Is falsifiability in science still a thing?

basically

>Climate Change.jpg

CO2 levels has increased to 400 ppm? True
CO2 is a green house gas? True
400 ppm will radically and adversely effect the climate? Unknown

Do we want to find out the hard way? No. But do we know for certain? Hell fucking no.

The fear mongering presented in this pic is the science version of the boy who cried wolf. The consequences of too many failed doomsday predictions are all those big bad climate change "deniers". Honestly, what the fuck did the climate science community expected?!?

They forgot the bit in the 70s where they were championing the "Runaway Greenhouse Effect", which would turn the Earth into a Venus hellhole.

Saint Carl Sagan was a proponent of this.

science has not abandoned it, but it never completely adhered to it. It's fine if it's not falsifiable right now, i.e. string theory, but inherently un-falsifiable things i.e. a deadbeat God are not fine. String theory is bullshit too, but that's another story.

i think many theories usually start out with an unfalsifiable idea or thought before it is fleshed out.

Isn't the effects of increased CO2 on the greenhouse effect logarithmic in nature?

we all know what happened in the boy who cried wolf though... there really was a wolf and he fucked up that niggas shit

>but inherently un-falsifiable things i.e. a deadbeat God are not fine

and this is why people spread the falsifiability
meme, to slap a science label on their atheism to make themselves feel smart.

>i think many theories usually start out with an unfalsifiable idea or thought before it is fleshed out.

the actual word for those is hypotheses

I think what is meant by this is that the 19th Century ideal of:

1. Form hypothesis.
2. Perform experiment.
3. Support/reject hypothesis.

Is on the way out. Science is increasingly turning to:

1. Gather a fuckton of data.
2. Automagically detect pattern and structures in data using software no one in your department really understands, and the people that do understand it don't know shit about what you're doing.
3. Tell a convincing story about why the structure is what it is and publish.
4. ???
5. No profit. You're doing this for free. The publisher, on the other hand...

even without falsifiability, god is quite a shit scientific theory

no, most scientists would say that for a statement to be a hypothesis it has to be testable.

but well done for what would have been a brilliant contribution

>. 3. using software no one in your department really understands, and the people that do understand it don't know shit about what you're doing.

think theres a problem in the cognitive brain science where it would be optimal if everyone was well versed in stats/math modelling/computational theories, neuroanatomy/physiology whatever and also did the behavioural stuff but its like all split. the people who do great models dont do good experiments (or ones which involve explicithypothesis testing), behaviourists know shit all about stats or math and can sometimes abuse the analysis of neuroimaging. and then the ones who do the physiology/anatomy dont want none of it even though its obviously vital for a proper understanding of the brain and its cognition.

>newspaper predictions are scientific journal publications

fucking kill yourself

>scientific models can't predict the future with 100% certainty
>therefore we should throw it out the window and continue to pump greenhouse without a care for the world

I don't think you even come to comprehend how scientific modeling works. Although I shouldn't be surprised since you are taking a literal political cartoon as a statement of 'scientific knowledge'.

>I don't think you even come to comprehend how scientific modeling works.

No, please go ahead and explain why it's sound science to keep models that fail to make predictions about reality or why it's sound science to be the secular version of a manic street preacher predicting the imminent end of the world in order to sell your ideological and political agenda.

You do know that fable is directed at liars and not the people they're telling lies to. We're not obligated to believe a thousand lies for that one time a liar tells the truth.

There's diverging uncertainty on any extrapolated model. This doesn't mean that the underlying empiral inputs are wrong or inconsistent and much less that the general trend is wrong.

The fact that you only focus on the 'policy' part of it tells me right off the bat that you could care less about the science and all about the partisanship. I suggest you take that mental gymanastics routine back to appropriate cook boxes.

>There's diverging uncertainty on any extrapolated model. This doesn't mean that the underlying empiral inputs are wrong or inconsistent and much less that the general trend is wrong.

I hope that's not your justification for sensationalism and doomsday prediction.

google.com/#q=500 days global warming

Also, difference in long term predictions doesn't explain the outright contradictory predictions for global warming

bbc.com/earth/story/20160127-will-snow-become-a-thing-of-the-past-as-the-climate-warms

washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/01/26/global-warming-could-make-blizzards-worse/?utm_term=.582934a68dc4

>The fact that you only focus on the 'policy' part of it tells me right off the bat that you could care less about the science and all about the partisanship.

It was *your* side that politicized global warming first.

youtube.com/watch?v=EeBeq0i03bg

forbes.com/sites/larrybell/2013/11/03/blood-and-gore-making-a-killing-on-anti-carbon-investment-hype/#5b86a37c3750

You would think the best way to address global warming is by replacing coal plants with nuclear power. But some, not all, but some of the prominent figures in global warming are dead set against and those who believe in AGW and support nuclear power to solve the issues are demonized.

theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/16/new-form-climate-denialism-dont-celebrate-yet-cop-21

theecologist.org/News/news_analysis/2986335/dont_nuke_the_climate_james_hansens_nuclear_fantasies_exposed.html

newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/how-not-to-debate-nuclear-energy-and-climate-change

I'd imagined it would be hard to push for wealth redistribution if the problem of global warming was solved and nuclear power plants don't really need any carbon credits from Al Gore either.

So yeah, we do care if people are taking a crisis, real or imagine, and using it to push their own political agenda

>I hope that's not your justification for sensationalism and doomsday prediction.
>google.com/#q=500 days global warming
Not that sensationalist if you take a moment to read about what he's actually saying and not twist his words. What he was referring to was a conference on climate change that was coming in 500 days.

>Also, difference in long term predictions doesn't explain the outright contradictory predictions for global warming
>bbc.com/earth/story/20160127-will-snow-become-a-thing-of-the-past-as-the-climate-warms
Did you read the article? It explains how it's not a contradiction.

It seems like you are incapable of arguing honestly. All you're doing is misrepresenting what people are saying and cherrypicking extreme sources in order to smear while avoiding the actual scientific debate. Such sophistry only shows that you're an ideologue and don't actually care about the facts.

>Did you read the article? It explains how it's not a contradiction.

Not article but articles as in plural.

bbc.com/earth/story/20160127-will-snow-become-a-thing-of-the-past-as-the-climate-warms

washingtonpost.com/news/energy-environment/wp/2015/01/26/global-warming-could-make-blizzards-worse/?utm_term=.582934a68dc

That's not a diverging model. It's going in completely opposite directions, which is why I linked both articles. BTW: you did not address AGW believers purging their own members because these pariahs in the climate science community had the audacity to actually address the problem of greenhouse gases with a viable alternative and not with wealth redistribution or peddling carbon credits like the pope peddling indulgences.

They aren't contradictory. You are confusing two different mechanisms, which are both discussed in each article:

Washington Post: “The U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has found that nor’easters like this one may grow stronger [with] human-caused climate change, as they are driven by the contrast between cold Arctic air masses and ever-warming ocean surface temperatures,”

BBC: Partly as a consequence of climate change, the Atlantic Ocean is warmer now than it was even a few decades ago. As a consequence of this ocean warming, the air above the Atlantic is also unusually warm and moist. When that warm air met cold, dry air from the Arctic, it formed a winter storm, so conditions were just right for a monster snowfall.

BBC: But climate change is nothing if not complex. Even if a warmer world helps create the conditions for extreme snowfall events in some regions, this does not necessarily mean more snow will fall overall.

Washington Post: Granted, there are also ways that global warming may weaken some aspects of winter. With warmer average temperatures, snow may melt away more quickly. There’s also an idea that we might get “less snow, more blizzards” in a warmer world — in other words, less snow on average but more extreme snow events when they do occur.
Trenberth takes a similar view. As long as it’s cold enough — in the height of winter — he expects that more water vapor in the atmosphere will enhance snowfall. “So as long as it does not warm above freezing, the result is a greater dump of snow,” he comments. But at the opening and closing of the winter season, as things are on the warmer side, you might get less snow and more rain.

>They aren't contradictory. You are confusing two different mechanisms, which are both discussed in each article:

Nitpicking. If a mechanism that was a consequence of AGW was causing more snowfall, then it was false to claim an end to snow irregardless of what happened to the additional snowfall due to the other alleged mechanism caused by AGW. Also, the claim of harsher blizzards and more snowfall as a result of AGW isn't panning out as promised.

weathertrends360.com/Blog/Uploads/2014/08/o-snow-chart.png

weathertrends360.com/Blog/Post/Long-Range-Weather-Forecasting-The-2014-2015-Winter-Outlook-1935

epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-snow-cover

>But climate change is nothing if not complex

So complex that the effects of climate change is unfalsifiable since virtually any weather event is anecdotal evidence for AGW.

BTW: you still did not address AGW believers purging their own members for supporting nuclear power nor have you addressed using AGW to push unrelated political agendas and carbon credit indulgences.

>When your thread about falsifiability turns into thread on climate change

What are they paying you to do this and how do I get in on it?

The guy who made the idea of falsifiability popular also said that the elementary thing in all of our pursuits, including Materialist ones, is our Subjective experience. The very notion of Objectivity is only ascribed to Phenomena in the context of our feeling tones.

When one's discussion is rhetorical and their desire is to win arguments, the intent of the narrative won't be the subject at hand.

These people get off on thinking they are smart, but their domain is the argument, not the world, and so any corroboration has no value.

And that is how you bring the thread back to falsifiability.

one third of all CA trees are dead.
sfgate.com/news/article/Unprecedented-More-than-100-million-trees-10624642.php

I just want some of that phat Koch brothers money

Who are you quoting?

They were thinking they needed funding.

Who exactly claimed an end to snow?

All you're doing is misrepresenting the clickbait headline without even reading the article. The articles don't contradict each other.

Neither say that snow will end or that snowfall will increase globally. One describes how blizzards were caused *in a certain area* due to arctic wind mixing with the warmed pacific wind. But warming globally will decrease snowfall in north America. Here is the IPCC projecting such in 2007:

ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch11s11-5.html

So here's a classic example of the dishonest argument your making. You imply that climatologists predicted more snowfall based on a news article (which doesn't even say that) when in fact they did the exact opposite. If you had gone to the scientific literature you would not have been able to make that argument. But it's very hard for you to do that because then you would have to actually argue against the science instead of misrepresenting what laymen are writing about it.

>BTW: you still did not address AGW believers purging their own members for supporting nuclear power nor have you addressed using AGW to push unrelated political agendas and carbon credit indulgences.
Why would I address comments that were made to someone else? Anyway, I see no reason to address irrelevant opinions that have nothing to do with the science. I support nuclear power. Many wrongly are afraid of nuclear power. What else is there to say and how is it relevant anyway? It's merely a distraction because you know you have no scientific argument against AGW.

Strict falsification never existed. If a theory is weak enough to be wholly disproved by a single counter-argument, then it didn't deserve the name "theory" in the first place.

All theories have anomalies that the theory is incapable of explaining. Under naive, strict falsification, science would have literally no theories to work with. That's the opposite of progress.

Also, there's the problem of practical reality. An expert in the field might be able to discern that the experiment that supposedly falsifies a theory is actually not set up properly, or lacks proper controls, or was performed with a notoriously error-prone methodology. If the theory has been performing well in other contexts, you should eliminate the most obvious answers (bad researcher, poor design, poor analysis) before turning to the big guns (bad theory).

It goes directly to the motives of some in the alarmist community. Nuclear power solves the problem of greenhouse emissions and takes away their argument for wealth redistribution and for making the worker's paradise.

>But warming globally will decrease snowfall in north America. Here is the IPCC projecting such in 2007:

>ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/ch11s11-5.html

weathertrends360.com/Blog/Uploads/2014/08/o-snow-chart.png

weathertrends360.com/Blog/Post/Long-Range-Weather-Forecasting-The-2014-2015-Winter-Outlook-1935

epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indicators-snow-cover

There is no downward trend in snowfall. The data doesn't back up your claim.

>there is no downward trend in snowfall. The data doesn't back up your claim.
wew lad

>It goes directly to the motives of some in the alarmist community.
So now you are explicitly admitting that you employ ad hominem attacks against supporters of AGW, rather than actual arguments against it.

Another problem is that two can play at that game. I could point out several problems with the motives of deniers of AGW, but I'm not, because it's irrelevant to the science.

The data does back it up but regardless a few years is not enough to judge a forecast for the entire century. We'll see who's right, but I have actual scientific reasoning on my side. Can you say the same?

And here's more recent data from the same site.

>simple linear fit in excel
you do realize that proves nothing, right?

>downward trend
>the trendline doesn't count because then I'm wrong REEEEEEEE

It proves that snowfall is decreasing. However it does not prove the projection correct as the projection is what would occur over the current century. See

You got BTFO several times, kid. It's time to stop posting.

I'm a brand new poster in the thread.

And no, you can't just fit a trendline and call it a day. You need to also compute confidence intervals for the slop to demonstrate that it's statistically significantly different than zero if you want to say it's actually decreasing.

I'm using the data that was in the chart posted to prove "there is no downward trend," it has no error range provided.

Then no one should be using it.

I don't see the problem with using it casually. I'm not trying to get it published.

If you're going to make an argument using evidence you should be using the best evidence you can. Doing otherwise is dishonest, even in a casual setting.

No, what's dishonest is to claim that data with a decreasing trend shows snowfall is not decreasing. Not to mention that this is all irrelevant towards the claim that snowfall will decrease over the century.

Dude, you're really doing it wrong, lmao

Falsifiability is a garbage criterion, because falsifiability isn't falsifiable. Humans are forced to create a priori, untestable metaphysics to even start science. Time to read some Kant if you want insight into that.

Sorry, but anyone who has delusions of "pure" scientific understanding is foolish and wrong.

Karl Popper invented falsifiability as a way to justify his right-wing totalitarian ambitions and discredit Marxism as "unfalsifiable".

It's always existed as a petty political stance by ideological morons. It's never been a serious way to view scientific discovery.