User talk:MissPiggysBoyfriend/sandbox

I do have a couple of thoughts perhaps not as well organized as I would like

The first is that I’m generally sympathetic with what I believe is your main point. That said, there’s often a world of difference between what I (or any other editor) think, and what is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia.

Before I jump into the substance, I’ll note that I am surprised that we do not have a suitable forum for discussions such as this. They do occur on article talk pages but they are officially discouraged, and when they go on to long, editors will remove them or archive them. That will happen more quickly in some places rather than others, and climate change is the subject where I would expect that to be enforced rather quickly. I am sympathetic to the rationale behind this position, and do agree that many discussions on many talk pages get far a stream from the stated purpose, specifically to discuss changes to the article. I am not pushing for a change in the rules governing such discussion on talk pages; rather I wish a dedicated place were created which would allow editors to discuss things such as this but separated from the talk page so that those who do not wish to get involved do not have to see it. That’s a side issue a come back to the main topic.

Jumping to one important point I agree with you that equilibrium climate sensitivity is an important concept. In fact, partly because the known impact of a doubling of CO2 by itself is very close to 1°C, I have often wished that we would introduce an artificial variable which I will call a feedback multiplier incorporating all of the feedback items. Then we could debate whether this multiplier is closer to one or closer to three or closer to five. That sort of what the debate is but it is couched in terms of the aggregate climate sensitivity. I would see value in separating a scientifically solid climate sensitivity due to CO2 alone from the combined impacts of all other items. That would allow, among other things, all but the true denialists to accept one well-defined variable, and then move on to debate the multiplier.

I do think there is value in looking at the variability of other scientific values. However where we may differ regards what ranges are acceptable in scientific discussions. I may be reading too much into what you are saying but I get the sense that you want to argue that many scientific constants have a tight distribution around the mean estimate while the client sensitivity has a very broad distribution and therefore the issue of consensus is different. In fact I do agree that the variability of the mass of a proton is much smaller than the variability of what I’m calling the multiplier. However, I think it would be interesting and instructive to pull together a long list of constants and the variability and rank them by the size of the variability. It is my belief that while many constants especially those in particle physics have small variability there are other areas of science where the range around values is disturbingly large.

For example in economics we have the fiscal multiplier. I don’t think any mainstream economists reject the concept, but the exact value of the multiplier has a disturbingly large range. I think we could find other examples and economics and behavioral sciences were in effect is well accepted by virtually all practitioners but the exact value of the effect falls into a fairly large range.

That all said the climate multiplier is an extremely important concept. If the multiplier is close to one, it is highly likely that the resultant warming will be a net benefit to humankind. If it is closer to five it may be close to disastrous. Neither of these two values are extremes meaning way outside plausible values. Serious practitioners have done serious studies in which a value of one or a value of five are plausible values. If there’s any area of clients climate science that needs more work. It is the study of the aggregate feedbacks. No one of consequence doubts that there are some feedbacks but the magnitudes are a lot softer than many in the field willing to admit.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  00:36, 14 June 2015 (UTC)

Consensus
I assume you're familiar with the phrase "Let's agree to disagree". That's a consensus that disagreement exists.

Also, I doubt many white middle class people in the US could provide GPS coordinates for St. Loius, but most would agree "It's somewhere in Missouri". Consensus on that also.

Science, of course, is self-correcting. The holy grail is the Nobel Prize, which sometimes goes to the few who turn up solid evidence that turns a consensus that says "X" on its head. Of note too is that the earlier consensus that said it was X was neither right nor wrong, because right and wrong apply to the intellectual integrity of the thought processes that go into the assessment. Thus, before the brilliant team found conclusive evidence that it is really Y, the consensus that it is X (based on available evidence at the time) was not "wrong", it was merely ignorant of the evidence that had not yet been discovered.

I was fortunate to once meet a perennial contender for the Nobel (biology) at a Yellowstone hotsprings area and got to stroll around, just the two of us. As we walked, he got onto a soapbox about science not being a collection of discrete factoids, but a methodical international effort to learn all we can about the things we know we don't know, and to learn all we can about the questions we haven't even asked yet. Afterwards, I've told the story to various researchers I've met and it seems there's consensus on that too. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 12:09, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
 * It is tempting to look at your that definition of science and say that if that’s the definition then climate science isn’t science. I won’t do so because I’ve read a lot of papers by climate scientists, and by and large, I think they are honestly trying to learn about things we don’t know. Unfortunately, a few scientists get a bit soap boxy and make pronouncements only tenuously related to the facts. Worse, some nonscientists latch onto bits and pieces of the science and use it to advance their own agenda. Unfortunately, our news media is more interested in scary headlines like “Arctic ice to disappear by 2014” then on a reasoned and balanced discussions of the issues.-- S Philbrick (Talk)  13:23, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
 * "My" definition? I didn't state one of my own.  See science NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:32, 22 June 2015 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I'm not trying to push any idea that "climate science isn't science" or the like. For example, I agree 100% that explanations and predictions related to global temperatures are a perfectly good topic for scientific investigation.  My recent concerns about "many ecosystems" and "Resilience" are a concern that those particular concepts may not be clearly enough defined to give a clear answer.  For example, consider the statement "in the 17th century, the resilience of many ecosystems in France was exceeded."  We have pretty good information about 17th century France, but is there enough agreement on definitions that one could give a clear answer to that?  I'd wager not, at least not yet.  For that reason, I would greatly prefer predictions such as "sea level will rise" or "we will see extiction of [whatever]."  But it seems I'm in the minority there, and the question is sufficiently debatable that I'm not going to push my point of view further at the Scientific opinion on climate change talk page.MissPiggysBoyfriend (talk) 05:53, 23 June 2015 (UTC)
 * Additionally, about Watts and sensitivity, here Watts does a write-up on a paper suggesting a "most likely value" for sensitivity of 1.75°C, with bounds of 1.25°C-3°C. With the IPCC estimating 1.5-4.5°C, that hardly seems like "denial".MissPiggysBoyfriend (talk) 06:51, 23 June 2015 (UTC)