol / low ghg and high ghg / low aerosol. This is hardly the problem of climatologists and more the problem of economists and government air quality employees to predict. We're not even sure how much we're putting out today, so how do you expect us to predict accurately how much we're going to put out in the future? Volcanoes also put out particulates (aerosols) but this effect is already averaged based on previous eruptions, but because of their random nature tend to add future uncertainty. They release much fewer aerosols then humans do, however. See my above post for more information, you must have missed it. Note that aerosols in this case is referring to the direct effect of particulate pollution, and not cloud albedo caused by aerosols.