Re: THE SKY IS FALLING! THE SKY IS FALLING!

"Will Vaughan" <wsvon@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:gibgtn$l4a$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
James Schrumpf wrote:
Quiet, Professor <theodoreward@xxxxxxxxx> -- I'm transmitting rage.
*snip*


Yes I mentioned there are a lot of smart people on both sides, though
the majority seem to be on one side. Again, I'm not saying its set in
stone as I can't judge not being a climate scientist or whoever
studies this crap. I am simply saying if there are two sets of smart
people arguing over this it is retarded for people who are in no
position to judge to summarily say one side or the other is correct.
And that being the case if you have to choose a side you should
choose the side that allows life on earth to continue over the side
that allows you to keep driving SUVs.


Except that on one side you have people who are ignoring the actual
science that's going on right now and clinging to the AGW belief.

Science isn't determined by how many people are on one side or
another, but by what the evidence says.

Galileo was right when most of the rest of the world was wrong.

Continental drift was proposed by Ortelius in 1596, fully developed by
Wegener in 1912, and not agreed upon until the late 1960s.

Bretz proposed the origin of the scoured badlands in Montana to be the
result of a catastrophic flood from glacial lake Missoula, and the
argument went on for over forty years before the geologic community
accepted the evidence in the 1970s.

What the AGW people have done is taken a set of measurements and some
dubious climate models and run wild with them. They are ignoring more
recent measurements that don't agree with their models, and their
models can't account for observations they should have predicted if
they were accurate.

The problem with your last sentence is that it's not as simple as
"quit driving SUVs"; it's more like "prevent the developing nations
from developing and destroy the existing economies of the developed
nations."

Answers to complex problems are never simple, and climate is one of
the most complex things on Earth. If someone claims to have a simple
answer to "global warming" or "climate change," they're selling
something.

Exactly - and the examples you cite do show that science is a
self-regulating institution. But the ones you cite are exceptions - for
the most part, ideas by small groups only gain when they are
scientifically plausible - and this is not the norm in science. This is
explored in detail in Thomas Kuhn's "The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions." Just because its not the norm doesn't mean it can't
be true, but the odds are very much against it.

However, the AGW deniers don't have science on their side. Sure
there is some evidence that points against AGW - but the most of
the evidence - and the most convincing scientific evidence - is on
the side of AGW. As a result, most climate scientists beileve it
as a likely theory. The AGW deniers need to read Carl Sagan's
Demon-Haunted World to get a perspective on what it really means
to have a scientific debate and not an all out war on prevailing
scientific ideas based on limited and faulty evidence.

Plus, Professor's idea is crystalized by Hitchen's - from
Sahil Kapur's article:

"Christopher Hitchens, a genuine skeptic, accepts that even if
the science of human-caused global warming is uncertain, "we
should act as if it is" certain, because "we don't have another planet
on which to run the experiment." Hitchens argues that if humans
turned out not to be contributing to global warming, we would merely
have made a "mistake in analysis, which we could correct from,
" whereas if the doubters were wrong, inaction "would lead to disaster."
This illustrates the difference between honest skepticism and zealotry."

Have you heard about the Theory of Alien Genocide? Unless people give me
donations on behalf of the aliens, they will come down here and kill
everyone. Even if we are uncertain about this theory, "We should act as if
it is" certain, because "we don't have another planet on which to run the
experiment." I argue that if humans turned out not to be contributing to
this alien genocide, we would merely have made a "mistake in analysis, which
we could correct from, " Whereas if the doubters were wrong, inaction would
lead to disaster."

Of course, one of the many things the AGW fascists are wrong about is the
consequences from AGW.

Warmer periods in man's history have been more beneficial for humans,
whereas the colder periods have been the least beneficial.


.

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