Recently off-topic has seen a slight influx of threads that either started off being about denialism of scientific consensus or derailed in that direction.
The fundamental questions this discussion seemed to be based on is understanding the philosophy of science and the scientific method, and how to bridge that gap of understanding between those who study science and those who don't.
I thought it would be interesting to take the discussion to a deeper level to the fundamental questions themselves, to contemplate what is science, what is the scientific method, the best ways to apply the scientific method, the assumptions made when practicing science and what makes some practices of science more reliable than others.
tl;dr I would love to see a discussion on the nature of science itself, that is hopefully independent from and not bloated by the trappings of politics.
Sorry, I'm not sure how to kick this off.
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tl;dr I would love to see a discussion on the nature of science itself, that is hopefully independent from and not bloated by the trappings of politics.
I won't be sticking around for this because I am pretty sure it will get horrible within the first page or two, but I do want to wish you good luck in your attempt. You'll need it.
tl;dr I would love to see a discussion on the nature of science itself, that is hopefully independent from and not bloated by the trappings of politics.I won't be sticking around for this because I am pretty sure it will get horrible within the first page or two, but I do want to wish you good luck in your attempt. You'll need it.
Thanks
I just want to talk about science, man! Science is cool.
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Fair warning: I have drink a gallon of Gatorade and visit Karl Poppers grave on my bucket list....
The reason that science works is because its a dialog with nature rather than a monologue at it. You see how things work, you think it works a certain way, you figure out how to see if you're right and then you try to see if you're right*. If you're not you have to start over and refine your idea. Most of the stuff we come up with is stupid and if you ask the universe the right way it will tell you you're stupid.
You can be wrong doing this, but it is very hard for you and everyone else to be wrong doing this for very long because eventually something you got wrong will turn up in the real world. (hopefully with a kaboom more subtle than creating a black hole over cern or something...)
The thing is there is no objective measure for enough evidence is enough.
You cannot philosophically justify an alpha value in an experiment
You cannot philosophically justify a connection for what constitutes enough evidence.
You can't philosophically justify what is enough of a connection to call something bonkers/ maybe, probably, probably not, a sure thing and a fact.
Disproving a negative is a pain in the rear
and to top it off, People tend not to make their decisions based on evidence anyway.
Some politically powerful groups hate science: religion and people making oodles of money doing things that science tells us is bad. Oldest trick in the book is to sling mud. Cast any doubt you can on scientists (east coast liberal elitist facts! Godless heathens!) philosophically undermine the process (its not proven! Its jut an opinion! science doesn't prove anything)
And to top it all off, the bridge between articles that only a few specialists pay for and understand and the common crowd is for profit magazines who's science editors are trying to publish 120 articles a week skimming it and twisting it into the most sensational headlines possible.
*philosophically yes you're not proving yourself right you're failing to prove yourself wrong but after a certain point, come on.
tl;dr I would love to see a discussion on the nature of science itself, that is hopefully independent from and not bloated by the trappings of politics.I won't be sticking around for this because I am pretty sure it will get horrible within the first page or two, but I do want to wish you good luck in your attempt. You'll need it.Thanks
I just want to talk about science, man! Science is cool.
Well, I can discuss what I've seen my wife do. My wife is primarily engaged in the conservation of the wilderness (at least that's one way to put it). In her field, things have advanced quite rapidly over the past decade.
One of the front running issues is that of the environment and how it's changes are affecting the natural order of animal life.
She uses these computer models these days showing the migrations of animals, the population density, the variations in temperature, precipitation, humidity, pressure, and a whole lot of other items in her research. They utilize this to try to predict what is happening with the animal populations and how best to regulate them for the best interest of those animals, whilst still trying to preserve human life.
Interestingly enough, they utilize human actions as either resources or obstacles. People don't realize it, but LEGAL hunters are a massive resource that she relies on in regards to deer and other animal populations that if allowed unlimited growth, in and of themselves could cause difficulties with plant and other animal life.
As I said, much of her research and scaling comes from many other scientists in the field of climatology and biological/zoological sciences to compose databases which she then loads up and utilizes to compare and contrast.
Her studies then would take place on a seasonal, annual, and long term projection and outlooks. In these she typically sees what problems may be arising. Comes up with a hypothesis of what is occurring, and perhaps another of what the solution could be. She then does her research which either helps validate, or not validate what she thinks and then discusses it with others who also work with the databases or are in the field doing their own research into these items.
It's actually much more complex than I'm making it sound. In a nutshell, what happens in the environment directly impacts animal life. She is studying it and trying to figure out what it's effects are and solutions to things that are occurring because of it.
Is that the type of discussion you are wanting. I suppose it deals with biology more than the hard sciences of chemistry and physics, but many of the principles of study, hypothesis, and research probably are very similar.
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The broad working definition I have for science at the moment is "The process of learning how to do something twice in a row on purpose."
Part of that means learning about the mechanisms involved in how things work in order to predict what they will do if tampered with. Part of that means tearing things apart to look a the pieces. Part of that means tampering in controlled conditions to just to see what happens. The most difficult fields of science to study are those which tearing the subject apart to examine the pieces, or where having controlled conditions isn't possible or practical. Naturally advancements in those fields are more difficult (read: slower) to achieve and are often clouded by skepticism and ethics issues.
It's actually much more complex than I'm making it sound. In a nutshell, what happens in the environment directly impacts animal life. She is studying it and trying to figure out what it's effects are and solutions to things that are occurring because of it.So basically what your wife is working in is on the collateral effects of climate change, such as what is happening to the polar bear population now that the Arctic is undergoing drastic change.
Spoiler: the changes are having dramatic effects on the polar bear food supply, or rather their access to it.
Yes. That actually is directly related to things she would be working in (Edit, as in her field of study...related...but not the exact project she worked on...there are many different ongoing projects...the Polar bear one isn't one she, herself is working on).
Her's is focused more on Animal life than the weather.
I have an uncle who is more involved with the direct science of climate change itself (and from what I understand rather famous in the field...but I'm not as familiar with his specifics on a day to day basis). He's also quite the scientist, but I'm not as familiar with the scientific processes or science that he actually does. I see the results occasionally or talk about them...but I don't see how he goes about it specifically.
My spouse on the otherhand, I see what she does...and she even tries to explain it to me...however...there's a reason I didn't go into Biology, Meterology, Conservation, or any of those fields. (Overall I did nicely in school...but my Biology wasn't my forte...I eeeked out a B+ in biology...which downgraded my GPA on that note. My spouse on the otherhand...she did great in Biology...actually she did great in just about every subject except history if I recall).
Want to add, while she was in school, We got married before we finished up. Since we only had one vehicle, I actually got to accompany her (vehicle was in my name and we payed for insurance for me only...plus...she was a little green hearted in many ways and chose to bike as much as possible...she still does, though she has her own car now when she wants) on a LOT of her research projects and research activities. I saw a LOT of the processes, even though I didn't do the research or write up the reports or anything else she actually did. I just observed what she did when she was out in the field.
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It's actually much more complex than I'm making it sound. In a nutshell, what happens in the environment directly impacts animal life. She is studying it and trying to figure out what it's effects are and solutions to things that are occurring because of it.So basically what your wife is working in is on the collateral effects of climate change, such as what is happening to the polar bear population now that the Arctic is undergoing drastic change.
Spoiler: the changes are having dramatic effects on the polar bear food supply, or rather their access to it.
that explains the seals i saw tooling around in an SUV....
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Fair warning: I have drink a gallon of Gatorade and visit Karl Poppers grave on my bucket list....
Not a fan of Gatorade, but Karl Popper is absolutely one of the most important Philosopher's of Science out there. Ideally I think burgeoning science majors in college should take a class on Philosophy of Science as part of their major (with a focus but not exclusively so on Popper's ideas). Popper is widely influential among scientists (especially in the hard sciences) but there's been a bizarre strain of criticism among non-scientists for years (that I suspect is partially due to his rejection of Marxism).
Falsification of theories and reproducibility of results are two things that we should strive for in science. It's all about checking and stressing each others' theories and experiments to continually refine and occasionally revolutionize our models for how reality operates. The universe doesn't care about our feelings or our politics, and those shouldn't interfere with our data collection or with our interpretation of results. Experimental design should strive to eliminate sources of bias both among test subjects and the experimenters themselves.
WHY DO YOU HATE MARXISM SO MUCH!!!
Oh, right, because Marxism, never mind! Carry on.
So, mathematical theorems are, pretty much, make some assumptions and then prove your deductions.
And if the proof is correct, then the deductions will follow as long as the assumptions are valid. Or be pretty close, mostly, if the assumptions are close.
So you might assume the problem is on a flat surface, and know your answer will get worse as the Earth's curvature matters more.
Or you might assume that gas molecules are points and get the Gas Laws (which are very, very close to what's actually observed), but is obviously going to break down if the molecules are close enough that their volumes matter, or they start chemically interacting, for example.
And there isn't a similar set of laws for liquids, because some, like water, interact (giving surface tension for example) and others, like sugar molecules, are long chains that tangle.
So, physics is, in a sense, looking at the world, making some deductions and some simplifying assumptions, proving it mathematically, deducing as much else as you can, and looking at the world again, to see where it fails - which are usually because your assumptions don't fit well enough (if, for example, you can't ignore the curvature of the Earth).
Of course, for something like global warming, there isn't a 'proof' in this sense, I doubt if we even know all the factors. But people have been looking and collecting data, and looking for correlations, and trying to explain them. And poor or unsatisfactory explanations do not mean the correlations aren't there.
Not a fan of Gatorade,
HEATHEN!
but Karl Popper is absolutely one of the most important Philosopher's of Science out there.
Which makes him what in terms of science? The Roger eberts of film making?
Ideally I think burgeoning science majors in college should take a class on Philosophy of Science as part of their major (with a focus but not exclusively so on Popper's ideas).
Ugh. No. No more pointless classes. Even after you do the first two years of highschool part 2 you still have to cram in far too many humanities requirements and things you need to learn to learn science to actually learn science.
Elementary school: Oh, just wait till highschool, you can pick your classes.
Highschool: oh just wait till college, you can pick your classes
College I: Oh just wait till the second two years of college you can pick your classes...
College II Oh just wait till grad school you can... hey wait where are you going?
Popper is widely influential among scientists (especially in the hard sciences) but there's been a bizarre strain of criticism among non-scientists for years (that I suspect is partially due to his rejection of Marxism).
Politics is more of an ought than an is thing. I'd say its best left to philosophers but they don't do either very well.
Falsification of theories and reproducibility of results are two things that we should strive for in science. It's all about checking and stressing each others' theories and experiments to continually refine and occasionally revolutionize our models for how reality operates.
Nothing wrong with that, within limits. But when you're doing anything in the real world stuff happens. Your data gathering monkeys get driven off the randomly selected survey point at gun point. Your data sheets go flying out the window on a stretch of highway and you never find form 187. New guy forgets to set something on the machine that goes ping and the metal sheet that's supposed to be detecting matter spin gets burned to a crisp.
These are the problems I have with some of his ideas:
The problem of induction.
I really don't see a problem here. The laws of physics have stayed the same across time and space. We know that because the stars we see are cranking out a rather predictable spectrum of light. That tells us whether you go billions of years in the past or billions of light years thataway the laws of physics still work. You can conclude at least.... a momentum to the laws of the universe. Some thing or some reason why the laws stay the same.. usually. There's no reason you can't posit exceptions to these where warranted, like big bang black holes or a trillion year into the future but being unable to claim that the sun will rise tomorrow is taking it waaay to far.
The conclusion for the continuation of the laws of physics isn't perfect but....
Its not philosophically good enough....
Nothing is. Why on earth should I care about a standard that's so high that MAYBE one thing (I think therefore i am)
Why does science work?
The idea that science works because its some sort of evolution of ideas is silly. Lots of bad ideas spread very quickly and remain around a long time. Science works because it gives us a more accurate picture of reality. Philosophy doesn't seem to be able to handle anything other than the perfect, so it misses the good.
Failed to disprove...
Failure to disprove is itself meaningless. I slept in bed all day and failed to disprove quantum physics, ghosts, 5 foot stepping into an opponents space AoO rules and the mystery of if the light stays on in the fridge when you're not watching.
The entire reason that failure to disprove under reasonable conditions says anything at all is because the right kind of failure to disprove constitutes evidence for your position. If you correctly predict the results in an honest experiment its probably because your idea accurately reflects how the universe works.
Oh hay dare now, nothin' wrong with being a heathen, you betcha!
Oh hay dare now, nothin' wrong with being a heathen, you betcha!
yo that's my religion bro
anywy ironically I ended up not having the attention span for my own thread even after i stopped being busy, sorry about that folks. Lol adhd
Popper's requirement of falsification was as I understand it pretty much a response to the sloppy, all-encompassing theories of Freud et al, where no possible criticism or experiment could be considered to throw the theory into invalidity. The importance of falsification, while modern science is problematic in some areas (such as probabilities of events happening), is still huge. I suppose I mean that if no possible test could disprove your theory, it has become too important to you for you to see it soberly. No matter how good or important the theory is for you, humanity, and the world.
What would make the IPCC declare the threat of climate change over/invalid/overstated/not a problem? Yes, this is a political issue, not a scientific one. Really consider it. Is there even a single possible scenario?
Popper's requirement of falsification was as I understand it pretty much a response to the sloppy, all-encompassing theories of Freud et al, where no possible criticism or experiment could be considered to throw the theory into invalidity. The importance of falsification, while modern science is problematic in some areas (such as probabilities of events happening), is still huge. I suppose I mean that if no possible test could disprove your theory, it has become too important to you for you to see it soberly. No matter how good or important the theory is for you, humanity, and the world.
What would make the IPCC declare the threat of climate change over? Really consider it. Is there a single possible scenario?
Sure. A sustained drop in atmospheric CO2 levels would probably do it. But bear in mind that the baseline data they're looking at now is roughly 200 years long; the current theory isn't going to be overturned on the basis of a single observation or even a single anomalous year.
Well, I can discuss what I've seen my wife do. My wife is primarily engaged in the conservation of the wilderness (at least that's one way to put it). In her field, things have advanced quite rapidly over the past decade.
One of the front running issues is that of the environment and how it's changes are affecting the natural order of animal life.
She uses these computer models these days showing the migrations of animals, the population density, the variations in temperature, precipitation, humidity, pressure, and a whole lot of other items in her research. They utilize this to try to predict what is happening with the animal populations and how best to regulate them for the best interest of those animals, whilst still trying to preserve human life.
Sadly, the anti-science people simply say "Well your computer models are flawed, therefore I reject what you say." Despite a tremendous amount of work verifying the models and following it up to see how their predictions fit reality, they are easy to reject.
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The entire reason that failure to disprove under reasonable conditions says anything at all is because the right kind of failure to disprove constitutes evidence for your position. If you correctly predict the results in an honest experiment its probably because your idea accurately reflects how the universe works.
I'm afraid this isn't true. One of the issues in science is making the a correct prediction for the wrong reason (and then, later, making a wrong prediction because we didn't get our causal theory right).
As an oversimplified example, I say that the sun rises because it's pulled by a giant dung beetle. Thejeff laughs at my beliefs and says that it's riding on a huge chariot. Sissyl, more classically educated, says that it's because the sun is suspended on a giant crystal sphere surrounding the earth, and you probably believe in some nonsense involving a rotating planet.
To a first approximation, they all make the same prediction (a 24 hour day and night cycle), so we can easily make correct predictions with any of them. That doesn't tell us which idea accurately reflects how the universe works. The key is to find an area where my prediction differs from everyone else's so we can decide which of the competing explanations is actually correct.
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As an oversimplified example, I say that the sun rises because it's pulled by a giant dung beetle. Thejeff laughs at my beliefs and says that it's riding on a huge chariot. Sissyl, more classically educated, says that it's because the sun is suspended on a giant crystal sphere surrounding the earth, and you probably believe in some nonsense involving a rotating planet.
This is the part philosophy really can't do.
The sun is pulled by giant dung beetles -----> Something happens------> 24 hour day.
WHY does a dung beetle result in a 24 hour day? There's no rational correlation between the two ideas. A 24 hour day is equal evidence (or non evidence) for all of those theories. It offers no explanatory or predictive value.
A spherical planet spinning around on the other hand, explains the motions of the stars, the motion of the planets, and the rising and setting of the sun, and the weird way a ship vanishes over the horizon, and the shape of the shadow on the moon durin an eclipse, difficulties mapping while sailing,
Any random story can explain one thing that you already know. It takes a good idea to explain multiple things you already know and even better , stuff you don't know yet.
The prediction of the spectrum of light, for example, depends on multiple parameters (masses of electron, proton neutron, planck constant, the electric charge). The fact the numbers agree now doesn't mean the numbers (as they are now) have to agree forever.
Ahem
There's no reason you can't posit exceptions to these where warranted, like big bang black holes or a trillion year into the future but being unable to claim that the sun will rise tomorrow is taking it waaay to far.
http://www.eleceng.adelaide.edu.au/personal/dabbott/publications/PIE_ abbott2013.pdf
.... I have absolutely NO Idea how that is even remotely irrelevant.
There is nothing preventing the electric charge to not be a constant, for example.
If it changed drastically we wouldn't be seeing the light at all.
One of these days I'll learn not to express an opinion on the internet. I'll also apologise in advance if I've messed things up here or got examples wrong, it's been a while since I studied this.
The thing I find useful to keep in mind with science is that it's more a method of doing things than something specific. A clear method that should be repeatable with the same results when performed by anyone. Or something close at least, since there's always some degree of error.
One of the consequences of this is that depending on how you approach things you can get incorrect or misleading results despite having a good method. Sometimes you can test wrong variables and get coincidental increases, or the thing causing the thing you're testing is doing something a little different to what you expect. Sometimes you can just have a bias or some sort of expected result and design your experiment so that it supports your theory.
Going off some dodgy memories here, but I seem to remember the Hubble Constant being a good example of this. The Hubble constant is a measure of how fast the universe is expanding. There were two main schools of thought: one thought the universe should be young and another than thought it should be old. So there were a lot of papers published at the time that would either have this high value for the Hubble Constant or a much lower one, with not much in the middle. But as time went on, measurements tended to end up around the middle, fitting neither of the main theories, and we ended up with something different, which we're still using.
Examples like this do pop up from time to time in science, and it really shows that science isn't a unified thing. So I personally favour the Paradigm model of how science works over the other models. Your theory might not work in every instance, but if it works better than that other theory in some instances, use it where it's better. If you can use a simpler, wrong theory to get more or less the same results as a better but more complex theory (eg Newton's laws vs relativity at low velocities), it's still okay to use it. And of course sometimes the thing you're looking at isn't well understood so you have a number of theories to pick from.
Paradigms have the advantage of letting you pick whether you want to use falsification to justify why not to use something or induction to use something irrationally at any point. Let's face it, induction is quite irrational, but it's useful and intuitive. Falsification is just induction in reverse, and sort of comically while it's great at showing when things don't work, which it does so very rationally, it relies on induction for actually keeping the theory.
Basically what I'm getting at is that we're still human (or most of us are) and are subject to biases, even if we don't think we are. It's easy to ignore data, problems or theories you don't like and still have something that's scientific.
Philosophy doesn't explain it. That isn't the point. Philosophy (the philosophy of science, to be exact) gives you an approach to explaining.
Let me take another whack at this explanation...
You cannot philosophically justify when observation A is or is not evidence for idea B.
You cannot philosophically justify when prediction C is evidence for idea B.
You really just have to wing these and figure out if they rationally follow.
If philosophy of science seems useless to you, it's because you've internalized that philosophical advance so that it seems obvious. It isn't obvious. We know it's not obvious because it wasn't used for most of human history.
Note that my bucket list does not involve a similar visit to a soda stand and the tomb of Francis Bacon.
Examples like this do pop up from time to time in science, and it really shows that science isn't a unified thing
Much like my family, don't assume that just because they're fighting doesn't mean they're not unified. They're SUPPOSED to be trying to kill each others ideas, thats the entire point.
It doesn't means it can not change or have not actually changed. DOn't know why the link is not working
There is nothing preventing the electric charge to not be a constant, for example.If it changed drastically we wouldn't be seeing the light at all.
It was a really weird dissertation on different views of how math relates to the universe.
but the idea is that just because a model is working now doesn't means it have to work always.
No, but because it has been in place for 13ish billion years it does mean that it will be in place tomorrow.
Examples like this do pop up from time to time in science, and it really shows that science isn't a unified thingMuch like my family, don't assume that just because they're fighting doesn't mean they're not unified. They're SUPPOSED to be trying to kill each others ideas, thats the entire point.
That's quite true. But it does mean that scientific evidence doesn't necessarily mean it's completely true, which is what I was getting at. Some people do tend to overlook that, or think that just because one scientist thinks/says/does A then all scientists do that too because it's science. I'm sure you know just how annoying that is.
Random thought: If our moon had spun around alittle more do you think people would have figured out the whole spinning planet thing faster?
Which is why, once you've winged it and come up with idea B, you use it to make prediction D. If prediction D doesn't work out, you dump idea B.Philosophy doesn't explain it. That isn't the point. Philosophy (the philosophy of science, to be exact) gives you an approach to explaining.Let me take another whack at this explanation...
You cannot philosophically justify when observation A is or is not evidence for idea B.
You cannot philosophically justify when prediction C is evidence for idea B.
You really just have to wing these and figure out if they rationally follow.
And according to Popper how much of the alphabet do you have to go through before you can say you're right?
but there's been a bizarre strain of criticism among non-scientists for years (that I suspect is partially due to his rejection of Marxism).
This seems strange to me. I've several times seen discussions where marxists have pointed out that marginalism in unfalsifiable, where the response from neoliberal economists have been to dismiss the requirement for falsifiability.
Is there something I missed? Some context I'm not aware of here?
You can't. You don't.
You say you've got a working theory and you use it until you or someone shows where it doesn't work.
You can and you do. The false modesty is annoying.
You say that decapitation is lethal to humans. You dont say that you have a working model that predicts the end of life at decapitation. We don't say that we have a model for where mars is we drop a remote control car on it.
Economics isn't a science and the far left is notorious for rejecting science in favor of critical theory or ideological convenience or purity. On the other hand pretty much all of the right does the same.
Since he specifically mentioned Popper being disliked for his dismissal of Marx, and since I've specifically seen marxist historians and economists say we need to approach economics in a more scientific fashion, it didn't add up for me.
Do you have any specific example of modern marxist economics rejecting the scientific method? Seeing as how part of their criticism of marginalism is that it's infalsifiable, it seems like a claim that would need to be at least somewhat backed up.
I agree that modern economics is usually not very scientific, relying on pseudoscience and baseless assumptions, much like the current shape of evolutionary psychology, but there is nothing inherently anti-scientific in studying economies.
I'm a science teacher, and this is how I explain and discuss science.
Science is the dominant philosophical system of the modern world. It allows us a limited ability to predict future events, and gives us a strong basis of information and learning that so that we can create new technologies.
Science is of two parts: 1. the scientific method, and 2. the body of information, constantly updating and changing as we learn more, that humans know.
1. The scientific method is a method of logic and experimentation that allows us to separate factual and non-factual knowledge by a process of experimentation - extreme skepticism is vital, and repeatable experiments are the standard of proof in this process. No fact or knowledge is every 100% immune to change or testing - this is a major piece of the scientific method. Information that has strong experimental evidence supporting it must be accepted, even if disturbing or a complete revision of what has to this point been understood as the truth - a major issue for many people with science.
For example, scientists in 19th century Europe were forced to revise their worldviews on the age of the earth based on geological data, and people have had issues with this revision in society for the last 200 years.
2. Science is also the body of actionable knowledge that we have gathered with the scientific method. This knowledge is powerful because we can predict results (like sending a probe successfully to another planet with chemistry and physics), and create useful technologies (antibiotics, solar power) with it. Scientific knowledge is repeatedly tested, gathered through experimentation and observation using the scientific method, and expected to provide clear predictions of future behavior in the natural world.
Science is a very powerful system of thought, but not the end all of the entire human condition. Science is morality neutral, the information and technology it creates can be used for good or evil. Ethics and morals must be brought to science and technology, whether from faith or from other philosophical systems.
Plenty of them, depending on what parts you want to disprove. A long period of cooling while greenhouses gas concentrations continue to rise would do so, assuming there weren't other known causes for the cooling, though even then the threat might be over if those other causes could be expected to continue. (Note: A couple of years below a hot outlier year doesn't count.)
The heat continuing to rise despite greenhouse gas concentrations dropping would break the theory, but not the threat.
Evidence of an unknown feedback loop scrubbing CO2 out of the atmosphere faster than expected would end the threat without changing the basic theories.
Probably a ton of other things that I don't have the background to even think of.
All of this is very unlikely. That's because there is a huge body of evidence behind climate change. A lot of good, old, well tested theory and a ton of data showing that theory applies to the current situation.
Of course, on a smaller level, the process goes on in climate change theory all the time. Models are created, predictions made, compared against reality and hypotheses are shot down or revised. But that's in the details, not the big picture.
Let's go with that. A sustained period of cooling (say, thirty years?), while CO2 levels keep rising.
The problem is that the IPCC's mission is to find evidence for AGW. There is not one person there that would have the guts to say "well, maybe we were wrong". They would say "well, there are oscillations within the tectonic plates that have lowered the temperatures for now, but that won't save us for long, and we must make sure to transform our society into a sustainable, CO2 emission-free society". Just like they were saying about el Nino, then next year la Nina, then the NAO, then the gulf stream, then differently heated parts of the ocean, and so on and so forth.
More troubling, if your next scenario happened, rising heat despite falling CO2, the IPCC would most likely block inquiry into what caused the rising heat, calling it evil propaganda of the oil industry.
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Plenty of them, depending on what parts you want to disprove. A long period of cooling while greenhouses gas concentrations continue to rise would do so, assuming there weren't other known causes for the cooling, though even then the threat might be over if those other causes could be expected to continue. (Note: A couple of years below a hot outlier year doesn't count.)
The heat continuing to rise despite greenhouse gas concentrations dropping would break the theory, but not the threat.
Evidence of an unknown feedback loop scrubbing CO2 out of the atmosphere faster than expected would end the threat without changing the basic theories.
Probably a ton of other things that I don't have the background to even think of.
All of this is very unlikely. That's because there is a huge body of evidence behind climate change. A lot of good, old, well tested theory and a ton of data showing that theory applies to the current situation.
Of course, on a smaller level, the process goes on in climate change theory all the time. Models are created, predictions made, compared against reality and hypotheses are shot down or revised. But that's in the details, not the big picture.
Let's go with that. A sustained period of cooling (say, thirty years?), while CO2 levels keep rising.
The problem is that the IPCC's mission is to find evidence for AGW.
This is simply wrong. As in, so wrong that no response is needed. Reread the mission statement.
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What would make the IPCC declare the threat of climate change over/invalid/overstated/not a problem? Yes, this is a political issue, not a scientific one. Really consider it. Is there even a single possible scenario?
There are countless things which theoretically could falsify the theory of global warming. However, given that nothing HAS after more than a century of ongoing study the plausibility of finding anything to do so is virtually nil.
Examples;
If satellite measurements of incoming radiation were no longer greater than measurements of outgoing radiation that would disprove AGW... but it has never happened.
If surface measurements of incoming radiation no longer showed that radiation increasing over time that would disprove AGW... but it has never happened.
If measurements of the absorption and emission spectra of carbon dioxide did not match changes in the radiation spectra reaching the planet's surface that would disprove AGW... but it has never happened.
If measurements of the total heat content of the climate system stopped growing, even for a few years, that would disprove AGW... but it has never happened (claims to the contrary are lies based on applying false statistical analysis to less than 2% of the climate system warming).
Et cetera.
The idea that a theory is 'not scientific' because efforts to falsify it now have virtually no chance of succeeding is the height of irrationality. For decades after Arrhenius first proposed AGW theory there were half a dozen arguments (e.g. overlapping absorption spectra, ocean sequestration of CO2, etc) which it was believed WOULD prove it false... but over time each of those arguments was tested and shown to be incorrect. Global warming theory persists not because it 'is not falsifiable', but because every conceivable attempt to falsify it has failed. We no longer have any new ideas of how to do so. MAYBE there is some hidden level of science which we have not yet discovered which could falsify AGW, but while we are constrained by the current limits of scientific understanding, global warming is as close to a 'fact' as scientific analysis recognizes.