Should the Scientific Challenges of Dissident Nobel Laureates be answered?

You mean this guy?

Skeptical Science said:
We often see scientists from non-climate fields who believe they have sufficient expertise to understand climate science despite having done minimal research on the subject; William Happer, Fritz Vahrenholt, and Bob Carter, for example. As he admits in his own words, Nobel Prize winning physicist Ivar Giaever fits this mould perfectly:

"I am not really terribly interested in global warming. Like most physicists I don't think much about it. But in 2008 I was in a panel here about global warming and I had to learn something about it. And I spent a day or so - half a day maybe on Google, and I was horrified by what I learned. And I'm going to try to explain to you why that was the case."

That quote comes from a presentation Giaever gave to the 62nd Meeting of Nobel Laureates in 2012, for some unknown reason on the subject of climate change. As Giaever notes at the beginning of his talk, he has become more famous for his contrarian views on global warming than for his Nobel Prize, which have made him something of a darling to the climate contrarian movement and climate denial enablers.
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http://www.skepticalscience.com/ivar-giaever-nobel-physicist-climate-pseudoscientist.html
 
Giaever's contrarian climate opinions come from a position of extreme ignorance on the subject, as he admits. [0:58] “I spent maybe half a day — a day or so — on Google” While he is certainly a highly accomplished physicist, that does not automatically make him a climate expert as well. As he himself has admitted, he has spent very little time researching the subject, and it shows. He personifies the classic stereotype of the physicist who thinks he understands all scientific fields of study.

This is why we don't rely on indvidual scientists or individual papers to draw conclusions about climate change. The only way to get an accurate picture is through the work of many scientists, peer reviewed and scrutinized over decades and tested against multiple lines of evidence. He's the one trying to make empty claims backed only by his personal authority in a field where he has earned zero authority.

Giaever is currently associated with the Heartland Institute. So not on the side of the science.

Here, in red, are some areas of basic science where Giaever has pushed his career down the stairwell:

rpenner said:
There are a lot of people who think they have some great insight into the nature of reality and then go on a web campaign to try and get the world to follow them and tar and feather the physicists who actually have jobs and the respect of their peers. To help future students of physics not fall so badly off the rails, please allow me to present my constructive notes on what physics actually is.

[Revised] Fundamental Principles in Physics
  • “Science is about the management of ignorance.” Science-as-an-occupation is the confrontation of ideas about reality with experiment and observation of reality so that science-as-a-body-of-knowledge expands. This knowledge can come about in many ways: by repeating an experiment to see if it plays out the same way for us and in the reports of others, by seeking out new phenomena, by measuring more precisely, by pushing into areas that we were once ignorant, etc. Saying ‘I don’t know’ is the beginning of learning about reality, not the end. Related to this is Karl Popper’s quote from The Open Universe : An Argument for Indeterminism (1992), p. 44, “Science may be described as the art of systematic over-simplification — the art of discerning what we may with advantage omit.” (h/t: danshawen) Unlike mathematics where theorems may be rigorously proven from logical arguments from axioms, postulates and givens, there is no concept of proving an idea right in science. The best we can do is demonstrate that we can demonstrate experiments or observations which are not compatible with an idea or that the totality of knowledge still leaves us ignorant of any examples incompatible with that idea. Lots of ideas will fall into the ‘I don’t know’ area of incomplete knowledge.
  • “Beware confirmation bias and intellectual dishonesty.” Science isn’t about proving that your ideas are right, but that some ideas are objectively more precise or equally precise and more parsimonious than others. This means you have to look at all the relevant evidence, not just the evidence in favor of the ideas you support. As Richard Feynman wrote in “Cargo Cult Science”, “The first principle is that you must not fool yourself — and you are the easiest person to fool.”
  • “A physical theory is a useful, precise, communicable framework for predicting the behavior of a wide variety of related observable phenomena.” Basically, we assume reality has behaviors which are commonly observable by all of us and physical theories are the summaries of our observations. To the extent it goes beyond this or doesn't measure up to this, it is not a physical theory. (But because math and physics are necessarily tightly linked by the "precise" requirement, we sometimes speak of mathematical theories as simply theories when the context isn't confusing to professionals. Sorry.)
  • “The map is not the territory.” Physics can't tell us about reality -- physics can only give us validated models of the behavior of reality. Newton's assumption of (and reliance on) Euclidean space and universal time does not, for example, tell us what space and time are, but only how they behaved up to the limit of his knowledge by experiment and observation. This expression originates with Alfred Korzybski following up on Eric Temple Bell.
  • “Management of uncertainty is vital to relating theory and observation.” Every physical measurement necessarily has an associated uncertainty, because rulers, diffraction gratings, clocks, sextants, weights and compasses only have finite manufactured precisions and comparisons with them can only be made within certain tolerances. Knowledge of and experience with statistics is vital. Amateurs plot points, experts plot error bars.
  • “Symmetry usefully encapsulates ignorance.” When a validated physical model has a symmetry, it means we have not yet seen nature violate that rule. Mathematical models have many types of symmetry, which is a more general term than just the symmetries of geometrical objects. A perfect sphere gives us three dimensions but no reason to single out any direction as special, but that might just be an artifact of our ignorance. The sphere could be a crystal with several special directions related to internal structure. Until we know more, the symmetric description is the safest description of what we know and do not know.
  • “Continuous symmetries are associated with conserved quantities.” This is a famous theorem from Emmy Noether. Early physics instruction consists of working with conserved quantities of physics models, which result from symmetries of those physics models which encapsulate our ignorance based on the behavior of reality never violating the assumptions of those models. Therefore it is of great interest if nature appears to obey a conserved-quantity rule without a current physics model having an associated symmetry.
  • “The correspondence principle tells us something about future theories.” Since a validated physical theory is also a summary of the up-to-then observed behavior of reality, a successful successor theory must be able to reproduce all the predictions of the former theory with at least as good of precision. That is the predictions of the Standard Model of Particle physics, must in the appropriate problem domain reduce to the predictions of the theory of quantum electrodynamics which in the appropriate problem domain reduce to the predictions of Maxwell's electrodynamics which must in the appropriate limit reduce to the predictions of Newton's three laws of motion. Likewise, the predictions of General Relativity must in the appropriate problem domain reduce to the predictions of Newton's Universal Gravitation which must in the appropriate problem domain reduce to Kepler's laws.
That’s not a lot, but represents a mindset not found in introductory physics textbooks (as of the last time I checked). I hope you will find it useful.
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See next post for related content.
 
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Concrete examples of Giaever's ignorance and sources of learning that he ignored:
  • “How can you measure the average temperature of the Earth? I don't think that's possible”
    • The accuracy of the global surface temperature record has been repeatedly confirmed.
    • There are also learning resources which explain how we know these facts.
    • Since this is ground zero to approaching a problem, finding out what the empirical facts are and not known to Giaever, it appears you can stop listening here and gain no less information.
  • [04:27] “From ~1880 to 2013 temperature has increased from ~288K to 288.8K (0.3%). If this is true, to me it means that the temperature has been amazingly stable.”
    • What type of physicist can't do a conservation of energy calculation in their head? If the surface temperature changes that much in 133 years, then you are talking about an energy imbalance currently averaging over 200 TW.
    • We're not talking about the melting of the non-ice parts of the Earth, we are talking about effects on biology on a global scale. So pooh-poohing the change as small percentage change in thermodynamic temperature is based on no empirical point of view. It's a bad argument.
  • “Water vapor is a much much stronger green[house] gas than the CO₂. If you look out of the window you see the sky, you see the clouds, and you don't see the CO₂.”
    • What a moronic bit of reasoning. Even weathermen know that H₂O is a dependent variable, not an input signal. That's because H₂O precipitates out of the sky all the time. Thus the total amount of H₂O in the air is causally related to the mean global temperature.
    • A second moronic part is that he seems to be ignorant that CO₂ is an invisible gas. This was a meeting of young scientists, not ignorant blind people with no exposure to the concept of what CO₂ is before.
  • “Is it possible that all the paved roads and cut down forests are the cause of "global warming", not CO2? But nobody talks about that.”
    • Everyone talks about that. But the data shows it's not the cause of the measured effect.
    • Then Giaever contradicts himself by claiming that Steven Chu is one of these people who talks about the subject nobody talks about. Giaever is speaking with a more literally forked tongue than I would credit to a non-politician.
  • “[Fellow Nobel Laureate Steven Chu has] been bought by the global warming people, and he's now helping Obama trying to make green energy in the United States.”
  • “Is climate change pseudoscience? If I’m going to answer the question, the answer is: absolutely.”
    • A sound bite and not a rational, fact-based judgment supported by the lecture.
Videos that Eugene Shubert's post should be replaced with:

http://www.mediatheque.lindau-nobel...hemistry-and-climate-in-the-anthropocene-2012
http://www.mediatheque.lindau-nobel.org/videos/31331/the-science-and-policy-of-climate-change-2012

This post (and the prior one) copies heavily to to point of being plagiarized from that of Dana Nuccitelli because Eugene Shubert never shows any sign of clicking through to good science links, even though Daecon really tried.
 
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Mod Hat ― Drive-by reminder

While we greatly appreciate those who are willing to give their efforts to such threads, it is also necessary that we remind members that lazy, drive-by topic posts are generally inappropriate.

Seriously, if one wishes to post a thirty minute video and put no effort into their own role in the discussion, there is a place for that.

It's called "Facebook".
 
It's intellectually dishonest to promise "scientific challenges" in the thread title when you present an anti-scientific Gish gallop with nothing that passes for scholarly research.
It's also intellectually dishonest to promise Nobel Laureates (plural) in the thread title when you present only one.
 
rpenner said:
It's intellectually dishonest to promise "scientific challenges" in the thread title when you present an anti-scientific Gish gallop with nothing that passes for scholarly research.
It's also intellectually dishonest to promise Nobel Laureates (plural) in the thread title when you present only one.
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1st challenge (1:46-2:55): Global warming is a religion because you can’t discuss it.

2nd challenge (4:25-4:42): From 1880-2015 the average temperature has been amazingly stable. It has increased from ~ 288K to 288.8K, i.e., only 0.3%.

3rd challenge (5:10-5:59) Only 8 thermometers to measure the average temperature of a continent. Where do you put them?

Also, you missed Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever saying that most of his challenges are based on commonsense.

Here is another Nobel Laureate that calls global warming a scientific fraud (21:00-29:08):

 
Ivar's first issue with inclusion of the ocean temps in the data may or may not be a valid complaint. It's probably too early to tell.

34 other Nobel laureates have signed a document voicing their concerns about global warming. Many of those are no doubt not climatologists either.

About the global sea level rise:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_level_rise
  1. For example, geological observations indicate that during the last 2,000 years, sea level change was small, with an average rate of only 0.0–0.2 mm per year. This compares to an average rate of 1.7 ± 0.5 mm per yearfor the 20th century.
sea level.jpg
 
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Eugene Shubert said:
nd challenge (4:25-4:42): From 1880-2015 the average temperature has been amazingly stable. It has increased from ~ 288K to 288.8K, i.e., only 0.3%.
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Eugene, this is definitely a spurious argument. What PERCENTAGE change does it take to cause a cascade phase transition on some part of this planet? It depends.

Eugene Shubert said:
3rd challenge (5:10-5:59) Only 8 thermometers to measure the average temperature of a continent. Where do you put them?
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On a satellite would be an excellent choice, wouldn't it?

Eugene Shubert said:
most of his challenges are based on commonsense.
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Under that argument, a lot of science, like relativity, to name only one example, fails miserably. Observation beats common sense, a lot of the time.
 
Eugene Shubert said:
What? No one is capable of proceeding in a chronological order? Has the global warming religion got everyone stumped?
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It's not a religion to me, Eugene. I have nothing to gain or lose by discussing it, but I'll be the first to admit, I'm no expert on the subject. I'm a former telecom engineer, so when someone asks me "where do you put the thermometers?", the answer to that one is kind of obvious, to someone with my background, at least.

I provided a detailed graph of the sea level changes he was discussing. I thought I saw the same one flash on his slides. It is very interesting to me, somehow he just seemed to totally ignore the part of the graph that resulted from measurement of sea level changes done by satellite. Does he even know what a satellite is?

Just because climatologists decided recently to include average ocean temperatures in their estimates of global warming is not something that necessarily negates or skews their views of the problems of global warming or carbon emissions.

The argument that a large number of scientists and climatologists in particular have a different view regarding global warming actually is an indictment of someone who instead relies on "common sense", particularly when that "common sense" does not inform him, satellite telemetry has come a very long way since the time he won his Nobel, and none of us are the least bit interested in where he thinks the eight thermometers should have been placed.
 
Eugene Shubert said:
Not only is climate changing but hurricane severity is actually decreasing according to observational data presented by Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever. Measured CO2 levels has no appreciable effect.
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And what about any observational data presented by an actual, qualified, climate scientist?
 
Eugene Shubert said:
Not only is climate changing but hurricane severity is actually decreasing according to observational data presented by Nobel laureate Ivar Giaever. Measured CO2 levels has no appreciable effect.
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Well, he has us dead to rights there, Eugene. With the exception of 1995, the trend in the Atlantic has been a decrease in hurricane activity over the last two decades. Authority: NOAA. I'm not certain this statistic would be an accurate predictor of global warming trends, and evidently neither does NOAA.

My oldest stepson is a hurricane physicist contractor with NOAA.

HurDat.jpg
 
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