Undeniable and Unfalsifiable
Is global warming unfalsifiable? A blogger on Qurora.com recently said so.
Definition of UNFALSIFIABLE: not capable of being proved false.
Since 2000, atmospheric global warming, AGW, promoters and green house gas theory, GHGT, theorists have claimed their theories were undeniable and anyone who denied them was a denier, an intended derogatory term. In January 2014 one went further and claimed AGW was unfalsifiable.
Logic. Unfalsifiable is a legitimate conclusion from mathematics. Once a math theorem is proved, it is automatically unfalsifiable. 3 + 3 = 6, always and everywhere. If Y > X and Z > Y, then Z > X. The area of a circle in a plane of radius r is Pi*r*r. Nobody will ever falsify those truisms. That is what math does for us.
The claim that AGW is unfalsifiable is merely a claim, assertion, postulate, proposal, theory. Its proponents must provide evidence to prove and verify it before rational people can accept it as true. Unsupported claims are to be summarily dismissed.
There is no consensus on a commonly accepted mathematical description and quantification for the GHGT and associated AGW model to determine the effect of increased CO2 on atmospheric temperatures. This is why the UN IPCC continues to operate and GHGT modelers resort to empirical data fitting correlations that fail to predict. Since the math model does not exist, it has no predictive power. It is impossible to prove it is unfalsifiable and therefore it should not be accepted as scientific theory, let alone a correct one. This proves the assertion on Quora is false.
An unfalsifiable law of nature is the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which Sadi Carnot used to falsify the possibility of building a perpetual motion machine that created energy. Engineers routinely use it to avoid attempting to build impossible heat engines because it is always valid, always works and is unfalsifiable.
Back radiation. A basic tenant of GHGT is radiant energy transfers from colder atmospheric CO2 molecules to the warmer surface by a new mechanism, back radiation from cold to hot. It is described in the well-known K-T diagram for Earth’s global energy flows (1) showing an average back-radiation rate of 333 w/m2 from the atmosphere absorbed by Earth’s surface. Note this value exceeds the 161 absorbed from the sun! And surface radiates at 396! (The error is confusing radiation intensity, which depends on body temperature and emissivity, with radiant heat transfer between two bodies which depends on the difference in their intensities. Confusion may have arisen because they share the same engineering units, w/m2. The diagram (right) should show one up arrow with value 396 – 333 = 63.)
Is global warming unfalsifiable? A blogger on Qurora.com recently said so.
Definition of UNFALSIFIABLE: not capable of being proved false.
Since 2000, atmospheric global warming, AGW, promoters and green house gas theory, GHGT, theorists have claimed their theories were undeniable and anyone who denied them was a denier, an intended derogatory term. In January 2014 one went further and claimed AGW was unfalsifiable.
Logic. Unfalsifiable is a legitimate conclusion from mathematics. Once a math theorem is proved, it is automatically unfalsifiable. 3 + 3 = 6, always and everywhere. If Y > X and Z > Y, then Z > X. The area of a circle in a plane of radius r is Pi*r*r. Nobody will ever falsify those truisms. That is what math does for us.
The claim that AGW is unfalsifiable is merely a claim, assertion, postulate, proposal, theory. Its proponents must provide evidence to prove and verify it before rational people can accept it as true. Unsupported claims are to be summarily dismissed.
There is no consensus on a commonly accepted mathematical description and quantification for the GHGT and associated AGW model to determine the effect of increased CO2 on atmospheric temperatures. This is why the UN IPCC continues to operate and GHGT modelers resort to empirical data fitting correlations that fail to predict. Since the math model does not exist, it has no predictive power. It is impossible to prove it is unfalsifiable and therefore it should not be accepted as scientific theory, let alone a correct one. This proves the assertion on Quora is false.
An unfalsifiable law of nature is the Second Law of Thermodynamics, which Sadi Carnot used to falsify the possibility of building a perpetual motion machine that created energy. Engineers routinely use it to avoid attempting to build impossible heat engines because it is always valid, always works and is unfalsifiable.
Back radiation. A basic tenant of GHGT is radiant energy transfers from colder atmospheric CO2 molecules to the warmer surface by a new mechanism, back radiation from cold to hot. It is described in the well-known K-T diagram for Earth’s global energy flows (1) showing an average back-radiation rate of 333 w/m2 from the atmosphere absorbed by Earth’s surface. Note this value exceeds the 161 absorbed from the sun! And surface radiates at 396! (The error is confusing radiation intensity, which depends on body temperature and emissivity, with radiant heat transfer between two bodies which depends on the difference in their intensities. Confusion may have arisen because they share the same engineering units, w/m2. The diagram should show one up arrow with value 396 – 333 = 63.)
Perpetual motion machine. Using only one law of physics, the first Law of Thermodynamics conservation of energy, and infinite sequence convergence mathematics, I proved the back-radiation postulate of GHGT constitutes a perpetual motion machine creating energy (2). That is a sufficient proof GHGT is not unfalsifiable, and in fact is actually false.
I think this conclusion is unfalsifiable, because I proved it with logic, the foundation of all mathematics, physics and proper use of the English language.
CO2 effects. It is true everything (energy and matter) in the universe is connected to everything else by the four fundamental forces of nature (gravity is one), but most connections are very weak.
Increasing atmospheric CO2 does affect the properties of the atmosphere (heat capacity, density, absorptivity, emissivity). I know of several energy transfer mechanisms affected, some leading to higher temperatures in some parts of Earth, some causing lower temperatures of other parts. All effects are rather small, most cancel out, and the net effect is vanishingly small and could go either way, depending on which mechanism dominates and which temperature one is thinking of.
Introducing a radiating dipolar gas molecule like H2O and CO2 would absorb some incoming solar radiation if the spectra overlap, a cooling effect below. It would increase the resistance to surface radiation transfer, causing surface to radiate more intensely at a higher temperature to transfer through the atmosphere to space at the same 239 rate fixed by global energy balance, a warming effect below. The rate of consumption of CO2 and solar energy by photosynthesis chemical reaction in plants increases with CO2 concentration and temperature of the atmosphere, a cooling effect.
Conclusion. So I am willing to accept CO2 affects a temperature, but I don’t know which, where, why, how or how much. Nobody else does either. Which is why AGW scare mongering is a hoax built on fraud. (Bogus is a more appropriate adjective than unfalsifiable because unfalsifiable is not very useful.)
I proved global warming is not unfalsifiable. Further I proved it is false. AGW promoters are wrong. QED.
- Trenberth, Kevin E, John T Fasullo, Jeffrey Kiehl, “Earth’s Global Energy Budget”, Bulletin of American Meteorological Society (BAMS), March, 2009, pg 311-324. http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/trenbert/trenberth.papers/TFK_bams09.pdf
- Latour, Pierre R, “No Virginia, cooler objects cannot make warmer objects even warmer still”, Nov 2013, PSI.org, http://www.principia-scientific.org/no-virginia-cooler-objects-cannot-make-warmer-objects-even-warmer-still.html
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