Re: Cycling not related to global warming

On 2007-05-20, Tony Raven <junk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Ben C wrote on 20/05/2007 09:41 +0100:
On 2007-05-19, Tony Raven <junk@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
[...]
Meanwhile I will continue to remind those that have forgotten that in
science it only needs one person to overturn the firmly held views of
the entire scientific community.

I can see how that might be true for something like theoretical physics,
where you have a lot of theory built on relatively few facts. But GW
consists of relatively tentative conclusions drawn from a huge amount of
facts. Or at least, if that isn't what it is, it's hard to give it much
credence at all.

Try looking at the story of heliobacter pylori as to how firm
conclusions drawn from a huge amount of facts were overturned by two
mavericks who had been ostracised by the scientific community for years
for their views. Its the best known example but there are many other
examples - look at how the geneticists were all convinced that mapping
the genome would provide all the answers until they did it and found it
provided very few answers and lots of unanswered questions that didn't
fit with their model.

You make a good point. The worrying thing is how many people believe in
anthropogenic GW on the basis of "all those boffins surely can't be
wrong". But it's not that simple. The boffins aren't stupid and they do
good research, but they still get plenty of things wrong.

I would agree with you that GW are relatively tentative conclusions but
the science-politico community treat it as much more than that and seek
to either suppress or ridicule alternative hypotheses for the observed
facts.

Human nature I suppose. Actually for GW there seem to be a lot of facts
that the Earth is getting warmer, but much fewer that demonstrate why.
The why is often justified with computer models, and that's an
interesting one, because you are never really sure how many
not-so-tentative leaps of deduction exist in the model tucked away
behind the scenes.
.

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